Bela Lugosi unavailable? Just get your wife's chiropractor.
Examples of Fake Shemp in films.In-universe:
- Day for Night: The director of Film Within a Film Meet Pamela has one last problem with his Troubled Production when the male lead is hit by a car and killed, with the climax still to be filmed. He gets a body double and shoots the scene from behind.
- The Death Kiss: Actor Myles Brent is shot and killed for real during the filming of a gangland murder in Tonart Studios production The Death Kiss. With the film still not quite finished, production boss Steiner suggests they use Brent's body double for the last scene, and they do. (Ironically Steiner is played by Bela Lugosi who was the subject of one of movie history's most famous Fake Shemps.)
- In Bowfinger, when Kit Ramsey goes into seclusion at Mindhead, thinking he's really being followed by aliens and UFOs, Bowfinger tries to get another actor to double for him. He hires Jiff, a Black and Nerdy guy who's a perfect doppelganger for Kit before they realize he's Jiff Ramsey, Kit's identical twin brother.
In general:
- The Frankenstein Monster was subject to this in the original Universal Horror film series of the 1930s-40s:
- In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Bela Lugosi played the Monster, except for the scene in which the creature is first thawed from the ice. Lugosi was either unavailable or unwilling to shoot the scene, so a stunt man was used and at one point his face is seen directly - in fact, it's the first shot of the Monster's face in the entire movie - and he looks nothing like Lugosi.
- During production of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Glenn Strange, who played the Monster, suffered a leg injury. Fortunately many of his scenes at the time required him to just lie on a gurney. For a scene in which he throws a woman through a window and chases the titular duo from the laboratory, however, Lon Chaney Jr. - who was appearing in the film as The Wolf Man, but who had played the Monster years earlier in The Ghost of Frankenstein - put on the makeup and the suit and did the scene for Strange. Once you know, the Shemping is obvious, as the Monster suddenly starts moving more like the Wolf Man than Strange's near-robotic portrayal.
- Most of Monty Python's members played multiple roles in each movie. When two of one actor's characters are in a scene together, the less prominent one is a stand-in. For example, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when Brother Maynard (Eric Idle) is reading an inscription describing the Castle of Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh to Arthur's Knights, Sir Robin (otherwise played by Idle) is portrayed by an obvious Shemp trying to conceal himself behind his shield. An arguably more amusing example is near the end of Monty Python's Life of Brian, in which Reg is played by John Cleese in one shot, then swapped with a look-alike when the Centurion, another of Cleese's characters, appears in the next.
- Steven Seagal is notorious for walking off the set of any movie he's in at will. He's also become increasingly out-of-shape as the years have passed. These two factors combined mean that any film supposedly starring him since at least Half Past Dead could more accurately be said to be starring his body doubles. As he also refuses to do ADR, requiring someone else to do the Looping Lines, he barely appears in some of "his" films at all.
By movie:
- During protracted production of Alien³, it was discovered that Carrie Henn (the girl who played Newt in Aliens) was too old to convincingly play the part. This, coupled with substantial script rewrites and behind-the-scenes shenanigans led to her and fellow survivor Hicks being killed off for real at the beginning of the film. Newt's body is played by a body double (and only glimpsed in closeup shots of her eye and mouth for most of the time she's onscreen) in the finished film. For the autopsy scene they used a dummy created from a mold of Carrie Henn made during the previous film.
- George McFly in the Back to the Future sequels did this, The Other Darrin, and Filming for Easy Dub to get around the absence of Crispin Glover. This trope was invoked by disguising The Other Darrin, Jeffrey Weissman, with a makeup FX mask of Glover made for the first film, sunglasses, out of focus shots, and even having him spend the entire "future" portion of the film "inverted", in which George was actually upside-down. While an impressive bit of movie-making magic, this ran into significant legal problems. Because the switch in actors was so well hidden audiences were led to believe Crispin Glover still played George McFly, and he filed a lawsuit for misappropriating his likeness. Though the suit was settled quietly before its court date, the cornerstone of the argument was the use of Stock Footage of Glover in the first film, and the Screen Actors Guild wrote new rules on stock footage as a result of this. The Guild also began including clauses in their contracts requiring film studios to obtain permission from members (or their estates if deceased) before Shemping them.
