This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.
Throw It In
Strong Sad: And this part here represents Rondell's transformation into a new man. Homestar Runner: I thought you said that was just an accident that happened because you loaded the film wrong.
The preservation of ad libs, improvisations, and the occasional accident or mistimed what-have-you for dramatic or comic effect, sometimes at the cost of continuity.
These are often some of the most memorable scenes, for better or for worse, due to their spontaneity.
Differs slightly from attaching Hilarious Outtakes to the ends of shows. Related to No Fourth Wall. See also Rule of Funny, Rule Of Cool.
Not to be confused with Enforced Method Acting, when something unexpected is deliberately done to an actor in order to elicit a realistic response, or Improv, where there is very little or no script at all and the actors are making up large chunks as they go along.
See also The Show Must Go On, Studio Chatter, Good Bad Bugs.
Compare:
Farfel the dog, the ventriloquist dummy mascot for Nestlé back in the 1950s and '60s, would end his familiar jingle (N-E-S-T-L-E-S/Nestlé's makes the very best/chaaaw-klit) with a "chomp" sound. This was because Jimmy Nelson — who performed him — was nervous during the auditions, causing his sweaty hand to slip off the mouth control. The executives liked this so much they they kept it in ever since, even when Farfel (and his extended family) were revived in the '90s for a Christmas commercial.
Parodied in a Geico commercial where Foghorn Leghorn is doing narration for a book, only he is doing a very bad job at it. At one point in the shooting, he also adds in something, which he shortly thereafter admits that he added it in. Eventually, it got so bad that Henery Hawk ended up departing from the equipment room with a bat and was audibly implied to have bludgeoned Foghorn Leghorn with it, presumably to beat some sense into him.
Anime
It's not dialogue, but when Digimon Tamers head writer Chiaki Konaka saw that Jianliang's little sister, Xiaochun, was included in the opening song's shot of characters holding up their Digivices, he decided to make her a Tamer. Similarly, when he saw that the character designer had drawn so many pictures of her infamous "Terriermon torture", he decided "it would be criminal" not to include scenes of it. Xiaochun and Terriermon even have an Image Song together.
In-universe example in Midori Days: Seiji and his gang of delinquents get hired to play minor parts in a movie starring their favorite actor. During the final scene, the hero is mortally wounded. The boys are supposed to have a big mourning scene as he dies, but get a little too into the moment, and beat the crap out of the guys who "shot" him in revenge first. The director decides to keep it.
Because most anime is animated first and then dubbed to fit with ADR, in contrast to the Western practice of recording the voice first and then animating to the voice, there is a tendency for dialogue to be more ad-libbed.
When Norio Wakamoto was brought in to record the voice of Chiyo-chan's "father" in Azumanga Daioh, all of his scenes had already been scripted and animated. While he kept to the scripted lines, his delivery invariably ran longer than the animation (in one case, over a full minute longer). Rather than rerecord his lines, they reanimated the scenes to match them, because he's Norio Effin' Wakamoto.
When Jan Valentine in the Hellsing OVA storms into the Council of Twelve's meeting room and faces a dozen weapons pointed in his direction, the original seiyu doesn't say anything before being shot. The English dub VA however ad-libs in a hilarious 'Oh f*ck me' comment.
The Lupin III special "Crisis in Tokyo" isn't a particularly funny movie in the native Japanese, but the dub had a ton of ad-libbing done by the actors (though not to the point of it being a Gag Dub), particularly Christopher Sabat who voiced Jigen. It worked, it's one of the funniest Lupin movies ever released in the states.
The Funimation dubs of the Lupin III films and specials feature a lot of this.
In Lucky Star, Tsukasa's seiyuu Kaori Fukuhara said the directors encouraged ad-libs. Her famous "barusamiko-su"*
"Balsamic vinegar" — Tsukasa's Verbal Tic in the anime
line was one of those moments.
According to legend, the names of the main characters (A-Ko, B-Ko, and C-Ko) in Project A-Ko began because the creators couldn't think up good names for the characters, and started referring to them as A, B, and C during preproduction.
In Durarara!!, the kitty ears on Celty's helmet was originally a joke by Narita, but it was kept because the character designer really liked it.
The Axis Powers Hetalia anime apparently has a lot of this too. France and England's seiyuus Masaya Onosaka and Noriaki Sugiyama said in an interview that most of their characters's fights are ad-libbed.
In Afro Samurai, following the death of Brother 1, Ninja Ninja's "eulogy" ("Add one mo' body to the body toll, may god rest this po' bastard's soul") was impromptu on Samuel L. Jackson's part.
The Japanese version of Sonic X used this a few times. There is a scene in "Super Sonic Appears" where it looks like Sonic is going to get killed. His robot servants ask him if Sonic will survive to which Eggman was meant to have stayed silent (in thought of whether he could actually kill Sonic or not) however the voice actor jokingly said (in Japanese of course): "Of course! No one ever dies in animes!" The other voice actors decided to just go along with the joke causing the scene below to accidentally get created; the show's makers found the scene so funnily 4th wall breaking that they ended up keeping it in.
In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, during the Day of Sagittarius episode, each of the SOS-dan members was commanding a space fleet, and each of them was shown in a bridge filled with Bridge Bunnies of their own imagining (It Makes Sense in Context). Mikuru's crew (a bunch of stuffed animals) were lifted from doodles that Aya Hirano (Haruhi's seiyuu and occasional Cloudcuckoolander) had drawn in the margin of her scripts.
According to Tiger & Bunny's scriptwriter, Nishida Masafumi, Origami Cyclone's habitual photobombing tendencies were something that he suggested to the producers as a joke. He was surprised that they agreed with the idea.
In Detective Conan, the character Wataru Takagi did not originally exist. He was a nameless character. In one scene, Megure-keibu asks his name and his voice actor (Wataru Takagi) responded with his name. Gosho Aoyama, the mangaka, kept it in.
On a whim, the artist of Busou Renkin decided to add a butterfly mask to the Big Bad of the first arc. This turns out to be fairly significant, as he is a recurring character, and the butterfly motif drives most of his personality.
Art
Norman Rockwell created the models for his paintings by posing real people and taking their picture. One of his works depicts a young couple filling out their marriage license. Originally he intended to depict the presiding clerk in "paternal beaming" mode, but when one of the photos caught the clerk-model slumped in his chair, staring absently off into space, that was what went into the final picture◊.
This was how William Wegman found his niche in film and photographs of Weimaraners. Previously struggling with his career as a painter, Wegman one day found his calling when his dog, Man Ray, wandered onto the set during his photo shoots. Finding it easier to incorporate his dog into the set, rather than keeping him off, he used Weimeraners as a template for his works thereafter.
Comics
Lex Luthor was originally drawn with red hair, but was abruptly changed to bald after an artistic mistake by illustrator Leo Nowak. Not only has it stuck with Luthor's popular image ever since, but was indirectly responsible for Luthor taking the Ultra-Humanite's place as Supes' arch nemesis as DC didn't want two bald mad scientists battling Superman (and thus Ultra-Humanite gained his trademark tendency to Body Surf and was Put on a Bus for several decades).
During one arc of Invincible, Omni-Man marries an insect-like alien, and there's a panel of him kissing her and Invincible looking disgusted. According to the sketchbook in the back, the artist made this as a joke and Robert Kirkman decided to keep it in the actual issue.
Fan Works
During the DC Nation Olympics Arc, it was completely unintentional for Hades to actually kill Arsenal. The intent by the plot-runner and Hades-mun was just to get him high, removing him from the fight. The fact the Roy player ran with it and made Hades simulate a heroin overdose completely changed the ending, prompting the Sadistic Choice the Greek Gods would force on Donna later.
In Part III of Bart The General, a door bell can be heard ringing in the background when Bart talks about throwing a sponge at a mirror.
Films — Animation
Phil Hartman reportedly ad-libbed most of Jiji's lines in the English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service
Mostly they wanted some sort of funny talking animal, but Miyazaki films aren't exactly known for those, so they let him go off at times when Jiji never said anything at all in the Japanese dub; it's not a total distraction, but it takes away from the more quiet mood the original dub gave.
Likewise, John Ratzenberger's performance in the English dub of Spirited Away.
Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast originally just mentioned flowers and chocolates when advising the Beast about what present to give Belle. David Ogden Stiers ad-libbed the line "Promises you don't intend to keep."
Iago in Aladdin, when preparing to abandon the palace with Jafar when their treachery was exposed, mentioned packing up guns, weapons knives, as well as a miniature picture of Iago and Jafar that he "planned to draw a face on." According to the DVD commentary, the entire thing was Iago's voice actor, Gilbert Gottfried, ad-libbing.
According to the DVD Commentary, while Iggy Pop was recording the "voice" of the Cosmic Horror at the end of the 1983 animated feature Rock & Rule, he actually dropped the microphone, but didn't miss a beat and worked it into his performance.
In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Michael J. Fox's character, Milo, is vomiting over the side of a ship; under his breath he mutters "Carrots, why is it always carrots? I don't even eat carrots...", which was an ad-lib. Also, apparently Jim Varney (who played the vegetable-allergic "Cookie") improvised a lot of his lines.
In The Road to El Dorado, voice actors Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh were put together in a single "voice box" so that they could bounce off of each other (voice actors generally aren't given this option). This naturally led to a good deal of ad-libbing from both (think the "loquacious" line from their opening "duel").
When Osmosis Jones comes back from "The Zit" he greets Leah by saying "Brandy— oh I mean Leah". Brandy Norwood was the voice of Leah. The error was left in because the director thought it was funny.
The cast from Twice Upon a Time was composed of improv actors, and as a result the movie has several "alternate" versions, including one with language that was very much not suitable for children.
For the voice acting of All Dogs Go to Heaven, much like the instance of The Road to El Dorado, as mentioned above, Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise were put in the same sound booth to record their dialogue, and as a result, much of the back and forth between them was improvised.
In The Princess and the Frog, the line "That's new" (as in, right after Naveen has attempted to woo Tiana, only to have his throat balloon like a frog) was supposed to be spoken in a confused, surprised way - "Whoa, that's new." But instead, the actor voicing Naveen said it suave, and it got into the film that way. It works.
From the Lion King, Timon's line "What do you want me to do, dress in drag and do the hula?" was an ad-lib by the voice actor. The line ended up spawning a scene where Timon's 'idea' leads to a Gilligan Cut.
Similarly, in the song Be Prepared, you might notice that Ed is uncharacteristically speaking (or rather, singing) in the song. That's because Jim Cummings, Ed's voice actor, was filling in for Scar for the remainder of the song at that point, because Jeremy Irons, Scar's regular voice actor for the film, was unable to sing the song anymore due to blowing out his voice at the verse "You Won't Get A Snuff Out Of Me!"
In How to Train Your Dragon, the line "thank-you for nothing, you useless reptile", was an ad-lib by Jay Baruchel. The trivia track on the disc also notes other places where voice actors improvised.
In Shrek, there's a scene where Donkey chastises Shrek for belching, saying it's no way to behave around a princess - which is then followed by Princess Fiona unleashing an impressive belch of her own. Fiona's belch was real and unscripted - Cameron Diaz had been drinking Coke while recording her lines. She stayed in character, and Eddie Murphy improvised the next line, "She's as nasty as you are!" and it was kept in the final take.
Mike Myers also improvised the line "You're on your way to a smacked bottom" after getting annoyed at one of the directors.
The inclusion of "All Star" by Smash Mouth was also a Throw It In - it was originally intended as a placeholder until a better song was found, but test audiences loved it, so it was kept in the final version. This also led to the producers asking Smash Mouth to do a cover of "I'm a Believer" for the end of the movie.
In Kung Fu Panda, Po's father owning a noodle shop was incorporated into the film after the producers found out that the voice actor for the character also owned a noodle shop.
When recording voice tracks for the animated film Madagascar, the animators did temporary voice tracks, which were then to be dubbed over by celebrity voice actors. They had originally planned for Robert Stack to voice Skipper the penguin, but after he died, they just left animator Tom McGrath's voice track in because he'd gotten so into playing the character.
The same thing happened on The Incredibles. Originally, Bud Luckey and Brad Bird did the voices of Rick Dicker and Edna Mode as temp tracks. Lily Tomlin was at one point considered for the part of Edna, but she said "What do you need me for? You got it already." after hearing Brad Bird's performance.
In [1]Sita Sings the Blues, there are three narrators. The original screenplay called for none. These three people were originally being interviewed for their take on the story. The discussion was so interesting, that Nina Paley added a narrators, so she could use it.
Films — Live Action
A much-disputed, yet nonetheless famous instance, is in Midnight Cowboy. One of the producers insists that the cab that prompted Hoffman's now-famous "I'm walkin' here, I'm walkin' here!" was driven by an actor, and that the production team was told to make the near-hit appear to be ad-libbed. However, when on Inside The Actors Studio, Hoffman claimed that he and Voight were not supposed to be nearly hit by any traffic, even from paid drivers, and that his reaction was in lieu of "We're filming a movie here!"
A few John Belushi moments in Animal House came about like this, particularly in the cafeteria scene. His trip through the buffet line was between takes, but when the crew saw they were told to keep rolling. Moments later, he improvised the "I'm a zit" gag, and the looks of surprise and disgust on the actors are genuine.
In the 1967 film, The Dirty Dozen. Lee Marvin's "Oh, they played an active part alright." line was completely unplanned, as was Ernest Borgnine's reaction of spitting his drink on the floor and coughing.
In 28 Days Gerhardt's speech about forks in the road, salad forks, crab forks and ladles was entirely ad-libbed by Alan Tudyk.
Leonardo DiCaprio telling Kate Winslet to get on the daybed in preparation for him sketching her nude portrait, saying "Get on the bed — errr, couch!" According to the director's commentary, the original line had no reference to a bed, but DiCaprio's nervous flubbing of the line seemed just too perfect to leave out.
When the ship is sinking and Rose comes to save Jack, when he jumps in the rising water, he says, "Shit, that's cold!" — apparently, unscripted. Rose goes "GAAAAASP!" in the same scene. This was also Enforced Method Acting, as the actors were told the tank of water would be warmer than it was.
When Jack and Rose are hanging on for dear life about two minutes before the ship sinks, Rose says "Jack, this is where we first met!". Complete ad-lib, but it makes the scene that much sadder.
Also an ad-lib was Jack's line as he is leaving the First Class dinner table: "Time for me to go back and row with the other slaves." James Cameron preferred it to the scripted line and left it in.
Robin Williams is also notorious for ad libbing a large part of his dialog — it's said that often the writers ended up saying, "Well, that's funnier, let's go with it" to his improvisation on-stage.
Actor Robert Prosky described his approach for the restaurant scene in Mrs. Doubtfire as "hold on for dear life" since he never knew exactly what was going to come out of Williams' mouth during any given take. If you watch that scene carefully, you can see Pierce Brosnan struggling not to crack up at Robin's antics, and this is made all the funnier by the fact that Brosnan's character is supposed to be annoyed/angry throughout most of that scene.
Much of the monologue in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams' character is counseling Matt Damon on relationships was ad-libbed. This is particularly true in a bit where Williams is describing his dead wife and her tendency to be flatulent when sleeping, which is why Will responds by laughing almost hysterically — Matt Damon himself had no idea what was coming. You can also see the camera shaking very slightly, and it's been reported that the cameraman too was laughing. His last words ("Son of a bitch, he stole my line") were also improvised. So was "Fuck you!" "You're the shepherd."
During filming of The Birdcage, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane were so thoroughly into ad-libbing and bouncing off one another that they were forced to promise they'd do one take exactly as scripted before they were allowed, in subsequent takes, to say whatever they wanted. Also, the scene where Robin Williams trips carrying the pot of soup was not supposed to happen, but how hilariously appropriate it was to the mood made it into the film. If you pay enough attention, Hank Azaria nearly loses it at Robin falling.
In Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack's statement that he used "human hair — from my back" was an ad-lib. You can see Bloom trying not to laugh, and McNally chuckling in the movie. The commentary states that they initially tried to edit it out, but they found that the line lost something without it, so they threw it in.
In the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Will says to the other characters "I'm not leaving without Jack!" while getting on the Black Pearl. When he sees that Jack is on the other side of the beach getting chased by a large group of natives, he says, "Never mind, let's go!" This line didn't make it into the movie (because they did indeed wait for Jack, more or less), but its creation was actually from a blooper where Bloom flubbed his line, and "Never mind, let's go!" was an effort to just keep going and say the line again without hesitation. This fact can be found on the Dead Man's Chest DVD commentary.
All of Jack's jokes about Will supposedly being a eunuch were ad-libbed by Johnny Depp. Through the creators' approval of the first, he continued.
According to sources, pretty much the whole of the character in the first film was a Throw It In, as originally, Jack was supposed to be more of a background character, a sort of sidekick to William, but Depp decided to go with his now famous zany approach to the character, that for a while, had the director and the executives not too pleased with him. Depp told them "trust me, or fire me." He still improvised a lot in the second and third films, but in the first film, it led to a completely different character.
Speaking of live-action Disney films set at sea, in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Kirk Douglas falling over in his haste to row to safety was an accident too funny to pass over.
District 9: Many, if not all of Wikus' lines are improvised. When you consider how beautifully Sharlto Copely acts his part, this becomes really impressive food for thought.
Thomas Mitchell, the actor playing the drunken uncle is accompanied by a loud crash on one of his exits; the noise was actually caused by a grip tripping over a prop table and scattering its contents, but the timing was so serendipitous that director Frank Capra decided to use the take anyway. They were going to re-take it, but Mitchell shouted "I'm alright! I'm aallllll.. .right." That saved the take, as it made it look like he'd just done an off-screen collision with a garbage can. The grip thought he would be fired on the spot. Instead, Capra gave him a $10 bonus for "improving the audio quality of the movie."
There was much more dialogue in the scene where George and Mary are both talking to Sam over the phone — but that long kiss was so much better than the dialogue Capra scripted that it got used instead. Technically, that might be "Throw It Out" as much as "Throw It In".
In the building and loan panic scene, the woman asking for $17.50 wasn't originally in the script. Capra fed the actress the line before shooting without telling James Stewart, so he could seem genuinely surprised when she said it. He was, and the grateful kiss afterward was an in-character ad-lib on Stewart's part.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, Ian McKellen accidentally hit his head on the ceiling while entering Bilbo's residence. This was kept in the final cut as a joke.*
ie. bumping the hanging lanterns was scripted. His quick turn to his left... painfully whacking into the ceiling-strut as he does so, was not. Ow.
Also in the first film, during the final fight between Aragorn and the leader of the Uruk-Hai hunting party, the actor in the Uruk makeup was supposed to fake a head-butt to Viggo Mortensen. But the makeup evidently made it difficult for him to judge the distance, and ended up giving Mortensen a very real head-butt. The move, and Mortensen's very real pain, made it into the film.
From the same fight scene, Makaore (the actor playing the Uruk) throws a knife at Mortensen. The script called for him to throw it and miss, but he actually threw it straight at Mortensen... and Mortensen deflected it with his sword, a completely unplanned move so cool that it would be hard to believe it wasn't either practiced, or special effects.
In The Two Towers, Aragorn comes upon a scene that seems to indicate that two of the other characters are dead. On the extended DVD, they show several takes of him snarling in helpless anger as he kicks an Orcish helmet. Then, they try one more take... and he collapses to his knees, screaming in fury, grief — and pain. Viggo Mortensen broke two toes kicking the helmet and decided to use it. They finished the shot, and then brought the medics in.
In the scene where Eowyn runs onto the terrace after her confrontation with Wormtongue and stares out at the landscape, a banner suddenly tears off its pole and blows away. That was not intended; genuine high winds were blowing everything around violently. But the symbolism was so provocative and moving it was decided to keep the shot, and a follow-up scene was later filmed showing the banner landing near Aragorn as he rides up to the base of the hill.
During filming of the Battle of Helms Deep, some of the stuntmen playing Uruk-Hai relieved their boredom between takes by making a game of tapping their spears against the ground in unison. This gave Peter Jackson the idea to have all 10,000 Uruk-Hai do it as they arrived as an intimidation method.
One specific instance is described on the special edition extra content, where they were about to shoot the Elves counter-attacking against the Uruks coming through the breach in the deeping wall. The actors playing the Elves were a little timid (probably their first shoot as Elvish warriors). At the time, there was a large group of stuntmen in Uruk costumes standing across the way, who began stomping their feet, beating their weapons against their chests, calling them names and even making obscene gestures at them. This quickly got the Elvish stunt-doubles riled up, and they in turn began posturing and drawing imaginary arrows at the Uruks. Then suddenly, to everyone's surprise, the director yelled "Cut!". Part of the footage got into the film, though they had to cut out parts with gestures and exclamations that were not... native to Middle Earth.
In First Blood, protagonist John Rambo jumps off a cliff into a tree, then falls down, hitting branches on the way down, to hit the ground with a blood-curdling scream. That's because Stallone broke three ribs doing the stunt.
Similarly, in The Young Lions, when Marlon Brando's character is fatally shot, he falls down a big hill and into a pond. He apparently injured himself rather badly in the fall, but being the world's most famous Method actor, he kept still and finished the take and waited to yell in pain until "cut" was called.
Hannibal Lecter's famous hissing was completely improvised; indeed, was enough of a joke that the actors didn't expect it to be kept in the film. You'll notice that there's a nice long pause between "A nice Chianti" and the hiss, presumably so that it could be cut without damaging the line. The director decided it struck the right tone, after noticing Jodie Foster was quite genuinely creeped out.
Hopkins improvised the bit where he briefly mocks Clarice's accent during his Hannibal Lecture; this overlaps with Enforced Method Acting because he did not inform Foster that he was going to do this, so the surprise on her face is genuine.
Several scenes in The Film of the Series of Bewitched were directly scripted from development-period improvisations between Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, including, in an amusing recursion, the scene where Isabel and Jack "improvise" an interview with a witch. According to Nora Ephron's DVD Commentary, this scene was essentially unchanged from the original improv, right down to Kidman's line, "Do we have to keep doing this?"
