When you're an extra, all you really have to do it stand there and not look distractingly pretty. Or animated. Or otherwise out of place.That doesn't always go as planned, and aspiring actors have ruined many great scenes by not knowing their role. Here are a few moments that have been totally ruined by a scene-stealing extra...
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00:00It's usually not hard to be a film extra.
00:03All you have to do is be forgettable.
00:04Unfortunately, it actually isn't as easy as you think, and plenty of people in the background
00:09have ruined many otherwise perfect scenes.
00:11Here are some hilariously obvious movie extras who just couldn't get it right.
00:15Teen Wolf
00:161985's Teen Wolf had a little something extra for audiences.
00:20In the final scene, Michael J. Fox wins the basketball game, kisses the girl, and the
00:24crowd goes,
00:25"...nuts?"
00:26Wait, is that guy standing in the back of the bleachers with his fly down and all his
00:30team spirit hanging out?
00:32Well, maybe not.
00:33Thanks to a lot of people with too much time on their hands, it turns out that this probably
00:37isn't the little Teen Wolf so many thought they saw.
00:39In fact, it might not even be a man at all.
00:42So far, the extra hasn't come forward to let us all in on the truth of what happened in
00:45those bleachers.
00:46But good luck watching the end of Teen Wolf again without noticing it.
00:50Back to the Future 3
00:51Remember that heartwarming scene in the conclusion of Back to the Future 3?
00:55Good old Doc Brown surprises Marty by returning to 1985 to let him know he survived and all
00:59is well.
01:00We get to see Clara again and learn of her marriage, but best of all, we are introduced
01:04to Jules and Vern, their two young children.
01:07And then…this.
01:08"...it means your future hasn't been written yet.
01:11No one's has."
01:14Did you spot it?
01:15Check out Daniel Evans, who plays Vern, motion to someone off-camera and start pointing at
01:18his junk.
01:19He probably just had to pee, but still, it's a wonder this shot made it through editing.
01:24Thanks to some visually-challenged editors, Vern's not-so-great Scott took center stage
01:28at the worst of times.
01:30Ghostbusters
01:31Remember how the trick to being a good extra is not getting noticed?
01:34Apparently, the guy in this shot from 1984's Ghostbusters didn't get the memo.
01:38"...I like that shirt, Brad."
01:42Clearly, the extras were told to act excited, but this guy goes way over the top.
01:47If you look for him throughout the whole movie, you can see him pop up in other places, too,
01:50like the end credits and this scene where he starts jumping like a lunatic when the
01:54Ghostbusters arrive.
01:55Hard to tell if he's the world's worst extra or the Ghostbusters' biggest fan.
01:59Let's go with both.
02:00The Dark Knight Rises
02:02One of the most difficult aspects of any action film is getting the fighting to look realistic
02:06while making sure that nobody gets hurt.
02:08Sometimes, it doesn't work out.
02:10Remember Luke's kick from Return of the Jedi?
02:11Well, Luke could be channeling the Force, but Batman doesn't have the same excuse.
02:16During the fight scene with Catwoman and Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, you can clearly
02:19see a guy in the background who decides it'd be best to get hit...without actually getting
02:23hit.
02:24He gets about four feet away from the Caped Crusader and throws himself backward for no
02:27reason.
02:28How does that even happen?
02:29"...You saw it yourself, Robin.
02:31The slightest impact was sufficient to instantly reduce them to anti-matter."
02:38Eh, nice try, Batman.
02:40Next time, just screen out the bad extras during auditions.
02:43Enter the Dragon
02:44Enter the Dragon is a groundbreaking martial arts film starring Bruce Lee at the peak of
02:48his career of ass-kicking.
02:56But apparently, even that wasn't enough to impress one extra.
03:00In a scene where a group of guys are watching Bruce Lee kick the snot out of someone, a
03:03background player who should be stoically standing still starts cracking up.
03:07It's totally out of place for the scene, but once you know it's there, all of Bruce Lee's
03:11bone-cracking kicks disappear, and this one giggling extra is all you'll ever see.
03:16North by Northwest
03:18Toward the end of Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest, an important scene takes place
03:22where Eva Marie Saint points a gun at Cary Grant, and fires.
03:25If you look closely at the boy sitting down directly behind Saint in the shot, he clearly
03:29covers his ears before the gun goes off.
03:31It's another one of those things where, if you catch it, it kinda ruins the scene forever.
03:35But maybe it wasn't a mistake.
03:37Maybe the audience is supposed to know that Saint's character is going to pull a gun and
03:40fire at Grant, because, well, thinking about Hitchcock's legendary attention to detail,
03:46it must have been, uh, foreshadowing, to hint to the, uh, the audience that…
03:50"...Oh, what a load of crap!"
03:53Yeah, never mind.
03:54That kid sucks.
03:56Jaws
03:57Imagine you're an extra on Jaws, and you're told that you need to look freaked out because
04:01a gigantic, aquatic monster has just eaten a little boy.
04:04That's probably about the only instruction most extras needed, but there was one guy
04:07who clearly thought differently, because instead of screaming for his imaginary children, he's
04:11giggling like a little kid.
04:13Worst of all, he's pretty much center frame and right in the camera for a few seconds
04:17of infamy.
04:18Maybe he thought he was in Sharknado?
04:19Yeah, that was probably it.