Movie Extras That Totally Ruined The Scene

When it comes to working as a film extra, your only real job is to become a forgettable chunk of the scenery. Unfortunately, this doesn't always go as planned, and people in the background have ruined many an otherwise-perfect scene because they think they're the star. Such as ...

Every so often, a movie comes out with a little something the audience didn't expect, and the censors failed to spot. 1985's Teen Wolf is one such film. In the final scene, you can clearly make out a person standing in the back of the bleachers with their fly down and ... well, you get the idea. From this great accident of celluloid, an urban legend of the Teen Wolf Penis began to spread, and it has gone unanswered for more than three decades.

Thanks to YouTube, a lot of people with too much time on their hands, and the scrutinous eyes of several people, it seems clear that a penis is not sticking out of the person's pants who may, in fact, be a woman, based on one theory going around. The extra may have just forgotten to XYZ, and stood up with looser pants than he or she would have preferred. Either way, the legend of the Teen Wolf Penis remains until the extra comes out of the shadows and lets us all in on the truth of what happened in those bleachers.

Dunkirk, while a great movie, isn't exactly a "fun" one. It's tough to make a World War II movie anything but serious, but one extra did his best. Unfortunately, this made an otherwise-intense film look pretty hokey there for a second.

In the film's 2016 teaser trailer, a group of Allied soldiers look up ominously at an oncoming squadron of Nazi planes. At 40 seconds in, check the soldier toward the right of the group, highlighted by The Independent. He looks up, but he doesn't act like you would if an air army was coming to murder you. He's staring at the sky with a highly visible smirk on his face, like he's trying to stifle laughter after remembering some awesome Hitler joke he heard at lunch. His sleepy eyes suggest he's barely registering what's happening, like everyone else sees Nazis and he's thinking, "huh, birds maybe." Even his ducking down and hiding like the other soldiers seems weird — it's less "terrified soldier fearing for his life" and more "inattentive kid who almost forgot he was playing Heads Up Seven Up."

Does one extra reacting to a Nazi invasion like it's some mediocre air show ruin Dunkirk? Absolutely not, but it does make one wonder how that footage made the trailer, let alone the final film.

Remember that heartwarming scene in the conclusion of Back to The Future III when good ole' Doc Brown surprises Marty by returning to 1985 to let him know he survived and all was well? We get to see Clara again and learn of their marriage, but best of all, we're introduced to Jules and Verne, their two young children. Unfortunately for movie audiences and everyone on the Internet, Daniel Evans, who played Verne has been the subject of some controversy.

If you look closely, the kid looks toward someone off camera and starts pointing at his junk. Some fans have thought he was doing some lecherous action toward the lovely Elisabeth Shue, but a closer inspection of the kid seems to point to his obviously urgent need to take a leak. It's a wonder this shot made it through editing, since they could have just gone with a take where the kid wasn't pointing to his crotch, but thanks to some visually challenged editors, Vern's not-so-great scott took center stage at the worst of times.

In just about every scene requiring extras, the production crew tells the people playing members of a crowd to act normal, and not take the focus off the main characters. Apparently, the guy in this shot from 1984's hit film Ghostbusters didn't get the memo, because he gets so jubilantly over-excited, he steals the focus away from the main characters.

Just watch the guy — he's either just that excited to be on film in the first place, or he truly believes the Ghostbusters are real and are about to save the city. You can even hear him yelling, "Ghostbusters! Alright!", and the fact that you can hear him at all is a major issue, given the musi and the rest of the crowd intelligently screaming in the background. Either chalk this one up to bad sound editing, or perhaps some drug-induced hysteria, but either way, this guy really tanks the shot.

He's become something of an Internet sensation over the years and is often referred to simply as The Red Haired Extra. Incidentally, the man who caused all this trouble is Hollywood makeup artist Eldo Ray Estes, who has talked about his short stint on the set of Ghostbusters and his reason for his excitement. Basically, he just wanted to be seen on camera. And don't we all?

One of the most difficult aspects of any action film is getting the fighting to look realistic while simultaneously ensuring nobody gets hurt. During a fight scene involving Catwoman, Batman, and some thugs, the action ramps up and the heroes begin to kick some serious goon ass. While the camera's focused on the action between Catwoman and a fellow soon to have one hell of a headache, you can clearly see a guy in the background who decides it'd be best to get hit without actually getting hit. He gets about 4 feet away from the Caped Crusader and takes a butt-kicking from absolutely nothing whatsoever causing him to hurl back onto the ground.

Why exactly did this extra decide to jump the gun on his inevitable beat-down, and why did it slip past editing? Perhaps he saw how poorly his fellow goons were faring, and thought it best to trick the Dark Knight? Who can say, but at least we have a scene memorable for something other than choreographed superhero spats in the dark.