X-Men: Reports suggest that the actual script of the movie didn't have Wolverine saying "bub" but Hugh Jackman, as a fan of the character, threw it in. Some reports state that he actually "threw it in" many, many times. They just only kept some of them. When Wolverine meet Professor X, he says "What do they call you — Wheels?" where the Wheels part was ad-libbed. The scripted line was "What do they call you — Baldie?"
After the famous lobby fight scene in The Matrix, there is one final shot of the collateral damage in the lobby; a piece of one of the pillars collapses, which hadn't been originally intended, but it looked cool, so they kept it.
There's also the part where Neo vomits after being told my Morpheus the truth of the Matrix. In the set, Keanu really vomited after something in his meal didn't agree with him.
According to the director, much of the humor in Death at a Funeral was based on deliberately exploiting this trope. He explained that scenes would often be repeated until something funny went wrong, and then that take was used.
The "You know how I know you're gay?" scene sprang from an improvisation about a completely different subject.
The waxing scene: they didn't tell Steve Carell on the first rip that they were actually going to go through with it. Hence his expression, followed by some decidedly out-of-character swearing at the actor who just ripped half his chest hair off. Those wincing looks and glances off-camera from his "buddies" are real. Carell also ad-libbed all the lines he yelled after each rip including "Kelly Clarkson!!" The script for this scene actually read: "Scream, swear, apologize," if memory serves.
Groucho Marx ad-libbed frequently; many Marx Brothers movies have noticeable blips where the makers shaved off a few seconds to make room for things like the Animal Crackers speech which begins: "Pardon me for a second while I have a strange interlude."
Some scripts simply had "Harpo Does Something Funny" because his improvisations were often better than what the writers could come up with.
Their first major film The Cocoanuts had to be shot with multiple cameras because every take they did was different, so normal single camera techniques didn't work. The "viaduct" gag was not in the original script of the play the film was based on.
In Animal Crackers the actor playing the antagonist accidentally called Groucho by his own character's name. Both of them were able to improvise off it well enough that the take ended up in the film.
More of a funny mistake than an intentional improvisation, the film Hot Fuzz includes a scene where Simon Skinner, Timothy Dalton's intentionally-played up bad guy who is in fact merely a Disc One Final Boss raises his glass and for a split second looks right down the barrel of the camera. Director Edgar Wright decided to leave the outtake in, and even timed the sound of a bell in the background to accompany it. Additionally, Danny Butterman's "I'm not made of eyes" was ad-libbed by the actor. Similarly, the first scene where Dalton's character gets introduced (when the two are jogging) was going to be reshot, because Dalton kept unintentionally pushing Pegg out of frame. They decided to keep it in, as they felt it fit Skinner's character.
The most famous example of all time, in Casablanca:
Rick: Here's lookin' at you, kid.
Borat: the naked wrestling scene. Sacha Baron Cohen told the director that if he ran short on oxygen from having a 300 lb man sit on his chest he'd hit the mattress three times fast. If you look you'll find he does that about halfway through the fight.
Annie Hall: the scene where Alvy sneezes, blowing away a boxful of his friend's $2000/oz cocaine ran much longer, but was cut back because the laughter from the audience made the rest of the dialog inaudible. The sneeze was real, and unrehearsed.
A example that has become a legendary scene: Indiana Jonesshooting the swordsman. Harrison Ford had diarrhea problems and wasn't up to fight him with his whip as originally scripted. A version of the story exist that Ford improvised the scene while filming. A slightly more plausible version says that Steven Spielberg said sarcastically to Ford that the only way the scene could get shortened is if he just shot the guy. The crew began laughing at the idea and they worked it out. Another version of this story holds that Ford and most of the crew had gotten sick, and this was the last scene they needed to film in this location. Ford goes to Spielberg and says "Look, Indy wants to save the girl, right? He doesn't have time for this, so why not have Indy shoot the fucker?" And so he did. According to the Making of Indiana Jones book, they did manage to shoot a completed fight scene with the swordsman. There were two versions during the editing process. One cut with the fight with the Arab and one with Indy just shooting him, with George Lucas preferring the former and Spielberg the latter. They left it to a test screening to decide which to use. Indy shooting got the biggest laugh and was kept in.
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in response to Indy asking his father how he knew Elsa was a Nazi, Jones Sr. simply replies "She talks in her sleep." Sean Connery actually ad-libbed that line, and it was kept since it made the entire crew burst into laughter.
The Empire Strikes Back: Han's reply to Princess Leia saying that she loves him was originally supposed to be "I love you too," but Ford ad-libbed "I know," because he felt it to be more like the character. The director Irvin Kershner said they had ran through several different lines because the "I love you too" line felt too lovey-dovey for someone like the Loveable Rogue Han Solo, so eventually he just asked Ford to say what felt natural. Kershner loved the result — "I know" was the final take, at least before lunch — but George Lucas was afraid it was Mood Whiplash. Lucas was proven right when airing for a test audience — but the audience also felt the line was classic Han Solo, so he agreed to leave it in.
In A New Hope when Luke and Han were rescuing Leia disguised as stormtroopers and Han was forced to respond via radio to their commander, Ford intentionally did not memorize his lines and only briefly looked at what he was supposed to say. So while the scene as written is supposed to be Han improvising, "We're all fine here, thank you... How are you?" Ford played it panicked and grimacing at the last line. Again, it was good enough to keep, and provides a great bit of comic relief in the middle of a tense sequence. Harrison Ford just seems to be a magnet for these.
He pulled a similar stunt while filming The Fugitive (see details below).
Apparently Luke's remark "I can't see a thing in this helmet!" regarding his Stormtrooper disguise, was made by Mark Hamill after he thought the cameras had stopped rolling. This led to another Throw It In moment, when the Stormtrooper smacks his head on the door. A moment that's so famous, recent DVD releases apparently add a "thud" sound effect when it happens. You just can't get the help these days, can you Lord Vader?
Jango Fett gets banged slightly by a descending ship door in Attack of the Clones in homage of the above, even though that scene is done in CGI.
One explanation for the difference in dialogue quality between the original trilogy movies (especially A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back) and the new trilogy is that the dialogue was either ad-libbed or "improved" on by either Harrison Ford and the other actors more or less on the spot or the screenwriters who collaborated on the script.
The improvisation/script alteration was remarked on by Mark Hamill in an interview around the time of the film's release. Apparently Harrison Ford had covered his script with alterations so that he could say the lines his way, and this encouraged Mark to alter some of his own lines. The "prisoner transfer from Cellblock 1138" was Mark's ad-lib (instead of a random string of numbers), which Lucas didn't originally want to use since it was a blatant Shout Out to his earlier film, but got put in the final cut.
There is at least one instance of a "throw it in" in the new trilogy. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman improvised the dinner table scene in which Anakin mentions "Aggressive Negotiations". Apparently, Lucas didn't like the dialogue he had written for the scene, so he just told them to improvise. Portman later said that "it got inappropriate very quickly."
Anthony Daniels' entire performance as C-3PO in the original movie. Lucas figured he would just overdub the dialogue to get the characterization he wanted, then changed his mind after several people, including Mel Blanc, told him to go with Daniels' voice and interpretation.
Alan Rickman plays Big Bad terrorist Hans Gruber. When he can't get information from a character, he shoots him in cold blood without a second thought. Later, he tells the rest of the terrified hostages, "I wanted this to be professional, efficient, adult, cooperative, not a lot to ask; sadly, your Mr. Takagi couldn't go along, so he won't be joining us for the rest of his life." This line was an ad-lib by Rickman.
He also ad-libbed the idea of eating some of the food from the party buffet while saying the line.
While not as spur-of-the-moment as many examples, the scene where Gruber pretends to be a hostage was written after the filmmakers discovered that Rickman could do an excellent American accent. The filmmakers had been looking for a way to have McClane and Gruber meet face-to-face before the movie's climax, and Rickman's accent provided a way to do that.
In one scene McClane tries to jump between air ducts in an elevator shaft. He misses his mark and just barely clings to one of the lower ducts - which was really an accident by the stuntman, but included in the final cut because it looked authentic.
It is even funnier because it broke the logic. That part was quite serious, until that line.
In Monty Python's Life of Brian, when Brian is telling everyone that they are all individuals, and they mindlessly repeat it, the one guy who goes "I'm not!" is an extra who just threw that out there on the spur of the moment. He got a pay raise to speaking actor.
The "He hasn't got shit all over him" line was improvised.
John Cleese has an improvised moment in the Burn the Witch! scene; when asked why witches burn, the crowd is stumped. Cleese has the next line: "Because they're made of wood?" However, according to the DVD commentary with Eric Idle, he experimented with the timing between the question and the answer, even going so far as to start answering and then go back to thinking. Watch Eric Idle in this scene; towards the end of the pause he's biting down on his scythe to keep from laughing.
The line, "There are those who call me... Tim?" According to some versions of the story, the Enchanter did have a more appropriately mystical name, but Cleese forgot it while shooting.
In general however, the Python troupe rarely used ad-libbing.
The Right-Hand Cat in the opening scene of The Godfather was not in the script. It was just some random stray cat that Marlon Brando befriended, and argued Coppola into letting him work it into the scene. And it works. In the same movie Lenny Montana, playing Don Corleone's henchman Luca Brasi, actually flubbed the line where he congratulates Don Corleone on his daughter's wedding. Coppola liked it, and inserted a scene earlier in the film, where Brasi is rehearsing his congratulation.
"Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your daughter...'s wedding... on the day of your daughter's wedding. And I hope their first child be a masculine child. I pledge my ever-ending loyalty."
Legend has it that Lenny Montana (who worked for the Colombo crime family) was one of the thugs sent down to the set to see how the movie portrayed the Mafia, and whether changes needed to be made to the script; one of their demands, for example, was that the word "Mafia" not be used. The actor playing Brasi had had a stroke, they needed a replacement, and Lenny got the part. He was a big fan of Marlon Brando, and flubbed the lines because he was so nervous about meeting him.
Clemenza's now famous "Leave the gun, take the cannoli" line was a half-improvisation by Richard Castellano; the gun part was in the script, the cannoli part was not.
The famous classical music from 2001: A Space Odyssey was just supposed to be a placeholder used while they edited the movie. But Stanley Kubrick liked it so much that he kept it in as the movie's score.
In the Armageddon, Bruce Willis improvised the famous line: "The President of The United States just asked us to save the world... anyone want to say 'no?'" Michael Bay liked it so much he made sure they put it in the trailer.
A surprising amount of the jokes in Superbad were purely ad-libbed by the cast, usually until something was funny enough to cause the actors to break down laughing, and thusly added to the script.
In Spider-Man 3, Topher Grace ad-libbed the quip, "My Spider-Sense is tingling, If You Know What I Mean." Apparently, he also added all sorts of jokes that didn't make it in, such as a needlessly creepy "I've just upgraded from a vanilla to a strawberry!" addressed at the red-headed Mary Jane.
In Atonement, director Joe Wright reveals in his commentary that the scene just before Robbie discovers the school girls massacre, at the point where he removes his helmet, the weather is cloudy. As he looks up the sky, the sunlight surprisingly shines and gets cloudy again the moment he put his head down.
In The Hours, when Meryl Streep goes to the sink and turns it on, the faucet explodes and shoots water up into the air; Meryl just went with it, and they kept the take.
Of the two shooting stars that appear during the shark's night attack on the boat, the first one was apparently real and kept in due to being a real one-in-a-million shot.
When the barrel whips over the front of the boat and knocks Brody's glasses off, it wasn't meant to get that close to Roy Scheider, and his reaction was at least partly natural.
The footage of the live shark thrashing around in the cables supporting the cage was captured when the animal accidentally got stuck there. This contributed to Hooper surviving as legend has it the dwarf actor they were using for purposes of scale refused to get back into the cage afterwards!
During the first take for Quint's Indianapolis speech, Robert Shaw was extremely drunk. They reshot the scene with him sober, but Shaw's performance in the first take fit so well with Quint's character, that the crew actually edited cuts from both takes into the scene.
During the fountain scene, at one point Austin's, ahem, "stream" starts giving out intermittent splashes like a sprinkler. According to the DVD commentary, this was actually a result of the water cannon malfunctioning, but the directors found it so funny they left it in.
Similarly, Scott Evil's little dance at the very end after gloating that he'll get Austin Powers in the same film was not in the original script. Seth Green, the actor for Scott Evil, was just fooling around with the set without realizing that the camera was actually rolling, but the directors found this to be hilarious so they left it in.
In Serenity Mal's "Faster! Faster would be better!" is sucha Whedon line. It turns out it was ad-libbed, when Nathan Fillion was asked just to "say something Mal would say."
The rather strange opening sequence was filmed on the second unit as a joke, and then the director decided to use it for real.
The scene where a crowd fails to cheer until one of the main characters does. This happened because the extras were all Czech, didn't understand English, and at first actually didn't realize they were supposed to cheer.
Also, in one shot where in response to how to beat William, Adhemar's page says that "With a lance, on a horse..." "...he's unbeatable." This shot was actually the result of a cameraman not realizing he was supposed to be doing a close-up until right as the action began.
Peter Sellers: according to IMDB, Inspector Clouseau's "rit of fealous jage" line in A Shot in the Dark was an actual slip of the tongue by Sellers. It was so Clouseau-esque, however, that the director kept it.
General Turgidson's tumble in the War Room was unscripted and accidental.
George C. Scott didn't intend to play Turgidson quite so whacky all of the time. In some of the scenes, after the "official" take, Kubrick would tell him to do it really, really over-the-top to amuse the other castmembers, then stuck that take into the final cut. Scott was initially upset about this until he actually saw the result.
A great deal of Peter Sellers' performance is said to have been improvised, including prominent examples such as President Muffley's "Just as sorry as you are" phone conversation with Premiere Kissov, and the title character's uncontrollable hand.
Malcolm McDowell claims Alex's use of the song "Singin' in the Rain" during the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange was an improvisation on his part which Kubrick approved. During rehearsal, the scene had not been working as scripted, so Kubrick told McDowell to try dancing. While trying this, McDowell spontaneously began singing the song. Kubrick realized it worked and immediately left the set to call New York and secure the rights to the song.
Speaking of Singin' in the Rain, this also happened in-universe: Don Lockwood figured that the line he was supposed to say in his and Lena's first talkie when seducing her sounded too cheesy, so he decided to stick with repeated uses of the phrase "I love you" while kissing her arm. It... didn't quite work as well as they had hoped.
The crowd rushing the stage during the "Pinball Wizard" number in Tommy was not scripted, in one of the most spectacular "throw it ins" ever.
In the romantic classic An Affair to Remember, several of the dry-witted exchanges between Terry and Nickie were ad-libbed by Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.
In The Outsiders, the scene where Dallas falls out of his chair while flirting with Cherry at the movies was an accident. You can see C. Thomas Howell briefly look at the camera.
The Joker clapping sarcastically with everyone while in his cell when Gordon was promoted to Commissioner was an improvisation by Heath Ledger that Nolan immediately told the camera crew to keep filming.
When the exploding hospital suddenly stops exploding, Heath Ledger pauses and gesticulates in frustration before fiddling with the detonator... and then runs like hell when the explosions resume. Considering the original intent was an Unflinching Walk, it was a grand change (and a Crowning Moment of Macabre Funny.)
In Citizen Kane, Joseph Cotten mispronounced the word "criticism" and quickly corrected himself, due to his exhaustion in acting in the ambitious film at the same time that he was starring in The Philadelphia Story on Broadway. Since his character was drunk in the scene Wells decided to use that take, and in fact you can see that he is initially surprised and then pleased by the mistake. There is a story that Welles intentionally had Cotten kept awake for a very long time, because extreme fatigue resembles drunkenness.
In Max Mad 2: The Road Warrior, one stunt involved a motorcycle hitting an embankment, whereupon the stuntman was to flip over the handlebars and land on his back on padding in a standard stunt move. The stunt went wrong, the stuntman flipped head-over-heels two or three times, and wound up breaking both legs. The scene made it into the final film without reshooting, because it was that awesome.
The lineup scene in The Usual Suspects was scripted as a serious scene, but the actors didn't play it as such. Bryan Singer was initially pissed off about it, but ended up using some of the funniest takes in the final film. And in the scene where Redfoot the Fence flicks a cigarette into McManus' face, the reaction is entirely genuine: he was supposed to be aiming for the chest.
In the French movie Il y a des jours et des lunes, a priest who acts in amateur plays is at one point complimented on his acting skills. The actor playing the priest was supposed to answer with a joking "You're telling me you want to be my agent?" but flubbed the line into "You're telling me you want to be my apostle?" When he realized, he started laughing hysterically but tried to stay in character by apologizing and talking about Freudian slips and blasphemy before repeating the real line. The director decided to keep it because the slip was just too good.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the design of the Starship Reliant was not supposed to look like it did in the movie: the visual effects team sent the design sketch to producer Harve Bennett for approval, and he signed off on the sketch upside-down. The vis-effects people realised that it actually looked better upside-down, and was more distinguished from the Enterprise with the nacelles angled down rather than up, so they built the model according to the "upside-down" view. That design of starship has been used in subsequent movies and shows.
In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, when Kirk learns the Klingons have murdered his son he seems to be so deep in shock he completely misses his chair and falls on the floor. Director Leonard Nimoy wasn't sure if Bill Shatner simply made it up or if he really missed the chair, but he felt that it was perfect for the scene and left it in.
For his part, Shatner confirms in his book Star Trek Memories that he did, in fact, just miss the chair and fall on his ass by accident.
In Star Trek 2009 McCoy's "All I've got left are my bones" line is an ad lib as is Scotty's "can I get a towel." You can see Spock's lips twitch after that one since he's trying not to laugh.
One morning in 1986, San Francisco native Layla Sarakalo discovered her car had been towed because the public parking space had been made available for a film crew truck. She figured the best way to get money to pay the towing fee was to work on the film that day as an extra. She managed to get hired that day to join the other extras. She was feeling a bit nervous, having never worked on a film before, so the other extras told her to "act naturally". When she got stopped by a "Russian" asking her how to get to the naval base in Alameda where the "nuclear wessels are", she naturally responded, "Ooh, I don't know if I know the answer to that. I think it's across the Bay. In Alameda." The director, Leonard Nimoy, loved that moment so much, he threw it in and it became one of the most frequently broadcast clips from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Although the way Leonard Nimoy tells it in his autobiography I Am Spock, that shot was really just Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols accosting random passers-by and asking them about "nuclear wessels". Sarakalo was apparently just passing by, listened, and gave the instructions, and it's that shot which remains in the film — they made a contract with her afterwards. One genuine ad-lib in there is the impassive police officer being asked questions: he was a genuine police officer there to provide security, and his reactions were just recorded on film and got in there.
In Ghostbusters, the appearance of Gozer was a last-minute decision by Ivan Reitman, made and announced to the cast right before the scene was filmed. Gozer's appearance in the script is that of Ivo Shandor, the occultist who began the summoning in the 1920s, but Reitman spontaneously came up with the idea of Gozer as an androgynous, otherworldly female, and her costume, equally improvised at the last second, is literally taped-up bubble wrap. The cast thought it was insane and would spoil the finale, and continue to express amazement today at how well it worked. Then again, Paul Reubenswas intended to play the part of Ivo Shandor...
Bill Murray reportedly adlibbed at least some of his lines. The degree varies between different accounts from practically everything he said to just a couple of lines.
The commentary notes that practically every scene had an ad-lib, not just by Bill Murray either. Rick Moranis also ad-libbed much of his dialogue, especially in the party scene, though he worked with the screenwriters to get a vague outline of what was needed.
According to the DVD info for Black Knight, one of the female lead's faceplants was entirely unintentional, but kept in because it looked awesome.
While he was writing Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson accidentally mixed up two words while writing dialogue about Little Bill's cheating wife. He decided to leave it in, as Little Bill is angry when he says the line and would have mixed the words up.
The scene with Thorton Melon's secretary taking notes for him in Back to School was supposed to show his son Jason sitting next to her looking disgusted, but the actor simply couldn't stop laughing at Edie McClurg's performance. They decided to leave it in since it works just as well that he is supposed to be laughing in frustrated disbelief instead.
Norman Mailer directed a small number of films where he threw in unplanned bits:
In Wild 90, an improvisational movie, about twenty-five minutes of the soundtrack became muffled due to a technical error. Mailer decided to release the movie with the soundtrack muffled, rather than redub it, saying it "sounds like everybody is talking through a jockstrap."
During the filming of Maidstone, a movie about a director attempting to become President, Rip Torn attempted to hit Mailer over the head with a hammer. The two of them then fought viciously, all while the cameras rolled. The fight appeared in the movie.
While making Tough Guys Don't Dance, Ryan O'Neal gave a poor line reading which Mailer put into the movie, over the protests of various people, including O'Neal himself, because he felt the poor reading added something to the picture. See it for yourself here.
In Young Frankenstein, Marty Feldman started covertly switching his prosthetic "Igor hump" from shoulder to shoulder between scenes, until someone on the production crew finally noticed, and a bit was added where Frederick notices the change on-camera. Also, the "cat hit with a dart" sound-effect was Mel Brooks's on the spot improvisation.
Nearly all of Spaceballs was co-written by Mel Brooks, but the lines for the scene where Dark Helmet plays with his action figures? They were ad-libbed by Rick Moranis, who plays Helmet in the movie.
Another continuity reference happens at the end of El Dorado when John Wayne snaps at Robert Mitchum for alternating which arm he put his crutch under. Before becoming a big star, Wayne did part-time continuity work in college.
While filming The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway slipped and fell on her butt while filming a scene on some bleachers. Garry Marshall put that cut in the movie as her character was a Dojikko anyway. You'll notice Heather Matarazzo briefly slips out of character when this happens.
In the 2004 Dawn of the Dead film, an early scene filmed with a fixed camera on a car roof as it drives around the wrecked apocalyptic neighborhood almost caused an accident when the car drove in front of another vehicle, forcing the other driver to slam their brakes and barely avoid hitting it. Everyone agreed that it added a great touch to the apocalyptic feel of the sequence.
