Throw It In / Live-Action Films

Creators

• British director Mike Leigh makes all his films this way, working with his actors to develop their characters, then improvising brief scenes and gradually building them up to the entire film.
• 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.
• 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.
• Marx Brothers
  • 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 Mr. Chandler 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.
• Peter Sellers:
  • 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 Blake Edwards kept it in.
  • There is an outtake of the scene where Sellers says the line wrong before both he and George Sanders crack up.
• Robin Williams was also notorious for ad-libbing a large part of his dialogue — it's said that often his writers end up saying, "Well, that's funnier, let's go with it."
  • Good Morning, Vietnam, What Dreams May Come, Patch Adams, and Aladdin all feature examples of Williams ad-libbing.
  • Mrs. Doubtfire has both in-character and out-of-character examples:
    • The movie starts with his character, a professional voice actor, quitting his job because they won't allow him to comment on the cartoon's message that if someone offers you a cigarette, you should take it.
    • 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^note And also true; while the note was in the script, it originally said something different and Robin didn't have a line. The director changed it last minute because it sounded better and had poetic symbolism from previous dialog Williams had. His line was of mild frustration that they did in fact, steal his line. So was "Fuck you!" "You're the shepherd."
  • During filming of The Birdcage, 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. Finally, Williams' character Armand is asked if a character in an in-universe production should just stand still. Armand goes into an elaborate dance routine complete with shouting, then tells the actor "but keep it all inside." The entire thing was improvised by Williams.
  • Genie, the breakout character of Aladdin was originally supposed to be very somber and mellow; he'd appear, grant the wishes, not take up too much time. Then they got Robin into the booth. Supposedly there are over four hours of him just going off, with a good third of that unusable because "you can't say that, we're Disney". It was so funny, however, that the character (and script) was rewritten, and the animators told to show whatever impression or visual gag Robin would do in film.
    • However, even then, a lot of Robin's work was ad-libbed. So much so, that the film was disqualified from any writing Oscars.
• Ever wonder why Brad Pitt is eating in so many of his scenes in movies? The guy stashes food around the sets and just starts eating in the middle of takes to avoid Milking the Giant Cow should he leaves his hands empty. Often, the take with him eating is the best one, even adding to the scene, and thus often makes the final cut.
• Robert Downey Jr. does the same thing, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as Tony Stark, where he ad-libs a lot of his lines to play up the character's arrogant bravado. In fact, Tony outing himself as Iron Man at the end of the first movie was unscripted, as was the whole business with the blueberries in The Avengers (2012)
• Louis de Funès was well-known for ad-libbing, especially when it came to physical comedy. In theater especially, he could make a mere walk-in role last longer and longer with every play. This often happened with movies too, naturally; just watch these 20 famous improvised scenes.
• Unlike the other members of The Three Stooges who tended to stick to the scripting, Shemp Howard was known to frequently ad-lib one-liners in Stooge shorts and the feature films he worked in. His role as Shorty the tailor in the movie Pittsburgh, for example, is greatly expanded from what it was meant to be due to Shemp's quick-fire wit.

0-B

• In 127 Hours, in the self-amputation scene, the crew had created a super-realistic prosthetic arm for the lead actor James Franco to cut through. It was so realistically built that they didn't actually expect the actor to be able to cut through the bones, and had planned editing alternate shots to simulate it. However, Franco did manage to do it, and it was so realistic and gruesome that the take was left in the final film.
• In 1917, for the climactic scene near the end where the main character is running across the battlefield with the 2nd Battalion's attack underway, George McKay was told, "Keep running, no matter what." His barreling into several other soldiers and stumbling back to his feet only adds to the chaos of the battle and his own determination to press forward and call off the attack.
• In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Kirk Douglas falling over in his haste to row to safety was an accident too funny to pass over.
• In 28 Days, Gerhardt's speech about forks in the road, salad forks, crab forks, and ladles was entirely ad-libbed by Alan Tudyk.
• 300:
  • The memetic delivery of the line "THIS! IS! SPARTA!!!" was actually not that highly emphasized in the comic book novel, nor the original script. According to Gerard Butler, after they'd finished filming the scene as scripted, he asked them to do "one more take" and then delivered the line in the now-famous manner. The crew loved it so much that they used that take instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
  • The Oracle's words are actually just ad-libbed gibberish by the actress who played her. Zack Snyder was delighted that she worked the word "Carneia" into it.
• The 40-Year-Old Virgin
  • 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,".
• 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.
• The scene in The Addams Family where Wednesday Addams sleeps with her arms folded up on her chest like a corpse laid out for a funeral was ad-libbed by Christina Ricci, who was about 10 when the movie was filmed.
• Aliens: Hudson's line "Game over, man! Game over!" was made up on the spot by Bill Paxton. Not bad, considering it became one of the most famous lines from the movie.
• 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 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.
• American Graffiti:
  • The opening where Terry crashes his moped into a garbage can was an accident but left in.
  • So was the scene where a very young Harrison Ford sings "Some Enchanted Evening". The original script just said his character "acts obnoxious".
• The moment in American Hustle where Rosalyn kisses Sydney was not in the script but came from Amy Adams (Sydney). Given Miss Adams and the fact that Rosalyn's played by Jennifer Lawrence, many straight guys (and many women as well!) everywhere are eternally grateful.
• Gwen Stacy yelling "PETER!" after Spider-Man webs her hand to the hood of a police car and her subsequent Oh, Crap! expression in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 weren't in the script according to the commentary and was, in fact, a happy accident they decided to keep 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.)
  • Eugene Levy is known for doing this. Adam Hertz, the screenwriter for the American Pie movies, said when writing for Mr. Levinstein he likes to sketch out what he wants Levy to say and not write too much actual dialogue. Justified, too, given Levy's appearances in so many Mockumentaries.
• 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 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.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: Early in the film, Scott is on top of the world, finally recognized for his heroics as Ant-Man... until an elderly barista earnestly says "Thank you, Spider-Man!" This was such a perfect line that they made sure it was in the trailers, but it turns out that it was a real mistake on the part of the actor.
  Ruben Rabasa: It was crazy, I thought it was somebody else, I thought it was Spider-Man! So when I said, "Thank you Spider-Man!" everyone was like "what?"
• In the Armageddon (1998), 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 that he made sure they put it in the trailer.
• 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 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 Atonement, director Joe Wright reveals in his commentary that in 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 at the sky, the sunlight surprisingly shines and gets cloudy again the moment he put his head down.
• Austin Powers in Goldmember:
  • 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.
  • 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 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 Zoe Saldaña and was not in the script. They kept it in anyway.
• The Avengers (2012) has several:
  • Robert Downey Jr. ad-libbed a joke about one of the Bridge Bunnies on SHIELD's Helicarrier playing Galaga. Not only was the line kept in, but at the end of the scene, one of the Bridge Bunnies (whom director Joss Whedon thought looked a little sketchy in said scene) is seen returning to his game of Galaga.
  • He also ad-libbed the semi-delirious monologue from Tony as he's recovering from his Near-Death Experience. Famously, during this speech he expresses an interest in trying shawarma; Whedon found this hilarious and brought the cast back after filming had concluded to shoot the post-credits scene where the six exhausted superheroes eat shawarma.
  • Mark Ruffalo ad-libbed the Hulk's roar that brings Iron Man back to consciousness, as well as a small moment where he touches a cradle when he meets Black Widow. The latter would be expanded upon in the sequel, where the two characters bond about their inability to have children.
• Avengers: Age of Ultron:
  • Andy Serkis was originally only brought in as a motion capture consultant to help Mark Ruffalo and James Spader. Jeremy Latcham then stumbled upon some online fan art of Serkis as the Black Panther villain Klaw, and Joss Whedon liked it so much that he decided to cast Serkis as Klaw in the movie.
  • Once again, Robert Downey Jr. improvised the "Hello, Deere" quip. In the home release director's commentary, Whedon admitted that he regrets not thinking of the line himself.
• In Avengers: Endgame, as written, Tony and Morgan's special way of saying "I love you" was "Love you tons". At the actor's suggestion, the line became "I love you three thousand", which is what his real-life children say to him.
• Two of the most memorable moments in Avengers: Infinity War were improvised:
  • Star-Lord, having mistaken Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange for Thanos' minions, asks them where Gamora is. Iron Man shoots back: "I'll do you one better: who's Gamora?" Dave Bautista, playing Drax, then ad-libbed: "I'll do you one better: WHY is Gamora?"
  • Tom Holland improvised the entirety of Spider-Man's final scene on the spot. This includes the line "Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good..." which became a minor Memetic Mutation in its own right.
