There are some people that want to see things with as little advanced knowledge as possible.  For them, even a trailer is a spoiler.

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I can make a strong case for the idea that Moriarty was able to fake his own death much easier than Sherlock did.  Here’s how.
 
 (1) Sherlock did not actually see the gun fire or the back of Moriarty’s head blow off, because Sherlock lurches backwards and closes his eyes a split second after Moriarty stuck the gun in his mouth —


— and (2) Moriarty did not fall straight back and land hard on the rooftop, which would have caused Moriarty too much pain to allow him to lay still and pretend to be dead.


Watch the scene 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.  If you watch Moriarty’s fall very closely (with some freeze frame pauses to study it) you’ll see that it appears he actually landed on his butt before falling onto his back!
 
Sherlock may-or-may not have seen this, because his eyes were closed as he lunged away from Moriarty (use your freeze frame to verify this, too).  But that doesn't really matter because I'm sure Moriarty did a convincing job of looking like a dead men falling down.  From about twelve feet back Sherlock stares at the motionless body with blood oozing onto the roof — from a  bag of blood taped to Moriarty’s back, under his clothes.  A tube would led up up to his collar at the back of his neck.
 
As soon as he laid on his back, the pressure would squeeze the blood slowly from the end of the tube (which would have been loosely plugged until that moment) and ooze out around his head just as we saw it do.


So, did Moriarty fire a blank into his mouth?  No, that would have probably penetrated his brain almost as well as bullet.  However, Sherlock heard a loud bang, so the gun must have fired either a bullet or a blank, right?

Not necessarily. 

Sherlock certainly heard a loud bang, but he was several feet away from Moriarty when that happened, and a loud bang fairly close to a person tends to overwhelm the ear’s ability to determine precise direction.  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, twelve feet away. 
 

 And if the explosion occurred directly behind Moriarty (but three feet further back), Sherlock would think the gun was the source of the noise.
 
Suppose a small explosive had been rigged to go off under the ledge of the structure shown below —


 — which was located directly behind Moriarty when he “shot” himself.


I’m not sure how Moriarty set off the charge at the precise moment he wanted. I suspect he used the same brilliant strategy he employed to break into the Tower of London.

An accomplice.
 
Somebody was watching from a high window across the street, with binoculars and a remote device, ready to blow the little bomb locate a few feet behind Moriarty when he put the gun in his mouth.
 
So, let’s recap this wacky theory.  (Hey, I heard that!  Everybody groaned.  Come on, I’m being brilliant here!) 
Moriarty knows Sherlock won’t kill himself unless he believes Moriarty is dead and cannot call off the snipers.  So he has an accomplice nearby set off the small, hidden charge three feet behind him when the accomplice sees Moriarty place the unloaded gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Sherlock recoils in shock at the sight of the gun in Moriarty’s mouth, just six little inches from his own face, and then —


Bang!
 
Moriarty falls back (quickly but carefully) and plays dead.  He hopes the fish-eyed stare and the spreading pool of blood around his head will convince Sherlock not to look too closely — which he doesn't. 

In fact, the three screen grabs I've displayed here represent the only times Sherlock forces himself to look at the body, briefly and from a distance. The third time, he just glances over his shoulder while standing on the edge, even further away (as shown in the first picture above).

And notice that there really wasn't a lot of blood at first — which I think is a telling clue.  A man with his head blown off bleeds out a lot, very quickly, and then the bleeding stops.
 

But with Moriarty, he bled very little at first, and then it just kept seeping out, even though his heart had supposedly stopped.  I think this blood is coming from that bag taped to his back, under his body, being pushed out through a short tube leading up to the back of his neck. 

Simple and foolproof.


Lo and behold, Sherlock is fooled. (Yes, I know, Sherlock is an adorable genius, but even he screws up sometimes, right?)

Moriarty’s plan succeeds . . . sort of.  He doesn’t know that Sherlock faked his own suicide moments later, and even when he gets up after Sherlock is gone, walks casually over to the ledge, and looks down to gloat a little, he sees Sherlock appearing to be just as dead as Moriarty did a moment ago, because the "ground crew" has set up the scene in seconds, hiding the fireman’s safety net and splashing the blood around Sherlock while he played dead!

Either that or Mycroft's men rushed out onto the roof from their hiding place in the stairway, ready to arrest Moriarty — which was Sherlock's plan all along. After all, the sniper was positioned lower than the rooftop, so he wouldn't have seen Mycroft's agents apprehend the master criminal!
 
So, what are your thoughts?  Did I miss any major problems?
 

Last edited by Bruce Cook (December 30, 2015 7:49 pm)

Once again.  I really hope it's a twin or a henchman doing all this.  If Moriarty is really alive I will be so Damned disappointed.

As I mentioned above, my reason for thinking Moriarty is alive is actually very simple.  Moriarty is super smart — and killing himself would be super dumb, not to mention being completely out of character.  But fooling Sherlock into believing he had killed himself would be super smart . . . and totally in character . . . and much closer to the novels than a deliberate act of self-destruction.