The scene from Mystery Men in which a burning trash can suddenly flares up behind the Spleen who jumps in surprise, then sheepishly says "Excuse me" to the other characters was a total improvisation on the part of Paul Reubens. Apparently, one of the workmen on the set didn't know the garbage can was a prop that would be later set on fire, and had thrown a disposable lighter into it.
The word "Shpadoinkle" from Cannibal! The Musical was originally a placeholder for the song "It's a Shpadoinkle Day," but when Trey Parker first played the song for friends they loved the word so much that it was kept.
There was also a scene where the town's drunken sheriff informs Packer that he's going to be hung at sunrise, then adds "You know what they say about sunrise?", awkwardly pauses for a moment, and just wanders off. According to the commentary, the actor (who actually was drunk) had just forgotten his line and walked off camera — Trey Parker opted to leave it in because he decided that it was funnier than the actual punchline.
In Being John Malkovich, in the scene where John Malkovich is walking away from John Cusack, a passenger in a car driving by yells "Hey, Malkovich, think fast!" and throws a beer can at Malkovich's head and hits him. Apparently, it was an extra that had gotten drunk and just decided to do it at the spur of the moment. It was kept in, and the extra got a pay raise because he now had a line of dialogue in the film.
"It just be rainin' black people in New York!", said by Edwards as he drops onto a tour bus in Men in Black, ad-libbed by Will Smith.
Another Will Smith ad-lib made it into the sequel, when Agent J first shows Agent K the car's new "autopilot," a life-sized human model that pops out of the steering column;
Agent K: Does this come standard?
Agent J: Actually, it came with a black dude, but he kept getting pulled over.
Almost all of Tommy Lee Jones' lines in the first film were ad-libbed. Jones hated his character's lines, so he made up his own. Will Smith is genuinely confused half the time.
Harold Lloyd's silent 1928 comedy Speedy climaxes with a high-speed chase through the streets of NYC by a horse-drawn trolley. At one point during location shooting for the scene, the trolley crashed into a pillar holding up an elevated railroad platform. This was kept in the final film.
Randall's line in Clerks 2 of "What smells like shoe polish?" in the scene where Dante is painting Becky's toenails was meant to be "What smells like nail polish?" The "shoe polish" was a callback to the first Clerks.
Roy Batty's "tears In rain" speech from the ending of Blade Runner was actually a mostly-improvised performance by Rutger Hauer that was kept in the final product. According to Hauer and screenwriter David Webb Peoples, the script called for Batty to deliver a two-page speech that explained all of his past adventures in greater detail. After a long night shooting, and with the sun coming up on the final day of filming, Hauer (who had been trying to figure out how he could condense it down) stripped the speech down to its barest minimum and delivered it in one take.
When The Narrator exits from the Tyler Durden-controlled police station in Fight Club, he threatens the police officers with a "lead salad." The line was improvised by Edward Norton on the spot, as were the dubious expressions of the threatened officers.
According to the DVD commentary, during the first fight between the Narrator and Durden, where Durden is taunting him to "hit me, hit me in the face" and gets punched in the ear instead, Norton was supposed to take a swing at Brad Pitt's shoulder, but improvised and actually hit Pitt in the ear, resulting in the "Ah, God! Fuck! Why the ear, man?!" line.
The scene with Pitt and Norton hitting golf balls into the trainyard had nothing to do with the original script. The two of them were drunk and screwing around and Fincher decided to film it and put it in.
From Tom Jones, according to the IMDB: "Hugh Griffith was reportedly drunk through much of the production; the scene in which his horse falls on him was not planned, and many believed he was saved by virtue of his inebriated condition. The film incorporated every frame of footage before rescuers entered the frame to save him."
In Almost Famous, Penny asks William if he wants to go with her to Morocco, and he answers, "Yes. Wait, ask me again." Penny asks him again, and he responds with an even more enthusiastic "Yes!" This was not in the script; Patrick Fugit, who played William, was simply asking Kate Hudson to do another take of that line, and Cameron Crowe left both takes in.
In Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson accidentally hits a ball close enough to make Ray Kinsella jump aside with a "Whoa!" It also knocks over the nearby bag of baseballs.
In Taxi Driver, the scene where Scout dances with Iris while playing soul music was based on an improvisation Harvey Keitel came up with while rehearsing. He asked Martin Scorsese to include it in the movie, because it added so much to the character. Scorsese was reluctant to do that because the rest of the movie is from Travis Bickle's point of view, but once he realized Travis could be outside the apartment watching from his taxicab, the scene stayed.
In the original 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, the scene where Major Marco overrides Sgt. Shaw's brainwashing by showing him an entire deck of queen of diamonds has Major Marco slightly out of focus. Director John Frankenheimer later claimed to have heard theories this was done intentionally to show Marco from Shaw's hazy, brainwashed point of view. In fact, it was a technical glitch. They had tried to reshoot the scene with the camera in focus, but according to Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra's performance was at its best in the first, out-of-focus take, and it deteriorated in take after take. In the end, they decided to use the take with the best performance, out of focus or no.
In the Transformers series Michael Bay is known for encouraging improvization among the actors, which led to Steven Spielberg talking to the cast saying he would be looking at the dailies and saying "That's not in the script." Apparently in the first film, the reason Mikaela was mostly looking away from Sam while he was driving her home is because Shia LaBeouf improvised this long line of dialogue where she wouldn't recognize him because he lost 100 pounds at fat camp and the friends he met there have died from diabetes. Megan Fox could not keep a straight face.
It's also done occasionally to get more realism, such as the dialogue on the AWACS, which was improvised by the crew based on what they'd say in a combat situation like that (only without the giant robot scorpion...).
The final scene from I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang had Paul Muni disappear into darkness as he said his final line "I steal," thanks to the lights being turned off a bit too early. Everyone agreed it was the perfect touch to end the film on.
At the very end of Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of The Last Temptation of Christ, in a scene depicting Jesus' Crucifixion, the film image suddenly dissolves and then goes stark white, as if there were a sudden light leak in the camera while they were filming. Turns out that that's exactly what DID happen - something had gone screwy with the camera while they were filming the scene, and no one noticed until they reviewed the footage later. But since it happened at precisely the point of Jesus' death in the film, Scorsese kept it in.
In Kill Bill, Daryl Hannah went off-script when she started screaming and flailing around in the trailer after the Bride vs. Elle battle. Apparently, Tarantino liked it.
During the filming of the chariot race in Ben Hur, Charleton Heston's stunt double Joe Canutt almost flew out of the chariot when it jumped over a wrecked chariot, which was unintentional. The shot was left in with director William Wyler shooting a closeup of Heston climbing back into the cart. Reputedly, the crowd flooding the arena at the end of the chariot race was an unplanned move by enthusiastic extras.
Blazing Saddles: When Jim the gunfighter is telling Bart why he'll never be accepted in Rock Ridge, Gene Wilder's line goes, "These are simple folk, people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know: morons." Cleavon Little starts breaking up, because Wilder had improvised the "morons" part.
In Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash rips a sink out of a wall while portraying Cash as being affected by drugs. The sink-rip was not in the script.
In The World Is Not Enough in the scene where Renard is told by Bond that Elektra is dead the actor Robert Carlyle's make up is actually slipping, but the director thought his performance so powerful that he kept the shot in. It's actually easy to mistake the slipping make up for tears, such is how it comes across!
Also, Pierce Brosnan ad-libbed the bit where he adjusts his tie during the boat chase at the beginning of the movie.
The bit in Scream where Billy goes to give Stu the phone, but it slips out of his hand, hitting Stu was an accident. Matthew Lillard screamed out "You hit me with the phone, dick!" The moment made director Wes Craven laugh so hard, he chose to keep it in.
Deliberately cultivated in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, where the actors were given very little rehearsal time, and much of the dialogue consists of them interrupting each other or stumbling over words.
Christopher Walken's trick shot in Poolhall Junkies was accidentally filmed. As he was being taught how to perform it, he tried for the first time as practice and sunk the shot. They were filming, at his request, since he was afraid that he would be unable to sink the ball in any following take. If you watch you can see all the actors in the scene gasp and begin to laugh, even Walken looks surprised.
While filming White Heat, the crew ran into a problem. The scene takes place in the prison cafeteria, where CodyJarrett has just been informed of his mother's death. As written it was falling flat until Jimmy Cagney seated the two biggest extras on either side of himself and told the director to follow him with the camera no matter what.
While filming Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Melvin Van Peebles obtained a permit to set a car on fire for a scene he wanted to shoot that weekend. Unfortunately, he got the permit on a Friday, and the city hadn't filed it by the time shooting was scheduled. He did the scene anyway and when the fire department showed up, he filmed it and left it in the finished movie.
During the graveyard scene in Zoolander, right after Prewitt explains why male models are trained to be assassins, Ben Stiller completely forgot his line, and tried to wordlessly re-start the take by repeating his earlier line of "But why male models?", which prompted David Duchovny to run with it and hilariously reply, "...You serious? I just told you, like a minute ago."
In Pretty Woman, there's one scene where Richard Gere is showing Julia Roberts' character a very expensive necklace in its open box. The original scene as written simply required Roberts to tentatively touch the necklace and say it was beautiful. Instead, as Roberts touched the necklace, Gere clapped the box's lid down on Roberts' hand, scaring the hell out of her and making her laugh. Because of the way it looked on film, the take was left in — watch where Roberts turns to when the joke is played on her — she's looking offscreen at the crew, not anywhere near a camera.
In the film version of East of Eden, Cal was supposed to deck Adam after he rejects his present. When shooting, James Dean had the impulse to instead hug Raymond Massey. This became a moment of Enforced Method Acting for Massey who, unpracticed in improvisation, came across exactly as stiff and uncomfortable as Adam ought to be under the circumstances.
When Kevin Kline's character in A Prairie Home Companion opens the bottle of champagne, it was director Robert Altman he hit in the forehead with the flying cork. Kline's "Sorry!" was unscripted.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" was reportedly not in the original script for The Shining, but was just Jack Nicholson adding in something to make Jack Torrence seem just that little bit crazier. And thus, a legend was born.
According to legend, Bela Lugosi was just beginning to learn English during filming of Dracula. He learned all his lines phonetically, and his odd mispronounciations have since become a very well-remembered part of the character. At least one reviewer has also noted they give the impression that Dracula isn't used to speaking at all. In reality, he had been in the USA for eight years by this point, and spoke the heavily accented but serviceable English he would for the rest of his life. However, it is entirely possible that two years earlier, when he took the role on Broadway, he was directed syllable-for-syllable and kept the strange results.
Two flubbed lines by Robert Redford made it into the final cut of All the President's Men, thanks to Redford's ability to work the mistake into his performance. One was Redford on the phone with a person who spoke only Spanish, asking the others in the newsroom: "Does anybody here speak English?" when he was supposed to ask for someone who spoke Spanish. The other is at the end of a six minute take with Redford on the phone (again). He calls the person he's talking to by the wrong name but keeps going.
In the final shot of Barton Fink, the seagull diving into the water was unplanned.
Robert Englund improvised quite a few of Freddy Krueger's one-liners, but the best-known example happened in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, in a scene where Freddy emerged from a television set and killed a girl by smashing her head into it. The scripted line was "This is it, your big break in TV!" which Englund said on the first take. When the director went for an alternate angled shot however, Englund changed the line to "Welcome to Prime Time, bitch!" The different camera angle made it easy to edit the two lines together, and it became probably Freddy's defining one-liner.
According to The Other Wiki, the line was originally "You're on TV now, girl!"
In The Fugitive, when Richard Kimble pleads with Deputy Marshall Gerard, "I didn't kill my wife!", Jones ad-libbed his blunt response of "I don't care!"—which promptly became the film's most memorable line.
Also, when Gerard and an extra are hanging around:
Gerard: Newman, what are you doing? Newman: I'm thinking. Gerard: Well, think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate doughnut with some of those little sprinkles on top — while you're thinking.
Harrison Ford injured his knee during filming, but postponed surgery until filming was complete, feeling (correctly) that the resulting limp would heighten the tension of the chase scenes and emphasize Kimble's vulnerability.
Similar to his actions while filming A New Hope, he also refused to memorize the script for the scene where he's interrogated by the police, allowing his responses to be completely realistic.
According to an interview with Uwe Boll, the infamous Dave Foley full frontal nude scene in Postal was a result of this: Foley was sitting down wearing only a robe and Boll had merely instructed him to stand up. Apparently, neither of them anticipated that the robe would suddenly open. Boll found this so funny that he had to leave it in.
In Time Bandits, Katherine Helmond was supposed to play the role of the Mrs. Ogre (on the ship) in heavy prosthetic makeup, like her on-screen husband. She really wasn't looking forward to this, and suggested to Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin that it might be funnier to make the character a normal-looking woman who was actually stronger than her monstrous husband. To her relief, they went for it.
In Avatar, during a scene where Neytiri is attempting to teach Jake how to speak Na'vi, she gets annoyed at his mispronouncing the word "nari" and smacks him in the side of the head. This was a real smack from the actress, and was not in the script. They kept it in anyway.
In WarGames, when David, Jennifer, and Falken were rushing to Norad on the Jeep, the Jeep wasn't supposed to crash, but it was kept since it added more dramatic tension.
In American Graffiti the opening where Terry (Charlie Martin Smith) crashes his moped into a garbage can was an accident but left in.
Soviet director Leonid Gaidai often used this. One of the most famous examples is a scene from his comedy The Diamond Arm where a smuggler who got out of the sea notices that his accomplice got stuck on a tiny island several hundred meters away from the shore. The first smuggler, played by the veteran actor Anatoly Papanov, looks out into the sea, growls "Idiot!" and angrily spits out. In reality, the "Idiot" remark was addressed at the cameraman because he had filmed the scene incorrectly and because of this Papanov had to go back into the cold water. Gaidai liked the genuine anger of that remark, so it was inserted into the final cut.
In the 2006 movie Déjŕ Vu\, there's a scene where the Timey Wimey Machine is ramping up to full power. As they're trying to get it to work, the lead machine wonk played by Adam Goldberg yells at his colleagues "I need more cowbell!" Reportedly this was an ad lib by Goldberg that suited the scene so well they left it in, and somewhat amusingly, several reviews singled it out as one of the most entertaining moments of the film.
In The Great Escape during the Fourth of July scene, Goff's line "No taxation without representation" was an ad-lib, causing Steve McQueen to do a double-take.
There is a scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where Draco Malfoy asks Harry, disguised as Goyle, why he was wearing glasses, as Harry had forgotten to take them off. When Harry replies that he had been reading, the script originally only had Malfoy stare him down skeptically. Tom Felton decided to mischievously add the line "I didn't know you could read," instead, and it was kept.
In the same film, actor Jamie Waylett didn't realize his character wasn't supposed to participate in the Slow Clap at the end, so he stood up and was pulled down again by Tom Felton. They kept it.
Jason Isaacs improvised two lines in the film: the first, as he was leaving Dumbledore's office and felt it was un-Lucius-like to let Dumbledore get the last word, he turned to Daniel and sneered "Let us hope that Mr. Potter will always be around to save the day." Daniel similarly ad-libbed Harry's reply: "Don't worry. I will be." The second ad-lib was Lucius' curse cut short by Dobby; the script didn't mention any specific spell so he just recalled from memory the "Avada Kedavra" curse, which led to some fans wondering how Lucius thought he could be using an unforgivable curse on Harry outside of Dumbledore's office.
When Hermione meets Harry in the first film, she says "Holy cricket, you're Harry Potter!" According to Emma Watson, she ad-libbed the "holy cricket" part and Chris Columbus thought it was hilarious.
In the fifth film, the Trio cracks up at the end of the scene when Harry tells Ron and Hermione about his kiss with Cho. This was an instance of Corpsing, which David Yates left in because he thought it hit the right tone.
Voldemort's memetacular hug of Draco was improvised by Ralph Fiennes. According to Tom Felton, they did over twenty takes of that scene and Ralph Fiennes only did the hug once. They used it, obviously.
In Tim Burton's Batman, when exploring Wayne Manor with Vicki, Knox (Robert Wuhl) ad-libbed the jokes about the decorative suits of armor Wayne has.
Many, many, many, scenes of Date Night are all improvising, and ad-libed.
In the original Rocky, loan shark Tony Gazzo is talking with Rocky about Rocky not breaking the thumbs of one of his clients, when he pulls out an inhaler in mid-sentence and uses it. This unscripted action happened because the man playing Gazzo actually had an asthma attack at that moment, and the director liked how it made the scene more authentic.
In When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal's "Pecan Pie" monologue is largely improvised. Meg Ryan's bafflement is genuine Enforced Method Acting, and you can actually see her glance off-camera for a moment. Rob Reiner made "run with it" motions, Ryan stayed in the moment and it stayed in.
Similarly, Matt Damon's story about his brothers in Saving Private Ryan was ad-libbed. Tom Hanks does almost exactly the same thing as Meg Ryan in the previous example — watch his gaze flit off-camera for a second, then a slow nod. Is that "Captain Miller hears you, Private Ryan", or "Tom Hanks hears you, Steven Spielberg: run with it"?
On the subject of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan: In You've Got Mail, there's a scene where the Tom Hanks character, holding balloons in one hand and a bagged goldfish in another, accidentally closes the door on the balloon strings. In an ad-lib, Hanks re-opened the door to free the balloons and joked to Ryan, "Good thing it wasn't the fish!"; it made the cut.
R. Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, in Full Metal Jacket, pulled the "reach-around" line, when insulting a recruit from Texas, out of his head. Kubrick stopped the filming to ask Ermey what that meant. After it was explained, Kubrick simply said to go with it. Other Hartmann lines were also ad-libbed, with Ermey being one of the relative few that Kubrick, notorious in some circles as a control freak, allowed to go off-script.
It probably helps that Ermey really was a Drill Instructor during Vietnam.
Ermey's entire character in the movie was thrown in, sort of. Ermey sat down with Kubrick as a "technical adviser", and for hours straight he literally just had a stream-of-consciousness moment with every horrible thing he could think of when yelling at new recruits, for later incorporation into the script. Kubrick was so impressed with it all, he later decided to just cut out the middleman and cast him as Hartman. In a way, any time he ad-libs in the movie it's the same as an "executive rewrite."
In My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Toula's aunt, who goes up to Ian (Toula's fiancé) to ask him something, randomly says "Let me touch your hair", and begins to massage it. This was an ad lib on Andrea Martin's part, as she'd forgotten her line.
In the classic Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant's character Dr. David Huxley has lost his clothes and is forced to find whatever he can around Susan's aunt's house to wear home. Naturally, all that is available are a ridiculous pair of hunting boots and a woman's frilly nightgown. When Susan's aunt sees him, she angrily asks him why he's wearing those clothes; impatiently, Grant jumps in the air and shouts "Because I just went GAY all of the sudden!" Whether this was a reference to homosexuality or not is unclear, but it wasn't scripted in any case.
It's 90% likely an intentional reference (also the first use of the term 'gay' to mean homosexual in a Hollywood movie): Note Huxley's next line is that he is "in the middle of 42nd street waiting for a bus"; at the time 42nd & Broadway was New York's seediest area, with lots of cruising homosexuals.
In Get Smart, the scene after the parachute jump in which 99 grills Max about what he would do if someone pointed a gun at him was taken almost verbatim from dialogue Anne Hathaway ad-libbed for her screen test. The director like it so much, he added it to the film. (From the making-of featurette on the DVD.)
According to multiple interviews by Gregory Peck, the famous scene in Roman Holiday in which he pretended to have his hand bitten off by the Mouth of Truth was ad-libbed by him, with only the director being aware of it in advance. Audrey Hepburn's scream and her relief laughter were genuine reactions. According to Peck, he borrowed the joke from Red Skelton.
In Return of The Pink Panther, Catherine Schell can be seen breaking into laughter at some of the antics of Peter Sellers. The two scenes in question are when Insp. Clouseau impersonates a telephone repairman, and later when Clouseau meets her in a restaurant and pretends to be a lounge lizard; in this latter example the scene ends with Schell choking on her drink. It's been said Schell's laughter (and the choking) were outtake-worthy moments that the director decided to keep; Schell has claimed they were scripted.
In Kramer Vs. Kramer, the last scene of the movie where Joanna (Meryl Streep) asks Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) "How do I look" and he replies "You look terrific" took place before the filming was supposed to begin, apparently Robert Benton liked it more than the original scene, and left it in.
Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond struggled for days with the final dialogue between Jerry and Osgood in Some Like It Hot, trying to think of an appropriate answer from Osgood when Jerry reveals he's a man. Unable to think of anything funny, they gave up and had Osgood say "Nobody's perfect." This has gone down in film history as one of the funniest punchlines and film endings ever. Billy Wilder even used the sentence as the title for his own autobiography. It's also on his gravestone.
In Inception the infamous "Mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling" line was said as a joke, but Nolan liked it and decided to throw it in.
In Ghost Rider, the first scene with Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, a professional daredevil, has him failing a jump. During the fall, the front wheel of his motorcycle smashes into his helmet, breaking the visor of the helmet. This was not intentional, and the stuntman really did take a tire to the face. However, when the stuntman saw the footage of the crash, he thought it looked good, so they decided to leave it intact.
Many scenes in The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, including a malfunctioning spaceship door and Animala saying "click" aloud as she flips a switch, were deliberately left in on account of the Rule of Funny.
In Road to ... Morocco, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are stranded in the desert when they find a convenient camel. In mid-line, Bob gets spit in the eye by the camel, and Bing laughs "Ho ho, good boy!" They pretty much had to keep that in.
In the Blaxploitation parody Black Dynamite, there is a scene where some men in black suits are shooting at Black Dynamite and a man in a large jelly doughnut costume from the car. As they pull up in the car and begin shooting, the car begins rolling away due to the fact that the actor forgot to enable the parking brake. He got it eventually, but the shot was kept in due to the fact that it fit in with the rest of the movie's intentional "Throw it In"s.