• 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.
• In Back to the Future Part II, the stunt double of Griff's female gang member was injured when she hit the column of the courthouse. They actually used that take in the movie.
• In the final shot of Barton Fink, the seagull diving into the water was unplanned.
• In Basic Instinct, actors Michael Douglas and Jeanne Tripplehorn were merely rehearsing the sex scene between their characters and didn't even know they were being filmed, but the director liked the footage so much that he put it into the film.
• In Batman (1989), when exploring Wayne Manor with Vicki, Knox (Robert Wuhl) ad-libbed the jokes about the decorative suits of armor Wayne has.
  • Michael Keaton ended up creating two things, both iconic for the movie. The first is the infamous "I'm Batman." line. The original line on the script was "I am the {k}night.", but after doing it so many times, he ended up saying the iconic line and it was kept in. The other is Batman's full-body turn because the cowl design was so stiff that actually turning it caused it to bow awkwardly.
• In Beautiful Girls, when Timothy Hutton is saying goodbye to Natalie Portman at the end, he kisses her on the cheek, which was unscripted, and her reaction is genuine.
• During the filming of the chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959), Charlton 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 close-up 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.
• 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?"
• The elephant defecating next to Ewan McGregor in Big Fish was absolutely not in the script. As the elephant started going while McGregor delivered his lines, director Tim Burton ordered a quick zoom out so they could catch exactly what McGregor's character had signed up for when he joined the circus.
• In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the film opens with score drummer/composer Antonío Sanchez asking director Alejandro González Iñárritu a question in Spanish, and then detuning his drums as desired by the director, who was sitting in on the sessions and helping to direct the score. Iñárritu can also be heard in the background of the closing credits.
• 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 because the actor forgot to enable the parking brake. He got it eventually, but the shot was kept in because it fit in with the rest of the movie's intentional "throw it in" moments.
• According to the DVD info for Black Knight (2001), one of the female lead's faceplants was entirely unintentional but kept in because it looked awesome.
• 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 of 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.
• The Blair Witch Project took this to an extreme. The film had no script beyond a 35-page outline of the lore, meaning that the lead actors were all hired for their improv experience because, while the directors left them instructions at their camp every morning (and subjected them to Enforced Method Acting), they had to come up with all of the characters' dialogue and actions themselves. Because this was a found-footage film, lead actress Heather Donahue was also the camera operator (taking a two-day crash course on how to use one because she'd never done so before), meaning that the film's famous Dizzy Cam wasn't planned either.
• 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 started breaking up because Wilder had improvised the "morons" part.
• There's a scene in Blood of the Tribades where three of the female vampire characters, all wearing face-concealing cloaks and shot from a distance, climb up a stairway etched into rock above a waterfall: None of the cast was able to travel to the location they wanted to use, but co-director/co-writer Sophia Cacciola was, so she FakeShemped for all three actresses by climbing the stairs once, then compositing the shot to make it look like three people walking in single file instead of just one. She happened to adjust the hood of her cloak at a certain point in this shot, so in the composited version it looks as though all three women pulled on their hoods in a certain way in succession; This was left in because it looked cool and seemed like some sort of ritualized gesture that the characters might do.
• 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.
• 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.
• Dennis Miller, who didn't want to do the film and only did for the million-dollar payday, so disliked the script of Bordello of Blood that he improvised all his dialogue, which did not endear him to his castmates.
• 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 a sudden!"
• Bullitt: In an early scene without dialogue, Bullitt goes to a Chinese restaurant with his girlfriend and the waiter nearly smacks him in the eye with a menu. Steve Mc Queen chuckles and claps a hand over his eye in mock pain, then visibly reassures the off-camera waiter that there's no harm done.
• Burnt contains an infamous scene where Adam, having reached his lowest point, suffocates himself with a sous vide bag in an attempt to commit suicide. This was improvised by Bradley Cooper, who spotted the sous vide bag in between filming takes for the scene, saw an opportunity, and took it. As such, he did actually choke in real life and really did have to be restrained by Matthew Rhys, who was able to get the bag off his head. Cooper described this as a life-changing experience because he and Rhys, who had barely known each other up until that point, had bonded together in a special way.

C-D

• Bill Murray ad-libbed the scene in Caddyshack where he was pretending to win the Masters.
• In Cannibal! The Musical there was 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 the Disney Channel Original Movie Camp Rock, starring The Jonas Brothers, the character of Shane, played by Joe Jonas, falls in a bush while running. According to Demi Lovato, the fall was real.
• In Captain America: The First Avenger, when Steve finishes getting transformed by the super serum, Agent Carter briefly reaches out to touch his abs, before pulling back at the last second. This was not scripted.
• Captain America: Civil War:
  • Tony's "I'm going to sit here, so you move your leg?" was improvised, since Tom Holland forgot his blocking for the scene. It works as Tom Holland acting anxious about Robert Downey Jr. melds in well with Peter acting anxious about Tony Stark. It even gets folded into their dynamic in Spider-Man: Homecoming, with the awkward "That's not a hug, I'm just getting the door" bit.
  • Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan improvised the bit where Bucky asks Sam to adjust his seat. Look closely, and you'll notice that the camera cuts away just as Stan is starting to laugh. The directors opted to keep it both to lean into the Teeth-Clenched Teamwork dynamic between the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it's one of the very few scenes in the film of Bucky smiling.
  • John Kani (as King T'Chaka) speaks Xhosa and taught Chadwick Boseman (as Prince T'Challa / Black Panther) some during filming. The two then performed some of their lines in the language. Ever since, Xhosa has become the language of Wakanda in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• In Captain Marvel, Samuel L. Jackson improvised the joke during the Alien Autopsy where Nick Fury takes a peek at the dead Skrull's private areas.
• The most famous example of all time, in Casablanca:
  Rick: Here's lookin' at you, kid.
  • There's also a scene where several of Rick's French customers sing La Marseillaise to drown out the Nazis and break down crying. Most of these extras were Europeans displaced by the Nazis and the crying was genuine.
• Carry On... Series:
  • Carry On Nurse: In one scene where the Colonel is seen placing bets with Mick, Wilfrid Hyde-White changed the name of the horse from the scripted "Bloody Mary" to "Rambler", which Hyde-White had backed earlier in the day. Harry Locke visibly reacts to the name change but doesn't spoil the take.
  • Carry On Regardless:
  • When doing the wine-tasting scene, Joan Sims was told that she'd be drinking a non-alcoholic juice. Unbeknownst to her, her first mouthful of the juice was actually gin, which made her make a look of surprise.
  • When Kenneth Williams is trying to hail a taxi with the chimp, Fred Griffiths ad-libbed the line, "I'll take you, but not your brother".
  • Carry On Up the Khyber:
    • Peter Butterworth improvised submerging himself in the pool during the harem sequence and his wink to the sky before the famous dinner party scene.
    • Lady Ruff-Diamond's line, "Oh dear! I seem to have got a little plastered" was an ad-lib by Joan Sims which was kept in. Julian Holloway's reaction to the line was genuine.
  • Carry On at Your Convenience: Kenneth Cope improvised the "lovely pair of canteens" line.
  • Carry On Abroad:
    • Brian Osborne improvised his "drinky, drinky" line and caught Sid James off guard when he said it. After that incident, that became Osborne's nickname amongst the crew.
    • David Kernan, Sally Geeson, Jimmy Logan, and Joan Sims quite noticeably fall over as the holidaymakers dash through a collapsing hotel corridor.
• In the film version of The Cat in the Hat, Mike Myers is standing in the hallway amidst the house falling down when one particular beam falls, and Mike jumps and starts looking around because no one told him it was going to happen.
• In The Celebration Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen) breaks off a furious row with his wife to calmly take a drink of water, before continuing to scream at her. This was not planned, Thomas Bo Larsen's throat was getting raw after several takes of shouting and screaming, so he stopped the scene for a quick sip. The director thought it was hilarious and left it in.
• In Eric Liddell's first scene at the running meeting in Chariots of Fire, Ian Charleson (Liddell) was giving a speech - "I am, and will be whilst I breathe..." - when he was suddenly interrupted by a cow mooing offscreen. Instead of stopping, he smiled and finished his line: "...a Scot." The director liked it and left it in.
• Child's Play has a scene near the end where Chucky is in an elevator with an elderly couple. As soon as the couple steps off the elevator, the woman says "Ugly doll." As the elevator ascends, Chucky retorts "Fuck you.", which was ad-libbed by Brad Dourif.
