kennese wrote:

After watching Reichenbach Fall I immediately hit  Google looking for theories. The result? Even more confusion. If Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat are somehow seeing this, Hurry up and end our agony.

I too have a theory its a bit different from the ones I am seeing out there and it started from something Moriarty said. He told  Sherlock that his weakness is that things have to be too clever, and I think as Sherlock fans we want things to be too clever also which led me to think that maybe the answer to what happened is all so very simple.  So I forced myself to re-watch the epsisode looking for a simple explanation.

I don't believe as some have expressed that Sherlock was one step ahead of Moriarty from the start. Sherlock expected Moriarty to come after him yet he did not know exactly  how it would happen
I think that it was at the journalist's flat he fully understood the scope of Moriarty's plan and that Moriarty was pushing him to disgrace himself by commitng a very public suicide (Btw this is Classic Moriarty who never get his hands dirty;  refer to Study in Pink, and the Kidnapped children in the Chocolate factory)

Sherlock turns to Molly for help and he admits to her that he is not ok and that he thinks he is going to die and that he needs her help

On the rooftop Sherlock is trying to get out of jumping.  He threatens to throw Moriarty off the roof but Moriarty tells him that he has a hit on Sherlock's  friends and that only he could call it off. Sherlock does not risk calling his bluff and prepares to jump. It is there on the ledge that he figures out a way to beat Moriarty and singing "If I've got you" ( Honestly I do not know how they both figure each other out I am not a high functioning sociopath)

Anyways as we know Moriarty seeing that once he is alive that Sherlock can still save his friends, blows his brains out much to Sherlock's surprise. This is why I simply don't buy all the theories about  Sherlock landing on the rubbish truck, body doubles and fake blood. Sherlock knew that Moriarty would be watching his fall and that he would not have been able to trick him with all that gimmickry.There simply was no time for that. Moriarty had to see Sherlock hit that pavement!  Also now that Moriarty was dead the stakes were even higher since the hitmen had no one to stop them except Sherlock''s  dead body on a pavement. Once again no room for gimmickry.Some have stated that the  3 hitmen was just a bluff on Moriarty's part or hired by Mycroft to protect them. Either way if Sherlock knew this why would he still jump there was no need.


I think that most of the fandom wants to believe that Sherlock was somehow able to jump and survive without injury after all we do see him standing without a sctach at the gravesite  That is not possible, So what is left no matter how improbable must be true. I believe that he did jump and did suffter some injuries. However he jumped from a hospital the same hospital Molly worked out of. They must have arranged for him to get immediate treatment. Remember we do not know how much time passed from the jump to the scene of the gravesite. It could have been weeks givinng Sherlock enough time to recover.  
Remember too that Sherlock in a Scandal in Bohemia did prove that such things are possible after he threw the CIA agent out of the window several times whilst tied to a chair and that man survived! So he must have known that it is possible to survive such a fall as long as he got immediate medical attention (Sherlock did call the paramedics before he threw the agent out of the window).

Some people have said that Sherlock used a rubber ball to stop his pulse to trick Watson into thinking he was dead and that being knocked to the ground by the biker made him even more disoriented. Yes the timing of that biker is suspicious but really after watching his best friend  jump off a building army doctor or not I don't think that Watson was in any frame of mind to take any proper reading of Sherlock's pulse and Sherlock would know this. (and I really wonder if Watson was supposed to even witness the jump is Sherlock really so cruel? ok maybe he could be. I digress)

About Mycroft. Others have hinted that Mycroft was somehow in on this whole deception. I honsestly don't buy his story to Watson about what he told Moriarty. How could a man who conceived of "the flight of the dead" be so dense? However I  am still not sure that Sherlock sought his brother's help. They have such a complicated relationship that it seems unlikely. Remember Sherlock was able to save Irene Adler and fake her death so convincingly that Mycroft was fooled and in no way suspected his brother. If he fooled Mycroft once he surely could have done it again

Thus there is my Simple theory; Sherlock Jumped, knowing he would suffer injury and Molly arranged to have him treated for his injuries and helped him faked his death. There was too much at stake to involve too many people such as the homeless network in this plan. We do not know how much time passed between the jump and Sherlock standing alive and well at the grave site so he had time to recover from his fall.