There isn't much to explain about this particular extra, but it's still loads of fun. In a scene where a large group of Kung Fu minions are watching Bruce Lee kick some poor loser in the head three times, a guy who should be stoically standing still, starts laughing his buns off. It's a simple mistake—the guy clearly got the giggles, as would we all when watching Bruce Lee practically decapitate a guy with his tootsies. The problem is that, once you know it's there, you can't unsee it, ever. Seriously, try watching it without noticing the laughing idiot in the background. It's not possible.

Toward the end of Hitchcock's hit film, North by Northwest, an important scene takes place where Eva Marie Saint points a gun at Cary Grant and fires. If you look closely at the boy sitting down directly behind Saint in the shot, he clearly covers his ears before the gun goes off. It's probable that the kid was tired of hearing the damn thing go off take after take, and just needed to plug his ear holes, but for some strange reason, Hitchcock ended up using the shot for the film.

It's another one of those things where, if you catch it, it kind of ruins the scene forever. Nobody's supposed to know that Saint's character is going to pull a gun and fire it at Grant, but somehow this kid, who has nothing to do with the story, has some sort of precognitive ability and plugs his ears so the loud bang doesn't ruin his brunch. He could have at least told somebody that a crazy lady was going to shoot up the restaurant. Kids can be so selfish and self-involved.

Imagine you're an extra on Jaws, and you're told that you need to run to the shore and look freaked out and scared, because a gigantic, aquatic monster has just eaten a little boy. Think of the children, and what might be going through your head if this was a real situation. That's probably about the only instruction most extras needed, given the film they were shooting, but there was one guy who clearly thought differently, because instead of screaming for his imaginary children, he's giggling like a little kid.

Seriously, he's swinging his arms and smiling all the live-long day like there aren't any sharks for miles and miles. Worst of all, he's pretty much center frame and right in the camera for his few seconds of fame. Watch this scene at your own risk, and not just because the shark is scary.

When it comes to children on set, just about anything can happen. In Everything Must Go, the scene isn't even about the kids, so much as it's about the adults talking in the foreground. Someone probably told the children to sit quietly and not to move, so as not to distract the attention away from the action. Well, kids being kids, it looks like they followed the directions to the letter, because they're sitting there and not moving at all. What's worse, the camera pans over to them when the scene opens, clearly showing them alive and moving. As soon as the focus goes toward the adults ... everything changes.

Just look at them and see if you can focus on anything else in the scene. These kids managed the impossible by working so hard to not distract the audience, they ended up distracting the audience by hilariously sitting stiller than statues. And you thought the Mannequin Challenge started in 2016.

There are lazy extras, and then there's this guy. If you look closely, you'll see that the guy sweeping either never learned how, or he knows something we all don't, because his broom is a good 6 inches above the ground he's "sweeping." There's no explanation for why the extra was sweeping this way. Perhaps he was thinking that he wasn't getting paid to sweep, but rather was getting paid to look like he was sweeping? If so, he clearly didn't pull it off — instead, he really just draws the attention away from James Bond, which is something nobody should ever attempt to do.

If you've ever fought an ape, you're probably dead because they're super-strong. If you haven't, don't, because they're super-strong. This extra from the original Planet of the Apes clearly doesn't know that. This "ape" is a monkey with a weaker throwing arm than Charlie Brown.

As the other angry apes chuck fruits and veggies at Charlton Heston, one of them apparently couldn't care less about the naked ape they were supposed to despise. The extra "throws" the fruit in a bored, lazy, limp-wristed, manner, as if moping because what a waste of food this is. It's not like the props could've hurt Heston — they were almost certainly foam, paper, plastic, or something that wouldn't slime up a movie star like Heston.

We can't give the extra the benefit of the doubt and assume the fruit slipped out of his or her hand — this person was absolutely winding up to drop a wad of paper in the trash bucket. Either this was a troll having a goof, or someone really needs to stop skipping Wrist Day at the gym.

This extra falls into the category of people who were clearly told that no matter what you do, don't look at the camera. If you look above Robert DeNiro's left-to-the-screen shoulder, you'll see a man who's clearly making every possible effort to look at anything but the camera. Every time the camera focuses on DeNiro, the guy moves his focus to another place in the diner. It's subtle, but it's so there. Plus, since the guy's sitting there all by himself, it looks even weirder that he glances off to the left, the right, the ceiling, the floor, and basically everywhere the camera isn't. It's like he's getting hassled by a gang of imaginary mobsters.