- The Reveal of Bunny's feet still having all ten toes while driving in The Big Lebowski was filmed with documentary producer and occasional actress Laura Burnett doubling in for Tara Reid.
- Wesley Snipes was not always available for each day of filming for Blade II, as he had had three other movies out that year. Instead of waiting for Wesley to become available, the crew shot another actor (who was not Wesley's stunt double) for scenes where it was not necessary to see Wesley's face. The first scene being where Blade, Scud and Nyssa are riding in the helicopter to meet Damaskinos. The second was after Nyssa performed an autopsy on the dead reaper and confronts Blade in his quarters about his attitude toward the Bloodpack.
- Blood of the Tribades has a scene where the creators had a specific location in mind, and a narrow window to shoot it in, during which the required actors weren't available. Thankfully, the scene was brief and just required three characters, who were already established as wearing identical hooded cloaks, to walk up some steps together: The solution was to film the co-director climbing the steps in costume alone from a distance, then composite the shot so she looked like three identically dressed people walking in single file.
- Carry On Loving: Most of the time you can see Bertram during the Foodfight!, he is played by a body double, due to Richard O'Callaghan being unavailable for the shooting of the scene.
- On Casino Royale (1967), due to the feud between Peter Sellers and Orson Welles, Sellers dropped out of the picture midway through filming. Because of this, the part of Peter Sellers, in the final scenes of the movie, is played by a cardboard cutout of Peter Sellers. In later versions, this cardboard cutout is replaced by previously shot footage of Sellers, dressed in Highland garb.
- Brandon Lee's tragic death on the set of The Crow three-fourths of the way through the production sent the producers scrambling for a way to salvage the film. Body doubles, careful angles, and CGI used to put Lee's face on a stunt double was used to finish his scenes. In a couple of places, it works really well, with the avoidance of close-ups on his face (at the risk of sounding disrespectful to Lee) arguably adding to the haunting, faceless, unknowable mystique of the character.
- DC Extended Universe:
- SHAZAM!: Due to Henry Cavill not being availablenote , the Superman cameo was achieved by dressing Zachary Levi's Stunt Double Ryan Hadley in the suit and only filming him from the neck down.
- Jared Leto, who'd previously played The Joker in Suicide Squad, was not asked to return for the Spin-Off, Birds of Prey. Instead, Flashback scenes showing the Joker were filmed by using Lo-Fi artist Johnny Goth as a stand-in, with his face deliberately never shown to the camera.
- In Zack Snyder's Justice League, there's a shot of Evil Superman from the "Knightmare" future hovering over the ruins of the Hall of Justice, holding Batman's cowl (after possibly having killed him). Thing is, we only see his darkened silhouette. It was rendered with CGI as Henry Cavill didn't participate in the additional photography.
- In SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods, Billy has a dream about going on a date with Wonder Woman. Much like the Superman cameo in the first film, the camera only shows her from behind or below the neck. Unlike other examples, this is intentional: Gal Gadot shows up as the actual Wonder Woman near the end of the movie, and Taylor Cahill is explicitly credited as "Fake Wonder Woman" for that scene.
- Hollywood screen legends such as Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman were "Shemped" in the movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. Cheryl Smith bore a remarkable resemblance to Veronica Lake, but her role was limited to playing the back of Lake's head.
