Yeah, I think it was something like, if Moriarty was dead, he couldn't call of the snipers, or it would cut off Sherlock's access to some information that Moriarty had.

But this was one of the hardest things in the whole series for me to swallow: I have trouble seeing suicide as a victory in any story. In some mysteries a murderer, once caught, kills themselves rather than be hanged, but Moriarty wasn't in that situation. Although this turned out not to be the case, Moriarty at that point believed he had the upper hand.

And well, killing himself meant Moriarty was, well, dead. That didn't matter to him?

After all, if he had been alive, he would have been there to direct his network, and Sherlock would have had a harder time bringing it down. And maybe he would have figured out that Sherlock hadn't really died. In a sense, Moriarty's being dead made it easier for Sherlock to pull off his plan.

I re-watched all nine Sherlock episodes during the last few days, and while watching The Reichenbach Fall I had some interesting thoughts about Moriarty’s death scene.  Up until today I never seriously entertained the idea that Moriaty was not really dead.

The idea seems far-fetched in view of what we saw.  But then I realized just how much we DIDN’T see, along with what we never heard anybody say.  Here’s what I mean.
 
Moriarty whips out that shiny pistol, sticks in his mouth, and supposedly blows his brains out.  Only one thing is missing.
 
The brains.
 
We all assume that the BBC simply chose not to get too graphic by showing a pink cloud of blood and brain matter spraying out the back of his head.  But what if that’s not the case. If Moriarty was faking, we didn’t see the departing brain matter because . . . it wasn’t there.
 
So, what about the spreading pool of blood that oozed out the back of Moriarty’s head?  If Moriarty was faking, where did the blood come from?
 
Actually, that would be easy to rig up.  Moriarty could have attached a wide, flat, plastic bag filled with blood against his back (under his shirt, of course) with a tube leading up to the back of his neck, plugged at the top. When he fell backwards, the impact on the bag popped the plug out and allowed the blood to squirt onto the rooftop the way we saw it do.
 
What about that big loud bang we heard from the gun?  Would any sane person actually stick a gun in his mouth and fire a blank?
 
Hmmm.  That question kinda answers itself.  If anybody is nuts enough to fire a blank into his own mouth, it’s Moriarty.  But articles I’ve read online clearly state that a blank cartridge fired from a gun pressed against any part a person’s body will cause serious damage.  And Moriarty had the muzzle close to the roof of his mouth, if not right against it.
 
I have no answer for that one – but I’m working on it.
 
And, of course, we must face the fact that Sherlock examined the body to be sure Moriarty was . . . wait, he didn’t do that!  He never even looked it again.  Moriarty could have lain there grinning like a fool, rolling his eyes around, waiting for Sherlock to jump off the roof so that the watching sniper would send word to the other assassins, calling off the “hits” on Mrs. Hudson, Watson, and Lestrade.
 
That, I have always believed, was the whole purpose of the fake suicide.  It’s the best explanation for the whole scheme.  And Moriarty might have ancipated Sherlock's intention to torture the "call off" signal out of him to save Sherlock's friends.  So, a fake suicide by Moriarty would virtually guarantee that Sherlock had to jump off the roof so that the watching sniper across the street wouldn't shoot John, and he would call the other assasines to tell them the "hits" were off.
 
Another thing I realized is that absolute nobody in the series other than John and Sherlock talk about the death of Moriarty.  We assume that it doesn’t need to be stated –  and that IS a reasonable assumption, but it seems odd that the closest anyone ever came to confirming Moriarty’s death was when Lestrade told Anderson that Sherlock’s death had been confirmed by Molly – and we know that was completely bogus.  Lestrade might have said something to Anderson like, "Moriarty blew his brains out and forced Sherlock to jump to save his friends from the assasines."
 
If Moriarty wasn’t dead, he could have simply gotten up and walked away after Sherlock jumped.  He would think Sherlock was dead on the street below -- and since the skilled street crew fixed the scene to look real very quickly, Moriarty would have seen exactly what he expected when he looked down from the roof.
 
We know from the quick montage scene of news reports early in The Empty Hearse that Moriarty’s hoax and his fake identity as Richard Brook had been publicly exposed, and that Sherlock reputation was restored.  But they don’t say a word about is how Moriarty died . . . or even state that he's dead!
 
All I’m saying, folks, is that if the producers of Sherlock plan to bring Moriarty back, they haven’t really done much to convince us he’s dead – other than show him sticking a gun in his mouth, falling backwards, and letting blood appear to leak out from the back of his head.  And the operative word here is “appear”.  When you think about, Moriarty's "suicide" would be easier to fake than Sherlocks!
 
