Sherlock: 10 Ridiculous Plot Points Lifted Straight From The Books

3. Undercover Druggie

With his preference for a "three patch problem" over a three pipe one, TV's Sherlock has reined in some of his literary inspiration's substance abuse excesses. Nevertheless, there is a definite sense that some of the supporting characters view his erratic behaviour and strange chemistry experiments as a suggestion of a man dabbling in illicit substances. Certainly, the police are always very keen to search his house. Series finale His Last Vow, however, stepped these insinuations up a level when John found himself called on to rescue a neighbour's son from a drug den. Who should he coincidentally find there but Sherlock looking scruffy and sullen, insisting he was there "for a case"? Apparently he was trying to get the papers to pick up on his drug habit to give creepy media mogul and series villain Charles Augustus Magnussen some false leverage over him, but Sherlock does seem to take to the undercover junkie role well enough to spread genuine concern among his nearest and dearest. It may all seem a pretty oddball set of contrivances for episode writer Steven Moffat to throw together, but this is actually a pretty direct adaptation of the opening of Doyle's story The Man With the Twisted Lip. In this story a friend of Mary has Watson try to bring her addict husband back from an opium den and, amongst the denizens of this hole of iniquity, Watson finds Holmes, happily playing his part and, once again, apparently researching for a case. And Another Thing: In The Man With the Twisted Lip, Mary inexplicably refers to Watson as "James". Fan canon has decided that this means that the H in John H. Watson stands for Hamish. The show makes reference to this both in the "John or James Watson" in the skip code text messages in The Empty Hearse and the key detail of Tessa knowing John's rarely spoken middle name in The Sign of Three.