- During his ill-fated quest to film Dune in the 70s, Alejandro Jodorowsky desperately wanted Salvador Dalí to play the Emperor. Problem was, Dali specifically demanded an obscenely high salary. Jodorowsky promised to pay him on a per-minute basis, then immediately began planning for an elaborate robotic double to serve as a stand-in for most of the Emperor's scenes. If this sounds insane, well, this is Alejandro Jodorowsky we're talking about, but what's even more insane is that it almost worked: Dali apparently liked the idea of being paid an outrageous amount for only a few lines due to its sheer absurdity, and the character of the Padishah Emperor, especially in Jodorowsky's script but also in the book, is Properly Paranoid to the point that using a robot double for his public appearances would be completely in keeping with the tone of the character.
- Though supposedly taking place in Montreal, where the rest of the movie was filmed and set, the climactic music festival performance in Eddie and the Cruisers II was actually filmed as part of a Bon Jovi concert in Las Vegas. It soon becomes obvious that all of the performers are getting close-ups except Stewart, the keyboardist, who's shown only in long shot with his hair over his face. Evidently David Matheson, who played Stewart, was somewhere else in the world that day and a stand-in was used for the Vegas shoot.
- The Trope Namer is director Sam Raimi, who coined the term "Fake Shemp" and "Shemping" when most of the cast of The Evil Dead (1981) had to leave for their regular jobs, and he and his brother Ted Raimi had to fill in a lot of scenes just by themselves. Raimi came up with the terms in reference to The Three Stooges, who used a mixture of stock footage and body doubles for the films they made after Shemp Howard's death.
- In Factory Girl, the biopic about Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol's creative machine, most of the figures like Warhol and Bob Dylan were portrayed by actors. They must have decided they couldn't pull off Mick Jagger, though, resulting in the use of a stand-in for a scene where the camera followed the back of Jagger's head for a bit while partygoers reacted to "Mick's" presence with delight.The Agony Booth: And let me tell you, this guy is portraying Jagger to a T. Especially when he wanders off in silence, his face stiffly pointed away from the camera. That's totally Mick!
- Paul Walker was killed in a car accident off the set of Furious 7, so his remaining scenes used CGI and doubles (two of which included his brothers Caleb and Cody) as well as the footage made before his death to retire his character without killing him off. For the end of F9, his character only appears by showing his car making an arrival.
- Older Than Television. The Troubled Production of Erich von Stroheim film Foolish Wives became more troubled when actor Rudolph Christians, who played Andrew Hughes (one of the main parts), died during production. Von Stroheim was forced to cast a body double. Viewers will note that in several scenes Hughes is shot from behind, from a distance, or with his face obscured by scenery. In some scenes, close-ups of Christians are awkwardly inserted into scenes they obviously don't match. This unfortunately impacted some important scenes, such as Hughes' final confrontation with Sergius.
- Game of Death: Bruce Lee had died when very little of the film had been made; only the famous fight scenes had been finished. In the end the film not only had minimal resemblance to Lee's original vision but the film-makers went to great lengths to hide the fact that "Bruce Lee" was in fact an unknown Korean martial artist (who was not a stuntman or an acrobat so he had to be doubled by Yuen Biao in more stunt-oriented sequences). In addition to the typical tricks of the time (face-obscuring glasses and lack of headshots), one truly egregious example comes within the first minutes of the film when the baddies try to threaten a perfectly stoic Lee, portrayed in the scene by a cardboard cutout taped to a mirror. The film-makers even went as far as including footage of Bruce Lee's actual funeral.
- Infamous movie example: Oliver Reed died during the filming of Gladiator with only about half of his scenes filmed. So they used shadows, CGI, and creative re-editing of already-shot scenes, along with some stock footage, to finish filming and rewrote several important scenes that would have been otherwise unfilmable.
- In Glass (2019), David Dunn recalls trying to talk to wife Audrey (killed off between films), but as Robin Wright was unavailable, she is silent and shot from behind.
- In the "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence in A Hard Day's Night, the audience doesn't see John Lennon much, because he was also promoting his book In His Own Write during production.
- The Huntsman: Winter's War: Kristen Stewart didn't return for the Snow White & the Huntsman sequel, so the brief scenes of Snow White involved an obvious body double who was only filmed from behind.
