I admit I don't know how Moriarty could have faked his death given the gun-in-mouth we saw, but his REASON for shooting himself just strikes me as so crazy that it's almost enough to make me believe he didn't really.

I think that the fact that Anderson and the EH woman's theories have differing views on Moriarty's end (Anderson has him dead while she has him alive) means that Moriarty's fate isn't public knowledge. That of course doesn't mean that Mycroft didn't step in and provide a coverup.

Well I'm currently thinking there is something...Andrew was teasing on The One Show.

My apologies to the members who already read my post about Moriarty's fake suicide on the TRF thread concerning the rooftop scene.  This is actually an altered version with several differences.
 
I’ve become convinced that Moriarty faked his death as the last brilliant step in his scheme to coerce Sherlock into committing suicide in a desperate effort to save his friends from the snipers.  If you carefully watch the scene in which Moriarty shoots himself you’ll notice two very interesting things.
 
(1)  Sherlock did not actually see the gun fire, because he lurched backwards and closed his eyes for a moment when Moriarty stuck the gun in his mouth.
 
(2)  Moriarty didn’t fall straight back and land hard on the rooftop, like a man who is dead before he hits the ground.
 
Watch closely and you’ll see that as Moriarty falls (and goes out of frame) he bends his knees and turns to his right, with his arm stretched towards the roof behind him to cushion his fall. In fact, it appears he actually landed on his butt before falling onto his back.
 
From twelve feet back, Sherlock stares at the motionless body while blood oozes onto the roof. However, I think the blood was actually from a bag taped to Moriarty’s back under his clothes, with a tube leading up to the edge of his collar.
 
But what about the gun that Moriarty fired right into his mouth?  After all, Sherlock heard a loud bang, so the gun must have fired either a bullet or a blank, right?
 
I don’t think so.  In fact . . . I don’t think the gun was even loaded.  Here’s why.
 
Sherlock certainly heard a loud bang, but he was twelve feet away -- and the exact direction of a loud, sharp noise which occurs nearby is hard for our ears to pinpoint.
 
A good old M-80 firecracker (or it’s equivalent) going off in front of Sherlock within fifteen feet would have sounded about the same as a shot from Moriarty’s gun.  And if the explosion occurred several feet directly behind Moriarty, Sherlock would naturally think the gun was the source of the noise.

(I'm not suggesting an M-80 was actually used. )

 What if a moderately-sized, remotely-detonated explosive had been planted under the ledge of this small structure, which was located directly behind Moriarty when he “shot” himself?
 

 You can see the same structure (distorted by the fisheye lens) on the far right in the picture below.  Sherlock comes out of a door further to the right and walks past it.
 

Moriarty must have had an accomplice in the building across the street (the same one the sniper was in, but on a higher floor so he could see the roof) with binoculars and a remote device, ready to blow the little bomb when Moriarty put the gun in his mouth.


 So, let’s recap this wacky theory.

Moriarty knows Sherlock won’t kill himself unless he believes Moriarty is dead and unable to call off the snipers.  An accomplice nearby sets off a small, hidden charge several feet behind Moriarty when the accomplice sees Moriarty place the unloaded gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.
 
Sherlock recoils at the sight of the gun in Moriarty’s mouth, just six inches from his own face, and he lunges ten feet backwards.
 
Bang!
 
Moriarty falls down quickly and plays dead.  He hopes the fish-eyed stare and the spreading pool of blood will convince Sherlock not to look too closely.
 

Sherlock finds himself staring in shock at the body of his nemesis and realizing he absolute must jump to save his three friends from the snipers.
 
Moriarty’s plan succeeds . . . sort of.  He doesn’t know that Sherlock has also planned to fake his own suicide.  Even after Sherlock jumps and Moriarty gets up, walks casually over to the ledge, and looks down to gloat a little, he sees Sherlock looking just as dead as Moriarty did a moment ago.  The ground crew has quickly set up the scene by splashing blood around and hiding the fireman’s safety net that caught Sherlock.
 
Sherlock’s plan was designed to be quick and simple -- not that time-consuming mess he described to Anderson.  That's the biggest reason not to believe a word of that discription of the hoax.  Anderson himself even commented that it would take too long! 
 
The beauty of this whole idea is that it presents Moriarty as a cunning genius, rather than a suicidal maniac. Instead of Moriarty suddenly doing something stupid, illogical, and spontaneous, he executes a brilliant, logical, and carefully planned strategy -- which would have worked perfectly if Sherlock's own plan hadn't save him!

Besides, it's funny as hell.  In the space five minutes, both men have convinced each other that they committed suicide -- even though there both still alive!  You gotta love that, really.
 
And what, you may ask, happened to Moriarty after Sherlock jumped?  Well, he expected to walk right out of the hospital, the victor of this final battle with the man he hates.  But with dozens of Mycroft’s agents up and down the street, Moriarty was quickly apprehended – probably before he even left the roof!
 
I think Moriarty was imprisoned and interrogated more forcefully than before, including the use of drugs. The goal would be to extract useful info about his worldwide crime organization.  Mycroft sent the data to Sherlock, aiding him in his efforts to dismantle the crime web.
 
The real kicker is that Mycroft does not tell Sherlock that Moriarty is alive and being held in a secret facility.  That's just the way Mycroft is.  He loves to keep secrets.

But holding Moriarty in prison proves difficult, and he escapes. Sometime after that, we see this on all the TV’s in England.
 

If this is really what happened, Moffat and Gatliss aren't going to have to worry about the fans complaining that Sherlock's suicide hoax was too simple.  When the fans learn what was actually going on that day at the hospital, they'll be amazed -- espeically if Mycroft does the explaining . . . and it's the first time Sherlock finds out he was tricked by Moriarty's own suicide hoax!

Good lord, what a mental image!  I can just see Sherlock's stunned expression! 

Last edited by Bruce Cook (July 5, 2014 10:50 pm)

Just a simple question: Then nobody of Mycroft´s people noticed that there wasn´t a dead body on the rooftop? Or they purposely left it there? I think the fact that nobody e.g. mentioned the body afterwards (and how they got rid of it) is a kind of proof that Moriarty is really dead. Don´t you think that Mycroft had said a word to his brother if the body had been missing? Moriarty is surely not back.

Though to be fair, they don't normally employ a gun!

Yes but this to modernise the canon..i.e. women in more active roles.
Is coming back from the dead  a modern thing?! Tee Hee.
Though it does happen alarmingly often, in the zombie BBC Sherlock world!

Oh Gof how I wish Moriarty to be alive ! But the show will become repetitive and there's no way he stays alive in the end .

I also think that the whole 'coming back from the dead' trope is rather overused and whilst it can work it has to be very cleverly written to work. We have already had one incidence with Irene Adler so another would, I feel, be detrimental (not least because it would be so out of kilter with canon).

I think Moriarty is dead and his "return" was Mycroft's plan. It is how he justified bringing his brother back to the UK and saving me from almost certain death.