It fell through the loops

This was uttered at a meeting.  It is a mash up of “fell through the cracks” (to be not noticed or dealt with) and “throw somebody for a loop” (to upset someone unexpectedly).  The reason I think the latter is involved is the speaker might have thought “threw” when he uttered  the homonym “through”, thus completing the phrase with “loops” instead of “cracks”.   The mind does play tricks like that sometimes.  However, an even better mix was suggested by Robyn Bottoni – “loophole”.  This actually makes more sense as loophole and falling through the cracks have similar meanings, hence a congruent conflation.  I would be interested in others’ thoughts on the mix up.   A big thanks to Elaine Hatfield for hearing this one!