Supposedly, in Down Periscope, the scene where Lt. Emily Lake (played by Lauren Holly, as a Naval experiment for having women on submarines) confronts her commander (played by Kelsey Grammer) regarding a sub maneuver that he'd pulled to help her regain her confidence. When leaving, the part where the actress slammed her elbow into the doorjamb, and gave a short hysterical laugh before darting out of the set was not in the script, but kept anyway for extra laughs.
In Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, the helicopter that they'd rented for the day crashed, and they caught it on film...so they added a line a about a tomato leaping at it.
The actors just got out of the wreck, dusted themselves, and went right on with the scene.
"Well, what do you think?"
["I don't think it will ever fly again."
In Finding Neverland, at the Clap Your Hands If You Believe part, the uptight Emma starts clapping fervently. The children were shocked in response, since the actress wasn't supposed to. It adds a lot to the scene.
In Kick-Ass, the entire bazooka subplot was improvised in the course of filming.
Similar to The Birdcage above, in John Carpenter's Vampires, John Carpenter got along with James Woods, a notoriously hard to work with actor, by allowing him to to ad-lib as long as he did at least one take strictly by the script. According to the DVD commentary, a lot of the ad-libs made it to the final cut.
During a car chase in RoboCop, a hubcap comes loose and rolls almost directly at the camera. Paul Verhoeven left it in since it looked very cool.
In The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews tripping at the end of "I Have Confidence" wasn't scripted, but was so perfectly in line with her character that it was left in.
In American Pie Jim asks Michelle, aka Alyson Hannigan, to the prom. After she talks about using her flute to make her sing and wanting to have sex with Jim, she climbs on top of him and says, "What's my name? Say my name bitch!" This was yet another "tried it differently on the last take" that they threw in. (You can see all the takes on the DVD special features.)
The scene in Wild Hogs where John Travolta attempts to pull off a poor Clint Eastwood impression in the biker bar was completely improvised on the spot. "What the hell is wrong with you?" wasn't directed towards his character.
In The Warriors, the famous line "Warriors, come out to playyyyyay" was stated to have been improvised by David Patrick Kelly, inspired by a man who used to make fun of him in New York. The use of the beer bottles was also an improvisation. (The original intention had been to use dead pigeons, but it didn't happen.) Good thing too, since that's the one scene everyone remembers.
In the classic Russian holiday film The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!, the Love Interest's fiancé Ippolit is thrown into a shower fully clothed in order to sober him up. After the water is turned on, Ippolit says "Oh, hot water, very nice!" Apparently, it took a while for Russian showers to warm up, so the actor was surprised when he got doused in hot water instead of cold. The director loved the unintentional ad-lib and kept it.
During the chase sequence in the original Gone in Sixty Seconds, the Mach 1 Mustang driven by the protagonist was accidentally clipped from the rear by another car, causing it to spin out of control and collide with a lamp post. The collision was kept in the film for dramatic effect.
In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Wallace bursts into the apartment drunk and throws his keys at Scott's head. The actor did this as a joke, but Edgar Wright loved it so much that he kept it in.
In Napoleon Dynamite, there is a scene where Napoleon attempts to hop a fence but ends up falling over onto the other side. Jon Heder actually fell while taking this shot, and the makers decided to keep it
In The Wind and the Lion, during one of Teddy Roosevelt's monologues, a horse lies down and rolls. In the commentary, the director notes that most filmmakers would have reshot the scene, but he kept it in for verisimilitude.
A lot of dialogue in Dog Day Afternoon including Al Pacino yelling "Attica! Attica!" and John Cazale's response when Pacino asks him what country he wants to go after the robbery: "Montana."
In the opening number of Golddiggers Of 1933, Ginger Rogers sings "We're in the Money. In between takes, the director heard Ginger joking around speaking fluent Pig Latin. He then decided to put in a part where the camera closes in tight on Ginger as she sings a verse of the song in Pig Latin.
In the final battle of Terror Of Mechagodzilla, there's a moment when (due to a nearby explosion) Godzilla's back-spikes catch fire. You can bet they left that shot in.
In the American Godzilla, there's an establishing shot of Manhattan from the south, in which an ominous bolt of lightning strikes one of the Twin Towers. It's totally real.
Word Of God on Brad Silberling's director commentary for A Series of Unfortunate Events states that Jim Carrey ad-libbed quite a few of his lines during practice runs. His practice lines damn near perfectly added to the scene's mood almost every time and were memorable even when they didn't, so Brad shrugged it off and said, "Eh, what the heck." Thus, almost all of his best lines in the movie were actually cooked up during practice runs. Overlaps with Harpo Does Something Funny, because anyone willing to cast Jim Carrey knows he can make a scene absolutely perfect if you don't try to order him around too much.
In Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, a scene featured a shot of Welles smoking. A piece of paper accidentally blew by in front of Welles. It was kept in at his request.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah Connor, after breaking out of her cell, ambushes an orderly by whacking him out and inflicting cuts in the process. This was not acted: Linda Hamilton actually inflicted the orderly's actor with the injury as revenge, because he went too easy on her when she was being restrained in an earlier scene (causing James Cameron to re-shoot that scene several times, and she had to fall to her knees on a hard tile floor each time). It was kept in the final cut.
True Lies: Word Of God says that Curtis's slip and fall during the stripper dance wasn't scripted, and you can even see Arnold jumping out of the chair to see if she's alright. She instead jumped right back up and continued the dance, with Arnold sitting back down quickly. Luckily, all of this is perfectly in character (Harry would obviously be concerned about his wife, and then hastily attempt to maintain The Masquerade when the show goes on) and it ends up as one of the funniest scenes of the movie.
In The French Connection, the script called for a number of near-misses during the chase scene, but in practice, many of them were mis-timed, resulting in accidental collisions that were left in for realism.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, Michelangelo accidentally drops a piece of his pizza into the canister of anti-mutagen. You can tell this was unscripted by the way Mikey immediately looks up at the camera with an Oh Crap expression on his face.
In the 2002 caper movie Stark Raving Mad, when Ben is knocking out the nightclub owner with a convenient bottle, they had several takes where the Soft Glass bottle didn't actually break — but the actors were so dedicated to selling every take that they just had Ben shatter the bottle and knock the guy out with the second blow.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off has actress Edie McClurg's famous line, "They think he's a 'righteous dude.'" This was ad-libbed.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie has a bit at the end of Ivan Ooze's rant about the horrible things inflicted on humanity he missed out on: "The Black Plague! The Spanish Inquisition! The Brady Bunch Reunion!" That last one was ad-libbed by Paul Freeman.
Literally the only explanation for the bulk of Pocket Ninjas; many of the things going on, especially during supposed fight scenes, only make sense if you assume the actors were clowning around without realizing the cameras were rolling and the director (who may or may not have been drunk and high at the same time) decided that that was exactly what he wanted in his movie.
In a scene from Clueless, Cher is giving a speech about granting asylum to Haitians. Cher pronounces it "Hate-ians" instead of "Hay-shens." This wasn't scripted - Alicia Silverstone didn't actually know how to pronounce Haitians. The director liked it so much that she told the crew not to correct Silverstone.
Max Keeble's giggling when meeting Jenna at the middle school was a flub on Alex Linz's part, but the creators liked it and put it in.
While The Three Stooges were filming the train scenes for "Hold That Lion!", Curly Howard just happened to pay a visit to the set. Jules White saw an opportunity and improvised a scene with Moe, Larry, and Shemp harassing Curly as a snoring passenger. [2]◊
The "Put on a phat beat for me to beat my buddy's ass to." line in the Iron Manparty scene. It's pretty obvious (as Robert Downey Jr. immediately cracks up on camera), but pretty hilarious as well. (And it's in character as Tony Stark is supposed to be drunk.)
In the roulette scene of Lola Rennt, an initial take was filmed of the wheel spinning and the ball being dropped, with the intention of later editing it together with a staged shot of the ball landing on twenty to complete the scene and win her the money she needed. The ball landed on twenty in the first take.
R. A. Salvatore was working on a Forgotten Realms novel starring a barbarian named Wulfgar. His editor called and told him the book needed a sidekick... now. Salvatore panicked for a moment, then says, "A drow... a drow named Drizz't Do'Urden, of House Do'Urden, of the city of Mezzoberanzan." Thus begins the life of the dark elf that launched a million copycats.
When Louis Sachar was writing Holes, he used Stanley Yelnats as a filler name, planning to replace it later with a more normal name. He never did, and the weird name even ended up becoming a plot point.
Live Action TV
Some of Saturday Night Live's most memorable moments are either this trope or Hilarious Outtakes that turn into Throw It In after much cracking up. Of course, since it's a live show, if the moment happens for the first time during broadcast, Throw It In is the only option.
One of the earliest, and one of the most famous: during Chris Farley's "Matt Foley" sketch, guest star Christina Applegate and cast member David Spade can be seen trying (and failing miserably) not to laugh while Farley goads them on with his famous "I LIVE IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!" line. The confusion and smirking on Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks' faces are genuine, and the camera cuts to the cast members repeatedly laughing out loud.
When Bill Hader couldn't stop cracking up during his lines as Stefon, he started covering his mouth with his hands. This was written in as a character tic.
This often happened on Conan O'Brien's Late Night as well. Whenever things went wrong (special effects not working, problems with costumes), Conan would often declare the screw-up to be better that what had originally been planned. In one particularly funny incident, a fire alarm went off in the middle of taping the show. Once it was established that there was no emergency, Conan decided to abandon the planned bit and air the resulting debacle. In another, when a technical glitch stalled a bit he was doing, Conan jumped up on his desk and began performing a striptease in order to pass the time until the problem was fixed.
A bizarre moment occurred during an interview with James Spader which was interrupted when a recording of a voice actor stating "Now that's a good Friday", apparently intended for a skit, was accidentally piped into the studio, leading to some good-natured ribbing of the production team.
Similarly, Craig Ferguson has left in a lot of bloopers. For instance, he's had the lights go out on him twice (once due to a power failure), and on another occasion, he slapped his Teleprompter too hard and shattered it.
The Game ShowSuper Password was almost ridiculously prone to set breakdowns, most of which were not edited out of the broadcast (for instance, the door sticking, the whole puzzleboard accidentally being revealed, etc.). To say nothing of Convy's utter inability to keep his mouth shut, which often led to him blurting out the puzzle answer prematurely and therefore leading to the whole round being scrapped.
An episode of The Jamie Foxx Show features Mark Curry guest starring as a traffic school instructor who takes his job far too seriously, reaching borderline drill sergeant levels, and eventually breaking into full-fledged military maniac troop leader. While one can't be sure, many of his gags seem improvised, such as one in which he walks into the classroom, trips, and stands up quickly, proclaiming "Any of y'all laugh, you ain't gonna graduate!" and another in which he slips while running towards Braxton's desk before loudly telling him what a "square" he is. In both instances, a number of the cast members couldn't help but laugh, including Jamie Foxx himself, and were forced to turn their heads away from the camera to conceal their laughter.
Listen to how Gibby delivers his line: 'Uh-oh! Looks like trouble off the stern... port... bow.' You'll notice how he seems confused and slows down at the end of that line. The reason? Noah ("Gibby") forgot the line as he was saying it! He couldn't remember how it ended. Later, when I watched it in editing, I felt it played really funny, so I used the take where he forgot the line.
Dan Schneider's propensity for throwing in elements of his previous shows in his newer ones was what lead to the creation of the Nick Verse.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giles walks into a tree when Buffy reveals that she knows he had sex with her mother under the effects of magical chocolate. This was unrehearsed and done at the last minute, to comical effect.
Two more hilarious examples come from the first season episode, "The Puppet Show". Nicholas Brendon screaming "REDRUM!!!" while playing with the puppet suspected of being a killer was shot between takes and thrown in, while Willow suddenly running offstage during their talent show performance of Oedipus Rex was improvised by Alyson Hannigan.
In "Enemies", when the Mayor suggests miniature golf to take her mind off her troubles, Faith (Eliza Dushku) unscriptedly cracks up at the absurdity.
On the commentary for the season 2 DVD of Scrubs, the creator comments that scenes written for the Janitor often had the addendum "or whatever Neil decides to say," due to his frequent habit of improvising usable material.
In John Ritter's guest spot, on Scrubs, he improvised the line "I pooed a little" after his pull my finger gag. Zach Braff immediately had to bite down on his cheeks to keep from laughing.
In the "STOP FINISHING MY AWESOME JOKES!" scene, J.D.'s "Oh, my God" while holding his ears was unscripted — he actually didn't expect Sarah Chalke's voice to get as high-pitched as it did.
The puppet characters occasionally malfunctioned; Tom Servo's head, in particular, would often fall off during production. Sometimes this worked well enough to keep; for example, in a sketch where Tom and Crow were Secret Service agents getting increasingly worked up about protecting Mike, Tom's bubble jarred loose and fell off at the climax, leading them to shout "HEAD! AHHHHHHH!" and panic.
Perhaps the greatest example of this was during the riff filming for a first season episode, when Josh Weinstein, still performing Servo at the time, sneezed violently. Nobody missed a beat.
According to some accounts, Joel Hodgson was really tired during the filming of the first KTMA episode because he had stayed up late the night before building the set and the robots which caused Joel Robinson to have a dopey laid-back demeanor. The crew decided to keep this as a character trait for Joel. Other accounts, however, state that Hodgson had used the same laid-back character performance in his prop-comic standup long before MST3K.
As mentioned in the film section, ad-libs are rare in Monty Python's Flying Circus, but at least one has been noted. In the "Exploding Penguin on the TV Set" sketch, Graham Chapman got away with this exchange...
John Cleese: Penguins don't come from next door, they come from the Antarctic! Graham Chapman:BURMA! John Cleese:(looks around the room nervously, a genuine reaction) ... Why'd you say "Burma"? Graham Chapman: I panicked.
Not an on-screen example, but Aaron Sorkin once ran across Allison Janney entertaining the cast and crew of The West Wing by lip-syncing to a jazz piece by Ronny Jordan called "The Jackal". He liked it so much he had Janney's character, CJ, do it in an episode, and had the characters imply that it was a ritual at the White House's victory parties.
Columbo's famous And Another Thing mannerism was a sort of Throw It In. While writing the play Prescription: Murder, which introduced the character, writers Levinson And Link had just written Columbo's exit from a scene when they realized they had forgotten to include an important plot point. Rather than retyping the whole scene, they simply had Columbo come back in and ask "one more thing".
In the original scripts for The Addams Family, Lurch was a mute — but Ted Cassidy ad-libbed his Catch Phrase "You rang?" while filming the pilot, and the producers like it so much they gave Lurch a voice.
William Hartnell's habit of flubbing his lines on Doctor Who was left in due to limited budget. (If you watch carefully, many early episodes will be peppered with minor flubs, usually a slight but noticeable delay or stutter.)
And the actor playing Ian Chesterton was able to ad lib so well off of Hartnell's frequent hashings of the character's name that it was eventually written in the scripts that the Doctor would mispronounce it.
In "The Hand of Fear": after Sarah has been freed from Eldrad's mind control, she says "Eldrad must live!... Just testing." That was an ad-lib.
Colin Baker was personally responsible for several notorious puns during his time as the Doctor, including the "Perrier water" joke (punning on the name of his companion Peri) in "Vengeance on Varos", and the Doctor's "No 'arm in trying" in "Revelation of the Daleks", after Davros' hand is blown off.
Patrick Troughton frequently varied his lines or added unscripted business during his time as the Doctor, including the first ever Doctor/companion kiss.
The Doctor ripping off a strap in "The Time of Angels". First take was an accident but the producers loved it so they told Matt Smith to rip it off in subsequent takes.
In the Seinfeld episode "The Parking Garage," the characters spend almost the entire episode trying to find their parked car in a parking garage. The original ending was for them to find it at the end, drive off, but then be unable to find the exit to the mall. However, when filming the scene where they were supposed to drive off, the car wouldn't start up. Deciding that was funnier, they used that as the ending instead. If you look closely before they cut away to a long shot, you can see Julia-Louis Dreyfuss and Jason Alexander shaking with laughter as the car refuses to start.
In another episode, Jason Alexander sneezes just as Jerry tells him, "I blamed it on you." They felt it was funnier that way and kept it.
In "The Junior Mint", Jerry's line "We'll watch them slice this fat bastard up" was ad-libbed. You can see the actors holding back laughs when he says this.
Kramer's now-iconic sudden entrances into Jerry's apartment began when Richards was late for a cue during one of the first shows, and entered quickly through the door. The audience got such a kick out of it that he kept entering that way in subsequent episodes. It has become one of the character's most lasting trademarks.
In an exception to the comedy rule, the last episode of the third season of M*A*S*H had, at the end, the characters having a moment of silence upon learning that their former commanding officer Henry Blake's plane was shot down, with no survivors. At the very end of the scene, someone drops a tray of surgical supplies, shaking everyone from their thoughts; this was unscripted and just left in.
The broadcast version does not have the tray dropping; the scene fades out on Hawkeye and Trapper continuing their surgery without pause.
In Star Trek: Voyager, non-Trekkie Robert Picardo ad-libbed "I'm a doctor, not a night light," in his audition for the role of The Doctor while having no conscious idea that "I'm a doctor, not a [something]" was Dr. McCoy's famous Catch Phrase. The particular line didn't make it into an episode, but was liked enough that The Doctor went on to use "I'm a doctor, not a [something]" phrases as much as McCoy had, and other Trek doctors would use it on rare occasion as well.
Similarly, Amanda Tapping was cast as Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1 after ad-libbing how the dialing computer for the Stargate had been MacGyvered to work, since it was an acknowledgment of Richard Dean Anderson's previous role as MacGyver. Unlike the Star Trek example, this one was kept in.
Farscape apparently had quite a bit of this going on, starting at around about the time Ben Browder ended a scene of armed guards chasing him by whirling around to face them, putting his gun to his own head, and shouting "Nobody move or the white boy gets it!"
In Gigi Egley's first appearance as Chiana, the character wasn't intended to stay on the show so she was given painful contact lenses that severely restricted her vision. When it was decided to make her a main character the lenses were modified to be more comfortable, but all the exaggerated head movements Egley had done to be able to see what she was doing were kept in as a character trait.
At the end of a sketch on The Electric Company where Rita Moreno plays a director trying to get Bill Cosby to get his line right, Morgan Freeman cracks up and walks off the set.
And in another sketch about a boxing match between the letter combinations "ea" and "ee", Cosby is handed a trophy... which falls apart in his hands accidentally. Skip Hinnant ad-libs: "Sorry we couldn't have sprung for a better trophy." Morgan Freeman cracks up again.
This article talks of One Life to Live having unscripted interactions between real-life drug addicts and one of the characters.
The Red Dwarf episode "D.N.A." has a scene where Rimmer, planning to clone himself to come back to life, is examining some of his own dandruff under a microscope while the Cat looks over his shoulder. During a rehearsal, Danny John-Jules accidentally sneezed on the microscope at the end of the scene. The timing was so perfect that the writers put it in the episode.
In another moment courtesy of Danny John-Jules, the episode "Bodyswap" features Lister's brain being recorded onto a cassette tape and given to the Cat for safekeeping. Almost immediately, he accidentally drops it in his mug of coffee.
From Quarantine, when Lister, Kryten and Cat are using the luck virus to locate what they need to fight Rimmer and Mr. Flibble, Craig Charles collides with and almost trips over the second item. The DVD commentary suggests that wasn't intentional.
Craig again, from Holoship. Lister eating the cigarette at the end of the confrontation with a hologram wasn't part of the episode script. Apparently he was sick after the scene.
For Holly's return to the cast in Nanarchy, he had to give a complicated explanation of the episode's events. According to a later interview, Norman Lovett couldn't pronounce a particularly difficult word in the script, which was Holly-ish enough to make it into the episode as 'that word I can't say'.
In the Supernatural episode "In The Beginning," Samuel is being possessed by the YED and after Dean unwittingly tells him everything, he pins Dean to the wall and smells his neck while asking him if he's one of the "special children." According to Mitch Pileggi, the neck-smelling wasn't rehearsed beforehand so Dean's squicked-out reaction is completely genuine and the sexual subtext is even more creepy.
Another example is Misha Collins' first appearance as Castiel. The staring and ignoring Dean's personal space was not scripted, so that Jensen Ackles was genuinely surprised.
And in "Bad Day at Black Rock," Dean's final frustrated "SON OF A BITCH!" was an ad-lib by Jensen Ackles, and you can clearly see Jared Padalecki breaking character and laughing.
How about throwing in an entire interpretation of a character? As noted under Playing Against Type, Marc Warren, known for smooth cockney scoundrel Danny in Hustle played a frightening Psychopathic Manchild as Jonathan Teatime in Hogfather. What's interesting is that he was hired to play Teatime similarly to Danny, but instead chose an interpretation inspired by Johnny Depp's creepy Michael Jackson-esque Willy Wonka. And it works horrifyingly well.
In a form of inversion, Yes Minister star Paul Eddington had a number of lines cut after he demonstrated that he was capable of expressing everything of significance in the discussion with expressions alone, particularly in the later episodes.
While most of Whose Line Is It Anyway? is improvised to begin with, the 100th episode had a notable incident where the electronically-synthesized bass rhythm suddenly sped up in the middle of a song, and Hilarity Ensued. They redid the game with the intention of throwing out the first take, but in the end, the second take was thrown out and the first take was used. It featured Wayne trying to spell out the subject's name "Howard" in rhythm, and being flustered from the tempo change he ended up spelling out H-O-R-W-A-R-D. Drew gave him a hard time about it, leading to Wayne responding "It's hard to spell at 210 beats per minute."
Greg Proops, afterwards:
"Watch out for those tempo changes, man, 'cause once we go into the second bridge, this shit takes off!"
Ryan: "Well I used to be I can't remember anymore."
Should any of the performers, Drew especially, say or do anything while between games that is hilarious, it will become a running gag for the remainder of the show.
