Okay, so I found a little thing (By “little thing” I mean two page Word document) that my friends and I cooked up a while ago, and I figured, with series 4 coming up so soon, I should share. I know it’s long, and others have had this theory before, but I think this might cover a few new points. Enjoy.
Project H.O.U.N.D. The drug that renders its users incredibly suggestible.
Well, WHAT IF JOHN WAS DOSED WITH IT? WHAT IF SHERLOCK NEVER FELL?
I’ve done the math. In show time (which I will admit is not always the same as real time), 5 minutes and 16 seconds pass between the time we see John get into the cab and the next time we see John’s cab on screen. During this time, Sherlock and Moriarty talk, Moriarty shoots himself, and Sherlock gets up onto the ledge. This provides plenty of time for the cabbie to have drugged John, and as we know from Hounds of Baskerville, the administration of H.O.U.N.D. can be pretty discreet. John needn’t know he was being exposed. Furthermore, as we learned in A Study in Pink, people rarely notice a cab driver’s face. He could have easily been wearing a medical mask or something.
How was the cab arranged? Well, obviously, if Sherlock was planning to drug John, and he wanted to use a cabbie to do it, he needed to get John away from the hospital. When they are together at St. Bart’s, John receives a call saying that Mrs. Hudson is injured, which, as we know, is not true. Sherlock, who ordinarily would protect Mrs. Hudson at all costs, chooses to remain at the hospital. Sherlock needed to stay and meet Moriarty on the roof. But he also needed John gone. SHERLOCK arranged for that call to happen. He knew full well what was meant to happen up on that roof. He even told Molly, “I think I’m going to die.”
Now, Sherlock being Sherlock, he knew that once John realised that Mrs. Hudson was okay, he would come back to the hospital immediately, and he would take a cab. The cabbie would have been in on Sherlock’s plan, possibly a member of his homeless network. Simple enough.
When John arrives on the scene, he immediately gets a call from Sherlock. Sherlock tells him “Okay, look up. I’m on the roof.” John proceeds to look up, and lo and behold, there’s Sherlock, exactly where he said he would be. Now, this part may have been real. Or possibly a H.O.U.N.D. induced hallucination, brought on by Sherlock’s suggestion.
This would have been similar to what happened in Hounds of Baskerville. John was locked in a lab, and Sherlock was talking to him over the phone. There was no hound there, but John did see one, because he HEARD the hound. He HEARD Sherlock ask him whether or not he could see it.
In the case of Reichenbach, he HEARD Sherlock tell him what was happening. Therefore, he saw it.
Parts of this theory follow what Sherlock told Anderson. While Sherlock never would have told him the WHOLE truth, he might have told him part of it. Sherlock is a self-proclaimed show off, after all. The people on the street would have been part of Sherlock’s homeless network. There WAS a body, and it did look like Sherlock. It would have been the body of the man Moriarty used to kidnap the children, the one that explains why the girl screamed.
While Sherlock never explicitly tells John what he’s going to do, it’s pretty obvious from Sherlock’s talk of leaving a note and saying goodbye that he is not staying on that rooftop for long, and he’s not taking the stairs. So once again, John sees what he expects to see. He sees Sherlock fall.
This is where faux-Sherlock comes in.
Faux-Sherlock would have had to fall, because the assassins were not drugged. They would have needed to see a body, and they would have seen it if the body was drug in after. John, however, knows Sherlock well. There’s no way he would have failed to notice that it was not his friend lying there.
That is, if he hadn’t been dosed with H.O.U.N.D.
John expects to see Sherlock’s body, so that’s what he sees.
We know that, when he was rushing to Sherlock’s side, John was hit by a bike. This would have been enough time for the gathered crowd to produce a sufficiently bloody scene. When John DOES get to “Sherlock,” he feels for a pulse, which is of course absent. He is then restrained as “Sherlock” is stretchered away.
In the beginning of The Empty Hearse, we learn that Molly Hooper examined the body. Molly, who was in on the plan. Molly, who knew Sherlock was not dead, knew that the body in front of her was not Sherlock, but who also knew that everyone else must believe it is. No one else, at least not anyone who was close to Sherlock, would have had to see the body. They could have had a closed casket funeral.
“I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for a second that I am one.” While there may have been many… unangelic acts on Sherlock’s part, he may have been referring to one, recent act. He had drugged John, and he regretted it. Especially know that he knew H.O.U.N.D.’s full effects, and he knew what he was about to do to John as a result. This also explains why he didn’t tell anyone how he did it, even with his show-off tendencies. He didn’t want John, or anyone else, finding out that he had used that drug on his best friend.
Now, you’ll also recall that when Sherlock and John were having their phone call, Sherlock tried to convince John that he was, indeed a fraud. That he had invented Moriarty. That the rumors were true.
John was drugged. He should have believed every word that came out of Sherlock’s mouth. But the idea that Sherlock was a fraud was too much for even H.O.U.N.D to overcome. Earlier in the episode, Sherlock accused John of believing those very same rumors, which John vehemently denied.
John was too loyal to Sherlock to ever believe that, but Sherlock severely underestimated John’s faith in him. Sherlock did not understand the sheer power of John’s trust in him.
Because out of all people, John Watson chose to trust Sherlock Holmes.
