Bizarre Things That Accidentally Made It Into Famous Movies

Star Wars junkies are known for being absolutely obsessed with every detail of the billion dollar franchise. It should be no surprise that obsessed fans noticed a pretty funny goof in the original, 1977 classic. In one particular scene, a handful of Stormtroopers are seen breaking open a door. On their way through the broken entrance, a Stormtrooper on the right side of the screen can be seen hitting his head on the once-locked door. The head knock is actually timed to the sound of the lead Stormtrooper's subsequent radio chatter. Years later, actor Laurie Goode, who played the infamous Stormtrooper, spoke about the goof. He claims it all happened because he had to use the bathroom. At least he's not Porkins.

Mel Gibson's Scottish war epic Braveheart takes place in the thirteenth century—certainly long before the motor vehicle was invented. As you'd expect, fans were more than surprised when they spotted a white car in the far distance during one of the film's big battle sequences. That's just one of the many instances in which modern day technology and fashion made it into Gibson's Oscar-winning movie. You can also spot a car during the funeral scene for William Wallace's wife. In another scene, a crew member wearing a baseball hat is visible during an innocuous chat between Gibson and Brendan Gleeson's characters. Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it—just as long as it takes you offset.

Steven Spielberg is known for creating films that are as brilliant as they are carefully assembled. With its on-point performances and elaborate period details, the 2002 caper movie, Catch Me If You Can, certainly lives up to Spielberg's already high standards of quality, for the most part anyway. Towards the very beginning of the 1963-set movie, Leonardo DiCaprio—who plays a conman on the run from an FBI agent (Tom Hanks) and his crew—is filmed walking into a Chase bank in downtown Manhattan. Everything in the scene looks authentic for the '60s, except for the Duane Reade sign in the background, which still had the drugstore chain's modern logo. The reason it was left in the movie remains unknown; it was probably just an inadvertent/overlooked error. Maybe Spielberg was just teasing the viewer?

They say nothing in life is ever 100 percent perfect. No matter how stellar a movie could be, there are still a number of awkward, blink-and-you'll-miss-them moments inadvertently caught in the backgrounds of some of the greatest films ever made.

There's an amazing moment in Being John Malkovich in which a car drives past the actor who's standing on the side of the road. Then a guy yells, "Hey Malkovich, think fast!" and beans him in the head with a beer can. While the scene calling for a Malkovich to get hit with the can seems to have been planned, the "think fast" line apparently wasn't. Director Spike Jonze said in an audio commentary that a bunch of extras working on the film snuck a case of beer on set, and were getting "pretty lit." The director added that the line the can-thrower yelled as the car zoomed past earned him his Screen Actors Guild card, bumping his pay from $100 a day to $700. Not a bad way to earn a raise.

If you thought that the role of a movie extra was to stand in the background and do nothing, you obviously haven't seen The Last Samurai. During a key scene in the movie, Tom Cruise's character, military advisor Nathan Algren, arrives on horseback for the film's epic final battle. As Cruise dismounts from his horse, the animal can actually be seen kicking one of the extras in the groin. Instead of dropping to the ground and crying, the extra simply takes a quick step back, reacts silently, and regroups in formation. In fact, the awkward moment is so subtle, most people didn't even know it happened until years after the film's 2003 release. Samurai are supposed to be disciplined, and this guy went the extra mile.

Hundreds of movies have become famous for their twist endings over the years, but nobody watching Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was quite expecting what went down in its final scene. After reclaiming the Black Pearl, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) orders his merry band of pirates to get to work on the deck. Just as they begin to move, a man wearing a white t-shirt and cowboy hat can be spotted in the background, looking off into the distant waters. Was this mysterious man's cameo a secret Easter Egg, or perhaps a character to be introduced in the sequels? Supposedly, he was just a grip crew member who accidentally forgot to clear the set during filming. If it was planned, this guy deserves to walk the plank.

Bond villain Blofeld's white Persian cat is one of the creepiest, albeit openly mocked, characters in You Only Live Twice. The furry creature loses a bit of his luster when it legitimately freaks out during one of the explosion scenes towards the end of the iconic spy film. Donald Pleasence, who played Blofeld in the movie, does his best to keep the cat clutched tightly to his body; but for a few brief moment, the camera captures the frantic feline scrambling to the nearest possible exit. This is one cat that's both shaken and stirred.

Remember the early '90s when pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan attempted a movie career? It didn't work. In fact, the only reason anyone talks about his 1993 feature, Mister Nanny, has nothing to do with the Hulkster. While Hogan tools around on his motorcycle, the camera captures one of the most bizarre sights in cinema, which you can see in the clip above at about the 22 second mark.

Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Some random dude threw a dog into the ocean. Why? Who is he? Did his dog stink or something? Was the motorcycle-riding montage so important that this footage needed to stay in the final cut? The only other question is what makes Hulk Hogan prouder: riding his motorcycle in front of a dog being thrown in the ocean, or that time he opened a pasta restaurant in the Mall of America for some reason.