One of the best known is when Drew flubbed a line from a scripted card, introducing "African Chant", and stated that "Africa is a country". Greg Proops, the forth chair that episode, busted up and immediately corrected him that, "It's also a continent, if you're a geographer!." Drew didn't live that down for the rest of the show.
One had Drew using a tape recorder of himself saying "One Thousand Points!" in an effort to do as little as possible. This provided two instances. One was pointing out the idiocy of making himself obsolete, especially as he needed to rewind the tape. Another was Wayne Brady editing the tape between segments to say "My ass! My ass! My ass!"
An audience member got one: When asked for a pair of unlikely roommates, a member loudly yelled out "Cosby and Hitler", prompting jokes the rest of the night. Most were directed at the producer who nixed the idea from making it to the screen.
In an early season two episode of House, House is mad at Wilson for having sided with Stacey, and Hugh Laurie ad-libbed "Bros before hos, man" during one take. You can clearly see Robert Sean Leonard cracking up at the line.
The famous "foot in the face" scene in the Merlin episode The Moment of Truth was at least partly just a joke Bradley James came up with — he deliberately waited for Colin Morgan's take, and then... stuck his bare foot in his face. The disgusted reaction is completely genuine, and they did a take without it, though thankfully that's not what ended up in the episode.
Sifl and Olly often had these moments whenever one of the duo would laugh. These moments were usually caused by Liam Lynch. An example can be seen in the music video for "Baby For Gravy". These were also very common in segments featuring the character Chester.
During the twin fight in Skins, Kathryn Prescott and Giles Thomas were supposed to just make it look like Emily hit Doug; however, Kathryn got a little too into the scene and inadvertently lamped him. Giles was so gobsmacked that, in his subsequent confusion and surprise, he trod on Megan Prescott (Katie)'s foot, who spent the rest of the scene desperately trying not to cry. All of that made it to the final cut.
The ending of the famous Oilz scene was reportedly the result of Kathryn Prescott and Lily Loveless just going nuts.
According to Mark Harmon, the first-ever GibbsSlap wasn't scripted; he just broke off in the middle of a scene to whack Michael Weatherly on the back of the head. Not only was it not cut, it rapidly became one of the character's trademarks.
Also, in "The Voyeur's Web", the scene where Abby pretends to cut her throat with the play knife was spontaneous. Pauley Perrette apparently forgot that Gibbs was supposed to be ignoring her and did it as a joke. It was left in.
In the first Christmas episode of That '70s Show, Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) spots Laurie, runs towards her, tries to jump over the couch, but slips on it and hurts his legs with the table, almost knocking over the punch bowl that was on it. Kutcher however manages to keep the straight face and to continue the scene afterwards. This shot was kept, and Kelso's hurting himself later became his trademark.
Behind-the-scenes materials indicate that Kutcher usually tried to roll with goof-ups - like his popsicle breaking in one episode - as just part of Kelso's clumsiness
In the episode where Donna tries to convince Jackie to move in with her, she at one point says: "Jackie, help me be more like you" and she sounds weirdly when she says it (like if she is running out of breath, or trying to hold a burp, or both). After a few more unsuccessful shots where neither Laura Prepon (Donna) nor Mila Kunis (Jackie) could keep from laughing, the first shot was kept.
The first time in "The Circle", Danny Masterson started cracking up while explaining how the government was hiding engines that ran on water. This wasn't scripted.
When filming the fifth episode of Glee, when Kristin Chenoweth (April) finishes her first take of "Maybe This Time", Chris Colfer actually cries at her performance. He was surprised to find out that they would use a shot of him crying as his character Kurt's reaction to April's performance.
Speaking of Glee, Brittany's non-sequiturs were all ad-libbed at first, and the confused stares she got from the others were real. And thus her famous Dumb Blonde persona was born.
Chris Colfer ad-libbing again: At the beginning of the second episode, when Puck and the other jocks are about to throw him into a dumpster, Kurt glares at them with contempt and says: "One day, you'll all work for me."
More broadly, the character Kurt Hummel can be considered this. Chris Colfer actually auditioned for the role of Artie, but the show's creators were so impressed by his talent and charm that they wrote an entirely new character loosely based on the openly gay actor.
In one episode of The Nanny, Sylvia fills in for Fran as the nanny. When she sits on Maxwell's desk (one of Fran's trademark moves), the desk collapses under her weight. They decided to keep it because it was funnier than what was originally scripted. If you look carefully, you can see the actors in the scene trying to not laugh.
An episode of Friends dealt with a woman calling Chandler and Joey believing she's calling a guy named Bob, and Chandler picks up, pretends to be Bob, sets up a meeting with her and then shows up to win her over when she's "stood up". The tag scene for that episode had the woman calling again, looking for Bob, this time with Joey hearing the message. The script called for Joey to pick up and say "Bob here", but Matt LeBlanc tripped and fell, desperately trying to grab the phone as he went down. This ended up a lot funnier than the scripted version and was kept for the episode.
In the episode "The One With Phoebe's Uterus", Joey walks into the apartment wearing a blue blazer. Matthew Perry (Chandler), while making a joke, accidently said "black" instead of "back", but the actors' reactions to the mistake were so funny, they decided to put it in the episode:
Joey: Guess what job I just got? Chandler: I don't know, but Donald Trump wants his blue blazer black. (pauses) Ross: What? Chandler: Blue blazer back. He wants it back. Rachel: But, you said "black". Why would he want his blue blazer black? Chandler: Well, you know what I meant. Monica: No, you messed it up. You're stupid. Chandler:(changing the subject) So what job did you get, Joe?
Similarly, in an episode of Frasier, Kelsey Grammer is supposed to rattle off the line "Fault-finding, flaw-fleeing Frasier" and end the scene by striking a confident pose, but he accidentally says "Flasier" instead. David Hyde Pierce proceeds to make fun of him, still in-character, ("You said 'Flasier'!", with a Niles-esque smug grin), and Grammer responds also in-character, protesting that did not say "Flasier", since he's been saying his own name for forty-some-odd years. The two then ad-lib talking over each other, tailing off into one of Niles and Frasier's very frequent scene-fade-out squabbles. Ironically, Grammer saying "forty-some-odd years" instead of whatever Frasier's exact age was (Grammer probably didn't know it off the top of his head) was completely appropriate in the context of the preceding conversation.
In the season three finale of How I Met Your Mother Barney is in a meeting with a bunch of Japanese men when Lily calls him to tell him that Ted has been in a car accident. He gets up, tells them in Japanese that his best friend needs him and he has to go, and hurries out the door. One of the men then turns to the others and asks, in English, "What did he say?" That line was ad-libbed during rehearsals by one of the extras in the scene, however it was given to one of the others to say in the actual episode.
Battlestar Galactica (the 2000's series) had a lot of this too... a fair amount of it probably stemmed from Edward James Olmos' method acting. The most famous Throw It In was probably the scene when in a fit of rage, Olmos-as-Adama destroyed a very expensive model ship that was on loan from a maritime museum.
When Roslin promotes Adama to Admiral, she was supposed to kiss him on the cheek. Olmos kissed her on the lips instead, and it was used in the episode. Mary McDonnell would later go on to say that she believes it is during that scene that Roslin falls in love with Adama, although it would take them another two seasons to get around to admitting it.
Grace Park threw in the lullaby that Boomer hums to the Raider and Athena hums to Hera, which is a traditional Korean lullaby.
Gaeta's savage baiting of Starbuck with the line "I suppose a pity frak is out of the question, then?" at the end of their mess-hall conversation in the episode 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul' was improvised on the first take by Alessandro Juliani. The entire set cracked up; then Ron Moore decided he liked it and asked AJ to keep it in in subsequent takes.
In NUMB3RS David Krumholtz inadvertently misspelled "anomaly" as "anomoly" on a map in one scene in the pilot episode, which the writers and producers kept as a quirk for Charlie. They even reference it in the final episode of the first season:
Charlie: I know how to spell the word "anomaly", okay? Don: No, you don't. Charlie: Get a dictionary. [...] Don:(shows him the dictionary) See? One O. Charlie: Is this a reliable dictionary?
Also referenced by other characters throughout the show. For example, Alan confides in Larry that he hates playing chess with Charlie because he seems so bored, so Larry tells Alan:
"Try Scrabble. He's a horrible speller."
In Defying Gravity Wass's remark that he could "sleep through World War IV" caused a lot of fannish speculation as to whether this was a hint of the state of the world in 2052. When creator James Parriott was asked about it however, he claims not to remember writing the line, and that it must have been a throw in by the actor.
In the final scene of Gossip Girl's second season Chuck was supposed to tell Blair "I love you too" and then, after she kisses him, "I'm not Chuck Bass without you." The second line ended up being moved to the season three premiere, since they instead went with a take where the actors ad-libbed the following:
Blair: But, can you say it twice? No I'm serious, say it twice. Chuck! I love you. I love you. That's three. Here's four — I love you.
According to this page, the first episode of the cop show Matlock Police (not to be confused with the more famous Matlock) had a car chase, where "the more dramatic aspects of it happened by accident — literally." (See link for details.)
In a Sex and the City episode, Miranda is contemplating her "just friends" relationship with on-again, off-again boyfriend Steve (who is the father of their son Brady). In an earlier scene in the episode, Steve picks Miranda's favorite flower, lilacs. Later in the episode, she's at a wedding, and, setting, a sprig of Lilac onto a table, asks her 1-year-old son Brady, whom she's holding, whether she ought to give Steve another chance. A second later Brady stretches out his hand for the flowers and picks them back up. This was unscripted, and worked for the scene particularly well.
In the CSI: NY episode "'Til Death Do We Part", Mac comes in to the lab to talk to Stella. At the end of the scene, someone comes in and gives Stella a crucial piece of evidence, to which she says "Best part of the job" and kisses Mac on the cheek. According to Melina Kanakaredes, who plays Stella, while filming that scene, she just spontaneously kissed Gary Sinise on the cheek and they decided to keep it in.
Just prior to the filming of the pilot for WKRP in Cincinnati, actor Richard Sanders (playing Les Nessman) injured himself, and thus appears in the pilot with a very visible bandage. It became a hallmark of the character that, in every subsequent appearance of the character, he always had some sort of visible bandage somewhere on his person.
David Lynch was famous for incorporating a number of Throw It In moments into Twin Peaks, including one which introduced a major plot element: during filming of the pilot episode, the face of Frank Silva, one of the set workers, was accidentally caught on camera reflected in a mirror. Lynch liked the effect enough to keep it in, and later cast Silva as BOB, the malevolent spirit who turns out to be tormenting Laura and her father. In addition, a number of improvisations and line-fumbles were kept in, even when they didn't actually make sense in context, in order to enhance the general weirdness of the show.
As much as 90% of Let The Blood Run Free was this, as the scripts were written based on audience votes, so the cast (all veterans of the original improv show) wouldn't see them until days before the episode aired.
Star Trek: The Next Generation had a season one episode, "Symbiosis", where in one of the last scenes Tasha Yar is in the background. Blink and you'll miss it, she waves at the camera. This was the last episode filmed with Denise Crosby as a regular cast member. The next episode, "Skin of Evil", where the character leaves, was filmed before "Symbiosis".
A physical example occurs in The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot episode, where Cameron has a mark across the side of her face where she was damaged in a fight scene. In reality, that injury was real; Summer Glau was hit in the face with an ejected brass casing while at the shooting range. Instead of covering up the mark, Summer decided to integrate it as one of the wounds she'd suffered in combat, and it shows throughout the pilot.
One of the most badass of all time: in the Breaking Bad episode "Crazy Handful of Nothing," Raymond Cruz improvised stubbing out a cigarette on his tongue. Bryan Cranston's reaction is quite genuine.
The opening of the MacGyver episode "Deathlock" shows a helicopter very nearly losing control due to ground resonance. However, the pilot averts disaster by lifting off, and the actors seem none the wiser.
When filming one of the pilots for Wheel of Fortune, the puzzle board was originally intended to be mechanical. They didn't have it quite finished by the time taping began, so they just had Susan Stafford turn the letters manually. After the show got picked up, they kept the board as it was. Of course, the letter-turning position was later taken over by the iconic Vanna White.
A fourth-season episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has Will's (Will Smith) father, Lou, return to make amends after leaving him and his mother long ago. At the end of the episode, Lou ends up making another excuse to leave again, and Will is left with Uncle Phil. Will then launches into a scripted monologue where he expresses frustration that he wasted money buying a present. According to interviews from the cast and crew, directly after his monologue finished, Smith launched into an impromptu speech (where he shouts at Phil that he can handle himself without a father figure, and expresses that he'll be a better man than his father) based on his own experiences as a child. The speech was so powerful (James Avery gives a look of confusion when Will begins his speech before playing along, and an audience member can even be heard crying in the background during the final shot) that it was kept in the final episode as is.
Much of Mork's lines on Mork and Mindy were nothing but this. The writers would actually leave whole pages of the script blank and just let Robin Williams do what he wanted.
In the first episode of Leverage there is a scene establishing the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Nate and Sophie and Hardison rolls by on an office chair saying "oooooh...." Aldis Hodge wasn't even in the scene but had stuck around to watch.
The studio audience for the All in the Family episode "Edith's 50th Birthday," in which Edith is nearly raped by an intruder, became so enraged at watching a beloved character under attack that when Edith hits her attacker with a cake pan and runs for the front door, a number of women in the audience can be heard screaming "RUN!"
David Dukes, who played Edith's would-be rapist, stated that the audience grew so hostile during the filming of this episode, he was afraid that audience members would rush onto the set and attack him.
Music
The Kinsmen's lead singer Jack Ely begins the third verse of "Louie, Louie" a measure early, which the drummer tries to cover up.
The pseudo-German "Gunten glieben glauten globen" at the beginning of Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages" was producer Mutt Lange doing a variation of the standard "One, two, three, four" cue out of boredom. The band thought it was hilarious.
The track "Alice practice" on Crystal Castles' debut album was just a vocal demo featuring a load of distorted semi-incomprehensible roaring by singer Alice Glass over a chiptune-esque electronic beat. It was accidentally uploaded by the band and their fans reacted positively to it, so they decided to include it on the album, making it an entire song's worth of Throw It In.
The track "Love and Caring" also qualifies - during a short instrumental section, Glass can easily be heard saying "What the fuck is...? Oh, it's the bass... " before launching into more distorted, noisy vocals.
At the end of "Riding Into Work In The Year 2025 (You're Invisible Now)" by Flaming Lips, while the singer is going "Aaahhh..." over and over, someone can be heard saying "Alright... stop."
In "What Is The Light?", the stopwatch function on someone's digital watch can be heard going off - it happened to do so on rhythm, and right before the drums kicked in.
After "I'm Still Alive" by Stratovarius, two people can be heard talking.
The opening operatic blast which falters and fails in the Electric Light Orchestra track "Rockaria", before the song picks up as it should, was a fault by the diva they'd brought it; they left it in because the false-start-and-retake sounded right.
At the end of the Sonata Arctica song "The Power of One" on the Silence album, there's about a minute of silence, followed by someone (not from the band) muttering "And I fuckin' touched the mic, hold on."
Draw Me from Winterheart's Guild has a conversation among the band (in Finnish) at the end of it, when a bird flew into the recording studio. If you can't understand it, the (clear) lines translate to "You should get an award from Greenpeace." "A bird roast." "A bird roast... (Laughs)"
Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess played the last note of "In the Name of God" with his nose. Apparently Mike Portnoy liked it so much they decided to keep it.
On a similar note, Rudess played an improvised, on the fly solo on his continuum at the end of The Dark Eternal Night while they were tracking the drums or something, and the band liked it so much that they stuck it on the record.
Also, John Myung's bass solo in "Metropolis Part 1" was a tapping exercise he used to warm up. The rest of the band liked it and convinced him to throw it into a song.
One famous example is Australian band Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", which begins with the lead singer clearing his throat.
In the Ben Folds Five song "Steven's Last Night In Town," a barely audible phone ring is heard just before the last line of the chorus is sung. The placement is absolutely perfect and they kept it in.
Outkast's music video for "Ms Jackson" contains a plethora of animals. In one scene, an owl moves its head perfectly to the rhythm of the words. This was completely accidental, and was kept in because it just looks so damn cool.
The entire outro to the Outkast song "Prototype" is Andre 3000 ad-libbing...and then asking if they were recording the ad-libs.
"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream," from the album Bringing It All Back Home, opens with a take that quickly breaks down as Dylan (or his producer) bursts out laughing and says, "Start again, start again."
"To Be Alone with You," from Dylan's Nashville Skyline, opens with him saying, "Is it rolling, Bob?" This is not a self-reference but rather Dylan asking his producer, Bob Johnston, whether the tape was rolling. For a short time, the line became a fan catchphrase.
Elvis Costello messes up the intro to "Running Out of Angels" before saying "Sorry, I blew it" and starting over.
In Janet Jackson's early hit "Nasty," she ad-libs the spoken line, "Oh, I like this part."
Towards the end of "Runaway," as she repeats the line "I just know we'll have a good time," Jackson flubs a note and says, "Mm, didn't quite hit that note; that wasn't such a good time."
The opening of System of a Down's "Chop Suey" is two drumstick taps and the engineer saying "We're rolling 'Suicide'," the song's working name.
At the end of Relient K's "Mood Rings," lead singer Matt Thiessen quietly adds, "That was terrible."
After the breathtaking scream that ends Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s song "Let's Make Out," you can hear a voice going "Okay, that was great, but, uh... do it again." Another voice responds with "Ahahahahaa... no."
The "false start" on the piano at the beginning of "Old Time Rock and Roll" was a recording error, but Bob Seger liked it.
The Monkees, being comic actors as well as a band, did lots of these: some by accident, some by improv, & even some by design.
Gotta Eat by Lupe Fiasco, a three-minute running food pun, ends with a barely audible "so stupid."
Which may actually also be a Take That at Soulja Boy. Before the "so stupid", he mimics Soulja Boy's trademark "Yoooouuuuu!"
In the intro to Frank Zappa's Muffin Man, he flubs a line, breaks down laughing, and mutters "Let's try that again," before repeating the sentence.
The Hush Sound, "Love You Much Better" ends with improv crowd. During the clapping, you can hear a very loud "YES!" from opposite lead singer Bob Morris. After the applause dies down, you can hear Greta laughing hysterically and mocking Bob, "That yes was ridiculous. YESH."
The Who's "Happy Jack" ends with Pete Townshend shouting "I saw ya!". This was apparently his response to Keith Moon making faces outside the vocal booth while the rest of the band were recording backing vocals.
Legend has it that the rest of the group kicked Moon out of the vocal sessions for the song because his singing was exceptionally loud and terrible.
On the bonus track Pure And Easy from Who's Next you can hear Pete Townshend scream: Stop reading your girly magazine!
An urban legend has it that the stutter in The Who's "My Generation" was originally the result of a freezing cold recording studio. Supposedly, they decided they liked the way it sounded and decided to run with it.
Ronnie Van Zant saying "Turn it up!" from Sweet Home Alabama was because he wanted the producer to turn up the volume in his headphones.
Led Zeppelin has a number of examples, despite being a band known for attention to details:
Due to the tracks "bleeding through" the original recording tapes, Plant seems to sing some of the lyrics to "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" twice.
There's also the bleedthrough in the breakdown on "Whole Lotta Love", with backwards echo.
As Plant "ends" In My Time of Dying John Bonham gets a cough fit, causing Plant to say cough into the mic. Bonham then says "That's the one, isn't it?" and the studio engineer says: "Come and have a listen." with Bonham saying "oh yes, thank you."
"Black Country Woman" begins with the sound of a plane passing overhead (the band were recording outside) and Robert Plant chuckling. Engineer Eddie Kramer can be heard saying "Should we roll it, Jimmy?" in the background, then "Oh, lemme get this airplane off!", and then Plant audibly replies, "Nah leave it." before launching into the song.
"Tangerine" starts with Page strumming a few random chords, then counting off.
"Friends", likewise, starts with a few seconds of studio noise. Turn it up loud enough and one of the band members drops the F bomb.
The hum that leads from "Friends" into "Celebration Day" was required thanks to a production screw up - a mixer accidentally erased the drums from the beginning of "Celebration Day". Jimmy (IIRC) managed to salvage it by taking said hum and Fading into the Next Song.
The entire band gets completely out of sync with each other on the harmonies partway through "Misty Mountain Hop." They kept it in because the rest of the take was too good to lose.
John Bonham's bass drum pedal squeaks in a number of songs, most noticeably "Since I've Been Loving You."
One can hear a telephone ringing in the background of "The Ocean" The song itself starts with Bonham chanting, "We've done four already, now we're steady, and one, two, three, four..." The "four already" part refers to the fact that the band screwed up the three previous takes due to the song's complicated rhythm and structure, and Bonham was trying to encourage them.
For a while, John Paul Jones performed with a telephone on top of his organ. His explanation as to its purpose was something along the lines of "No one bothered to take it away."
"Carouselambra" has a guitar multi-string bend tracked in at the beginning and in the middle of the guitar solo. This was the result of an earlier take where Jimmy Page's guitar strap broke, causing Page to hold on to the neck to keep the guitar from hitting the floor.
Downtown with Pearl Jam & Neil Young starts with Neil saying: "I fucked up, let me just play in the groove for a bit." It ends with Neil saying: "Well, we know that one!"
In Van Halen's "Unchained", David Lee Roth pointing out the producer Ted Templeman's suit, Templeman telling him to give it a break, and Roth's response of "One break, coming up!" was completely unscripted.
One story has it that the "knocking" sound that comes out of nowhere right before Van Halen's guitar solo in Michael Jackson's "Beat It" is the result of someone accidentally knocking on the studio door during a recording session.
Chicago has several of these scattered amongst their albums, but the 2004 Rhino remaster of Chicago VII removed the breakdown from the beginning of "Happy Man." The fans were not pleased.
The original mono mix of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds features a few engineering errors. "Here Today" is probably the main offender — a quiet instrumental break features the faint sounds of conversation in the background, after which Brian Wilson can be heard saying, "No talking!"