• A Christmas Carol (1938) had a scene of Scrooge telling Bob Cratchit to remove the coals from the fireplace. Cratchit's actor, Gene Lockheart, burns his hand doing so and the take of him nursing his hand is left intact.
• Cinderella (2015):
  • Ella dancing while singing "Lavender's Blue" in the attic was improvised by Lily James.
  • Sophie McShera and Holliday Granger improvised their lines on set for the stepsisters' first scene.
• In Citizen Kane, Joseph Cotten mispronounced the word "criticism" and quickly corrected himself, due to his exhaustion from 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, Orson Welles 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.
• Climax: Outside of the basic concept, the whole film was improvised by director Gaspar Noe and the cast, which is made up entirely of professional dancers, only two of which had any prior acting experience.
• A Clockwork Orange:
  • 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.
  • The scene in which Alex "pops" his mouth open for the Minister of the Interior to feed him is entirely improvised. Kubrick got incredibly bored filming the scene, so McDowell started fooling around to get everyone's attention focused.
• 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 actually didn't know how to pronounce "Haitians". The director liked it so much that she told the crew not to correct Silverstone.
• At the beginning of the 1965 French film Le Corniaud (The Sucker), the Citroën 2CV driven by Bourvil's character is hit by Louis de Funès's Rolls Royce, which causes it to fall into pieces à la Blues Brothers. Both drivers then proceed to have an argument over the wreckage, during which Bourvil threw the ad-libbed line "Maintenant, elle va marcher beaucoup moins bien, forcément!" ("Now, it will run a lot less well, naturally!"). De Funès had to lower his head to hide his snicker at the unexpected reply in order to not ruin the shot. (Which they couldn't afford, as they had only one self-destructing car available...)
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • The Dark Knight: Heath Ledger took this trope and ran away with it during his time as The Joker.
    • The Joker clapping sarcastically with everyone while in his cell when Gordon was promoted to Commissioner was an improvisation. Christopher Nolan immediately told the camera crew to keep filming.
    • Ledger ever-so-slightly modified the line where Joker disparages Lau's plan to run to Hong Kong. The script said "As for Lau's so-called plan", which was changed to "As for the television's so-called plan". The tiny change adds a little humour to the line and dehumanises Lau, which fits well with Joker's overall attitude towards people.
    • It was claimed that the scene outside the hospital where Joker's bombs take longer than expected to explode was the result of the bombs failing to go off on set. However, the behind-the-scenes of that scene shows the explosions did go off how they were meant to, but Heath Ledger wasn't informed that the explosions were going to stop. He was supposed to get in the bus during this phase and drive away, at which point the hospital would collapse, but he reacted to the scene in character and it was kept in. In other words, it is still an example, but not in the way everyone thinks it is.
    • A lot of the Joker's antics were thrown in. His lip licking was because Ledger found the scar make-up uncomfortable, and him accidentally firing his gun and falling when stumbling from the truck was when Ledger accidentally hit the trigger after almost losing his grip on the weapon. Even little things like eating the hors d'oeuvre at the fundraiser were unscripted.
    • During the scene when the Joker arrives at the fundraiser, he steps out of the elevator and into the room, past Alfred. Michael Caine (playing Alfred) had a line at that point. This was his first time seeing Heath Ledger in costume as the Joker, and he was so unsettled that he forgot his line and Ledger moved on as though nothing had happened. Nolan liked it enough that he didn't bother with a reshoot.
  • The Dark Knight Rises: Tom Hardy improvised the line, "What a lovely, lovely voice," which Bane says while listening to the boy singing the national anthem at the football stadium.
• Das Boot: A literal example. To simulate the storm scenes, a set was built of the conning tower's observation platform and huge jets of water were projected at the actors at realistic pressures. While filming one of these scenes, Jan Fedder (Pilgrim) lost his footing and was nearly swept off the set. Bernd Tauber (Kriechbaum) noticed he was suddenly missing, and without breaking character called attention to him by shouting "Mann-über-Bord!" ("Man overboard!") before helping him to the hatch. Director Wolfgang Petersen was impressed and wanted to do another take, before realizing that the accident was real and Fedder had broken a couple of ribs against the deck rail. His scenes had to be partially re-written so that he spent a portion of the voyage in bed afterwards.
• Many, many, many, scenes of Date Night are all improvised and ad-libbed.
• In the 2004 Dawn of the Dead (2004) 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 the brakes and barely avoid hitting it. Everyone agreed that it added a great touch to the apocalyptic feel of the sequence.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Man of Steel: In the soundtrack piece "Oil Rig", at about fifteen seconds in, you can faintly hear a young voice shout "Uh-oh!" That's Zack Snyder's daughter, whom he brought in to watch the recording session. It got picked up by the microphones, and was subsequently put into the final mix. And said "Uh-oh" can also be heard during the WB logo at the very end of the credits.
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:
    • Batman's "Oh shit" moment when he sees Doomsday charging his lasers was improvised by Ben Affleck. He decided to throw in the line because it was funny and unexpected, especially coming from a character like Batman, as well as being an accidental Call-Back to Man of Steel.
    • Wonder Woman's Grin of Audacity during the battle against Doomsday was ad-libbed by Gal Gadot as she felt it was something that Wonder Woman would do when faced with a strong opponent.
  • Justice League (2017): Aquaman shaking his hair like a surfer after riding a Parademon through a building was intended as a joke by Momoa, the "shampoo commercial" take. He was amazed they went with it.
  • SHAZAM! (2019):
    • The "Detective Moron" and "You're dead" bits were improvised by Zachary Levi.
    • A shot during the mall scene has a group of shoppers milling about the background in spite of all the chaos happening around them. Sandberg revealed that they were crew members they forgot to and couldn't remove due to deadlines so he and the post-production crew just added shopping bags to turn them into extras.
  • Birds of Prey (2020):
    • Ella Jay Basco drew all the art on Cassandra's cast herself.
    • Margot Robbie and director Cathy Yan both came up with the idea for Harley to shoplift a fanny pack during the chase scene independent of each other (the pack in question was a real product being sold at one of the stalls on location).
    • Steven Williams added: "Miss Montoya, we do have a dress code" at the end of Erickson and Renee's meeting.
    • Ewan McGregor improvised Roman's Villainous Breakdown when he learns Cassandra has the diamond.
    • Zsazs's monologue as he threatens a tranq-ed Harley was almost all improv.
    • Most of the taco breakfast at the end was improvised by the actors, and Helena laughing at Harley stealing Dinah's car was a last minute addition.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League:
    • It turned out that the "We live in a society..." line from the second trailer wasn't in the script, Jared Leto came up with it, according to Zack Snyder. It doesn't appear in the film proper, although Snyder released the take of the line on Vero.
    • According to this article, the special effects team was given a lot of leeway during certain fight scenes, with people coming up with new ideas, and then asking Snyder if they could do so. In particular, Darkseid's initial invasion^note As noted in the article, even before the scene was cut down for the 2017 version, it still wasn't as long, elaborate and detailed as it ended up being here was essentially a blank canvas where the animators could put Darkseid and the defenders of earth in all kinds of scenarios, as long as the characters eventually did what the plot needed. Likewise, Steppenwolf losing one of his horns was decided upon because the crew wanted his head to roll under Darkseid's foot, which wouldn't really work if he still had both of them - and then to add insult to injury, then it was decided that if one horn was going to go, they may as well cut the other off too.
      Snyder: I always say, 'Show me something I didn't think of', and that’s what happened here. For me, it just helped make the movie bigger.
  • The Suicide Squad: Peacemaker saying tighty-whities is racist and his jerk-off motion towards Bloodsport at the rebel's camp was improvised by John Cena.
  • The Flash (2023): Michael Keaton revealed that he improvised the moment where Bruce uttered "You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts."
• Deadpool:
  • A lot of the jokes. The biggest one has to be when Ryan Reynolds makes a joke about how Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are the only two X-Men in the film due to their limited budget.
    Deadpool: You know it's funny how I only see the two of you here. It's like the studio couldn't afford any more X-Men.
  • The opening credits were a placeholder by the previsualization team. The crew found them funny/fitting and kept them.
• 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.
• One of the crashes staged for Death Race unexpectedly sent the stunt car much higher than intended, so it hung up on a billboard rather than smashing into the wall below. The resulting footage looked so badass that the filmmakers went back and equipped one of the other racers' vehicles with a rocket launcher suitable for blowing rival drivers sky-high, purely so they could justify using the clip.
• In the 2006 movie Déjà Vu (2006), 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.
• The famous "squeal like a pig" quote from Deliverance was not present in the source novel or the original script. It was an ad-lib cooked up by the actors that the director liked since it didn't contain any of the foul language of the original line, meaning the line wouldn't have to be cut or edited for TV.