As a writer myself (with two novels available on Amazon, I'm tickled pink to report :D), I love the idea that both men had brilliant plans to fake their suicides, both plans worked perfectly, and both men ended up thinking they had survived while the other man had died.

Ya gotta love the irony!

And as for the idea that bringing Moriarty back is not canon — just the reverse is true.  I submit that having him blow his brains out definitely isn't canon (and, as I said, it's way out of character — which is much worse in my view).  Moriarty didn't kill himself in the novel.  He died trying to kill Sherlock.  So, if he did come back in season four, they'd have him around to play out a more canon-accurate story later on.

Have I changed anyone's mind?  If not, I promise not to take it personally. I just love thinking up stuff.  And I really do believe what my signature says.

Last edited by Bruce Cook (January 1, 2016 3:13 am)

I can accept Moriarty is dead...but who will take over from him?
Every fairytale needs a villain.

As far as Moriarty's character I think we need to remember that he was not only super smart, but super crazy.  And I don't mean strange and eccentric, I mean actually insane.

James Norrington wrote:

What would be the point of those two brilliant minds to cheat suicide at each other?

Of course, it could be just another part of this huge game they're playing but then the entire big showdown of Reichenbach would be somewhat pointless I feel.

Thanks for the kind words, Lord Nottington!  
Perhaps I can answer your question and lure you another step closure to full agreement on this. The point of those two brilliant minds tricking each other is simply that each one, separately, had the idea that a suicide would accomplish the goal they wished to achieve, but they were both understandably reluctant to die.
 

However, being two brilliant minds, they both thought of their own clever way around that little problem.

Sherlock’s plan, of course, has never been official revealed.   My theory states that he had Mycroft arrange for his trusty government agents to (1) cordon off the block, (1) dress as bystanders, (2) put an old Browder fire safety net in the back of the laundry truck we see by the curb, (3) catch our favorite consulting detective —


(4) throw blood on him while he played dead, and (5) make sure John didn’t get close enough to discover the ruse.


Moriarty’s plan to cheat death and trick Sherlock was even easier.  As described above, he just used an empty pistol, a remotely detonated charge (in the hands of a nearby accomplice), and a bag of blood taped to his back!

Easy peasy!  
To me, the beauty of this is that is proves the intelligence of both characters (and the writers of the series), along with a delicious demonstration of just how ironic this ka-razy universe can be.

However, if Moriarty did NOT do something like this and just shot himself, it diminishes the character by proving he was far less intelligent than Sherlock!  Our hero was faced with the challenge of faking his death to save his friends, and he rose to it magnificently.

Moriarty was also faced with the need to present a convincing apparent suicide, and I think I’ve proven that he didn’t need to actually kill himself to achieve his goal!

This isn’t just about me wanting to see the character come back for more entertaining stories, this is about me want to believe that — just as Conan Doyle intended for the literary version — Sherlock Holmes is being tested to the limit by an adversary as brilliant as himself.

Jim Moriarty engineered one diabolical scheme after another that presented situations which twisted our minds and shocked us when we discovered the scope of his long-range plans.  By the end of TRF he had poor John and Sherlock running through the streets of London, handcuffed together and fleeing from the police!

It took Sherlock two years (and at least one severe beating in a foreign country) to dismantle the global crime network of this diabolical genius!


For Moriarty to get to the moment of his ultimate triumph and then just whip out a pistol and launch his gray matter across the roof is not a good enough “end game” for such a master criminal.

We want him to be defeated by Sherlock’s brain, not by Smith and Wesson’s bullet!


And that is the point of those two brilliant minds both faking their suicides!

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Last edited by Bruce Cook (December 31, 2015 10:48 pm)

By the way...that photo of Andrew, from the fake S4 trailer, is a shot of Andrew in The Stag film. 
But you probably know that by now!  Such a great film!  Anyway, I keep remembering all the reporters trying to get info out of Andrew & he never does come out & bluntly say "I'm not in the series anymore."  He skirts around the question, playfully.  ;)

My thoughts in short:
I think Moriarty is truly dead but Andrew may appear again in mind palace/subconscious/dream scenes. They have done this twice and may do it again.
This said, I think that someone took over his network or has been working with him all along. The remark about a virus in the data may point in a direction of computer crime/hacking etc. I think it is improbable that they will present someone completely new. They love to switch gender with the characters so it might be Mary (think of her apparent prowess with hacking MI5) or Janine (the Irish connection), maybe with Mycroft being under their thumb or involved in a different way. 

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Ever look real close at the newspaper we see briefly in "The Empty Hearse"?


Specifically, that smaller sub-headline at the bottom?


Okay, I confess — I recreated that myself.  Here's the real screen grab.


But why doesn't the paper mention the body of "Richard Brook" and the fact that the police would assume Sherlock had murdered him before he jumped?  For that matter, why is there not one single news report about the death of Richard Brook / Moriarty?

Ever!

Doesn't that seem odd? 
 

Last edited by Bruce Cook (January 3, 2016 6:51 pm)