So that is it! What do you think? Did I leave out anything? Is it too simple?
Let me know
We have all the time to trash it out before season 3 starts lololol

P.S Please ignore any grammatical errors  I think faster than I type and I am doing this at  2 a.m so I really don't care about proof reading right now lol
Also I think IOU is significant I just don't know how
That's it I am done
Kennese 25/1/2013
 

Agreed. We're all way overthinking this, which is probably why none of us (me included) have a bombproof theory that fits absolutely everything. I like the idea of him jumping, nut surviving, but I'm pretty sure those paramedics weren't real paramedics, so that makes me question that theory. Anyway, I, personally, have not found, or come up with a thoery that I think 'that explains everything'. I like to believe that if I ever stumble across the right theory, I'll know it. Anyone else have the same feeling?

Mycroft is in on it. It's canon.

When Sherlock is standing on the edge, right before he starts laughing, you can vaguely hear the sound of someone picking up the phone, and then a faint 'hello'. But we don't see Sherlock hang up on whoever this is (it sort of sounded like Molly, but I'm not sure, could be Irene for all I know) so maybe they were listening in on his conversation with John?
Also. I've been thinking how Sherlock left his phone on the roof (not sure if it broke or not), an how John says "I can't go back to the flat at the moment", maybe he goes back to the scene of the crime?
I'm probably completely wrong
 

Ivy wrote:

....I also always wondered why he left his phone on the rooftop, he could have put it back in coat. It's almost like he wanted to make sure it's safe.

Where he's going, he'd have no use for it, after all. He could be found through his phone, so he had to leave it behind. Plus isn't that what someone might do who's committing suicide, toss their phone away? I thought it was meant to look dramatic for us, the audience (especially combined with that heart-rending music that they were playing), and also it would seem believable to John and anyone else who went up there and looked around after the fall.

Irene was leaving her phone behind in order to make Sherlock believe she was actually dead. This may have been a role model for Sherlock when faking his own death.  And the left behind phone is a nod to the canon where Holmes left behind  his "note"book , his final words, for Watson.

Ivy wrote:

I also always wondered why he left his phone on the rooftop, he could have put it back in coat. It's almost like he wanted to make sure it's safe.

If you don't think it's Sherlock on the ground, then it'd make sense he didn't want the phone to be left for the police or someone else to recover. Also, the phone would most likely break from the fall.

kazza474 wrote:

OK, again I am all over the place today! Had a break, googled some cumber-news, stared at a few cumber-pics, all that stuff that we old women do to make us feel young and spritely again.



Now straight after that, the conversation goes :
MYCROFT: Someone called Brook. Recognise the name?
JOHN: School friend, maybe?
MYCROFT: Of Sherlock’s?

DERRRRRR Mycroft! It says he was a close friend! Just a slip in continuity but quite amusing.



ok, so the main thing I wanted to say here is that remember, they had a lot of time to set things up, both Sherlock & Moriarty.

I think what Mycroft meant was that Sherlock didn't have any friends
 

Ivy wrote:

O.K. I watch the rooftop scene again, I don't hear the "hello". 

It's pretty faint, but it's there. Or, I'm just going completely crazy. You can only just make it, but I talked to some other people and they heard it. 

Ivy wrote:

A friend of mine heard it, too. So you can't be crazy.  Maybe you two have a super hearing and I don't. 

haha, no. Maybe, I don't know, turn the sound up a bit. We're all focusing on what we see and stuff, we're not really focusing on what we hear
 

I was looking though my favourite Reichenbach tumblr again ( http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/theory-index ) and there are links to other theory tumblr sites:


What do you think about that, regarding "there's one clue that everyone has missed".

http://whumpresource.tumblr.com/post/16391365481/sherlock-theory