• The Descent: A crew member's face was accidentally caught on camera in one scene. Rather than reshooting the scene or removing him, his face was whitened to make him look like a hiding Crawler.
• The Devil Wears Prada: Emily's line to Andrea about how she keeps hearing this (flaps fingers and thumb) when she needs to be hearing this (closed hand) was something Emily Blunt overheard a mother saying to her daughter in a supermarket early in the production and added to her dialogue.
• Die Hard
  • Alan Rickman plays Big Bad terrorist Hans Gruber. When he can't get information from a character, he shoots him 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 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.
  • Al Leong improvised the bit where he takes a candy bar from the concession stand before fighting the SWAT team, as he felt the scene could use some comic relief.
• French-Canadian comedy Ding et Dong: Le Film has the two dim as lightbulbs protagonists hired as stuntmen for a driving sequence in a movie being filmed. They barely understand enough English to write down the English-speaking director's directions, and turn the wrong way right at the start, leaving the stunt course and driving like maniacs in real traffic. When they're finally stopped, the character in the passenger seat looks dizzy and asks "Pis, c'etais-tu correct?" ("So, was that good?") before being arrested by the police. The actor who played the role stated that he had a completely different line to say, but the stunt drive he had just gone through (the driver was a real stuntman) had left him so shaken that he blurted out that line to the real movie director, forgetting that the cameras were still rolling. They loved that take so much that it was used in the final movie. See it here.
• 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.
• District 9: Many, if not all of Wikus' lines are improvised. When you consider how beautifully Sharlto Copley acts his part, this becomes really impressive food for thought.
• In Django Unchained, Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) cutting himself before smearing blood on Broomhilda's face was ad-libbed. DiCaprio actually injured his hand while smacking it on the table (and the glass). This is also why nobody reacts to Candie's hand dripping blood, but are all giving each other "are we supposed to pretend we don't notice that?" side-eyes. It's also why Broomhilda's actress looks so mortified. However, the blood added even more tension to an already tense scene, and so they left it in, necessitating DiCaprio's character wearing a bandage over his hand for the rest of his time in the movie. Reportedly, after the take was over, DiCaprio got a standing ovation from the cast and crew.
• The scene in Doctor Strange (2016) where Christine is scared by a mop falling over after being exposed to all of Dr. Strange's new magic wasn't planned. Rachel McAdams was just supposed to walk out of frame dumbfounded, but the mop just happened to fall over, scaring her.
• Doctor Strangelove:
  • General Turgidson's tumble in the War Room was unscripted and accidental.
  • 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. Highly uncharacteristically for Stanley Kubrick, who was known to be an extreme perfectionist, who in some cases demand would several hundred takes of a scene to get it just right, wholeheartedly embraced Sellers' improvisations and made sure to keep several cameras on him at all times during filming. (It probably helps that, in his own way, Sellers was almost as much of a perfectionist as Kubrick—it's just that he was more willing to go off-script than Kubrick.)
  • One notable (and possibly apocryphal) example of Sellers' on-set ad-libbing was with the famous "Mein Führer, I can walk!" moment. Supposedly, Sellers got so caught up in the emotion of his role as the titular doctor that he briefly forgot that Strangelove was supposed to be handicapped; once he realized his mistake, Sellers hastily shouted the line to save face.
• 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: "Wyoming."
• Down Periscope:
  • Supposedly, the scene where Lt. Emily Lake ( a Naval experiment for having women on submarines) confronts her commander regarding a sub maneuver that he'd pulled to help her regain her confidence. When leaving, the part where Lauren Holly 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.
  • Also supposedly, many of Nitro's lines were ad-libbed. The character, portrayed by Toby Huss, was only supposed to have a couple of lines at the beginning of the film.
• Dracula: Dead and Loving It had the infamous "Staking Lucy" scene, in which Steven Weber (as Jonathan Harker) gets covered in blood from hitting the stake once into her heart. Brooks (as Van Helsing) - who'd hidden behind a nearby pillar) explains that she'd just eaten before exclaiming that she'd moved. Harker hits her again, only to get covered in another geyser of blood. When Van Helsing insists that she's Not Quite Dead...
  Harker: She's dead enough.
• The scene in The Dreamers where Isabelle's hair catches fire happened unplanned. Eva Green was supposed to lean forward and kiss Matthew goodnight but accidentally caught her hair on fire on the candle on the table. She didn't let it worry her and acted so natural that Bernardo Bertolucci decided to leave it in as he felt it demonstrated perfectly the cross over in the film that things are about to get a bit crazy!
• The "Most Annoying Sound" scene in Dumb and Dumber was unscripted (you can tell because it's clear Jeff Daniels is about to crack up). Jim Carrey also made up the "We went to the moon!" line.

E-H

• 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.
• In Edge of Tomorrow, the kiss Rita gives Cage at the end was not in the script. Emily Blunt said afterwards, "It just felt right. It felt right and I did it."
• At the end of El Dorado, 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.
• In Enter the Dragon in the scene where O'Hara (Robert Wall) is beaten by Lee, Bruce Lee delivers a flying kick to O'Hara. Wall and Lee had decided that Lee should deliver a real flying kick to add authenticity to the scene, as Wall knew how to take the hit. They had not planned for Wall to go flying back into the extras, knocking them all over and actually breaking one's arm.
• An In-Universe example occurred in the Even Stevens movie: In the film's beginning, during Ren's valedictorian speech, Louis and Beans (after tricking Donny into letting them go backstage) have a beach ball-shaped device bounce around the podium, with Tugnut (who was asleep during the speech) being ordered by Weskler into grabbing the ball and restoring order. Louis intended for the ball, when exploding, to release confetti. However, Beans (who presumably was the one who actually created the ball) misheard his instructions and said that he thought Louis said "spaghetti", right after the ball detonates and sprays the coach with the brunt of spaghetti and meatballs. Louis then said to Beans that his mishearing things made the prank even better.
• Fast & Furious 6 has a scene where Roman sees Hobbs and tries to tease him by calling out "Hey, Mia, you better hide your baby oil." Hobb's actor, Dwayne Johnson, improvised the retort "And you better hide that big-ass forehead", which made Ludacris do a Spit Take and ended up making it into the final movie.
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off has actress Edie McClurg's famous line, "They think he's a 'righteous dude.'" This was ad-libbed.
• In A Field in England, the script called for Whitehead to have a Thousand-Yard Stare after being tortured, but his actor Reece Shearsmith decided on the spot to go for The Unsmile instead. Director Ben Wheatley was so impressed with the result that he kept it in the film.
• 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.
• From a scene between John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis at the end of 1997's Spiritual Successor to A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures (bonus points for Curtis' very visibly suppressed laughter immediately afterwards):
  Rollo Lee: Oh, Wanda...!
  Willa Weston: Willa.
  Rollo Lee: —Willa...!
• While filming A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood discovered that the intense Spanish sun and his sensitive eyes did not agree very well. And as the role didn't exactly allow him to wear shades and the hat only helped so much, his solution was to squint as much as possible during filming. Resulting in his now-iconic Clint Squint look.
• Fight Club:
  • When The Narrator exits from the Tyler Durden-controlled police station, 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 was directed at the last minute to actually hit Pitt in the ear, resulting in the "Ah, God! Fuck! Why the ear, man?!" line.
  • The scene with Tyler and the Narrator hitting golf balls into the trainyard had nothing to do with the original script. The two of them were drunkenly aiming golf balls to hit the catering trucks; Fincher decided to film it and put it in.
• 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 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 Sylvester Stallone broke three ribs doing the stunt.
• Kathryn Newton revealed much of the script for Freaky lacked detail exactly so the actors could improvise - for instance, she decided to have the Butcher eating breakfast with his hands and no manners.
• In The French Connection, while tailing Sal, the actor playing Sal got too far ahead of the chase car, which was then caught in a traffic jam coming off the Brooklyn Bridge. There's also the car, a '67 Torino, Popeye crashes into. It was actually just some guy on his way to work, driving on a street that was missed when closing to traffic. The production crew paid for the repairs to his car.
• 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.
  • When Gerard and Newman 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.
• Full Metal Jacket, R. Lee Ermey, as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, pulled the "reach-around" line when insulting a recruit from Texas, out of his head. Stanley Kubrick stopped the filming to ask Ermey what that meant. After it was explained, Kubrick simply said to go with it. It helped that Ermey really was a Drill Instructor during Vietnam. During Hartman's initial tirade against the recruits, Hartman punching Joker in the stomach wasn't originally in the script. Ermey later said in an interview that it was just what he would do in response to what Joker did (speaking without being spoken to) and he wanted it to feel authentic. So when Joker is bent over gasping for air, he isn't acting. Other Hartman 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.
