I'm not an addict. I'm a user.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Greg Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes Additional Tags: Post-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Angst and Happiness and Angst, Johnlock if you want it to be, But not specifically written that way, One Shot Summary:

What if Sherlock had come back earlier? Before John's grief could turn to anger and before he could decide to move on with his life. When there was still a chance for everything to go back to normal.

Takes place about 6 months after The Reichenbach Fall.

From “Sherlock Uncovered: The Return” (2016)

I’m of the belief that almost everything from s4 was a reference to, throwback to, recycled from, or inspired by events and dialog from previous seasons or outside sources.

That said, caught this one last night when my husband requested to restart Sherlock from the beginning once again. Left picture is from s1e1, right picture is from s4e3.

Hi! No need to apologize, I’m a ridiculous tinhatter myself and got into posting some of this stuff on here just cause I want people to talk to! With the exception of my casual-viewer husband (who looks at me like he’s going to commit me if I say anything much more than pointing out set design inconsistencies in s4), none of my friends watch Sherlock, so I have no one to talk to about my fixations, haha! So I’m all over discussing theories! *grabby hands*

That said, I’d never heard or seen it pointed out that the phone numbers were the same. I just popped in Netflix and the DVD and checked and I’m not entirely convinced they are the same. The THOB number looks like it ends with something along the lines of 154 or 152, while E’s number in TST ends with 552. I’m not saying they’re not the same, but the 3rd from last number on the napkin in THOB looks a lot like a 1 to me. (Unless they show the number better at some point than when Sherlock is talking about it during the deductions and the napkin is kind of wadded up?) For kicks, I looked up the UK standards for fake phone numbers in films/TV because I only know the US standards (the block of 555-01XX numbers being reserved for films/TV here) and one of the blocks held for UK numbers is anything 07700 900XXX...which it looks like both of those numbers fall into. If those last 3 numbers ARE the same, then that’s a good catch! Though when I just looked for it in THOB now, I wasn’t convinced they were the same...but I could be wrong!

Either way, if they were/are the same, it would totally go along with a s4 theory that I’m starting to buy into more. Like I’ve said, I try not to go too far into what I think is ACTUALLY going on, because there are so many theories and possibilities that latching onto one of them will just make me more likely to be wrong, haha. All I’ve been able to let myself say for certain is that there’s a lot of weird stuff in s4 and it all implies to me that all or part of s4 isn’t actually happening as we’ve seen it. When I let myself go further with it, my favorite theory is basically everything up to the end of TLD was true, but all of TFP is in John’s head after he got shot at the end of TLD. I admit I’m partial to that idea because a lot of the EMP theories would render scenes/events that I really like to not have been real. As an example, I selfishly don’t buy into (or don’t want to buy into, to be more accurate) the idea that everything since Sherlock getting shot in HLV (or even earlier) hasn’t been real...because in my dark and twisted personal preferences, Sherlock shooting CAM in the face is one of my favorite parts of the series. It makes me sad to think it might not have actually happened, haha. But that’s just me wanting that particular part to be real.

Anyways, the problem with my “everything is real up to John getting shot at the end of TLD, then TFP is in his head” theory is that there’s just too much in TST and TLD that don’t make sense or also allude to it not being entirely real. I still have a hard time believing that ALL of s4 is in someone’s head (a dream-within-a dream and multi-season-EMP theories seem, while plausible, a bit too extreme to me. We have to remember that normal, non-conspiracy-nutters watch this show too and need to be able to understand what ultimately happened), so I’m inclined to extend the “TFP is in John’s head after getting shot” theory to include either false memories of TST and TLD due to trauma (or TD-12), or maybe the whole thing actually is just a false retelling of the entire season.