- During filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Harrison Ford injured his back and was out for several weeks. To continue production, Steven Spielberg used Ford's stuntman Vic Armstrong to perform the action sequences (even the simpler ones Ford could do) from behind, and Ford later filmed a few token close-ups. It helped that Armstrong and Ford look a lot like each other,
◊ to the extent that Ford's own son once went up to him believing it to be his dad.- Armstrong, who closely resembled Ford, also doubled him in the scene in Blade Runner where Deckard finds the snake scales in the bathtub, due to Ford being unavailable.
- While James Bond's nemesis Blofeld is played by one partly seen actor in three movies and three different ones after being revealed, For Your Eyes Only has him returning, with his face never shown, just for Bond to kill him off for real (so the producers wouldn't need to reuse him considering the legal disputes for the creation of Blofeld and SPECTRE).
- The Little Rascals short "Bargain Day" features a couple of stand-ins for Jackie Cooper and Donald Haines in some scenes, as both were busy working in the Paramount feature Skippy for part of the production.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Thor: The Dark World, Natalie Portman was unavailable for reshoots. The ending kissing scene instead had Chris Hemsworth's wife, Elsa Pataky, stand in as Jane wearing Jane's costume and a wig, with film wizardry hiding this.
- All the footage of Jane in Avengers: Endgame is unused footage from The Dark World, though her dialogue is new ADR provided by Portman.
- Benedict Cumberbatch had a limited window of availability for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame and shot many of his parts separately from the rest of the cast. Many scenes where Doctor Strange is with other characters were accomplished through body doubles and digital splicing.
- In "Spider-Man: Far From Home", we revisit a moment from "Iron Man" from William Riva's perspective. In one shot, a bald stand-in plays Obadiah Stane with the help of archive Jeff Bridges audio,
- In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Rhys Ifans and Thomas Haden Church reprise their respective roles as Curt Connors/Lizard and Flint Marko/Sandman without ever working on-set, in part to ease filming the ambitious crossover film under COVID-19 restrictions, performing only in voiceover. This isn't too conspicuous for the Lizard, who would be an all-CGI character regardless, but it leaves the Sandman, who could still appear human in Spider-Man 3, spending most of the film in the form of a human-shaped mass of sand,note with director Jon Watts serving as Church's on-set stand-in. In the film's final battle, when Connors and Marko are cured and return to human form, it's quite transparently Stock Footage of similar scenes from their original appearances, resulting in them showing no reaction to the reassurances of the ones who cure them.
- Pixels has the alien transmissions to Earth be manipulated footage from '80s television broadcasts with various pop culture figures popular during the period. Their lines are provided via heavily edited dialogue from the footage and other miscellaneous recordings. The exception to this was Tattoo, whose lines are provided by an uncredited Carlos Alazraqui.
- One of the most infamous examples is from the legendary Plan 9 from Outer Space. Bela Lugosi died after filming only a few scenes, so Ed Wood had his wife's chiropractor stand in for Lugosi and cover his face in all his scenes. This, despite the fact that he was about a foot taller than Lugosi and was going bald (Lugosi had a full head of hair up to his death).
- Roy Kinnear died from a horseback riding accident during filming of Return of the Musketeers in 1988. His subsequent scenes were completed with a body double and voice-dubbing.
- The Cult Classic 1954 film Salt of the Earth had to be completed with body doubles after the film's left-wing subject matter got lead actress Rosaura Revueltas deported back to Mexico.
- Jean Harlow suddenly died during production of what would become her final film, Saratoga in 1937. Since not all of her scenes had been filmed, her character was written out of a few scenes, and for remaining scenes where her character absolutely HAD to be present, three doubles were hired: one for closeups, one for long shots, and a vocal double. To this day, it's not clear which scenes feature her, and which are her stand-ins.