• In the 2005 remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, the scene where Dick and Jane rob and bedevil a mean old bank executive while was originally built around a Brick Joke with the electric shock collar they put on him, but then Jim Carrey took the voice distorter from their disguise and ran with it.
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Towards the end of "Ain't There Anyone Here For Love?" one of the dancers leaping over Jane Russell accidentally knocked her into the swimming pool. The director decided to leave it in as it was funnier than having her just stand on the side of the pool for the rest of the song.
• 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 liked it so much, he added it to the film. (From the making-of featurette on the DVD.)
• Gettysburg:
  • General Pickett remains cheerful about the assault on the center of the Union line until he is thrown from his horse. The fall jars him into reality and he starts saying "What's happening to my boys?!", realizing that they're being slaughtered. This bit of symbolism happened because Stephen Lang actually did fall off the horse, but remained in character.
  • Supposedly, the scene where cheering Confederate troops mob General Lee happened because the reenactors liked Martin Sheen so much they showed their appreciation this way, and Ronald Maxwell filmed it. However, a similar scene does happen in the book, so it may be apocryphal.
• In Ghostbusters:
  • Bill Murray reportedly ad-libbed at least some of his lines. The degree varies between different accounts from practically everything he said to just a couple of lines. One of the most notable is him mentioning the time Egon tried to trepan himself - especially since Ramis went with it seamlessly.
  • 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.
  • During the scene where Dana watches the Ghostbusters' cheesy no-budget commercial, watch how Egon steps forward, delivers his line, and awkwardly steps backward while glancing down to make sure he's on his mark. This was a genuine gaffe by Harold Ramis, and he and Ivan Reitman decided to keep it in because it showed how awkward the inexperienced Ghostbusters were in front of the camera.
  • Walter Peck's fake laugh after Venkman tells him what "the magic word" is was William Atherton trying his best to keep from laughing for real. He had asked Ivan Reitman to not allow any ad-libbing during his scenes: since he was not a comic actor, he wouldn't be able to improvise worth a damn. (He would later say that his character was so disliked because he was the only one who didn't know he was in a comedy.) Bill Murray couldn't help improvising the "magic word" line and Atheron did his best to play along.
  • In the library, the bookshelf falling down behind the trio wasn't scripted; it was an accident caused by moving crew members. But Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd stayed in-character and improvised their reactions, so it was left in the movie as part of the freak poltergeist activity of the scene.
  • While shooting the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man's rampage through NYC, the actor playing the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man accidentally stepped on the model of the church next to the apartment building, and they didn't have the time or money to redo the shot. So, afterwards, while shooting the Ghostbusters' reactions, they had Bill Murray shout "Nobody steps on a church in my town!".
• 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.
• Ripcord's helmet flashing holographic pictures of Scarlett in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Originally, he was meant to be responding to the number of virtual controls showing up in the HUD, but when it got to actually including the display in the visual effects department, they thought it'd be more amusing if it had her face popping up.
• Glass Onion:
  • Ethan Hawke's cameo as the "Efficient Man" who helps the Disruptors and Blanc in boarding Miles' ferry came about when Hawke happened to visit the set of this film while shooting Moon Knight in Budapest. He quickly filmed his scene and then left shortly afterward.
  • During the climax, Peg breaks a glass wheel then looks shocked, as she gapes directly into the camera. Jessica Henwick just supposed to practice throwing the wheel, as there was only one prop, but she accidentally dropped it for real. Fortunately the camera was already rolling and caught the take.
  • Rian Johnson revealed that if a reproduction of a famous painting is commissioned for and used during a film shoot, it's required by law to film oneself burning it to a cinder after the shoot so that the reproduction has no chance of entering the counterfeit art black market. This means that the film team didn't have to use CGI to set the Mona Lisa on fire — they could simply burn the reproduction, which is what is seen in the finished film.
• The Godfather:
  • The Right-Hand Cat in the opening scene was not in the script. It was just some random stray cat that Marlon Brando had befriended and argued with Coppola into letting him work into the scene. And it works.
  • 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 line where he congratulates Don Corleone on his daughter's wedding because he was so nervous about meeting him. Coppola liked it (seeing a huge imposing guy like Brasi completely humbled and nervous in front of Corleone says a lot more about the latter's reputation than dialogue ever could), and inserted a scene earlier in the film, where Brasi is rehearsing his congratulations.
    Brasi: 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 never-ending loyalty.
  • Clemenza's now-famous "Leave the gun. [beat] Take the cannoli" line was a half-improvisation by Richard Castellano. The gun was in the script; the cannoli was not.
• Godzilla:
  • The film Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) has a rather famous one. There is a famous shot of Godzilla falling into the Nagoya Castle and destroying it. This was actually an accident; in the filming of the scene, suit actor Haruo Nakajima, actually fell and the suit's head slammed hard into the castle, loosening the teeth and causing the upper lip on the Godzilla suit in this film to have a slight wobble. Special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya loved this so much that he kept it in the film and left the suit as is.
  • Another incident happened when the suit was struck by pyrotechnics while Haruo Nakajima was still inside. The suit caught fire, but Nakajima, protected by the thick suit, wasn't aware that it was burning and kept acting out the scene regardless. This shot, in which Godzilla's head and neck are engulfed in flames, was also kept in the final product.
  • 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 first 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 real.
  • Dr. Serizawa's final words in Godzilla: King of the Monsters ("Goodbye, old friend")^note Spoken to Godzilla as Serizawa commits a Heroic Sacrifice to save Godzilla's life so that the latter can save the world from King Ghidorah were scripted in English, but Ken Watanabe said it in Japanese instead at the table, and Michael Dougherty was so impressed that he immediately decided to incorporate this.
• In the opening number of Gold Diggers of 1933, Ginger Rogers sings "We're in the Money". In between takes, the director heard Ginger joking around by 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.
• During the chase sequence in 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. Also, the derailed train at the very start of the film was a real one, which director H.B. Halicki happened to come across, so he incorporated it into an Establishing Character Moment scene.
• Several of Tuco's lines in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly were ad-libbed by Eli Wallach. Most notably the famous scene where Tuco shoots dead an assassin who monologues to him upon getting the drop on him while he's taking a bath, then says "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."
• In The Great Escape during the Fourth of July scene, Goff's line "No taxation without representation" was an ad-lib, causing Steve McQueen (actor) to do a Double Take.
• Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever: Aubrey Plaza, the voice of Grumpy Cat, said that when she was brought in to record, most of Grumpy's dialogue wasn't written or finalized yet, and she was asked to just make up her own lines for Grumpy. Plaza spent most of the recording sessions watching the live action footage and riffing on whatever action she saw. She even went far as saying the recording sessions were "like my own MST3K."
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Three times by Chris Pratt.
  • According to James Gunn, Peter flipping off the Nova Corps came from Chris Pratt goofing around on set.
  • The part where Peter drops the orb during the Collector scene was also not scripted. According to the commentary, Chris Pratt accidentally dropped the orb during filming but remained in character, so it was left in.
  • As was his quip, "If I had a blacklight, this place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting."
  • Outside of Pratt, Sean Gunn (the on-set actor for Rocket Raccoon) came up with the line, "Bunch of jackasses, standing in a circle."
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The shot of David Hasselhoff dramatically narrating the final lines of "Guardians Inferno" during the end credits was a last-minute decision by James Gunn, who shot the footage with his phone and rushed to the studio worried that the final cut had already gone out for distribution. Luckily, there was still time to make the addition.
  In these times of hardship, just remember: We. Are. Groot.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3:
  • The part where Quill tells Nebula he never noticed how black her eyes were was improv by Chris Pratt. James Gunn then came with her answer, "They were replaced by my father as a method of torture." To which Chris Pratt improvised, "He... he picked... a pretty set."
  • Star-Lord's F-bomb to Nebula was not in the original script. Instead, James Gunn told Chris Pratt to say the word on set. The take was considered funny enough to be kept in the film.
• Halloween Safety from 1977 contains a rare instance of this in a documentary/safety film for schoolchildren. During the shot of the mother pinning the black skirt on her daughter's witch costume shorter, a Siamese cat randomly wanders into the shot and just nonchalantly walks by. Obviously the safety film had a very low budget and they could not afford to reshoot the scene without the cat, so they left it in.
• Jessica Rothe said she improvised a few of Tree's lines in Happy Death Day, most notably "Who takes their first date to Subway? It's not like you have a foot-long."