ANYWAYS, I have a point here and a reason why this relates back to your original question about the phone numbers! In my recent re-watchings of s4, I’ve been noticing more and more how practically every aspect of the episodes is some callback or reference or blatant rip-off of something that’s already happened. I feel like if you put all the “old season episode vs s4 episode parallels” metas and dialog comparisons and all that together, you could reconstruct the entire s4 from things that have already happened. (Well, that and other movies.) If I had the fortitude and time to do so, I actually would love to just start at the beginning of s4 and do exactly that, piece the dialog and scenes and events together from things that came before. All of this to say that this is really starting to make me lean towards the false retelling or false memories or possibly it all being in someone (my money’s on John)’s mind...because they’re reconstructing it from things they’ve already seen and experienced. That would explain all of the parallels, the reuse of The Six Thatchers case, similarities in events and dialog, etc etc. Heck, even the girl in the plane being the same girl from TSIB.

(Though I don’t give that TOO much credit because I’ve definitely seen other shows where the same actor came back years later and played an entirely different character. Especially since she’s so much older and her character in TSIB was such a throwaway character that it took me awhile to even figure out which character was the same girl from the plane. On the other hand, it’s not like they couldn’t have found another little girl for TFP...or like she did such an amazing job in TSIB they wanted her back for a bigger role...or like they wouldn’t have possibly thought people would notice it was the same actress.........but I digress, in the end, it’s just a TV show and TV show’s reuse actors all the time.)

So anyways! Long story short is whether the phone numbers are the same or not, I think that there’s a reason that so much in s4 brings back elements from previous seasons. Either John’s traumatized brain is trying to piece together everything that’s happened...or someone is creating scenarios in their MP using stuff they already know...or a faulty memory is filling in holes with previous experiences....or something I’m not thinking of. It honestly wouldn’t have surprised me if the phone numbers were/are the same. No more out there than the glass sculpture from the Mayfly Man’s house showing up in Sherlock’s hospital room, I think!

So all other evidence that there’s something weird going on in TFP aside, the whole Eurus-Shooting-John thing is pretty compelling evidence itself. TLD ends with Eurus definitely shooting John with something, we see her pull the trigger and hear a gunshot. But then TFP starts and it’s like it never happened. In fact, it might as well NOT have happened as far as the show, the story, and the narrative are concerned. If it weren’t for a throwaway line from Sherlock about it having been a tranquilizer, they could’ve just not mentioned it at all and it would literally make no difference whatsoever.

If we were to assume it was true that Eurus shot John with a tranquilizer, it would bring up the question of…why? What would be the reason? Apparently not to kidnap him or take him hostage, not to get at Sherlock through his best friend or send a message. So then why? To escape from John after her big reveal? No need to knock him out to do that. What could John have done to stop her? She’d obviously already killed one person and was pointing a very real looking gun at him…if she just wanted to reveal herself and leave, she could’ve...just left. Just kept the gun trained on him and backed out the door. Unnecessary and anticlimactic, but making far more sense than randomly shooting him with a tranquilizer. She didn’t have a message for John to deliver about her return or any real point to it. I’m no super genius with X-Men powers, but even I can think of at least 10 better and/or more dramatic ways to reveal myself.

And now let’s look at the gun she has. It’s a Sig Sauer Pro SP2022, which - in case you were wondering - is a real gun. Like…the kind that shoots real bullets.

Tranquilizer guns do not look like normal pistols. In general, they have long, thin barrels for holding tranquilizer darts. My search has brought up this as the most “pistol looking” tranquilizer I could find.

And no, you can’t shoot tranquilizer darts out of normal pistols...and no, there’s no such thing as a tranquilizer bullet (because in order to work, it would have to be moving at a force great enough to penetrate skin and therefore just become a normal bullet).

So while yes, there are fake pistols that do/shoot a variety of other things (the cabbie’s cigarette lighter gun, airsoft/BB guns, etc), I don’t believe for a second that Eurus somehow had a tranquilizer gun custom made to look like a Sig pistol (and don’t particularly believe it would really be all that possible). And even if she did, then I defer to my question from earlier in this post...WTF would be the point of that at all?

So y’know that weird glass decoration that drunk!Sherlock was checking out at the Mayfly Man’s place during the stag night?

It’s totally in his hospital room in TLD.

In the background, by the window. I don’t think you ever see it much closer than in this screencap (apologies for my literal cell phone pictures of screens), but it looks exactly the same, down to the black metal/wire frame that suspends the glass over the base.