- The last scene in The Seventh Seal, showing the Grim Reaper leading the characters who'd died during the movie, was hastily shot while the weather was just as cloudy as director Ingmar Bergman wanted. However, this was after filming had already wrapped for the day, and the actors had left, so he got some crew members and two tourists who just happened to be nearby and put them into the costumes.
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Laurence Olivier, via the magic of stock footage and CGI, managed to appear as Doctor Totenkopf, the Big Bad, despite the huge setback of being dead. Which is quite appropriate, considering Doctor Totenkopf is revealed to have died twenty years before the film's setting.
- In the same way, Marlon Brando reprised his role as Jor-El in Superman Returns from beyond the grave, making use of stunningly realistic CGI and recycled and unused dialogue from the Richard Donner movies.
- Star Wars
- The Rise of Skywalker: To account for Carrie Fisher's death, the filmmakers forwent the use of CGI to recreate her voice and likeness and instead wove unused footage shot for The Force Awakens into the story, with a stand-in wearing the same clothes and a wig in the shots where she's seen from her back along with the one shot where she's silhouetted. Carrie's daughter Billie Lourd stood in for a younger Leia with Digital Head Swap and Digital De-Aging in the Jedi training flashback.
- In The Phantom Menace, during the scene after the climactic battle where Palpatine, newly elected chancellor, and the Jedi Council arrive on Naboo, Samuel L. Jackson was not present for filming to appear as Mace Windu, so his stand-in takes his place. He's right on the edge of the frame and not entirely in focus (but also not entirely out of focus) and it's unclear if the plan was to composite Jackson's face into the shot and the missed it, or they just decided he wasn't visible enough to bother. Either way Star Wars fans noticed, as they are apt to do.
- Rogue One's use of CGI recreation, and a very good impression by Guy Henry, brings the late Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin to life, along with a cameo of a youthful Princess Leia. Permission was obtained from Cushing's estate, but Carrie Fisher's untimely passing actually postdated the film’s release by a week or so.
- Akira Kurosawa's early film Stray Dog had several scenes where actor Toshiro Mifune was unavailable for various reasons. In order to show the character, Kurosawa had his assistant director, Ishirō Honda, stand in, as scenes were shot from far away, or from his waist down.
- When Superman II was turned over to Richard Lester, Gene Hackman refused to work with the new director, so some scenes feature a body double (watch him climb down the ice in the Fortress of Solitude... backwards) and a number of his lines were dubbed by a (not very convincing) voice double. All shots with the real actor were filmed under Richard Donner.
- Terminator Salvation featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator while he was Governor of California, thanks to a face mold made for the original movie scanned into a CGI recreation. This is a unique example, in that the crew decided to get permission from Schwarzenegger before shemping him — and in case he said no, the directors' backup plan was to have the Terminator's face blown off before anyone could see it.
- The Three Stooges:
- The Trope Namer comes from Sam Raimi's nickname for how the Stooges fulfilled their film contract after Shemp Howard's death in 1955. The last few Shemp shorts mainly featured just Larry and Moe, borrowed some Shemp scenes from old films, and used a body double (bit actor Joe Palma) wherever they absolutely had to.
- Even before Shemp died, mixing old and new material in Stooges comedies was pretty common. On occasion, actors appearing in stock footage would be unavailable to shoot new scenes, resulting in the use of usually pretty noticable stand-ins.
- Fake Shemps were also used whenever the Stooges had to play multiple roles. For instance, A Merry Mix-Up features a scene in which Moe, Larry, and Joe (Besser) reunite with their long-lost triplet brothers. Despite their efforts, the six Fake Shemps used in this sequence show their faces a few too many times.
- Larry Fine suffered a stroke during the production the unsold television pilot Kook's Tour. Producer/director Norman Maurer stood in for Larry in certain shots.
- Even supporting players needed fake Shemps. For Scheming Schemers (a remake of Vagabond Loafers and one of the four "Fake Shemp" shorts), a double was needed for Christine McIntyre, who had retired from acting between shorts. They had the double face away from the camera while Kenneth MacDonald told her to wait in their car until he left the house.