An earlier Beach Boys song, "Wendy", has audible studio laughter during an instrumental break.
Korn's song "Clown" from their debut album opens with a bit of random chatter, the band messing up the intro, yelling obscenities at the engineers and finally playing the bloody thing.
Limp Bizkit's song "Pollution" from their debut album "Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$" ends with someone yelling out "FRED, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!" while the vocalist Fred Durst repeatedly shouts out "BRING [THAT BEAT] BACK". After that, Fred continues to yell out "BACK" and other stuff repeatedly, while the guy's trying to tell him to shut up. Once a second "FRED, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" gets shouted out, Fred just nonchalantly says "and we're done".
The whole second side of the second record of Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything was done live in studio, so breakdowns and banter are included before and after nearly every song (though the single version of "Hello It's Me" cuts out its false start). And because the liner notes make a tongue-in-cheek claim that the whole side is an operetta about a musician, all the banter is transcribed and presented as dialogue next to the lyrics.
Couldnt I Just Tell You, from the first disc, leaves in Todds false start on the drums.
The Velvet Underground song "Temptation Inside Your Heart" is almost completely strange ad-libs between Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, kicked off by the line "you can talk during this" and then proceeding to mention how "in New York buildings are very high- and not at all offensive" and something about the "Pope in the silver castle."
Apparently, they were just going to overdub some "Dooo-dooo-dooo" during the chorus, and were unaware that they were actually recording to the same track as the lead vocals, so they just goofed off and let their mouths run between choruses.
At the start of Slipknot's "Get This", someone (possibly vocalist Corey Taylor) whispers "fuck", then the producer says, "Gimme a scream, Corey." There's a loud click, and then Taylor obliges him to start the song.
Also at the end of "Pulse Of The Maggots", a voice (presumably Corey's) can be heard proudly saying "Rockin'!"
Pretty much the whole first minute of "Don't You Evah" by the indie band Spoon is requests for recording talkbacks and for the producer to record vocal queues.
Progressive Metalcore band Protest The Hero's song "Wretch" features meows from a cat that wandered into the studio. The meows fit surprisingly well with the song, thus they were kept in instead of removing the cat and re-trying.
At the beginning of Mono's Yearning starts out with "We're rolling". It's particularly noticeable as the entire album is instrumental. (Well, except the other "throw it in" of one of the musicians asking "I think that was it, right?" in the middle of Moonlight)
In "Cleaning Out My Closet", Eminem famously had no snare(drum) in his headphones. A German techno artist made fun of this on one of his songs, as he "found" his snares, in his samples folder in Protools.
While recording "I Am the Walrus," John Lennon randomly flipped through radio stations and came across a BBC production of King Lear. He added snippets of dialogue from the scene being broadcast at that moment to the mix, most of which appear in the song's coda.
Also, at the end of "Helter Skelter" (but not in the rare mono version) you can hear Ringo Starr throw his drumsticks across the room and famously scream "I got blisters on my fingers!". Your hands would be sore too, if you had played a 27-minute-long version of Helter Skelter earlier in the day. The version captured for the White Album was the band's 18th take of the night.
In "I'm Looking Through You," after the line "but not today," there's a tambourine shake on an off-beat. That was one of the Beatles (not entirely sure which; I've seen it credited to all four!) actually dropping the tambourine.
The U.S. stereo mix of the song includes a false start during the intro.
The famous Beatles song "A Day in the Life": producer George Martin had brought in an alarm clock to signal when the first orchestral interlude would end, but it fit so well with the beginning of the second theme "Woke up, got out of bed, ran a comb across my head..." that they left it in.
Toward the end of the song's protracted fade-out of the last chord, a folding chair can be heard squeaking in the studio.
Yet another Beatles example: while recording "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", when Paul first gets to the line "Desmond lets the children lend a hand", George and John can be heard chiming in with "Arm!" and "Foot!". Paul managed to keep going, but as a result, got Molly and Desmond's roles backwards in the final verse.
On their song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," Paul can be heard laughing at the start of the line "...writing fifty times I must not be so..." around 1:21. This is rumored to be because John mooned him from the control room during the recording (the line preceding it was "so he waits behind").
About three minutes into "Hey Jude," John Lennon mumbles "Fucking hell!", apparently because he messed up a note on the guitar.
In the stereo version of the song "Please Please Me," John flubs a line in the last verse at 1:53: instead of "I know you never even try, girl" he says "I know I never even try, girl" and then giggles. (Remember, the whole album Please Please Me, except for four songs previously recorded for singles, was recorded in a single 10-hour studio session with virtually no edits or overdubs; it was largely the Beatles' live act, warts and all.)
Appended to the very beginning of "Revolution 9" is a barely-audible control room conversation between producer George Martin and Apple office manager Alistar Taylor.
Taylor: ... bottle of claret for you if I'd realised. I'd forgotten all about it, George, I'm sorry. Martin: Well, do next time. Taylor: Will you forgive me? Martin: Mmmm... yes. Taylor: Cheeky bitch.
That Accidental Nightmare Fuel howl at the end of "Long, Long, Long" was caused by an empty wine bottle placed on the organ's amp that started to rattle when Paul hit a certain note, the microphone picking it up and causing feedback, and George immediately answered it with a howl of his own.
"Wild Honey Pie" was, by Paul's account, an entire Throw It In song: he made it up in an experimental mood and they were going to leave it off the album, but George's then-wife Pattie Boyd liked it. This convinced them to keep it on the album.
John screams "YEEEEEEEEEAHHHHH!" at one point in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", which is followed by some indistinct chatter. Popular interpretation is that, since John screamed so loudly it audibly distorted, the chatter is somebody yelling to the mixing engineer "TURN IT THE FUCK DOWN" or something to that effect.
The song "Hey Bulldog" was originally "Hey Bullfrog"; the band changed the words after John improvised a dog's bark.
"You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" contains a line that is sung as "If she's gone I can't go on feeling two foot small". John flubbed the line, which was originally "two foot tall", but they thought that the new line worked better and kept it.
In the B-side medley on Abbey Road, at the end of "Polythene Pam" and the start of "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", John Lennon can be heard saying "We'll listen to that now, hehe" as a reference to the track changing. He then says "Oh, look out!" (presumably telling the others to get ready for the new song), and then another (barely audible) voice says "You should-" before the singing starts on "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window".
John's line "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition" at the end of "Get Back" was recorded from a live performance and added to the song as a Throw It In moment.
The well known beginning of "While You See a Chance" was originally supposed to have a drum track with it, however, Steve Winwood accidentally erased it when he was recording his voice.
The final line of the Barenaked Ladies song "One Week" was inserted as a placeholder. The lead singer saw an LED sign in front of a high school displaying "Birchmount Stadium: Home of the Robbies." One of the band members commented that they are waiting for the sign to be changed to read, "Birchmount Stadium: Home of 'Home of the Robbies'."
When the Mamas and the Papas were making "I Saw Her Again" there is a part of the song where one of them begins the line "I saw her, again last night" but stops at the comma when one of the others starts up. So the line ends up becoming "I saw her. I saw her again, last night." Reportedly, Paul McCartney said to one of the members of the group, "That was an accident, wasn't it." When asked how he knew that it was, it's told he said, "Nobody is that good."
On the song "Polly" by Nirvana, Kurt Cobain whispers "Polly Said" once during the interlude. This was originally a too early start on the next verse, but they liked it and left it in. It then became an official part of the lyrics and Cobain sung it (intentionally this time) on the alternate "Polly (New Wave)" version of the song found on Incesticide.
Similarly "Come As You Are" has an "I don't have a gun" a little too early, near the end of solo. Again they kept it in because they liked it.
In his song "You're Beautiful", James Blunt sings the opening line too early, pauses, and restarts once the music comes around again.
Of course "Weird Al" Yankovic exaggerated & lampshaded this in "You're Pitiful." Blunt was amused. Atlantic Records was not, so they don't get copyright royalties for the free track.
"Weird Al" also has an example on his original song "Albuquerque": the track ends with guitarist Jim West laughing because of the ridiculous chord he plays at the end of the song.
Similarly, one other song, "Genius in France." features a somebody in the studio laughing right before the intro of the song.
In the video for "Eat It", a shot-for-shot adaptation of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", the picture falling off the wall was coincidental, but it was left in anyway, since it added to the humor.
While Stavesacre was recording an acoustic version of their song "An Eclipsing" for their Greatest Hits album Collective, lead singer Mark Soloman broke out in laughter after an unexpected vibraslap hit. The take broke down, and one of the other members quipped, "A rattler just invaded our campfire!" The false start and ensuing hilarity were left in the final cut.
The beginning of "Shadows In the Rain", on Sting's Dream of Blue Turtles album starts with the drummer giving the beat, then a guitarist asking, "What key is it in? WAIT, WAIT; what key is it in?" Apparently they were so strapped for time in the studio they didn't have time for another take, so it was left in.
A similar moment comes at the end of the album's title track; as the song ends, you hear the entire band suddenly start cracking up.
Near the beginning of The Police's "Roxanne", there is the sound of a piano and Sting chuckling. The dissonant piano chord was a result of Sting accidentally sitting on the instrument during recording.
The very first portion of the Police song "Does Everyone Stare" is the original demo vocal Stewart Copeland did for the band; while he was recording the demo, his mike picked up a freak radio signal, one which was carrying an opera broadcast. The snippet of the opera was the same key as the song, so they kept the whole section in.
Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" begins with a coughing sound. This was Tony Iommi who was getting ready to record a guitar part when the other guys in the band offered him a joint to smoke. This caused him to cough uncontrollably, and the band recorded it and stuck it at the front of the song.
Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" and Oasis' "Roll With It" also have unedited coughs.
Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" features a high, loud scream from singer Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson just says that he got the enthusiasm that made it so memorable from doing the repeated takes.
Another Maiden example comes at the end of their Brave New World album where a dismayed Nicko McBrain can be heard to shout "Oh, I FACKING missed it!" after he thought he had messed up the drum track to an eight-and-a-half minute song on the very last hit.
Some think it is "Facking missed him", referring to Bruce.
In Dickinson's solo career, there is a B-side called "Acoustic Song". Roy Z recorded the guitar track in a single take in his bedroom, and the sound of his phone ringing in the background was caught at the end of track.
The presence of a lo-fi sample of "Dixie" in The Clash's "Rock The Casbah" is attributed to the drummer's The Dukes of Hazzard watch alarm.
Near the end of "Armagideon Time," there's an exchange between the engineer and Joe Strummer. Trying to keep the song from veering into "raga territory," they told the engineer to tell them when four minutes had gone up. Then Strummer changed his mind ("Okay, okay. Don't push us when we're hot!").
This incident was referenced in the song "Rock the Casbah".
During the instrumental break of "Should I Stay Or Should I Go", singer Mick Jones suddenly snarls out the word "Split!" That's because during recording, Joe Strummer snuck up behind him in the studio and jumped out to scare him. Mick didn't appreciate the joke and was telling him to get lost.
The Fall's "Paintwork" goes through a couple of odd, abrupt sound collage breaks where the music suddenly becomes distant-sounding and gets drowned out by a program about astronomy and later, a brief snippet of classical music. This was because Mark E. Smith accidentally taped over parts of the song.
In U2's "I Will Follow", drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. kicked over a beer bottle mid-take, and it was picked up by the kick-drum mic - and kept because it bounced perfectly in time with the music.
While recording his anti-suicide song "You're Only Human (Second Wind)", Billy Joel briefly forgot the words for a second then added them and laughed. Since it fit in with the song's theme of accepting your mistakes, it was left in.
When recording his breakthrough album The Stranger, Joel couldn't decide which wind instrument should play the melancholy opening melody of the title track "The Stranger", although he was leaning towards a clarinet. He approached his producer Phil Ramone for an opinion, and Ramone asked Joel to whistle the melody for him so that he could help. After Joel had finished whistling it for him, Ramone told him that he should just whistle it.
The famous opening of "Rhaphsody in Blue". During a rehearsal, the clarinetist added a glissando as a joke — Gershwin loved it and added it to the piece.
At the end of "Nudsie's Wedding Reception" by Michigan comedy band Da Yoopers, you can hear then-guitarist Joe Potila mumble "I messed up" at the end.
The Tractors, a country music band, left the tape running between songs on their debut album, including several ad-libs and chatter.
Alan Jackson began whistling the melody at the end of his recording session for his 1998 single "Right on the Money", unaware that the tape was still running. When he heard the whistling, he and producer Keith Stegall decided to leave it in.
Brooks & Dunn's "Lucky Me, Lonely You" contains at least three false starts, which may or may not be part of this trope.
The invention of the fuzzbox, a type of amp that creates distortion, was the result of this trope. During the recording of Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry," the guitarist's pre-amp went on the fritz, causing a distorted sound. Robbins' producer liked the sound and decided to have him play it as-is. The Ventures heard the song and worked with guitar techs to create an amp that would make a similar sound.
Megadeth's cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" contains a flub by then-drummer Nick Menza, who keeps playing after everyone else had stopped at the very end of the song. Mustaine yells, "Nick...Nick...Nick!"; the drums stop, and then faintly in the background, Menza can be heard yelling, "Fuck...me...running!"
Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" was originally intended to be far more sedate, but Hawkins and the rest of the musicians got blind drunk before recording it. The resulting Accidental Nightmare Fuel came to be Hawkins' signature tune.
At the very end of DragonForce's "Through the Fire and Flames," guitarist Herman Li broke a string while doing a whammy effect. They've kept it in the final cut.
In Queen's song "One Vision", the final line is supposed to end with "one vision". During recording, Freddie Mercury jokingly yelled "fried chicken" instead, as they had eaten it for dinner that day. They ended up keeping it in, despite the echo of the final line still saying "one vision".
The distinctive guitar crunches in the pre-chorus of Radiohead's "Creep" were actually an attempt by guitarist Jonny Greenwood to ruin what he thought was an awful song. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the band liked it and it stayed in the final mix.
The guitar riff that starts at about 2:50 into the song "Fake Plastic Trees" was supposed to start a half measure later, but was put in at the wrong time in mixing. The band decided that it sounded better the way it was, and left it in.
Country music singer K. T. Oslin accidentally set her keyboard to the guitar patch when she recorded "Come Next Monday." She liked the sound and decided to keep it in.
At the end of Pinmonkey's "Stay with Us," one of the guitarists says, "That better be it, because I just broke my A string on the last bar."
The Butthole Surfers' "Creep In The Cellar" has a strange backwards fiddle part that almost-but-not-quite fits the chords and rhythm of the song. It's just disorienting enough to seem deliberate, but in fact it wasn't supposed to be part of the song at all: The band were recording over tapes the last band to use the studio left behind, and somehow while they were tracking the song a stray fiddle track running in reverse popped up in the mix. By the time they figured out how to get rid of it, they had decided to just keep it in.
During the coda for the song "Just Like Noah's Ark", from Elton John's 2006 album, The Captain and the Kid, a pet dog of one of the band members, sensitive to the volume of a electronic cowbell sound played on the click track, begins to bark at the sound as the band is recording the track live. As the barking fit in well rhythmically with the track, the engineers left it in, and the dog is credited in the liner notes of the album with "woof-bells".
Frankie Sparo flubs a line in "Akzidenz Grotesk" on Welcome Crummy Mystics, but the lyrics are double-tracked, so in one channel he continues singing, and in the other he curses extravagantly.
In Fall Out Boy's "Dance, Dance", bassist Pete Wentz can be heard whispering "We're going into D minor" just before the chorus at one point.
Bernard Sumner of New Order starts laughing in "Every Little Counts" and can't quite stop until the next line. Given the verse, it's made even more humorous.
The recording of "Modern World" by Wolf Parade has a very audible sniffle 44 seconds into the song. However, it was most likely left in there because it occurs precisely in time with the music.
Colbie Caillat's "Can you count me in?" from Bubbly is arguably one of these.
The famous riff of Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" originated from Slash mucking around. He never intended the riff to be recorded, let alone immortalised.
For the same song, they also weren't sure what to do for the ending, so Axl started saying to himself "Where do we go now?"
The piano melody in the second half of the Derek and the Dominoes hit "Layla" was originally something drummer Jim Gordon was working on for a separate project. Eric Clapton came upon Gordon playing it in the studio late one night and begged for it to be included in the song.
The name of the band itself is a Throw It In of a Mondegreen. Someone mispronounced the band's real name, "Eric and the Dynamos", and it just stuck.
If you're paying extremely close attention to the end of Neutral Milk Hotel's "Oh Comely" (which was recorded in one take) you can barely make out one of the band members saying "Holy shit!"
The story goes like this: when Jeff Mangum went into the recording booth, it was assumed by all those present that he was merely testing out the mic. However, after running through all eight minutes of the song, without fault, those present were in awe, including our friend Robert Schneider, the frontman of The Apples In Stereo, who was awestruck enough to deliver the terribly apt "Holy shit!"
At the beginning of the Bettie Serveert song "Hell Is Other People", lead singer Carol van Dyk says something unintelligible, followed by a guy replying "Yeah, cool." Carol can't remember what they were talking about, but she was talking to an American friend of theirs and was unaware that they were being recorded. When they started mixing the song, they just left it like that.
The intro to "C Moon" by Wings goes on, and on, and on ... until Paul McCartney sheepishly asks "Was that the intro I should have been in?" before leaping into a spontanteous sung intro of his own.
In Sum41's video for "Pieces", the "f" in the "The Perfect Life" sign falling off wasn't intentional, but it was kept since it related to the theme of the song.
At the end of "He Doesn't Know Why" by the Fleet Foxes, one member can be heard asking "Are we going?" (which is answered by "Yup.") before a piano solo (which sounds completely unrelated to the song) starts. These remarks show up very briefly as text at the end of the music video.
In Dan Swano's solo album "Moontower" he recorded keyboard tracks as a guide to the lead guitar tracks he'd play later on. He decided he liked the way the keys sounded, so he kept it in and never recorded most of the lead guitars.
Gaelic Storm singer Patrick Murphy started laughing when singing the last line of the song "Kelly's Wellies". He can be heard apologizing for messing up the take, but in fact the laughter just makes the ending that much better, and was left in.
The synth riff for "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits was a warm-up tune used by the keyboardist. A producer asked him to see if he could build a song around it.
John Flansburgh's exclamation at the end of the They Might Be Giants song "For Science," "Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!", was ad-libbed.
Procol Harum's greatest hit, "A Whiter Shade of Pale", started from a botched attempt to play Bach's Air on a G string.
Not only was the killer sax break on Gerry Rafferty's greatest hit "Baker Street" improvised in its entirety by session saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft, Ravenscroft ended up recording his sax part in the wrong key but it got the thumbs-up regardless.
Louis Armstrong claimed that while recording the song "Heebie Jeebies", his sheet music fell; he proceeded to improvise a section.
It is occasionally reported that this is the origin of Scat Singing; in truth, Scat Singing went back to at least 1911 ("Heebie Jeebies" was recorded in 1926); however, "Heebie Jeebies" definitely was the Trope Codifier, if not exactly the Trope Maker.
At the end of Blood, Sweat and Tear's song "Spinning Wheel", they got a little goofy and overlayed a brass section of their song with merry-go-round music. The song ended in such a spectacularly bad way that one bandmember mutters "That wasn' too good" and they all laugh.
Gorillaz: While recording "Rock It", the lead singer let out a slight chuckle at the line "I got myself together". They decided to leave it in because it fit in character with 2D.
Additionally, the chorus for their song "DARE" was originally "It's there", but the guest vocalist Shaun Ryder had such a strong Manchester accent, it came out as "It's dare".
The stutter in Bachman Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" was supposedly thrown to make fun of a band member's brother, who stuttered. But it sounded good and they kept it.
Legend has it that the Monotones were recording their doo-wop song "Book of Love" in a studio nearby a park where some kids were playing baseball. The percussion in the chorus — "I wonder, wonder, who, woo-ooo-ooo" * WHOMP* "Who wrote the book of love..." was inspired by a very well-timed baseball hitting the outside wall during rehearsal.
On William Shatner's Better Than It Sounds album Has Been, the track ''I Can't Get the Behind That" ends with Henry Rollins and Shatner talking about recording another take. "Always can do one more." "Alright, let's hit it!"
"You Don't Know" by ska band Reel Big Fish begins with a recording of lead singer Aaron Barrett, apparently unaware that they were recording, saying, "Horns standing by... Holy shit we're rolling!"
American indie band Say Anything's original plans for their record '...Is A Real Boy' were to have spoken word introductions preceding each song. The only introduction to survive the final cut was that belonging to the first song, and the introduction itself is preceded by another recording of lead singer Max Bemis discussing his anxiety over the concept of a spoken-word introduction with another band member. It makes sense if you listen to it.
At the start of one chorus of "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" by R.E.M., Michael Stipe can be heard trying to suppress laughter. This is because the last line of the preceding verse was "a reading from Dr. Seuss" and he kept on messing up previous takes by accidentally singing "Dr. Zeus" instead.
"Bitches" by Insane Clown Posse is a "Hail Mary throw" sort of throwing it in. Ol' Dirty Bastard was asked to guest-star on the album, but when he arrived at the studio he merely rambled into a microphone for a few minutes before leaving. Mike E. Clark picked out a few lines of his ramble that rhymed, and the group formed a song around them. Since most of ODB's ramblings were about "bitches", that was the theme of the song.
ODB was never in the studio with ICP - according to the book "Behind The Paint", they sent a raw tape of the original intended song, with pauses for ODB's contribution, to his house. When the tape was returned, they realized that not only had he not listened to the song before recording, he just shouted incoherently over the entire thing, including drowning out ICP's verses. Having already paid him, they scrapped the song and had Mike E. Clark edit what little of his bullshit they could salvage into a new song called "Bitches," which they embellished with additional lyrics. Violent J is proud of the final result, considering how utterly useless Ol' Dirty proved to be.