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
    • When Draco Malfoy asks Harry, who is using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate Goyle, why he is wearing glasses (as Harry had forgotten to take them off), Harry replies that he has been reading. The script originally only had Malfoy stare him down skeptically. Tom Felton decided to add the line "I didn't know you could read."
    • Crabbe's actor, Jamie Waylett, didn't realize his character wasn't supposed to participate in the Slow Clap at the end when the students are applauding Hagrid's return, so he stood up and was pulled down again by Tom Felton, without breaking character.
    • 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 Radcliffe and sneered, saying, "Let us hope that Mr. Potter will always be around to save the day." Daniel stayed in character responding, "Don't worry. I will be." Moments later, Lucius tries to curse Harry, but is only able to utter, "Avada-" before getting cut short by Dobby. The script didn't mention any specific spell so Issacs just said the first thing that came to mind, leading a few fans to wonder how Lucius thought he could get away with using an Unforgiveable Curse on Harry outside of Dumbledore's office.
    • In an interview, Isaacs revealed that a scene where he kicks Dobby and then knocks him down with his cane, was also ad-libbed by him. Chris Columbus first thought he had tripped, but after hearing the explanation, he was delighted.
  • 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 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Trio cracks up at the end of the scene when Harry tells Ron and Hermione about his kiss with Cho Chang. This was an instance of Corpsing, which David Yates left in because he thought it hit the right tone.
  • Voldemort's meme-tacular hug of Draco in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 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.
• In The Hateful Eight, there's a scene in which Kurt Russell takes a guitar that Jennifer Jason Leigh had been playing and smashes it against a wall, destroying it. The guitar Leigh had been playing in the scene was a genuine antique guitar that was over a century old, that had been lent to the production. The antique guitar was supposed to be swapped out for a breakable prop before Russell smashed it. Russell, apparently having not been informed of this, grabbed the antique from Leigh's hands and smashed it. Leigh's shocked "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" during the scene is genuine, as can be seen by how she turns to the film crew before the scene cuts.
• Heat has the line "cause she's got a... GREAT ASS! And you got your head... ALL THE WAY UP IT!". Al Pacino made that up on the spot, and given the hammy delivery, Hank Azaria's look of exasperated shock was genuine.
• Help!: Part of the "Ticket to Ride" sequence, which the directors considered beautiful, was marred by the presence of telegraph poles in the background. Attempts at removing them failed...and then someone had the idea of superimposing musical notes over the wires in time with "I think I'm going to be sad..."
• In High Road to China, Tom Selleck actually slaps Bess Armstrong hard enough to knock her to the ground in a take for the scene in which their characters first arrive in Afghanistan. This was the take used in the film.
• There's a scene in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug where the company is running away from fearsome roars of the giant bear Beorn, and Bombur, the obese dwarf who is by far the heaviest of the bunch, is outrunning everyone else, which draws shocked looks from the other dwarves as he runs right past them. This was not in the script, and the other actors were genuinely surprised that Bombur's actor could move that quickly in his fat suit.
• In Hobbs & Shaw, the villain, played by Idris Elba, was initially supposed to taunt the heroes by referring to himself as "black James Bond". Elba, who had personal ambitions of actually being James Bond, refused, and instead called himself "black Superman". This line ended up in the trailers, along with a comeback where Hobbs refers to himself as kryptonite.
• Kate's now-iconic shouting of "Kevin!" in Home Alone was unscripted. It was an attempt by Catherine O'Hara, to salvage the take after she forgot her lines. Not only was the take used, but shouting a child's name became a staple of the entire Home Alone film series.
• 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. Edgar Wright decided to leave the outtake in, and 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 Nick Frost. Similarly, the first scene where Skinner gets introduced (when the two are jogging) was going to be reshot, because Dalton kept unintentionally pushing Simon Pegg out of frame. They decided to keep it in, as they felt it fit Skinner's character.
• 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.
• In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, while trying to find something to wear to The Who-bilation, the Grinch does the Tablecloth Yank in order to make what he claims is a kilt. The yank was intended to fail, but Jim Carrey successfully pulled it off. He then ran back and knocked over everything, table included.
• The Hunger Games:
  • The Hunger Games:
    • A unique variant of "throw it in" occurred during production. Originally, President Snow was only planned as a cameo, in keeping with the books in which Snow doesn't become a major character until later. However, Donald Sutherland sent director Gary Ross a very detailed letter in which the veteran actor discussed Snow's frame of mind and his motivations. The letter (which Sutherland reads as a bonus feature on the DVD/Blu-ray release) motivated Ross, who was also one of the film's writers, to craft several additional scenes involving President Snow, giving the character a much greater presence in the film.
    • Peeta joking with Katniss that he'll take the bow when they go hunting was ad-libbed by Josh Hutcherson.
  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: The Precision F-Strike that Johanna Mason shoots off during her interview with Caesar Flickerman was improvised on the spot by Jena Malone. They decided to keep it in because it fit perfectly with the scene and her character, although they ended up having to bleep it out to keep the movie PG-13.
  • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay:
    • Natalie Dormer improvised most of Cressida's directions to the twins and Finnick when his speech is being filmed, citing inspiration from how the film's director did so. She ad-libbed a lot of her other scenes too.
    • Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks ad-libbed Haymitch and Effie's kiss, shocking everyone on set.

I-L

• The final scene from I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang had Paul Muni disappear into the 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.
• 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 Inception, the infamous "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling" line was originally not supposed to include the word "darling". Christopher Nolan liked the improvisation and decided to keep it.
• Towards the end of The Incredible Melting Man, an increasingly decrepit Steve is staggering along when he trips over a curb. The layers of makeup effects and goop to simulate the character's melting made it very difficult for actor Alex Rebar to see, so the trip was accidental, but it was left in anyway.
• Independence Day:
  • The line at the end of Bill Pullman's Rousing Speech was ad-libbed. In fact, the speech was written as a placeholder for Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to work on later. But they were so consumed by filming that they forgot to work on it until Pullman started rehearsing the speech. The reactions by the extras and even the crew caused them to leave the speech as it was.
  • "AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL?!!" was caused by the intense smell of decomposing brine shrimp on location in Utah which no one had warned Will Smith about. Most of the scene was unscripted, in fact. Emmerich said he could have shot a whole movie out of Smith dragging an alien through the desert given how funny he found the result.
  • One scene was cut when Harvey Fierstein ad-libbed a kiss with Jeff Goldblum. It was added back into the Special Edition.
  • It was Robert Loggia's idea for General Grey to be a Marine since his branch wasn't established in the script.
• A example that has become a legendary scene: Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harrison Ford had diarrhea problems and wasn't up to fight him with his whip as originally scripted. This has led to multiple and somewhat conflicting versions of how it plays out.
  • One story says 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 was if he just shot the guy. The crew thought it was hilarious, and changed the scene.
  • Another version holds that not only Ford, but 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 also shot a completed fight scene with the swordsman. Both versions were considered during the editing process, 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, Henry Jones Sr. saying he suspected Elsa because "She talks in her sleep" was improvised by Sean Connery.
• During the climax of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of the extras missed his cue when chasing Donald Sutherland and was engulfed in a massive explosion that Sutherland himself barely evaded, suffering severe burns. This shot was kept in the film.
• The "Put on a phat beat for me to beat my buddy's ass to." line in the Iron Man 2 party scene. It's pretty obvious (as Robert Downey Jr. immediately cracks up on camera), but also perfectly in character, as Tony Stark is supposed to be drunk.
• 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!" Mosfilm had troubles with running hot water, so when it was finally turned on, Yury Yakovlev (Ippolit's actor) reacted to that without breaking character. The director loved the unintentional ad-lib and kept it.
  • Another ad-lib by Yakovlev in the same film was "Such muck, such vile muck, this fish galantine of yours!". The fish galantine was, in fact, not very good, and Yakovlev reacted accordingly — again while staying in character.
• During the infamous rape scene in Irréversible, an assistant director wandered into the shot because he didn't realize they were filming, and quickly backed out again. Director Gaspar Noe liked the very horrifying example of Bystander Syndrome it unintentionally provided, so he left it in.
• It's a Wonderful Knife: Buck's line about bringing a canine unit in, not because it would help catch the killer but just for vibes actually was something his actor Sean Depner ad-libbed, Jess McLeod revealed in an interview on the film.
• It's a Wonderful Life:
  • 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 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 not be so much "Throw It In" as much as "Throw It Out".