- In Besser shorts that were remakes of earlier shorts, Joe Besser's portly figure allowed for stock footage of Curly to be used in far shots. In the final short, "Sappy Bull Fighters", one can even hear Curly's famed "woo woo woo's" in far shots of Joe on the bull.
- A film was released with Kim Tai Chung (with Biao again doubling him) along with Bruce Lee footage, called Tower of Death in some places and Game of Death 2 in others. In this one, Bruce's "character" dies midway through the film and his brother takes over the role, played by Kim Tai Chung (with Biao still doubling) without any need to splice Lee in. Oh, and they used footage from Bruce's funeral again.
- Being deceased didn't stop Peter Sellers from starring in Trail of the Pink Panther, for which Blake Edwards borrowed outtakes of Sellers from earlier Pink Panther movies and fabricated a plot about Clouseau taking off in a plane and disappearing.
- Prior to his death, Sellers had been planning to make one more Clouseau film without Edwards (as their professional relationship had become so strained); in fact, Edwards was paid not to do it. When Sellers died, Edwards made Trail as the first part of a relaunch of the series with a new lead character (introduced in the second part, Curse of the Pink Panther), which comes across as a downright ghoulish grab for a Cash-Cow Franchise. Sellers' widow successfully sued Edwards and United Artists for disgracing the actor's memory.
- In Curse, Clouseau undergoes plastic surgery and turns evil, now played by Roger Moore. Son of the Pink Panther established that he died of old age after that.
- John Candy died from a heart attack during filming of Wagons East!, and had to be digitally edited into his remaining scenes.
- Parodied by Wayne's World 2 when Wayne and Garth allegedly travel to England... and are only shown either from the back or with something obscuring their faces. Notably, "Garth" is much shorter than usual here.Wayne: I can't believe Paramount is spending the money to fly us to England. I would have thought they would just use two doubles!
- A short film called The Death of Xander Cage was filmed to explain what happened to the protagonist of the original xXx movie just before the events of the sequel. Vin Diesel did not return to play Xander, so the character was portrayed by Khristian Lupo, Diesel's stunt double. Xander's face is never shown, and all his dialogue consists of recycled sound bytes from the first movie.
- Lou Diamond Phillips was severely injured on the set of Young Guns II. A horse that he was riding got spooked and proceeded to drag him several yards. He suffered a broken arm and a shattered kneecap. The filming mostly proceeded without him, using a body double. Those far-away shots of Billy's gang riding to and fro weren't just for Scenery Porn.
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - for the scene where Edmund first goes into Narnia, Skandar Keynes wasn't available, so his co-star Anna Popplewell put on the coat and doubled for him (being filmed from the waist down).
- Stardust has a sequence at a conjured up inn where four major characters - Lamia, Tristan, Yvaine and Primus - are there at the same time. However, it was rare that more than one cast member was available at once. Mathew Vaughn had to rely on stand-ins and camera tricks to make it seem like all of them were there.
- Subverted in It Happened One Night. Claudette Colbert was initially reluctant to do the Show Some Leg scene (where she does so to stop a car). But when she saw footage of the double's leg, she changed her mind and did the scene herself.
- Carrie (2013) had to deal with the lead being played by then-underage actress Chloë Grace Moretz - who thus had less time to be on set than everyone else. There are a lot of shots of Carrie talking to other characters while far away, because they had to film around Chloe's limited schedule. Director Kimberly Peirce usually stood in for actors to deliver their lines to her when she was off set.
- During the Tybalt and Mercutio fight scene of Romeo and Juliet (1968), John McEnery was sick for one day of shooting. According to Michael York's autobiography, the shadow of Mercutio as he throws a sword at Tybalt's feet was Franco Zeffirelli standing in for him.
- My Name Is Emily - for the scene in which Emily and Arden drive into the car park of the mental hospital, Evanna Lynch wasn't available. The extras co-ordinator - who was the only blonde on set - doubled for her and they used a wide shot to hide the switch.