This sort of leaves things open for Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss to work they’re creative magic and make a living Moriarty seem plausible.  For example, suppose Mycroft had his men apprehend Moriarty right there at the hospital on the day Sherlock jumped, and he’s been imprisoned ever since – unbeknownst even to Sherlock.
 
Mycroft might have succeeded in extracting info from Moriarty (with torture and drugs) and used this to assist Sherlock in his efforts to disassemble Moriarty’s criminal network.
 
But somehow Moriarty managed to escape – which doesn’t seem a bit unlikely in view of the other amazing stuff he’s done.
 
What do you think, folks?
 

Last edited by Bruce Cook (June 28, 2014 7:39 pm)

agree, Matt. rewatching the episode after TEH I still have a few problems with it...why was Sherlock so shocked with Moriarty´s death? it was one of the eventualities - probably the best one for Sherlock. I really wonder what would happen if Jim hadn´t kill himself..would he watch Sherlock jump down /nonsense/? would he been killed by Mycroft´s snipers /that would be not helpful for dismantling his network anyway/? or what? did Sherlock have a gun? would he kill Moriarty?

Hm. Could you put your theory in two or three clear sentences, so an idiot like me understands, too? 
You don't believe the solution offered to Anderson, do I get it?
But what about Moriarty's suicide? Not real?
Thanks!

Great points, MartaSt.  That makes two serious drawbacks to my suggestion that Moriarty faked his suicide right in front of Sherlock.  (1)  A pistol firing a blank inside someone's mouth would be almost as bad as a bullet, and (2) a person falling straight back onto a hard surface would land with enough force to cause considerable pain and injury.
 
My only defense for these real concerns would be to say that if Sherlock could devise a way to leap from a six story building, land safely, and fool both a sniper in a 2nd floor window and John Watson on the other side of the ambulance station, then perhaps the brilliant Moriarty could solve these two problems as well.
 
And remember Moffat and Gatliss came right out and said (in the Sherlock special which aired on BBC) that the explanation by Sherlock given to Anderson was their way of just “pulling the rug out one more time at the end” – one last ridiculous description of how Sherlock did it.  So, we still don’t really know how Sherlock faked his OWN suicide, much less how Moriarty faked his!
 
I wrote a long post on the “how Sherlock did it” thread describing the many, many reasons Sherlock’s little joke on Anderson couldn’t possibly be the real explanation, covering things like the fact the big blue airbag would have been in full view of the sniper across the street while the airbag was being inflated and while it was being hidden from John afterwards at the other end of the ambulance station.




I still maintain that a simple fireman’s safety net could have been pulled from the laundry truck, set up, used to catch Sherlock, and then stowed back before the truck drove off – all done so quickly that by the time Moriarty looked down (if he had NOT shot himself) he would have seen what appeared to be a dead Sherlock on the sideways.
 

 So, all I’m saying is that Moriarty had his own cleverly planned fake suicide to perform so that Sherlock would witness the removal of his one-and-only way to save his friends when he thought Moriarty was dead.
 

 

 It just makes sense.  Moriarty’s “death” made it absolutely necessary for Sherlock to appear to commit suicide for the benefit of the watching sniper.  We saw that sniper calmly packing up to leave after Sherlock fell.  He certainly was not “persuaded not to make the attempt” by Mycroft’s men, as Sherlock smugly told the gullible Anderson.
 

 I think we’d all agree that Moffat and Gatiss wouldn’t suggest that Moriarty was still alive and then palm off some disappointing revelation like, “It’s a new villain just taunting the world with an elaborate hoax”.  I’m sure that fans of the series would much rather learn that Moriarty fooled Sherlock, just as Sherlock intended to fool Moriarty and the sniper (and John, for reasons none of us have figure out yet).
 
The first episode in series four might reveal the actual method Sherlock used to fake his suicide – a simple but effective way of doing it like the one I described in the other thread.  Such a method of performing a stunt like that would seem obvious in retrospect – just like Sherlock’s famous deductions do after they’ve been explained (in the  books at least).
 
But if Moffat and Gatiss can also surprise us with the revelation that Moriarty cleverly faked his suicide as well, the fans might not complain as loudly (like Anderson did when he said, “Well . . . that’s not how I would have done it.”)
 
And we get the added treat of having Sherlock and Moriarty face each other in a new battle of wits.  I was very disappointed in Charles Augustus Magnussen.  He worked twice as hard to be evil and brilliant, but he only managed to be snotty and obnoxious.

Anybody agree?

(As you can tell from the above long-winded post, I just enjoy presenting a strong case for my ideas, and sometimes the results make me sound like a pompous know-it-all.  Hope I didn't put everybody to sleep.)


 

Last edited by Bruce Cook (June 30, 2014 7:01 pm)

interesting, Bruce! have to think about it!

Though he still needs to disappear to deal with the network.