  • 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 Jack Reacher, the car Jack is driving stalls but he is able to restart it in time to continue his escape. That was unscripted (and given Tom Cruise really did his stunt driving, the surprised and "fuck yeah" looks are genuine).
• James Bond:
  • Live and Let Die: During the shooting of the boat chase, a boat that Mr. Big's mook is piloting didn't make the jump over the road and smashed through a police car — it was quite in line with the comic tone running throughout the movie.
  • The Spy Who Loved Me.
    • In the scene where Major Amasova couldn't drive stick, Barbara Bach actually couldn't drive stick. Roger Moore's snarky responses were unscripted.
    • For the climactic showdown between Bond and Stromberg, it was originally intended that Roger Moore would stand behind the dining room chair as it was shot from under the table. However, Moore decided at the last minute that it would be more dramatic if he was sitting in the chair, which meant that he faced serious injury if the shot went wrong.
  • The World Is Not Enough:
    • In the scene where Renard is told by Bond that Elektra is dead, Robert Carlyle's makeup 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 makeup for tears, for such is how it comes across.
    • Pierce Brosnan ad-libbed the bit where he adjusts his tie during the boat chase at the beginning of the movie.
  • Casino Royale has the iconic scene of Daniel Craig walking out of the water showing off his well-muscled physique as well as doubling as a Shout-Out to the very first Bond film Dr. No with Honey Rider having a similar scene. In reality, the shot was supposed to be of Craig swimming to shore. However, he hit a sandbar, forcing him to stand up. The resulting shot was too good not to include and cemented Craig's status as a Mr. Fanservice as well as winning over some skeptical fans.
• Jaws
  • "You're gonna need a bigger boat," which was ad-libbed by Roy Scheider (Chief Martin Brody). Both the book's author and the screenwriter said that they'd have killed to write a line that good.
  • 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 re-shot 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.
  • Before setting off, Quint recites, "Here lies the body of Mary Lee, died at the age of 103. For fifteen years, she kept her virginity. Not a bad record for this vicinity." This was added by Robert Shaw. When asked who wrote it, he replied that he found it on a tombstone in Ireland.
• In John Carpenter's Vampires, John Carpenter got along with James Woods, a notoriously hard-to-work-with actor, by allowing him 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.
• Johnny English Strikes Again: In the commentary, director David Kerr revealed that when Volta used all the ammo in his specialised gun towards a knight armor-clad Johnny (Rowan Atkinson), followed by Volta throwing the gun as a projectile, the latter improvised the following quip: "Don't worry, Bough! He's only got six bullets in that thing! And of course, the thing itself.".
• While programming the stampede in Jumanji, one rhino had too many frames and lagged behind. The effect crew thought it was hilarious and convinced the director to keep "Sneezy" that way.
• Jerry O'Connell beatboxing in Kangaroo Jack. According to the DVD commentary, Jerry Bruckheimer heard O'Connell and Anthony Anderson beatboxing on set and asked O'Connell if he could do that "spit-rap thing" in the movie. Extra funny because people assume it isn't really O'Connell doing it in the movie since both the actor and character are pretty white.
• Jurassic Park:
  • The shot of waves breaking over a pier in the storm is actual footage of Hurricane Iniki making landfall in Hawaii that Spielberg filmed outside the crew's hotel.
  • While the effects artists filmed themselves for reference to animate the Gallimimus run, during the part where they jump over a fallen tree, one crashed to the ground. So one of the dinos falls in the scene as well.
  • During filming of the scene of Lex falling through the ceiling while fleeing a raptor, the stunt woman accidentally looked up at the camera for a split-second. A Digital Head Swap was done to replace her face with that of Ariana Richards.
  • When Gennaro runs into the bathroom, and backs up and lands on the toilet, Martin Ferraro actually did land on the toilet, which Spielberg kept in due to its authenticity.
• In Kick-Ass, the entire bazooka subplot was improvised over the course of filming.
• In Kingdom of Heaven, there's a moment during the final battle where you can see a siege tower on fire. This wasn't scripted or planned. An improperly extinguished fire effect ignited one of the tower models, and a camera just happened to catch a shot of the model as it went up in flames. Ridley Scott liked the image and it fit the context of the scene, so the footage of the burning model ended up in the final cut.
• 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, Quentin Tarantino liked it, possibly due to its unintentional shades of Blade Runner.
• A Knight's Tale:
  • The film begins with a shot of a jouster being demolished by his opponent and knocked off his horse. This wasn't a planned shot. It was an on-set accident that knocked one of Heath Ledger's stuntmen unconscious.
  • 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. Mark Addy started cheering which prompted the crowd into action. The crew went back and filmed a close-up of Addy starting the cheer so they could use the entire moment.
  • In one shot where in response to how to beat William, Adhemar's page says, "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. The director thought the shot looked cool and added a sound effect to highlight the zoom-in.
  • Alan Tudyk was cast as Wat because he improvised the "entrails will become your extrails" line in his audition, the director liked it so much he figured he had to hire Alan if he wanted to use the line.
• Knives Out:
  • Richard handing his dish to Marta while he asks for her input on the family's conversation about immigration was an improvisation by Don Johnson.
  • Rian Johnson noted in an interview that Michael Shannon made several funny improvs, among them "I will not eat one iota of shit!" and "Maybe Harlan left you a cold glass of milk in his will, asshole."
  • When the entire Thrombey family are yelling at Ana de Armas' character, angry that she was named the sole inheritor of their late patriarch's estate, Jaeden Martell reportedly improvised the following insult: "You had sex with my grandpa, you dirty anchor-baby!". It was initially lost in the chaos of the scene, but Michael Shannon happened to hear it and informed Rian Johnson, who reshot Martell's line in closeup so that it would be heard.
  • As noted in the main page entries for Brick Joke and Book Ends, the final shot of the film is Marta looking down on the Thrombeys while sipping from Harlan's mug, with only the words "My House" fully visible, implying that she'll be keeping the whole inheritance for herself. Rian Johnson revealed in an interview that this wasn't entirely intentional.
    Johnson: It’s funny that was—it wasn’t an accident, but it was kind of an accident. A happy accident. I knew I wanted her to like sip tea in the final shot, and I had had separately the idea of "My house, my rules, my coffee," as that first shot in the movie—after that first big dramatic shot of the house, breaking the tension with kind of a goofy modern joke mug. And I was like, "Oh she can have that at the end!" Then when we were doing that close-up, she was up in the balcony and I yelled up, "Sip the tea!’ and she brought it into frame and those words came up and I was just like, "Oh that’s pretty nice."
• 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.
• 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 happened - 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.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • In The Fellowship of the Ring, Ian McKellen accidentally hit his head on the ceiling while entering Bilbo's residence. (Specifically, him accidentally bumping into the chandelier was scripted. His quick turn afterwards, painfully whacking his head on a ceiling rafter, was not.)
  • Lawrence Makaore, the actor playing the leader of the Uruk-Hai hunting party, couldn't see properly with his makeup. During his climactic battle with Aragorn, he kept hitting Viggo Mortensen when he was supposed to miss, so Mortensen hit back, and they ended up actually fighting.
  • In that fight scene, Makaore throws a knife at Mortensen. The script called for him to throw it and miss, but he actually threw it straight at Mortensen, who deflected it with his sword. It was a real knife, meaning that if Mortensen hadn't successfully deflected it, it would've gone straight into his face.
  • 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, in the take that was used, he collapses to his knees, screaming in what looks like fury and grief. It was actually physical pain — Viggo Mortensen broke two toes kicking the helmet, but Mortensen managed to work it into his performance seamlessly.
  • In the scene where Éowyn 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, but the symbolism was so provocative and moving that the shot was kept, and a follow-up scene was filmed showing the banner landing near Aragorn as he rides up to the base of the hill.
  • King Theoden's line "no parent should have to bury their child" was improvised on-set by Bernard Hill, based on a conversation he once had with a mother who lost her child.
  • 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.
  • The special edition extra content describes an instance where they were about to shoot the Elves attacking the Uruk-Hai which were coming through the breach in the deeping wall. The actors playing the Elves were standing across from a large group of stuntmen in Uruk-Hai costumes, who began stomping their feet, beating their weapons against their chests, calling them names, and even making obscene gestures at them, as well as shouting a Maori haka to mess with the Elvish actors. This quickly got them riled up, and they began posturing and drawing imaginary arrows at the Uruk-Hai. 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 The Fellowship of the Ring, as Frodo is sailing away while Sam attempts to chase him down, Sam slips and falls into the river, and does not come back up. This is because Sean Astin had stepped on a particularly sharp rock and cut his foot. They kept it in and had Frodo come back to save Sam from drowning.
