Friends: The Monica Geller Mistake Most Fans Likely Missed (For A Good Reason)

With streaming services keeping older shows in the zeitgeist while giving fans the ability to pause at leisure, people have uncovered plenty of secrets they never could have before. TikToker @fictional.worlds brought one startling revelation to light in a video showing a scene from an episode of "Friends" where Monica (Courteney Cox) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) have a conversation. It seems like a standard back-and-forth, until the camera cuts to a side profile of Monica that shows she's clearly being played by a woman other than Cox.

This might be the first time someone has pointed it out, but it makes sense no one would've caught it sooner. As people explain in the comments, "Friends" was originally filmed in a 16:9 aspect ratio before being cropped to appear in 4:3 for older TV sets. Streaming services often adjust older shows to appear in 16:9, meaning audiences sometimes see more than they would have originally. For this scene, the crew likely needed a Monica stand-in and assumed no one would ever see the faux Courteney Cox. Older shows weren't meant to be viewed in this way, after all, leading to a humorous observation that's hard to ignore once it's noticed.

This isn't the first time eagle-eyed fans have spotted something amiss within "Friends." The sitcom has been a staple on streaming for several years now, and in 2020, TikToker @bronniiieee pointed to one scene where something similar happened with Jack Geller (Elliott Gould), where he's replaced with an entirely different person for a scene. Again, this comes down to older sitcom episodes getting remastered for the modern era, so a stand-in was used because the intention wasn't for them to be on-screen (or for only a part of them to be barely visible).

"Friends" isn't the only show where fans have discovered this happening. When "The Simpsons" arrived on Disney+, many fans complained about older episodes being presented in a different format, which ended up cutting off certain jokes. "Seinfeld" faced a similar backlash on Netflix when the streamer presented it in an aspect ratio of 16:9 rather than its original 4:3, which, again, ruined some visual gags.

For some fans, this could make older TV shows unwatchable. But for others, it can result in a fun game of hide-and-seek wherein they look for any inconsistencies that emerge when a show is presented incorrectly. It's a brave new world when it comes to watching older series, so there will inevitably be even more of these errors discovered and shared on TikTok moving forward.