By now, most people have at least heard of the urban legend of the "hanging munchkin" from The Wizard of Oz. During a scene in which Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tinman, and Toto merrily headed off to see the Wizard (and collect the Cowardly Lion along the way, of course), viewers noticed something upsetting going on in the background: deep in the forest of Oz, a dark human-shaped figure seemed to hang and sway, as though lifelessly suspended by a rope. Rumors soon spread that one of the actors portraying a Munchkin in the movie was depressed over his unrequited love for a lady co-star and decided to hang himself in the faux woods of the Tin Woodsman set.

According to these conspiracy theorists, the original home release version—the 50th anniversary VHS version that hit shelves in 1989—contained the true scene of the fatal fallout, which is how many at-home viewers noticed the sight and further spread the story. However, when MGM remastered and re-released the movie in 1998, the background looked very different than it had before. Instead of the hanging figure that'd caused so much hubbub, it appeared as though a large bird, like an emu or a crane, was stretching its wings and scuttling around in the backdrop. According to some, the size and location of the animal didn't precisely match up with the figure seen on VHS, leaving some viewers convinced there was a cover-up. However, the new visual did support the official story that several zoo animals had been brought to wander on the set and offer authenticity to the landscape, as one of the Munchkin actors confirmed before the upgraded release dropped.

Skeptics offer a plethora of additional reasons for disputing the hanging story. The Munchkin actors weren't even around the studio when the scene in question was filmed, and even if they were, the fake trees couldn't support the weight of a person. Others also pointed out that it may have been a simple editing error that made the first visual appear as it did, since there's evidence of a bird's wing even in the spookier version of the scene. Even still, morbid fascination keeps this ancient Hollywood rumor alive because, well, it's just more fun that way.

Who can smack a little girl with a bar arm and get away with it? The Candy Man can, apparently. In the 1971 classic musical adventure Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, one of the rapt extras listening to candy shop owner Bill (Aubrey Wood)'s song got an unexpected surprise when he lifted the counter-top to let the hungry children through and accidentally walloped her in the chin in the process. Like a pro, the girl didn't react, instead waltzing on through with the rest of the sweet-toothed kids. Her non-reaction is probably the reason production on the scene carried forward and this cut made it into the final edits, but yow. That still had to hurt.

The accidental jawbreaker isn't the only visible Wonka goof, but it's certainly the most painful to watch. Talk about an everlasting gobstopper.

If this one wasn't a real apparition, as some might like to believe, there's a crew member from The Ring with one heck of a videobombing story to tell. In one scene, Rachel (Naomi Watts) and Noah (Martin Henderson) go to pick up the sleeping boy Aidan (David Dorfman) from the floor and walk toward the hallway, just as a shadow person's head and shoulders can be seen slipping in and out of the lighted window frame behind them.

Chances are it was a simple case of a stagehand being in the wrong place at the wrong time and just wasn't caught by the editors—hey, there are a ton of continuity and factual errors to be found within the film—or a glimpse of Rachel's sister Ruth (Lindsay Frost). However, those that are a little more superstitious about these kinds of visual phenomena believe it's another case of a spirit being accidentally caught onscreen, which seems to happen a lot in movies about the undead. No matter what happened, the sight is still eerie in context, considering the characters were ducking a sinister spirit hellbent on destroying them.

You might not ordinarily expect a family film like Stuart Little to accidentally solve an almost-century-old mystery, but that's exactly what happened. A Hungarian art expert named Gergely Barki was shocked to see Robert Bereny's long-lost avant garde painting, "Sleeping Lady with Black Vase," in the background of the 1999 kids comedy during a 2009 viewing with his ten-year-old daughter. He immediately recognized the background painting as one he'd known about thanks to a lost art exhibit photo he'd seen from the 1920s, when "Sleeping Lady" disappeared from the collectors' radar and was thought gone for good.

Afterward, Barki spent two years trying to get in touch with someone from the movie's production crew and was finally informed by the set designer that the filmmakers had purchased it at a California store for "next to nothing" and later sold it to a collector. That buyer later returned it to Budapest—90 years after it originally went missing—and sold it at auction in 2014 for 229,500 Euros. The lesson: All ye art buffs, keep your eyes peeled at movie prop auctions! You never know which rare gems might be lurking within the bargain bin.

Will Ferrell might've been trying to trade in his slapstick comedy schtick for drama with 2010's Everything Must Go, but there was a bit of unintentional humor thrown into the background of one of the film's scenes. In a moment in which his character is playing catch-up with an old pal from high school (played by Laura Dern), there are two children hanging out on a plastic play bench in the yard. All seems normal with them until an extended pan shows the kids frozen in place while the adults keep talking normally.

Either the child actors were told to sit very, very still for the shot and exceeded all expectations, or a placeholder still (emphasis on still) was digitally inserted into the scene in post-production and forgotten. In either case, someone flubbed and let this visually awkward moment into the final cut—it even looks like Dern's character is slyly casting some sort of unintentionally hilarious stun spell on those poor kids with her hand gesture.