- The filmmakers of Into the Blue similar to the above example went behind Jessica Alba's back and shot several scenes with a body double of her character in a bikini. Sam had originally been written as a more realistic marine biologist who wore a wetsuit in a lot of her scenes, but this forced Jessica to film shots in the bikini to match those of the double - and the film was marketed around her not wearing very much.
- In the theatrical ending of Little Shop of Horrors, Tisha Campbell was unavailable for her appearance in the new ending and had to be replaced with a body double. When The Urchins walk into frame the camera pans away before the double's face would become visible.
- The Golden Compass was shredded in editing in order to reduce its runtime, infamously having the entire final act of the film removed. One of the side effects of this would have been Mrs Coulter simply disappearing from the story. This was evidently combatted by inserting a quick shot of a stand-in performer in an unconvincing wig accompanied by a looped line of Nicole Kidman's dialogue to signal the character's exit during the film's hurried conclusion.
- Disembodied Hitman was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the concept - a serial killer making his victims record themselves before they're murdered - was achieved by having the victims' actors film themselves remotely. Then for a couple of shots, Dean Houlihan would have a double wearing a ski mask or the face unseen.
- X-Men: Ian McKellen had to leave before production wrapped to begin working on The Lord of the Rings. During the climax Magneto is seen from behind when Cyclops shoots his Eye Beams at him as a double was filling in for McKellen.
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife gets around the death of Harold Ramis in 2014 by having Egon's face shrouded in shadow in the prologue, and using some strong and surprisingly well-done CGI in the climax, with Bob Gunton and Ivan Reitman acting as body doubles for Egon. No lines were spoken by Egon (outside of old recordings like the initial Ghostbusters TV ad), making it easier. Despite the creator death, Egon's legacy of his family and as a Ghostbuster is the focal point of the entire movie's story.
- Olsen-banden and its foreign remakes:
- Yvonne's actress from the Danish series had died before filming Olsen-bandens sidste stik began production, which was acknowledged in the film. Later, Kjeld's actor Poul Bundgaard died in the middle of production, leading to the character's living partner replacing him for the gang's final heist. Despite this, they did not to scrap the material they already filmed with Bundgaard, using the 17 years younger Tommy Kentner as a replacement for certain shots where Kjeld had to be present, always filming him from behind.
- During production of Jönssonligan dyker upp igen, Gösta Ekman d.y. got injured on set and had to be hospitalised. Production continued while Gösta was recovering, and his brother Mikael was used as a stand-in for certain shots where the character Sickan's face would not be seen well, including at least one spoken line.
- Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Jacques d'Amboise who played Ephraim had to leave before production wrapped as he was under contract with the New York Ballet and had to return to the stage. For the last few days of filming he was replaced with an uncredited stand-in.
- Grand Prix, a film focusing on a fictionalized version of the 1966 Formula One season, had an unique non-human example of this. One of the main teams featured is the fictional Yamura team, which in real life is represented through the then-debuting McLaren team after the producers agreed to sponsor the team for the season. Because the producers filmed part of the actual 1966 season itself, they had to come up with alternative plans in the event that the actual McLaren car failed to make the start:
- For the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, the producers painted Bob Bondurant's privately entered BRM in the Yamura colors after McLaren had to withdraw their car due to wheel bearing issues. Sadly, this effort was all for naught as Bondurant was among one of the many drivers to crash on the very first lap of the race.
- Later in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, McLaren had to withdraw their car because the Serenissima engine that powered the car had failed in practice and the team didn't bring any backup engines to the track. This time, Mike Spence's privately-entered Lotus-BRM was painted with the Yamura colors for the race. Thankfully for the producers, Spence survived to take the checkered flag. In addition, despite finishing three laps down from race winner (and eventual champion) Jack Brabham, Spence actually scored championship points because he finished in fifth (which at the time gave drivers 2 points).