The drum solo partway through Piggy by Nine Inch Nails was performed by Trent Reznor as a placeholder to be filled in with a proper solo later. However, he liked it too much to have it lost, so it was kept for the final version.
The odd, slightly dissonant sequencer pattern on the latter part of Tangerine Dream's "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" was produced by a malfunctioning synthesizer. The band liked the sound, though, and improvised over it.
At the beginning of Jethro Tull's "Baker Street Muse," Ian Anderson messes up, says, "Shit, shit, shit. Take two," and continues playing the song.
During the solo for the song "Aqualung" Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin walked into the recording studio and waved to Jethro Tull's guitarist Martin Barre. There are a few differing accounts of this story but one version says that Barre waved back, sustaining a note with his left hand and waving with his right. Ian Anderson claims that if you turn up the volume you can even hear him wave. There IS a short sustain in the solo, so this may be true, and if it is, then it's definitely an example. Another version is that Barre started improvising when Page walked in to try and impress him. If that was the case then it's still an example of this trope.
Near the end of "Strange Enough" for N.A.S.A's "Spirt of Apollo" album, Karen O cracks up during the chorus and adds, "Something like that, right? Is that what you want?" The producer replies, "Perfect."
Session guitarist Brent Mason ad-libbed some 70's porn music-esque "wah wah" guitar sounds on Billy Currington's "Don't". They were left in.
According to the band, Mike Wengren of Disturbed was noodling around when he created the drum-opener to "Down With The Sickness". Guitarist Dan Donegan heard it and asked "What is that? Keep doing that". It's now one of the band's most famous hooks.
The Agonist did this in their song "And Their Eulogies Sang Me To Sleep" - the 'false start' at the beginning is an out-take that the band decided to keep.
There's an audible click near the end of "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks. According to some sources, this is either a beer being opened, or a beer being spilled on a microphone. Garth also screams "Push, Marie!" a few seconds later. Marie was one of the song's (very many) backup singers, who was 9 months pregnant at the time.
The legendary drum sound in the breakdown in Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" started life as an accident involving the talkback circuit on the mixing board.
"Sittin' on a Fence", on The Rolling Stones' Aftermath album, ends with an acoustic guitar figure (by either Keith or Brian) that includes a rather obvious missed note.
Beck's "Outcome" has someone coughing into the microphone in the middle of the song. One Foot In The Grave is one of his more Three Chords and the Truth-style albums, so it was probably left in to add to the unrehearsed feel.
At the end of the song "Blitzkrieg" by Metallica, a member of the band burps loudly and proceeds to laugh about it. Another is then heard saying in the background, "We fucked up in one place."
At the end of Michelle Shocked's version of "The Arkansas Traveler"(?) the old man playing the farmer in the dialogue parts ends up flubbing the classic ending, "Shave and a haircut: two bits!" by saying "six bits" instead. This is followed by his and Michelle's raucous laughter, and the old man muttering the quip, "Six bits?...I'll saw you in half for six bits...."
The hidden track on Starflyer 59's Everybody Makes Mistakes came about this way. Producer Gene Eugene was recording an unrelated album with some session musicians, and as a lark, asked the sax player to solo over the rhythm section from Sf59's "The Party". Gene showed the recording to Jason Martin, who thought it was ridiculous but decided to include it on the album anyway.
During the drum solo which opens Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "The Sheriff" (on the Trilogy album), Palmer messes up at first and mumbles "shit". It's probably most audible over headphones.
The now world-famous Moog solo at the end of "Lucky Man" wasn't planned either. Keith Emerson decided to play that solo spontaneously over the song and didn't even know the tape machine was running. They kept the first take.
While recording the vocals for the song Blood on the Cornfields, Cormorant's vocalist Arhur von Nagel's voice cracked while delivering the lines "Was Christ not crucified?". Producer Billy Anderson told him that there was no need to rerecord it, as it added even more power to the delivery.
At the time he was writing songs for Siamese Dream, The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan owned a cheap electric guitar that would start producing odd, whistling feedback whenever he stopped playing it. He decided to exploit it as a good bad bug by deliberately writing a lot of Stop and Go parts into the song "Mayonaise" and using that guitar for the recording.
Various Status Quo recordings have count-in's, false starts or pre-song chatter left in.
The ends of several Wildhearts songs have people commenting before the tape cuts off - "YES!!", "Haha, I even got the words wrong", "Sexy! I'm sexy!"
Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen has an odd note in the break after the first chorus that could have been deliberate, but sounds very much as if Brian May forgot that his guitar was in drop-D tuning.
Franz Ferdinand's "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" starts with one band member, apparently Alex asking "You ready, Nick?" (or "mate", according to some sources), to which Nick replies "Yeah."
In "Raise Your Glass", P!nk comes out of the bridge and starts to sing the chorus a few beats early, the result being that the last chorus begins with the line, "So raise your... aw, fuck."
When Nino Tempo and April Stevens recorded "Deep Purple" for Atlantic Records in 1963, Nino actually forgot the words during the second half of the song, and April spoke them out loud to remind him. Nino actually wanted the spoken lines removed because, according to April, "He didn't want anyone talking while he was singing!" However, the song's producer, Ahmet Ertegun, who was also Atlantic's co-founder and president, felt that April's spoken words were "cute" and that they actually enhanced the song, thus he insisted that they be included in the finished product.
During the production of the music video for New Zealand alt-rock group The Clean's "Tally Ho", director Chris Knox accidentally exposed half the film stock, causing it to have a distinctive orange flare. The band rather liked the psychedelic effect of the flare, and kept it in.
An amusing example: the first movement of the song "Suicidio a sorpresa" by Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese ends with a barely audible Darth Vader saying "You don't know the power of the Dark Side", to which one of them replies "Eh sě, ciao! Ciao!". Supposedly, they had a toy Vader helmet in the rec room, and one of them touched it by mistake, activating it. Since their songs are already full of jokes, snippets from other sources, samples and references, Vader's voice was not so much out of place...
If you listen carefully to the guitar intro of Aerosmith's "Nobody's Fault", you can hear a squeaky door swing open moments before the rest of the band kicks in: According to Steven Tyler, an engineer had walked in while they were recording, and the timing of it amused them enough that they left it in.
Pantera's Domination starts off with a short drum intro by Vinnie Paul who can then be heard yelling 'fart stinks like a motherfucker!' before counting in the song.
The version of 'Valerie' sung by Amy Winehouse (said to have been done in one take) starts with producer Mark Ronson saying, "All right, it's rolling." and Amy murmuring, "I'm sorry Charlie Murphy; I was having too much fun."
Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Did I Let You Know' features the word 'Mozambiquey' which was thrown in because it fits the rhythm of the song...but doesn't mean anything.
Near the ending of Frusciante's solo in 'If You Have To Ask', the rest of the band can be heard clapping and cheering him enthusiastically. Many other tracks on Blood Sugar Sex Magik have small voice snippets, like Anthony asking "Frankie, is it?" at the end of 'The Righteous & The Wicked'.
Weezer's "Falling For You" has a woman briefly speaking in Korean over the intro. It wasn't meant to be in the song, but an amplifier picked up some radio interference, and they decided to leave it in because it fit with Pinkerton's repeated references to Asian women. The Korean in the song translates to "Which company makes this product?", by the way.
Similarly, the noise at the end of Rage Against The Machine's "Testify" comes from Tom Morello's amplifier picking up a radio signal.
There is a live version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight" by Elvis Presley with a female solo background singer who sang so hilariously wackily that the King laughed his posterior off over half the song. This version became an official release.
Vivian Stanshalls appearance as the "Master of Ceremonies" on Tubular Bells (and, by connection, the title of the album itself). Mike Oldfield and assistant Tom Newman were basically camped out at Richard Bransons new Manor Studio, recording their way through his multi-instrumental magnum opus while the studio would otherwise have been unused, and knocking off down the pub in the evenings. When Viv Stanshall came to record his solo album, he, unsurprisingly, accompanied them to the pub that evening, and they all got rather merry together. They came up with the idea of having Viv "introduce" the various instruments in the final section of side 1, and recorded it that night while still drunk. They also recorded a version of "The Sailors Hornpipe" for the finish of side 2, where they miked up most of the ground floor and performed the melody on guitars, while Viv improvised a humorous monologue on the historical features of the house. In the cold light of the following morning, the embellishments to side 1 were thrown in, including the "Plus Tubular Bells!" that gave the album its title. The pissup version of "The Sailors Hornpipe", however, was thrown out as being just a little too avant garde for a solo artist on his first album, but later appeared in the Boxed compilation.
In the final verse of Rascal Flatts' "Prayin' for Daylight", after Gary LeVox sings the line "Deep in my heart I know that you love me as much as I love you", one of the other members mumbles, "You know I love you, girl."
The acoustic guitar passage at the start of the Yes epic "And You and I". They were gearing up to start recording it, and Steve Howe was doodling and checking the tuning on his guitar. Jon Anderson thought it sounded "beautiful" and signalled to Eddie Offord to start recording. You can hear Eddie reply "OK" to Jon's signal after he starts the tape.
In a non-recording-related example, country music singer Dusty Drake came by his stage name when a concert promoter accidentally called him Dusty (his real name is Dean Buffalini).
Sonic Youth's "Mary-Christ" ends with the intro to "Kool Thing", which then fades out - and then the next song on the album actually is "Kool Thing". They actually did start playing "Kool Thing" immediately after recording that take of "Mary-Christ", and decided to just leave it in.
At the end of the song April Fool by the 70s all-woman brass-rock band Isis, you can hear trombonist Lolly Bienenfeld saying, Oh! I blew the last note!
Puppet Shows
In the "Elves and the Shoemaker" episode of Muppets Classic Theater, there is a scene towards the end where Rizzo the Rat comes on stage to give advice to Kermit and Robin. Since Steve Whitmire was already playing Kermit in that scene, Dave Goelz operated Rizzo for those two lines, with the intention of Whitmire dubbing the voice in later. (This is standard practice for Muppet productions.) However, Goelz's imitation of Rizzo's voice was so hilariously bad that they didn't bother re-dubbing it, leaving Rizzo with a very odd voice for that brief scene.
Radio
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the comically anguished scream presented as "this recording of a man being put into the Vortex" is actually a recording of Simon Jones reacting to a piano lid smashing his fingers.
Given that not all recordings have it, it seems likely that Thenardier referring to Cosette as "Colette" in the "Waltz of Treachery" was thrown in at some point, and is fairly common in productions of the musical.
During one rehearsal for "On My Own", the actress was so nervous she wrapped her arms around herself. The directors liked this, and it has been a part of the musical ever since.
As recounted in the book Making It On Broadway: Actor's Tales of Climbing to The Top, John Rubenstein, the original Pippin, had very bad bunions on his feet that made him reject every pair of shoes that the costume department ordered for him. In a fit of pique, he resolved to do the entire show barefoot one night. It was uncomfortable, but he did it. Bob Fosse ran in to see him at the end of the night, and Fosse said, "John, I loved what you did tonight. Keep it in. Barefoot! Gives you that innocence." To this day, the title role in Pippin, wherever you go, is done barefoot.
Spamalot: The scene where the French soldiers are taunting Arthur and his knights has become famous for ad-libs. One famous showing of Spamalot in New York City featured the French soldiers spitting out "I throw both my shoes at you!" in reference to the recent incident where an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush. The actors were visibly smiling and trying not to laugh on stage.
Also, "I headbutt you!" after the infamous headbutting incident in the 2006 FIFA World Cup involving the French player, Zidane.
Another from Spamalot: The Knights Who Said Ni have also become famous for ad-libs, and one showing received a lot of attention when one of the knights blurted out "And I am the father of Sarah Palin's daughter's baby!" The actors barely managed to stay in character.
Another — the evening after the announcement that Obama was to receive a Nobel Prize, the lead Knight Who Says Ni said they were changing their name to... a whole lot of stuff having to do with the Nobel, ending with, "And can we send Dick Cheney to accept the prize? Hey, it worked on Roman Polanski!"
Yet another: In a Chicago show a short while after Rod Blagojevich had been impeached due on charges of trying to sell Obama's former Senate seat, one Knight conducted a one-man auction for the Senate seat in question and the French Taunter included the line "We impeach your crooked governors!"
When doing a show in Austin Texas, the Knights changed their name into the song "The Eyes of Texas" although they claimed it was actually the new Homeland Security motto.
On the opening night of the musical version of The Producers, Nathan Lane improvised the line "Who do you have to fuck to get a break in this town?" in the middle of the song "The King of Broadway." It's been that way ever since, including in the movie.
Another from The Producers: Tony Danza played Max Bialystock on Broadway for a stint, despite the fact that it is referenced in the script that Max is fat and Tony Danza is certainly not. When they got to the iconic line where Bloom screams "FAAAAT!", Danza would look confused and say "...what?" and Bloom replied "You were fat... once...." and proceeded to call him "You once-fat fatty fat walrus!!"
Another example from The Producers involving Nathan Lane, during the London production of the show, directly after the scene where Max and Leo have just taken Siegfried Oath and are trying to leave Franz's rooftop. Lane, playing Max, tried to open the door leading offstage, but a stagehand had mistakenly locked it before the scene began. When the door didn't open at first, Lane shouted "We're trapped! Trapped like rats with a crazy Nazi!" When another one of the stagehands rushed to unlock it, Lane calmed down and said, "Got it." You can still see part of this in the 2005 film version.
During one of the rehearsals for the final scene of The Phantom of the Opera, the wedding veil Sarah Brightman was wearing fell off as she left the Phantom for the last time. Michael Crawford, in the title role, picked up the veil and buried his face in it, sobbing "Christine!" the whole time. It was left in and still continues to be an important bit of business for the character twenty years later.
The bit in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance where the Pirate King engages in a sword fight with the baton-wielding conductor of the orchestra was originally improvised by John Clark, the actor who originated the role on Broadway. Sullivan, who personally conducted the orchestra during the opening performance, so enjoyed hamming it up a little that he convinced Gilbert to rewrite the script to include it. Most performances of Penzance still has feature such a fight.
In Patience, there is a scene where Bunthorne's admirers are commiserating on their unrequited love for him. Gilbert scripted the following exchange, minus the final line, introduced by the actress playing Saphir but liked by Gilbert so much it is now part of the script:
Ella: The love of maidens is, to him, as interesting as the taxes! Saphir: Would that it were. He pays his taxes! Angela: And cherishes the receipts! Saphir: Happy receipts!
The Mikado has perhaps more of this than any other Gilbert and Sullivan play. (E.g.: "Modified rapture!")
Gilbert himself invited this in The Mikado. The "Knightsbridge" line invites the director to substitute a place known for scandal at the time instead of saying "Knightsbridge." The joke is not very funny, anyway, but results like "'He has gone abroad!' 'Abroad? Where?' 'The Watergate!'" can be vaguely amusing. Of course, it usually ends up devolving around perennial favorites "Parliament" or "Congress," depending on which side of the pond you're on.
Unlike Sullivan, Gilbert often hated unauthorised ad libs, though, and often clashed with D'Oyly Carte baritone Rutland Barrington over this. Pooh-Bah's line from The Mikado, "No money, no grovel!" was entirely Barrington's invention, and was used in performances over Gilbert's angry objections.
At this point, it's probably easier to list the productions of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals that don't throw in a few topical or local references. Ko-Ko's "little list" song (which describes various people the world could easily do without) is particularly susceptible to additions.
Monty Python performed during The Secret Policeman's Ball variety concert, putting on (of course) the Dead Parrot sketch. Halfway through, though, Michael Palin began to break up, unable to control himself. Although the audience had cottoned onto the problem and was already chuckling, John Cleese covered magnificently and sent the audience into hysterics with one, ad-libbed, shouted line: "THIS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER!"
In the premier performance of the opera "Rigoletto", the singer performing the title role, though experienced, was so unsure of his performance (due to wearing a prosthetic hump; Rigoletto is a court jester) that he suffered severe stage fright. The director/author, realizing this, shoved him on stage. The audience thought his stumbling entrance was a scripted joke and loved it.
During the run of the 1st version of The Scarlet Pimpernel musical, Douglas Sills (playing the title character) was notorious for ad libbing. Many of his ad libs became part of the scripts for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th versions of the show (yeah, it had a complicated run).
Harry's line about what he'd do with an invisibility cloak ("I'd kick wiener dogs") was an ad-lib when Darren Criss forgot his line. Also, Lauren/Malfoy's line "And-you-have-to-be-my-slave-for-a-whole-day-starting-now!!" was an ad-lib, judging by Joe Moses and Joe Walker's reactions to the line, given that Moses usually kept relatively straight-faced (well, sort of), and he was laughing in the background.
The "Oh, Goyle Rules!" line was thrown in by the actor as well.
Possibly subverted in A Very Potter Sequel when Ron/Joey Richter can't get the Taylor Lautner poster off the wall and proclaims, "It must be stuck on there with magic!" then when entering another room, "Wow. It's like every room in Hogwarts have been remodeled." This was either legit, or it was scripted for a good laugh.
It was legitimate. Nick and Matt Lang, the creators of the show planned for that to happen because they wanted the audience to be thoroughly surprised by what Peter Pettigrew really was. They later admitted that it made no sense to try that hard to trick the audience.
When a prop from USLES 's production of Aladdin was missing from the final performance (the ring which housed the evil genie) a replacement had to be found at short notice. The villain ended up being the Genie of the Shoe, and Abanazer threatening characters with cries of "Shooooooooeeeee!" ended up being the show's funniest running gag. Children in the audience were even asking to smell the evil shoe.
The sex between Kate Monster and Princeton during "You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)" in Avenue Q was originally supposed to be under a blanket, but apparently one day during rehearsal, John Tartaglia and Stephanie D'Abruzzo started playing around with the naked puppets to see what it would look like over the sheets. The choreographer liked it so much that Avenue Q is considered by many to be puppet porn even today.
The one Good Bad BugsThrow It In example that's not Ascended Glitch but Shout Out: I Wanna Be the Guy has a Good Bad Bug that makes it possible to skip Kraidgief's second phase before he rises up, which would also make the rest of the battle a total pushover since he would be at a much lower height and thus much easier to shoot. Word of God says it was kept in "since it works just like Kraid from Super Metroid".
When creating the character model for Tomb Raider's Lara Croft, creator Toby Gard was trying to make a minor adjustment to Lara's breast size. He selected all vertices in the breast to resize them, but the mouse slipped and they increased 150%. The team loved the new look and Lara's famous physique was born.
Somewhat similarly, the ridiculously long scarf worn by Hotsuma in the PS2Shinobi is a result of a programmer gag: originally it was a normal-length one, but someone made it a lot longer, everyone liked it and they proceeded to make it even longer.
Knights Of The Old Republic has an in-universe example, with HK-47's famous 'meatbags' catchphrase. Apparently soon after Revan built HK-47, the droid called Malak a 'meatbag' just because. Malak was really pissed, but Revan thought it was so funny that he reprogrammed HK-47 to call everybody a 'meatbag'. Although unintentional, the behavior was kept in.
Metal Gear Solid 3 - Ocelot's trademark hand gesture was an improv by the motion actor that made everyone laugh so hard it became the character's Catch Phrase - if a hand gesture could be a catch phrase.
Maybe to invoke this, Hideo Kojima had the Motion Capture actors for Naked Snake switched so that the one who specialised in action sequences did the dialogue scenes, and vice versa. In one scene EVA leans in to kiss Snake, and Snake's actor- unused to doing romantic scenes- instinctively edged away. They kept it in since the response was cute.
In fact, according to the Director's commentary, a lot of the things in Metal Gear Solid 3 were improvised and not actually in the original, initial script draft.
In a similar vein as above, the Honest Johns character of Metal Gear Solid 4's pet Monkey was thrown in when they realized that Raiden's motion actor did a pretty good imitation of a Monkey. Insert your own "Raiden is the Butt Monkey" joke here. That, as well as the fact that Drebin seemed too bland by himself in Kojima's eyes.
Kirby as we all know him was only a placeholder character for Kirby's Dreamland. They ultimately went with the little blob.
Wii Sports was originally set up to be a Mario title. The test audience surprisingly preferred the Miis. Try not to think too hard about what boxing would have been like.
...or if you really wanna know about Mario Boxing, play the DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. It had a boxing event which the Wii version lacked.
One of the levels of Portal can be finished in mere seconds, by using shortcuts to skip the entire level. When playtesters figured this out, the developers decided to keep it, since only advanced players would know how to utilize it. In fact, in the advanced versions of that chamber, the qualifications for gold medals require that you do this.
The commentary put it like this: If the exploit takes more skill to perform than doing it the intended way, it's perfectly reasonable to keep it in.
In a non-gameplay example, many of Raz's lines in Psychonauts were ad-libbed. They were so funny, the folks at Double Fine decided to keep them.
According to Dave Grossman Guybrush Threepwood's first name came when Monkey Island was in development. Since he had no name yet, his character art was simply named "Guy", and when Steve Purcell, the artist responsible for "Guy's" sprite, saved the file, he added "brush" to the end, to indicate that it was the Deluxe Paint brush for Guy, creating a file called "guybrush.bbm". They eventually just went with that, and had a great deal of fun commentingon his weirdname.
According to Tim Schaefer, most of the dialogue in Secret of Monkey Island was thought by him and the other writer to be placeholder, and that the bigwigs were going to hire some "real" dialogue writers to do the actual stuff, but the humorous placeholder dialogue was so funny that they decided to leave it in. This actually had quite an impact on the gameplay itself and lead to the "rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle" bit.
The name of the god Armok from Dwarf Fortress was taken from a variable used in the game's predecessor Slaves to Armok: God of Blood standing for the number of available arms: arm ok.
Working on the upcoming necromancy update, Toady discovered that he could accidentally cause necromancers to raise disembodied skin creatures in addition to more conventional undead. He decided this made as much sense as the walking skeletons did, and published it in his development log as one of the new features.
Most of Kefka Palazzo's dialogue in Dissidia: Final Fantasy was actually ad-libbed by his voice actor, Shigeru Chiba, and his tendency to change the tone of his voice mid-sentence was also due to Chiba.
