Missing sisters, catastrophic explosions, and year-long pregnancies. For a show about
physicists, The Big Bang Theory has a lot of missing pieces.
Some of the most recognizable hangout
spots in television history are Central Perk's orange couch on Friends, the table at MacLaren's
Pub on How I Met Your Mother, and the sofa in Leonard and Sheldon's apartment on The Big Bang
Theory. Much like how the orange couch in Central Perk is seemingly reserved for the six Friends
and the "Main Five" of How I Met Your Mother have unofficial dibs on the central table at
MacLaren's Pub, Sheldon has claimed a particular spot on his apartment's sofa as eternally his.
Sheldon is shown to have little to no patience for anyone who sits in his spot,
and has openly admitted that his feelings for the spot are even stronger than his
love for his mother. His affection towards this particular spot isn't specific to the sofa itself,
as shown in the flashback episode "The Staircase Implementation." Here,
we see that the only furniture in the living room was a pair of lawn chairs, one of which
was Sheldon's kept in almost the exact same area his seat on the couch would occupy down the line.
However, there are several instances throughout the show when the other characters sit on the
spot in Sheldon's presence, and he doesn't seem to mind or even notice it. Given how finicky Sheldon
is about the spot, it seems unlikely that he'd be okay with anyone else seated there, with the
exception of his beloved grandmother, which makes this a possible oversight by the cast and crew.
Kayley Cuoco's character Penny
has occasionally shared tidbits about her quirky family from Omaha, Nebraska. With
the exception of her father, Wyatt, the rest of Penny's family went most of the length of the
show without making an appearance on screen. Aside from her father, Penny has mentioned
she has a brother and a sister, both of whom she's comedically described as wild cards.
"What's he on trial for?"
"Oh, just a big misunderstanding. Ya know, you'd actually like my brother. He's kind of a chemist."
While Penny's brother Randall and their mother Susan finally appeared for Penny and Leonard's
second wedding ceremony in the first episode of Season 10, "The Conjugal Conjecture," her sister
was nowhere to be seen. Given that there was no mention of a sister in the episode, it's quite
likely that the writers either overlooked the fact that Penny had a sister, or the budget had
already been exhausted on the episode's ensemble cast that was appearing for the wedding ceremony.
Bernadette's pregnancy was revealed in Season 9,
Episode 15, "The Valentino Submergence." In the episode, Howard and Bernadette save an unconscious
rabbit found in their new hot tub and name it "Valentino Wolowitz Rabbit," after the holiday.
We see the couple's parental instincts emerge as the two nurture the rabbit back to health — that
is until Howard gets bitten by Valentino and fears that he may have been infected with rabies.
After Howard leaves to get himself tested,
Bernadette reveals some startling news to him and the audience.
"We'll find another time to tell him I'm pregnant."
Given that the episode takes place on Valentine's Day and that it typically takes two to three weeks
after conception for a pregnancy test to show a positive result, it's safe to say that Howard
and Bernadette must have conceived sometime in January. Their child, Halley, was finally born
in Season 10, Episode 11, which takes place in December. This means that Bernadette's
pregnancy lasted 11 months, two months longer than the typical duration of a pregnancy.
The broken elevator in Sheldon,
Leonard, and Penny's building served as a running gag for the entirety of the show's
run. This long standing aspect of the story allows writers to make use of the building's
staircases to lengthen character exchanges, both to provide exposition or to simply add
some awkward banter between any characters who happened to climb the stairs to 4A and 4B.
It was revealed in the Season 3 episode "The Staircase Implementation" that the
elevator broke as a result of Leonard's failed experiment in 2003. However,
Leonard tells Howard in the Season 1 episode "The Nerdvana Annihilation"
that the elevator has been broken for two years. As the show started in 2007,
this would mean the elevator broke in 2005. What's more, Howard witnessed the elevator break
in "The Staircase Implementation", so there's no reason Leonard would need to explain this to him.
It's strange enough that the elevator took until the series finale, a full 16 years from when it
initially broke, to finally get fixed. However, what's more puzzling is the fact that Sheldon
never seemed to be irritated by the elevator's malfunction, as he often berated the landlord
and building association for issues that were far more trivial than the broken elevator.
Though Raj's proficiency in his
native language Hindi was never in doubt, in the Season 10 episode "The Cognition Regeneration,"
Raj admits something that entirely contradicts his character's background. In the episode,
Sheldon decides to challenge himself cognitively by performing difficult
mental tasks after losing at a multiplayer game with the gang,
and begins to worry that he's no longer the wunderkind he once was.
Raj suggests Sheldon learn Hindi, and Sheldon surprises him by responding in
Hindi that he had learned the language when he was eight years old. Raj admits
that he himself never learned Hindi nor does he understand the language.
Raj mentioned several times that he had been born and raised by Hindi-speaking
parents in New Delhi, India, a country he complains about when
faced with the possibility of getting deported in "The Pirate Solution."
"I don't want to go back to India. It's hot, and loud, and there's so many people."
Raj has also occasionally spoken a few words in Hindi. He sings a lullaby to himself in
Hindi when cornered by the chatty Penny in "The Big Bran Hypothesis," and responds "whatever
floats your boat" in Hindi to Sheldon's attempt at learning Finnish in "The Psychic
Vortex." Though Raj isn't too fond of his country's food and culture,
he's shown a fascination with Bollywood movies, most notably when he has a heated debate with
Sheldon about two prominent Bollywood actresses in "The Bad Fish Paradigm."
There are two facts about Howard Wolowitz that consistently make him the butt of
jokes on "The Big Bang Theory": his deeply unhealthy relationship with his mother,
and the fact that he's the only one in the gang without a Ph.D. Howard,
as it turns out, only has a Master's from MIT. However,
these two aspects of the character happen to contradict each other when given some thought.
Howard's relationship with his possessive and controlling mother Debbie Wolowitz was often a
source of running gags throughout the show. Shown to be a typical "momma's boy," Howard
had never moved out of his mother's house in Pasadena, nor could he muster up the courage to
do so when asked by his wife Bernadette in the season 6 premiere, "The Date Night Variable."
However, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a university located
on the other side of the country, and it would take at least 5 years for Howard to complete a
Masters there. It's unimaginable to think that Howard could've survived on his own that long,
or that Debbie would allow him to move to Boston in the first place.