It's the biggest day of your life, a battle for your freedom alongside the immortal William Wallace. Fight hard, and you might win independence from England. Let down your guard, and you'll probably end up drawn and quartered, with your head on a pike as a warning to other Scots who consider rising up against the king. So naturally, when it's time to draw swords you ... act like you couldn't possibly care less?

That's apparently what the above Braveheart extra in orange was thinking, as not 50 feet away from Wallace, you see him "lunge" at his opponent with all the energy of a 7-Eleven clerk on the 75th hour of a 96-hour shift. Imagine a Marine half-heartedly lobbing a live grenade at his own feet and then promptly forgetting about it. It's basically that — not like his dance partner is any better. Guy #1 swings his sword like a bored toddler at tee-ball, and Guy #2's response is to "defend" himself by putting his weapon up with less oomph than a puppy shaking hands. William Wallace and King Edward might not have agreed on much, but they could probably see eye-to-eye on never letting these grunts near any battlefield ever again.

When you're an extra, even when the scene features something super-cool, you should act interested, but probably not crazy enthused. You're not a military spouse seeing your partner for the first time in two years. Maybe you're a kid who didn't get the video game you wanted for Christmas, but what Grandma got looks ... kind of cool.

In short, don't do what these two extras did in Return of the Musketeers. While one of the Musketeers shows off a treasure chest full of goodies, a background guy (wearing a black hat with a white feather) and girl (whose face is plastered to the guy's shoulder) start mugging incessantly, like the treasure or whatever else their eyes land on is the most interesting thing in the world. Their eyes dart everywhere. The guy keeps sporting this cheeky grin like he knows something skeezy about Porthos, and as the chest opens, the girl stretches to keep her head in frame, perhaps in case some important agent was watching. She gives up after a while, but Mugging Dude doesn't. He's silently "oh myyyy'ing" years before George Takei became famous for it and keeps darting his head around the main characters so he stays on camera. Since this is clearly his only 15 seconds of fame ever, it's almost understandable.

Robocop 2's most terrible extra extra almost had it. He did his job perfectly ... until everybody else stopped doing his job and he kept going. And just like that, he no longer had it.

This poor man's last-guy-dancing-at-the-party was one of dozens of extras booing and jeering an angry Detroit resident standing up to the Omni Consumer Products attempt to take over the city. Everybody yelled at him to sit down and stop harassing the poor, defenseless uber-capitalist. The angry Detroiter did reluctantly head back to his seat, but the guy way in the back wasn't done, no sir. He just kept pointing at and scolding the protester, waving his arm at him long after everyone else was done. Was his self-created motivation meant to super-shame the disrupter, making it crystal-clear that what he did was unacceptable, like a parent who still yells at their kid after handing down a timeout? If so, that's a terrible motive, and not just because the only motive an extra needs is "you exist."

Maybe this extra thought he was being dramatic, but he ultimately ended up looking sillier than Homer Simpson not knowing when the Monorail song ends.

Everyone loves the Stormtrooper who bonked his head on an errant door, but for our money, the best stupid extra in Star Wars history is this guy from Return of the Jedi, who was so excited for Luke Skywalker to kick him in the face that he couldn't wait to react.

As Luke is battling Jabba the Hutt's cronies, he goes to kick one down into the hungry, hungry Sarlacc's mouth. Except he doesn't even come close to making contact. Despite a good 6 inches of air between foot and head, Jabba's henchman reacts like Bruce Lee hit him square in the nose, falling backward and eventually becoming Sarlacc vittles. Why the director didn't immediately yell "cut" and remind the guy to make it look like a real fight, we'll never know. This wasn't background — Luke was front and center, with nothing other than Boba Fett leaving on a jetpack to serve as distraction. And even Fett's clumsy flailing pales in comparison to this extra.

Some Star Wars fans have retconned this as a "Force Kick," where Luke doesn't have to make contact for his kicking to be effective. But that's neither canon nor feasible. Luke has this power, he does it once, and then never again? No way. He's not the smartest Jedi ever, but he's not a moron either. Background Jabba guy, meanwhile? He just might've been.

Mr. Nanny is one of those forgettable flicks that you probably never saw, and we can't exactly recommend it. There was one odd scene, right at the end of the film, that outdid the whole stupid movie preceding it, however. As Hulk Hogan is riding his bike through the city, he passes a shoreline where someone clearly is seen chucking a dog into the water. What's creepier, is that for all we know, that wasn't an extra — it could have just been some guy who was there that day and decided it was time to throw his dog in the water.

It's the only memorable part of the film, but nobody has ever come forward to claim they did it. That could be because a dog might've gotten hurt and the cops might want to speak to him, or he simply never learned he was in the film. After all, the only way he could've found that out was by watching the movie, and not even Hogan is dumb enough to do that.