I think the identity thing is given a greater relevance than it's got. He discredited Sherlock and then forced him to suicide. Moriarty would therefore believe Sherlock won't be around to clear his name. I think Sherlock will find it a very simple thing to demonstrate that Moriarty was Moriarty and not Brook. Not sure on the point of theorising what will happen when he comes back as that depends a great deal on how the writers want to cover it. They could even not touch on this at all. Dramatic license and all.

I think we have to take the "Moriarty never existed" thing with a grain of salt.
Sure he says that he's deleted all record of his being, but he's not against telling untruths is he?

Sure Kitty's expose says he wasn't real, but let's face facts, she didn't exactly check out much of Moriarty/Rich's story that he told her did he? We know there are huge holes in the fabric of truth she has weaved, that is the whole point of the storyline really. The press just printing what they want us to believe. So we can't believe her story that there is no proof of Moriarty's existence.

I think he would have 'wiped out' most things that point to his life, but if anyone did some REAL investigative work they would find data on him.

Sherlocked I know quite a few guys who can grow that amount of stubble overnight; hairy things but yeah it is possible.

I think, we all made too easily the assumption, that Kitty is a bad reporter and would not have checked Brook's credentials. For one thing, we really don't know, how bad Kitty really is. Actor Rich Brook is presented as a public persona, even if he is not well known. His resumme is easy to check, even for a bad journo. The counter argument always was, that Moriarty altered all the records, but he himself said, that this is bullshit and this kind of powerful code doesn't exist. Well, we can't have it both ways. If the code does exist after all, Moriarty was lying to Sherlock. If it doesn't exist, we have to conclude that the Rich Brook persona is real to a certain degree. I tend to assume the latter. If actor Rich Brook never existed, people would have found out in a very short time. And more important, John would know it. He was there, when Sherlock came face to face with Brook, and heard all the accusations. He would be VERY interested after Sherlock's suicide to find out, if there's any truth in the Brook story. Well, he must still believe, at least it COULD be true, mustn't he? We talked about John having found inconsistencies in Sherlock telling him, he's a fraud. I've pointed out some inconsistencies in another thread (and, as always in the times of the world wide web, others have beat me to it, as I found out), but Rich Brook never having existed would be a glaring biggie for John. So if Sherlock wanted John to believe in the 'I am a fraud' story for a prolonged period of time, he must have known, that the Rich Brook story would check out.
So, what are the conclusions:
The simplest one would be, that Moriarty had created 'Actor Rich Brook' quite some time ago as a fall back identity, which would be always handy and practical for a supervillain. A variant of this theory is, that actor Rich Brook IS Moriarty (Moriarty being his artistic alias, since it sounds more menacing than his real name). The actor, who was not contend being a small fish and decided to become the greatest villain of all time.
Another possibility: We've never seen the real Moriarty so far, because Rich Brook, the small time actor was hired to be Moriarty's public face. The actor for hire story was true, but the client was not Sherlock but Moriarty.
Third possibility: Rich Brook is Moriarty's twin brother, who is willingly or by force working together with him. I like this possibilty least of all, but if the beard is not a continuity error, we are forced to conclude, that there are two guys, who look more or less identical. And in canon Moriarty has a brother.
As I said before, at this point, I don't know, what to believe. The most plausible solution would be the first one, that actor Rich Brook has always been one of Moriarty's identities (Jim, the IT guy, who dated Molly was another short term one), so the credentials would check out. But when was a tv show always about the most plausible solutions???

Well according to Kitty's records which John goes through Rich Brooks plays 'Brian Stokes' on the BBC1 award winning drama 'Emergency'. So it would be pretty hard to cover up whether or not that was true - even Kitty would've IMDb'd it as a precaution unless she had seen it herself.

Other reporters (Or at least members here) would certainly investigate the content once it was published and scrutinise it for consistency.

I think it's fair to say John would be aware of the allegations, who stated them and whether or not he had indeed performed in an award winning BBC1 drama as stated.

If it all turns out to be a sham - well Sherlock is effectively dead in the public's mind and so it's another odd twist to an already weird mystery which John would want to whittle away at to find the truth.

I still think Moriarty's helping Sherlock out with a clue in 'The Great Game'; "The clue's in the name: Janus Cars", was blatantly redundant and hinting towards a meat-puppet proxy played, in part at least, by Andrew Scott.

Finally food for thought, if "The Princess Bride" took it's poisoned cup game from "A Study in Scarlet" could 'Sherlock' not bring equilibrium by utilising the way the ship 'Revenge' employed its captain Dread Pirate Roberts each time?

