It is a delicate problem, because Mycroft would obviously have checked the rooftop. If there had been no body, he wouldn't have believed Moriarty was dead. M.could, hipothetically, have fooled Sherlock, but not Mycroft - I don't really believe he would be able to pretend he was dead under a close examination. And it is possible Sherlock took a look as well, once he safely inside the hospital.

Yes I think Mycroft/Sherlock /Gov....conspired  to hush up Moriarttys death.
In Andersons, the fan girls and Sherlocks theory , no body was found / public knowledge.

Perhaps they stole Moriartys own idea...and replaced him with a lookalikey actor..thus  Mycroft infiltrates and breaks Moriartys empire from the top.
Hence Sherlock had to jump to make it appear Moriarty won..and was still alive . Explains the  " I got you ... I am you" comments.
The replacement being the ugly duckling...and rescuing Sherlock.

The secret Gov. always runs both sides ....teorrists and agents to their own agenda...kinda the usual conspiracy theory.

Last edited by lil (June 11, 2014 4:23 pm)

But Gatiss and Moffat are evil. In S4, moriarty might be alive because of a mask, or a bungy jump or something in Andersons theories that we all scoffed at. It's probably going to be something that we have already seen. And we're going to kill ourselves when we find out

SebbyM wrote:

I've also read the theory that, like in the original Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty has a twin.

Erm, sorry - where does it say in the original stories that he had a twin???

What I find strange when Moriarty dies is what the gunshot does, or rather does not do, to his head. It depends on the gun and the type of ammunition, but putting a bullet through the roof of someone's mouth will rarely result in such a clean, barely marked corpse as the one we see lying there. By rights, Moriarty's face and/or the back of his head should have been blown apart with his brains all over the place.

So, was the apparently very neat and clean state of the corpse really just due to budget restrictions on the special effects, or is there more behind it?

I also wonder why Sherlock never bent down and checked that he was really dead. He says in TEH (explaining or mock-explaning the fall to Anderson) that "speed was paramount", but it would not have taken more than a moment to make sure. Or even shoot him again himself, just to make certain.

That all said, I really, really hope that Moriarty is and stays dead. He was OK and well acted and served his narrative purpose as long as he was around, but I've about had enough of him. Please give me some more interesting bad guys from now on (like Magnussen was!) instead of two-dimensional psychopaths who are just evil for the sake of being evil, which I find very boring.

Last edited by La Jolie (August 7, 2014 12:05 pm)

That's the thing - Anderson didn't necessarily know there was a body, because he didn't refute that point with the Irish girl's attempt at her own explanation where Moriarty was alive.

And if fans of Sherlock couldn't even agree on whether Moriarty were actually dead or alive, then we would have...

...this forum 
 

I can't help myself.
I have to be a total nerd here and point out that the girl was Scottish.  

JP wrote:

I don't kow... wasn't "are you out of your mind?!?" refute enough?

I took that as Anderson being shocked about the idea of Sherlock and Moriarty having an ... intimate moment.  Not about the idea of Moriarty being alive.  I could be wrong though.

tonnaree wrote:

I can't help myself.
I have to be a total nerd here and point out that the girl was Scottish.  

I totally knew that.  How embarrassing.  The Scottish accent happens to be one of my favorites, too.

My only excuse is that a few pints of beer scrambled my wits when I was typing that.