US Geological Survey would have found the island with satellite photography.
In one episode, astronauts are in orbit and can see the island; the castaways try to make an SOS with burning logs but Gilligan messes it up and makes it read SOL, the name of one of the astronauts. Journalists would have swarmed to the island to find out who had written the "SOL". But in reality, the SOL would have to be hundreds of feet long to be read from orbit.
In another episode, the "Evil Ginger Twin" successfully impersonates Ginger and leaves the island--but Ginger's real family would have exposed the impersonation and found out about the island.
In another episode, a storm washes up a cable holding telephone lines and Gilligan wraps cloth around the opening in the cable, and the cable is washed back into the ocean, preventing them from making any more phone calls. BUT the ocean would have rotted away the cloth, exposing the opening, and phone company technicians would have come to make a repair, found the island and rescued them.
Those are the cases where they would have been rescued. There may be more I haven't thought of.
But I'd like to ask about one other episode in particular.
A parrot named Sam keeps talking about "Jewels", which turns out to be a box of "Jewel" brand crackers, which have been buried with a newspaper dated April 1906, I think it's April 10. The date of the San Francisco Earthquake was April 18th. Significant?
I wonder if anybody can fill in the blanks and explain who left the parrot, the box of crackers and the newspaper there? Thanks.
(Seriously, sounds like Schwartz and the gang just sat around a table laughing as they threw out story ingredients at random...
)
And no, only the Harlem Globetrotters movie needs to be a weird dream...it's what Gilligan dreamed after falling asleep on the night after his wedding to Mary Ann...