The Shawshank Redemption Detail That Makes No Sense

"The Shawshank Redemption," the 1994 movie adaptation of one of the best Stephen King novellas, is widely considered one of the best movies of all time. With its 9.3/10 rating on IMDb (the highest on the whole site) and its years of non-stop reruns on TNT, viewers have had plenty of time to find a fatal flaw in the movie but have largely failed to find any. It was only Peter Griffin, the fictional lead of the animated sitcom "Family Guy," who noticed the one detail that simply doesn't add up. 

In a cutaway scene in season 14's "Candy, Quahog Marshmallow," Peter went to a "Shawshank Redemption" panel and asked Andy Dufresne's actor, Tim Robbins, the following question: "After you escaped into the hole, how did you perfectly re-attach the Raquel Welch poster from inside the hole, with a tautness that a rock could pierce?"

Robbins responded, "Does it matter?" And Peter replied, "It does to me." When Robbins asked him if he even liked the movie, Peter said, "I did very much up until that point."

The joke is that Peter's being a nitpicky jerk, the type of guy who went to the CinemaSins school of movie criticism to the chagrin of everyone around him. But although I know I shouldn't care about this sort of thing, I can't stop thinking about Peter's complaint every time I rewatch the movie. So much of Andy's escape plan relies on the poster staying taut so that the authorities won't find out about the hole until he's already far away from the prison, but it doesn't seem possible that Andy could've pulled that off. 

It doesn't help that the Warden throwing the rock through the poster is one of the coolest reveals in any Stephen King-related story. It's dramatic and satisfying and filmed with total confidence, but all of that's undermined once you start thinking about the logistics of the poster.

Now that we've established that this is a very serious issue, let's look at a few potential explanations for this apparent plot hole. It's common for fans to argue that the poster didn't need to be that taut for the rock to pierce it. Depending on the material of the poster, it's possible that the poster was heavy enough to appear fully taped to the wall despite only having the top part properly attached. And depending on how sharp the rock was, and how hard the Warden threw it, it's technically possible it could've pierced a loose poster. 

It's also possible that Andy got his hands of some sort of glue that he attached to the bottom of the poster as he was leaving through the tunnel. He could pasted some glue onto the bottom, let go of the poster, and it could've sealed itself to the wall on its own. Some fans might wonder why, if this is what happened, the movie would make no mention of the glue section of Andy's plan. The most reasonable answer is that the writers didn't think we'd be this annoying.

Of course, it's worth reminding ourselves why it took nearly twenty years after the movie came out for this apparent plot hole to become a popular complaint. For decades nobody thought about the poster's tautness because they were too busy rooting Andy on. They didn't poke holes in his plan because they wanted so badly to believe in it. "The Shawshank Redemption" put Andy through years of hell and let him triumphantly find his way to paradise; when the script, visuals and music are coalescing into something so cathartic, nobody wants to be the nitpicker who ruins it for everyone else.