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Who needs clever, logical mystery-solving when you can just wheel out Mr. Completely-Implausible-But-Weirdly-Accurate-Jump-Of-Logic? Throughout the story, Norman Jayden repeatedly proves himself to be the convenient plot-mashing wonder that no lazy writer should be without. He’s so good an FBI profiler he can make links where there aren’t even any links, and is always right, despite having absolutely nothing tangible to go on. Just check out how he finally identifies the killer if you take him to the Blue Lagoon night club in the third act:
Above: Jayden's so good he makes Columbo look like aboiled turnip
The killer wears a watch that a local police station traditionally buys as a promotion gift, so to Jayden that means that the killer has to be a cop (as said commonly-available watch will explode if worn by a non-law-enforcement worker, presumably). And the police conveniently have the current address and full current real estate ownership details of the retired cop in question on record.
And because said retired cop owns a huge industrial warehouse complex (On a retired cop’s money? Seriously?) then the only possible place his next victim could be stashed is within said implausible-but-its-dramatic-so-never-mind-the-logic setting (anywhere any more obvious and Shelby might as well put up a neon sign). It’s all illogical nonsense, but it all turns out to be true, because it’s the easiest way to fudge a third act together without doing any of that pesky thinking.
Plot hole 7
Above: Ultra-strength and no need for air. Why isn't she in an X-Men game?
Top tip. If you’re ever in a house fire, you can avoid suffocating on the smoke by suffocating in a closed fridge instead (you know, those big airtight boxes of cool that are notoriously impossible to open from the inside). How do you survive? Who cares? Just get out in between the cutscenes and no-one will ask how you managed it, you big Houdini you.
Plot hole 8
Whether the FBI run random staff drug tests or not, an addiction as debilitating as Jayden’s would not have gone unnoticed as long as it has. Unless of course the FBI is ignoring his chemical binging because of the magical clairvoyant detective skills the drugs seem to give him.
Plot hole 9
The guns used in Heavy Rain must be props, used simply to look intimidating. Whenever a single, easy shot would resolve things neatly, fingers stay well away from triggers and prey implausibly escapes in exactly the way the plot requires. We know this one happens in bad movies as well, but the frequency and choreography of it in Heavy Rain is stupid almost to the point of parody.
Above: Given how the story plays out, Hassan is the safest man in the world right now
Most notable examples? The way Ethan can escape a motel besieged by SWAT teams (‘Shit, he’s a whole eight feet below us on that pavement. Our bullets don’t even work down there’), and the numerous ladders Shelby can chase Madison up during the climax. Person slowly climbing very tall structure = sitting duck. An ex-cop should know that.
Plot hole 10
Heavy Rain’s world seems disproportionately populated with ludicrously enthusiastic but woefully unthinking killers. Take junkyard killer Mad Jack for instance. He thinks nothing of murderising police and FBI alike in his place of business, in broad daylight and during work hours, and then tops it off by dumping the bodies in a barely covered acid bath right at the front of his workshop forecourt. And despite having this big conspicuous murderer’s soup by way of a welcome matt, he doesn’t raise a bit of suspicion. It seems the police don’t bother to investigate the last-known whereabouts of missing officers. Probably too busy giving key evidence away.