-m0r

You and your bottom lines Kazza! A bit of Pyrrhonian philosophy might be useful :D

I agree Sherlock and Moriarty would each have sized her up as being 'repulsive' for the same reasons (That's she's ambitious and not very smart) but John, and possibly a slew of others, would have investigated the background and evidence for her story and would either have been left wanting or have found out that Richard Brook did indeed exist.

-m0r

Sherlock, I agree, I believe into the simplest explanation as well, though the stubble IS confounding! We're looking at a time laps of a couple of hours at most between Moriarty as cabbie and Moriarty as Rich Brook. Even the most hirsute men can't grow a moustache as fast as this. Trouble is, in a tv show you just never know, how much they bend reality!

I think the time gap between the cabbie scene and the one on the roof is more than a couple of hours. The cabbie scene is in the pitch dark whilst the rooftop scene is in brilliant sunshiney daylight. I guess if he had been up all night he might be the kind of guy that gets stubbly quickly.

However, referring back to the newspaper exposé by Rich Brook, Remember when Moriarty says to Sherlock back in the flat that every fairy tale needs a good villain? We are encouraged to believe t hat he is talking about himself being the baddie here aren't we. Later, on the rooftop, Moriarty says how he loves newspapers, because they sell fairy stories. Is it not possible that what he means all along is that Sherlock will be cast as the villain in the fairy talles conjured  up by the press -with Moriarty feeding the information of course. There is a fairy tale motif running throughout the episode e.g. Hansel and Gretel (the witch in this is eventually burned to a crisp).

It seems feasible that there could be brothers, perhaps twins,  one Moriarty and the other Rich Brook. Unless acting was some form of cover for Moriarty through his career. The idea of two brothers would be more faithful to the ACD canon. At a stretch I suppose it could be a reference to identity theft. It is certainly true that it would be relatively easy to prove that Rich Brook and Moriarty were not the same person, unless of course, they were.

I still cannot credit that Mycroft, who is after all such a clever man, would inadvertently give his brother's arch-enemy the perfect ammunition to destroy him. He knows that Moriarty is a genuinely dangerous man.

Allright, Moriarty/Rich Brook is getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser every time I look at him. When he visits Sherlock after the jury found him not guilty, he is clearly shown to be a left hander. He makes a big show turning this cup of tea so he can hold the handle with the left hand.Our attention is drawn to it. But the guy, who breaks into the tower, is clearly a right hander: He handles his phone with the right hand, but more importantly, he applies the diamond with the right hand, which needs some fine motorical skills. Now, you could argue, he wrote 'GET SHERLOCK' with his left hand. Yes, but he's writing in mirror image. If you write mirror image, the left hand is easier, because you don't swish over the letters with your hand. I should know, because I am a leftie and, as many lefties I'm very good at mirror image writing. Also, the letters, he writes are kind of crude, so he doesn't have to be very skillful with his left hand to write those letters. But for me the clincher is the careful way he applies the diamond with his right hand. No leftie would do this.
To me it increasingly looks like we're dealing with two different persons here. On just an emotional level, I like the guy, who dances to the Rossini melody in the Tower, and who gleefully poses in the crown jewells. The guy, who shows up at Sherlock's flat creeps me out. But, of course, that's not a valid argument, just a personal feeling.

Last edited by sherlocked (March 27, 2012 7:58 pm)

davina, we all saw but didn't observe, lol! No, I don't think, this one is a continuity error. This left/right hand thing is much too big for this. It's standard mystery novel stuff. But I like the way, they fooled us with the writing! If I weren't a leftie myself with lots of mirror image writing practice, I would never have caught on!

That's true. If I, a leftie would use both hands, I would hold the phone in my right hand and use the fingers of my left hand to type/click. But the guy in the Tower holds the phone in his right hand and does the typing/clicking with his right hand also. No leftie would do that, but, as I said before, the clincher is the diamond. No leftie would apply that with his right hand in the way this is done in the show.
So, if tobeornot221b's observation is correct, the guy in the tower and the 'Moriarty' at the pool in 'Scandal' are the same person, whereas the guy, who visits Sherlock (and possibly the cabbie) is a different one. This could make sense, since I read somewhere, that 'Scandal' for some reason was filmed after 'Reichenbach', so they should have paid attention to those details.

An aside: SHOULD  we deal here with something like the Moriarty twins vs. the Holmes brothers (and it's still a big IF), it's not uncommon, that identical twins, though they share the same DNA, have different hand preferences. It's a phenomenon, which is still not completely understood, but the scientists are getting there.

Last edited by sherlocked (March 27, 2012 8:49 pm)