Similarly, in Final Fantasy VI, the game that Kefka Palazzo originated from, his infamous introduction scene (barring the flashback) was not in the original script. Originally, he was intended to simply arrive at Figaro Castle and demand for Terra. However, Yoshinori Kitase felt that the scene was too boring to make completely normal, especially when they had only Amano's artwork of Kefka to work with, so he added in a scene where Kefka is complaining about Gestahl sending him off to Figaro, in the desert, on a reconaissance mission, and then stating that there is sand on his boots, causing the soldiers to wipe the sand off, and then, after laughing maniacally, berates them as idiots, with the intention of giving the implication that Kefka may be missing a screw or two from his head. They kept it in, and this also resulted in Kefka's characterization that we know him by to this day.
An in-universe example of this trope was also used. Ultros, feeling sore about his earlier defeat, decides to get his revenge by dropping a 4 ton anvil on top of Maria/Celes, but had a five minute delay due to his miscalculating the amount of strength and time he needs to actually attempt to push it onto Celes/Maria, giving Locke and the rest of the Returners (who discovered Ultros' plot due to a note in the dressing room for "Maria") enough time to halt his plan. Unfortunately, they also ended up interrupting the play by knocking out two key actors in the opera production (Draco and his rival suitor for Maria.), resulting in Locke and the returners improvising, with Locke trying to do his best (even if abysmal) attempt at mentioning that he'll take Celes's*
The opera's character is named Maria, but Locke, horrible actor that he is, uses the actress's name instead
hand and not Draco or Ralse, and Ultros challenging Locke to a duel.
Demyx of Kingdom Hearts II was written as a Satellite Character, but his Japanese voice actor threw in lines and quirks that gave a little more character to him.
Before the production of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Sora's japanese Seiyuu jokingly whined about having to voice The Hero all the time and asked if Nomura couldn't give him a few more "evil" lines. And so, Nomura created Vanitas.
The famous Post 217 in a NeoGAF thread about Scribblenauts became popular enough for official artwork◊ to be made of it. Soon after, the developers confirmed that "Post 217" was an object in the game's dictionary (it blows the map up).
Minecraft: Prior to patch 1.8, if you went an extremely-far distance in your Minecraft world (12,550,820 in-game meters, or roughly 820 hours of straight walking) you would run across a place called the Far Lands, where the terrain would suddenly become severely distorted and laggy due to a glitch in the way in-game worlds were generated. Originally, Notch said he liked the idea of a mysterious place so instead of fixing it, he kept it in. But in patch 1.8, he accidentally fixed whatever it was in the world generation process that created the trademark appearance of Far Lands. Currently, the world simply presents you with an invisible barrier, and Notch has not yet given any world on whether or not the Far Lands will return.
Creepers are the result of a failed pig model.
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne's Pandaren were originally an April Fool's joke that people responded to, so they were thrown into the game, with a side mission and a hero in the orc campaign. Blizzard even gave their race a tidy backstory and they've been a popular guess as a new playable race in the MMO.
In Quest For Glory IV, every evening in the Inn there are three villagers who convene. The voice actors had great fun ad-libbing lines for them, including a rant on how one of them used to be an elephant herder (the game is set in a country based rural medieval Romania, BTW, filled with forests and swamps) but the elephants all started dying out. The ad-libbing is quite apparent as on many occasions their speech do not even match what's written in the dialogue boxes. At one point the characters even speak out of order of what's being seen at the screen.
... that's because the game is buggy.
The story passed around is that the diskette version (which had no voice) was finished before the CD edition, which had voice acting. The developer loved the ad libbing that the voice actors did so much that they were not only allowed to continue but were used in place of the conversations in the diskette version, which is why they don't match.
In the game Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, there is a scene where the male protagonist Narmfully flubs a line leading the crew members off screen to laugh about it. And they decide to leave it in anyway. The Angry Video Game Nerd points it out, although you may want to keep this link in mind.
In Grand Theft Auto III the pedestrians have a strange habit of jumping in front of the vehicle you're driving - this was originally a glitch in the AI that the developers found quite funny.
In a similar vein, in ''San Andreas'' on occasion planes would crash for no reason, a result of a less-than-airtight approach to random generation of flight paths that allowed the possibility of planes' trajectories intersecting with the ground. It was kept because it added to the hilariously crapsack nature of the game.
Many of Nathan Drake's one-liners in the first Uncharted are the result of voice actor Nolan North's improvisation while watching gameplay footage of his character.
Perhaps one of the more noticeable adlibs is on the Train level, when being chased by an attack helicopter and some more grunts show up:
Nate: CAN'T YOU ASSHOLES SEE THE HELICOPTER?! I HAVE ENOUGH TROUBLE ALREADY!!
According to North, Charlie Cutter's claustrophobia in the third game was ad-libbed by his actor Graham McTavish, who thought it'd be funny as Charlie freaks out while making his way between a very narrow passage.
Much of the sidequest data from Septerra Core was this.
The Onyxia encounter in World of Warcraft was intended to have her Deep Breath ability used as a finisher on groups that had a significant number of players already dead. Due to a programming bug, it was used much more frequently, and was only left in because it didn't stop people from killing her.
Most of the swearing in Brütal Legend (especially on the part of Ozzy Osbourne's character) wasn't in the original script. But Tim Schafer decided to keep it because, well, it fits in.
In Undefined Fantastic Object, Minamitsu Murasa's theme contains a sudden pop, caused by a Windows notification while ZUN was recording it.
Note: for the many people who will inevitably go off to find the song on YouTube and hear the pop, this is not in her BOSS theme ("Captain Murasa"), but her STAGE theme ("Interdimensional Voyage of a Ghostly Passenger Ship"). There are tons of comments on Captain Murasa videos that nobody hears the pop.
Apparently when Fawful's dialogue was being translated for the English release of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, several translation errors were noticed but kept in the game anyway since Nintendo of America figured it would still be in character for someone like Fawful to say.
The 2009 Bionic Commando game features an Easter Egg where you can listen to one of Super Joe's flubbed lines: If you die on a certain boss in the game and try again, instead of telling Nathan to fight the boss, he tells him "You'll just have to fuck it".
Prior to the release of Pokémon Red and Green, one of the developers realized that, once he took the developer's tools out, there was room for one more mon. Since there were in-game references to the Pokémon Mew (where they got the material for Mewtwo), he decided to make it playable, but without a way to get it. No information was given about it, because except for the higher ups at Game Freak, no one knew you could get Mew. He figured they could give it away later, and a tradition was born.
Except for the Mew glitch, which allows you to get it normally by fooling the game into making it appear. This is due to the way the game handles numbers as code.
In Half-Life 2: Episode One, as Dog is about to throw a car containing you and Alyx across a pit to the destroyed citadel, the following exchange takes place:
Alyx Vance: Well, Gordon... unless you have a better suggestion... He is a robot. He's done the math. Alyx Vance: [to Dog] You did do the math, right? [Dog sheepishly shakes his head]
The head shaking was originally caused by a glitch and occurred randomly, but when it happened at just the right time in an early version of the game, the playtesters thought it was intentional, and the developers decided to make it a feature.
Interestingly, the gunships firing at the RPGs as opposed to the player was also originally a glitch, but they realized it added an extra challenge to the gunships and left it in (the glitch was caused by telling the gunship to attack the "most dangerous target", which the AI proceeded to assume was the rocket that could actually damage it, not the guy that had fired it).
A similar case during playtesting. At one point in Episode 2, you're gently prompted into throwing a grenade into a dumpster full of boxes. Do this the first time and the Fast Zombie hiding in there will toss it back out. It was originally a physics glitch caused by the boxes that would fly out when the Fast Zombie emerged, but like D0g's Indy Ploy, it was well received and left in.
The Crystal Theme from Final Fantasy. Quite possibly the most iconic song in the series. Put together by Nobuo Uematsu in ten minutes.
Samus Aran was originally going to be a guy, and is even referred to as male in the original instruction manual. Apparently, one of the developers thought it would be funny if the players found out she was female at the games end. Somebody agreed, and the rest is history
In Sam And Max Freelance Police: The Devil's Playhouse, one part in the script asked for some characters controlling the body of a giant Kaiju monster to make it do an "anime pose", intended as an homage to Voltron-type anime. The animator in charge of making the pose innocently asked the writer, "You mean like Power Rangers or like Sailor Moon?", to which the eavesdropping person in the neighboring cubicle immediately popped his head over the side and said "Oh my god, make him do 'Sailor Moon'". As a result, instead of doing a Voltron pose, the monster does a version of Sailor Moon's Transformation Sequence, which is a total non-sequitur but really, really funny.
Phoenix Wright had this quite a bit in terms of the text. After the game's final script was made for the English version of the game, the port team had a reading of the script. During one of these readings of the Recipe for Turnabout script they got to the part in Blue Corps and they were reading the dialog for when someone presents irrelevant evidence. Original the scene was just meant to be Lisa Basil explaining that Blue Corps uses a "Super Administrative Restricted Desktop Access Password-protection system" before Maya said "That's madness!". When the staff read this part out, one of the writers jokingly shouted out: "No Maya. THIS. IS. SPARDA!". This got a massive laugh from the team and the script was edited to included the improvised joke.
During the development of BioShock, the developers were surprised to find that the telekinesis power allowed the player to move the anchor points of trip wires as if they were regular objects. The devs then decided to tweak that behavior and have it be an actual feature of the power.
Elzam'sLeitmotif always being played when he's in combat was initially a programming bug (as he was a boss that switched to your side, and bosses always have their theme played). Since then, it seems both fans and devlopers love it making nothing able to override Trombe!.
There's actually a bit more to it than that: When he switches to your side, instead of changing his music's priority from "boss" to "player," they just added the "player" priority value to his already high "boss" value, causing his leitmotif to have higher priority than any other music in the game, including other bosses.
Maxim, the Bishōnen Jägermonster of Girl Genius, was originally created as a joke. But he was found so funny that he was added to the comic as-is.
The same goes for the entire Jager race. In the first scene with Klaus, there was a big empty space next to him, so Phil drew a scruffy-looking soldier with sharp teeth.
Also, Cesilee's Diary was originally supposed to be only 6 strips long. It ended up far longer and was eventually combined with the former primary comic, Campus Safari.
Less funny than dramatic, but Brittanny Ashworth's death in V2 of Survival Of The Fittest. The character's handler said, in an OOC note at the end of his first post with her, "Anybody after a kill feel free to take a shot at her." Of course, somebody interpreted this a bit too literally, godmoding the character's death at the hands of his villain character. After a little debate, it was left in.
Also, an important part of V3 character's Adam Reeves' backstory revolves around him having his lip torn by a fish-hook hold in a fight. It was suggested the culprit of this injury was the older brother of Maxie Dasai. The more the handlers thought about the idea, the better it sounded, and it was simply thrown in.
The website Bloggingheads.tv has a lot of this. Cats, children, doors, phone calls, and various other interruptions have been known to occur, and are sometimes left in.
This. Part Two was originally meant to be uploaded here, but the camerawoman thought the dissonance would probably be taken as an excellent piece of satire. See also the adverts on the same channel.
While tinkering with Ganon's clothes during the production of The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage, Ganon's robe fell off for no reason. The creators decided that the thought of the Great Evil King's robe falling off was too funny to leave out.
According to one of Linkara's video logs on the filming of an episode of The Nostalgia Critic, the Zuul joke in The Pagemaster review was originally a throwaway joke from Doug's brother, and the two decided to keep it in the video anyway. It got to the point of becoming a proper Running Gag in future Critic videos, and Doug and his brother can apparently no longer watch Ghostbusters without shouting "Zuul, muthafucka! Zuul!"
Marble Hornets has a special-effects example: at the end of entry 22, when Alex bleakly informs the camera how his situation has hit rock bottom, a shadow passes over him in a way that makes it look like it's reaching into his head. The shadow was intentional, the way it ended up looking wasn't. They kept it in.
In Entry #9, Tim's line to Alex about 'not having enough money to pay because he spends it all on tapes' was completely improvised by Tim Sutton (as in the real-life actor) himself. They decided to add the line into the script, but first they had to stop the take and re-shoot it because the original improvisation sent Troy Wagner into a laughing fit.
The flash series 4 Swords Misadventures had quite a few ad-libs in it's episodes:
In episode 4, the priest who expressed shock at Link's swear was not originally supposed to speak spanish, but Haidouken Dude thought it would have been funny.
Red stating that Green should "keep the tunic on" was added in by the creator.
When writing the scene for them running to the elder's house, he unintentionally made a reference to Resident Evil.
During the episodes where Red Link ended up becoming drunk from Chateau Romani, Red's voice actor suggested that he give Red a slurred southern accent while he was drunk, as well as improvise several of his lines (such as when explaining how he "knew" that "Chuck Norris's fist" was the answer to the third question as well as several lines in Red's drunken rant during the second part of the Phoenix Wright-esque debate). Another VA also suggested that they add in Red stumbling while entering the Castle Gates.
In Episode 5, the line where one of the villagers identifies Blue and Purple Link (aka, the Cock Boys) to the crowd was originally intended to be for the Running Man character that they met beforehand, but Haidouken Dude wanted to finish the episode quickly so he rewrote it for another villager.
In Episode 6, Vaati's slide show detailing Tingle ripping off the Links with maps at high prices, as well as Link's "It's over 9000!" line within the slideshow was improvised by Haidouken Dude.
The pair of Hinoxes that Shiek bumped into was originally supposed to both be voiced by Haidouken Dude, but he ended up voicing the green version instead.
Most of the infamous riot scene in the ending of Episode 6 was actually improvised and not in the original script.
Red's reaction to and speech about the potion eliminating his hangover in the ending of Episode 7 was an ad-lib. Likewise, his snoring while passed-out drunk from the aftermath of the fight as well as his earlier line of "Let go of me, you Purple Pissant! Me and the Green boy gotta talk!" in response to Green's statement of he should kill him first if he should get to Zelda, and his line when giving a drunken beatdown on Dark Link ("Oh look, I broke a nail on your face!"), were improvised by Red's voice actor, Richard.
Haidouken Dude even admitted that he often allows for the voice actors to take liberties when delivering the lines and doing situations when making the episode after creating the script.
Most Shiny Objects Videos involve at least a little ad-libbing. The Stinger at the end of the board game segment from "On The Couch" is a good example—the actor Nathan Schneekluth found Catch Phrase so amusing he kept pressing buttons during takes. One of them made it in.
Western Animation
On The Simpsons, the often-quoted sung line: "I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean, S-M-A-R-T!" This was an actual mistake by voice actor Dan Castellaneta, but it was just so "Homer" they left it in.
Homer's famous "D'oh!" was improvised by Castellaneta. The script only said "annoyed grunt". (And still does.)
As was Homer's song "Dancing Away My Hunger Pangs" on the season 12 episode "Hungry, Hungry Homer" (where Homer goes on a hunger strike to save the town's baseball team).
Recurring guest star Al Brooks is known for doing this. Noticeable when he plays Hank Scorpio in You Move Only Twice - most of his fast, random declarations are improvised. The entire Hammock district routine is improvised - hence why Homer only replies with a quick "Yes" because Dan Castellaneta had trouble keeping up with Brooks. Only at the end does he catch up and reply "Oh in the hammock district".
Megatron's famous "yeeeeeeeessss..." from Beast Wars wasn't originally scripted, but was improvised by voice actor David Kaye, who thought it fit the character. It did, and quickly became his Catch Phrase.
David also coughed while recording one of Megatron's power-hungry laughters, but they decided to leave it in, with the animators adding a surprised reaction shot of Inferno to complete the effect.
Futurama's famous Hypno-Toad sound effect is an example, similar to the 2001 example given above. The sound was meant to just be a placeholder until a proper sound effect could be edited in. However, the placeholder noise sounded "so wrong" that the creators decided to keep it.
The first episode contains the line 'Invader's blood marches through my veins - like giant, radioactive rubber pants!' The line was supposed to say 'ants'. But it's the kind of show where "pants" actually fits better.
The Hamstergeddon episode involved Ultra Peepi swaggering down the street, not by intention. It came back from animation that way, and Jhonen loved it and had the composer make funk music to go under it. "I want to hear Barry White saying 'Ultra Peepi.'" Check it out here.
Freakazoid!'s voice actor was supposed to refuse a plot hook with a "No," and the sequence ended up twenty seconds longer because of what he did say.
Jeepers: Hehehehehe... You want to see something strange and mystical? Freakazoid: NO! Get out of here with that watch! Lay off the poor beavers, will ya?! SHEEEEESH! You're a creep! Go away! We were having a good time until you showed up, Jeepers! Urrrg! Go have some coffee with cream or something! Because I'll tell you something... This is a happy place!
According to the audio commentaries, this happened a lot. Even the casting of writer Paul Rugg as Freakazoid was an accident; he was just supposed to be the placeholder, but ended up being so funny (in part because of his wild improv), that he was cast permanently. Apparently, several large sections of the first episode were entirely made up on the spot by Rugg.
Looney Tunes. Bob Clampett's 1943 short An Itch in Time has a scene of a dog, having been irritated by a flea, scooting wildly around a carpet on its rear end. As an "inside" joke, Clampett and his animators added an off-color gag of the dog pausing to tell the audience, "Hey, I'd better cut this out, I may get to like it!", fully expecting that either the studio or the Hays Office would have it removed. Astonishingly, they didn't.
(Porky sends his dog after a duck, but instead of letting himself get caught, the duck picks up the dog and dumps him on the shore of the pond)
Porky: Hey! Th-th-that wasn't in the script!
Daffy: Don't let it worry ya, skipper, I'm just a crazy darn fool duck. (bounces away across the pond, laughing maniacally)
The Woody Woodpecker short Wet Blanket Policy originally didn't have "The Woody Woodpecker Song" in it, but it was added in at the last minute by Walter Lantz, when he discovered how much of a surprise hit the single had become.
The episode "Shrabster" of Sealab 2021 involves an hammy, over the top announcer declaring "Indeed!" along with a linking remark with each scene change. The hammyness ultimately becomes too much for the announcer when leaving a clip involving a starving 14 year old African boy.
Announcer: Dead African child indee-hee-hee-hee-heed... (uncontainable laughter), I'm sorry. It's just so f-bleep-ing awful.
Avatar The Last Airbender: Sokka was originally intended as a more sullen character. However, his voice actor was a Jim Carrey-inspired comedian, so Sokka gradually turned into a much more over-the-top comic relief. The creators noted that because of this change, Toph ended up filling Sokka's original role. Also, the famous Foamy Mouth Guy was just going to faint in the background. Then an animator got really creative...
Haru's SEXYFINE'stache came about because a bored animator snuck it in.
In the Code Lyoko episode "Tidal Wave", Odd's final line, "I'm so hungry!", was ad-libbed by his dub actor.
In the Daniel and the Lions' Den segment of the first VeggieTales, a render glitch made a sudden flash of light in the background during a scene. The animators weren't able to fix it, so they just added a thunder sound effect and made an instant storm, that actually darkens the mood in the right way.
In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, in the first episode, a pony in the background was given crossed eyes as a joke by an animator, and wasn't intended to be visible. Last minute changes moved a bunch of other characters out of the way, making this pony visible. Fans noticed, and were amused, leading to the pony being nicknamed "Derpy Hooves." The joke became so famous that the show's creator, Lauren Faust, said "she can be Derpy if everyone likes."
They also gave her the cross-eyed look in most other episodes she appeared in during post-production in season 1. In season 2, her appearances are now fully scripted.
A rather unhumourous example happened in The Ren & Stimpy Show Adult Party Cartoon spinoff that ultimately led to cancellation of the series. The episode "Onward and Upward" contained a graphic homosexual sex scene between the eponymous duo in the original run, added as a joke by an animator. Creator John Kricfalusi explained that there was never supposed to be any actual sex in it, that Ren and Stimpy were supposed to be playing baseball under the sheets (as a part of a vague "pitcher and catcher" metaphor earlier in the episode). He claimed he wanted to cut it straight away, but he felt sorry for the animator who thought it was funny. The scene was left in and caused a minor uproar at an animation newsgroup, where a group of people thought Kricfalusi was trying to sabotage his own show - the executives at Spike TV saw this conversation, thought that's the way everyone felt and cancelled the project. Go figure.
When building the models for the TV series Tugs, it was found that Zorran's eye mechanism caused the front of his hat to tip up. They left it in because they thought it added to the expressiveness of the character.
According to Ashley Eckstein, she was asked to use an Icelandic accent for the voice of Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but when she came in with a practiced Icelandic accent, it apparently wasn't what they expected. The voice she ended up getting told to do in the show is based on the tones in her real voice during the audition when she got frustrated that she couldn't figure out what accent they wanted.
Real Life
When Neil Armstrong reported landing in simulators during the training for Apollo 11, he always said "Houston, Eagle. We have landed" or some close variation on that. When he actually got to the moon, he realized that something more poetic was necessary for such a historic moment and ad libbed "Houston, Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed" which no one else had ever heard. The communications officer in Houston was clearly surprised but responded "Roger, Tranquility." The name is now recognized by the International Astronomical Union.
Many, many lasting and important inventions were discovered completely by accident. The efficacy of microwaves with regards to heating food was realized when the American engineer Percy Spencer, while working on an active radar set, noticed that a chocolate bar he had on him began to melt.
The Cosmic Microwave Background, which is the evidential lynchpin in the big bang theory, was discovered unwittingly by the two American astronomers Penzias and Wilson, who did their darndest to get rid of the "background sound" their New Jersey-based radio horn was picking up, going so far as to scrub the entire inside of the horn. Their accidental discovery won them the Nobel Prize, and solidified the foundations of the big bang theory.
Zappo's Potato Chips invented the "Voodoo" flavor by a guy spilling a few spices. Someone stuck their finger in the resulting mess and declared it delicious.
Mammals are now believed to have evolved thanks to viral DNA. Keeping the bit that stopped the virus from being recognized as foreign allowed animals to keep their young inside them as they developed.