• In the climax of The Lost Boys, David sheds a tear after his hand is burned by the sunlight, presumably due to the pain. In reality, the heavy vampire contact lenses were just making Kiefer Sutherland's eyes water, but it looked really good so it was left in.
• 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 for Stylistic Suck, and on account of the Rule of Funny.

M-P

• In Mad Max 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 a padded area. The stunt went wrong, and 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. Plus, of course, the stuntman was in no state to try it again.
• As noted in several places (including Paul McCartney's director's commentary), Magical Mystery Tour is essentially Throw It In: The Movie.
• In the original 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, the scene where Major Marco overrides Sgt. Shaw's brainwashing by showing him an entire deck of queens of diamonds has Major Marco slightly out of focus. 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 Martian, NASA employee Rich Purnell (Donald Glover) slips and falls after being roused from sleep, prompting his boss to ask, "Are you all right?" Both the fall and the concern were unscripted. Both actors stayed in character, and director Ridley Scott kept the take.
• Mary Poppins:
  • In the scene where Mary Poppins is pouring the children's medicine, Jane lets out a shriek when she notices the medicine changed color, interrupting Michael's protesting. The scream was not in the script as her actress, Karen Dotrice, genuinely was surprised.
  • Another example: When Glynis Johns, who played Mrs. Banks, was invited to the studio, she assumed she was there to take the role of Mary. Walt Disney himself rapidly improvised and explained, while The Sherman Brothers were in earshot, that Johns would instead be Mrs. Banks, who had an absolutely amazing song that they were waiting to unveil to her after lunch. Disney escorted Johns to another area of the studio, and the Shermans wrote like mad to finish "Sister Suffragette" before they returned. Johns liked the song, took the role, and the rest is history. Not bad for an hour or two.
• In Masters of the Universe, He-Man's sword clearly falls off his back as he exits the high school's gymnasium. The crew noticed the mistake, but the film's difficult production meant that there was no time to redo the shot, so it was left in.
• Two examples from the first The Matrix film:
  • As the elevator doors close at the end of the famous lobby blastout scene, the camera goes to a wide shot as the elevator doors close, just in time to show a piece of stone veneer on one of the damaged pillars to the side of the image break off and crash to the floor. Completely unplanned, but a perfect way to emphasize the scale of destruction just wrought in that room.
  • Neo vomits after being told by Morpheus the truth of the Matrix because Keanu Reeves had eaten something that disagreed with him earlier.
• M*A*S*H:
  • After the scene where the main characters prank Sally Kellerman's character Hot Lips by dropping the shower tent wall while she's taking a shower and forcibly exposing her, Hot Lips goes to complain to Col Blake. The scene as written was comic and rather cruel, with Hot Lips hysterically threatening to resign her commission and Blake calmly replying "Well, god damn it, Hot Lips, resign your god-damned commission," and was intended to be Hot Lips' final scene in the film, the implication being that she did just that. But Altman kept the camera running and Kellerman played the humiliation absolutely straight, ad-libbing a desperate wail of "My commission..." It made the prank look cruel and the character much more sympathetic. Altman decided to keep the character in the film and the writers gave her a Heel–Face Turn; in later scenes, she has loosened up and has become one of the gang e.g. cheerleading exuberantly during the football match.
  • In an earlier scene, Hot Lips rants to unit chaplain Father Mulcahy about Hawkeye, wondering "how a degenerated person like that could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps". Mulcahy originally wasn't supposed to say anything in response, but while rehearsing the scene prior to shooting, René Auberjonois, who played Mulcahy, ad-libbed a reply: "He was drafted". Everyone agreed he should use the line, and it came to be considered a somewhat iconic moment from the film.
  • Mulcahy blessing a Jeep in another scene was also a last-minute addition. Auberjonois happened to stumble across the blessing in a copy of the Army Chaplain's Handbook and thought it would be a good addition to the story, and to his character. Altman agreed, and the scene was shot in one take.
• Max Keeble's Big Move:
  • Most of Elliot T. Jindrake's character was ad-libbed by Larry Miller, wanting to portray him like the dean from Animal House.
  • Max Keeble's giggling when meeting Jenna at the middle school was a flub on Alex D. Linz's part, but the creators liked it and put it in.
• The Men in Black franchise:
  • Men in Black:
    • Will Smith ad-libbed the line, "It just be rainin' black people in New York!"
    • Almost all of Tommy Lee Jones' lines in the first film were ad-libbed because Jones hated his character's lines. Will Smith is genuinely confused half the time.
  • In Men in Black II, Will Smith ad-libbed another line. When Agent J first shows Agent K the car's new "autopilot", a life-sized human model 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.
• 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!"
• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
  • 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, which everyone on the set loved.
  • Johnny Yong Bosch also ad-libbed his disappointment about his ninja animal being the frog, and the cast and crew liked it well enough that it was kept.
• In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Michael Palin ad-libbed the line "Hey! I didn't even eat the (salmon) mousse!" This does destroy the logic of the scene, making it even funnier. As if it matters.
• 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 threw it out on the spur of the moment. He got a pay raise to speaking actor.
  • The scene of the crowd going to listen The Sermon on the Mount is actually the extras being herded back into position; it was realized how good it looked and the camera was turned on.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  • 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 Mulholland Dr., the director David Lynch included Richard Green's (The Magician) prep - that first moment of him standing there for a couple of seconds was shot before the actor knew they were rolling. Richard Green said he was surprised to see it when the movie premiered.
• In The Mummy, when Rick threatens to kill Beni for betraying them to Imhotep, Beni protests "Think of my children!" Rick points out that Beni doesn't have children, to which Beni's actor ad-libbed, "Someday I might."
• 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.
• Done in-universe in My Favorite Year. With King Kaiser getting beaten up by mob goons on live television, someone in the audience looks up and spots that week's guest star, Alan Swann, in the rafters above the stage and starts applauding. The director in the control booth snaps "What is Alan Swann doing in the balcony?! Get a light on him!"
• Done in-universe in My Giant: Max, the "giant" of the title, gets his first film role as a villain in a low-budget Sword and Sandal film, but because he's been drinking, he ends up vomiting on the hero in his introductory scene. Near the end of the movie, we see a screening of the film-within-a-film and learn they actually left it in.
• 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.
• Napoleon Dynamite:
  • While filming the lunch scene outside the chicken coop, the actor who plays Farmer Lyle, unaware the camera is still rolling, makes an offhand comment about finding a couple of Shoshone arrowheads in a creek bed. It was so authentic that director Jared Hess decided to keep it in the final cut.
  • 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.
  • Also, the scene where Kip is giving the demonstration with the van and the dinnerware. Originally, he was to roll over it, and the plastic would deform but reshape itself, to which Kip was to say, "Pretty cool." However, the plastic was unable to comply due to the laws of physics, and that is what is seen in the film. It turns out to be actually funnier.
• In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Clark trashes the Christmas decorations in anger, after punching the plastic Santa he kicks the reindeer, the kicking of the reindeer wasn't scripted, his look of anguish was real as Chevy Chase broke his pinky finger when he punched the Santa and kicked the reindeer to deal with the pain, the director liked the take so it was left in the final film.
• In Neighbors, Stella turning her head to watch Mac and Kelly go at it, even after Mac turned her chair to face the wall, was of the baby's own doing and was too funny to not throw in (you can hear both Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne corpsing when she turns to look at them).
• In The New Guy, Real Life twins Jerry and Charlie O'Connell improvised climbing on a swing-set to do upside-down crunches, hence the Romantic False Lead's very confused look.
• 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 "You're on TV now, girl!", 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.
• In the 1990s remake of The Nutty Professor, Sherman Klump/Buddy Love and the comic's dialogue during the comic act was ad-libbed by Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle, respectively.
• The PC LOAD LETTER scene from Office Space. The machine beeped with an actual error message after Michael put paper in it which threw off the actor's line, and the entire thing was improvised to try and salvage the scene.
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: When Rick is being trained in how to use a flamethrower for his role in The 14 Fists of McCluskey, he instinctively flinches away from the heat. This wasn't scripted but was Leonardo DiCaprio's actual reaction, and director Quentin Tarantino thought it fit with the character of Rick Dalton and left it in.
• In On the Waterfront, Eva Marie Saint accidentally drops her glove, which Marlon Brando proceeds to pick up and play with. The scene was kept in the movie.
• 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.
• Pacific Rim: In an argument with Pentecost, Raleigh grabs his arm. Pentecost stops, glares at Raleigh's hand very pointedly, and Raleigh lets go. "One. Don't you ever touch me again. Two. Don't you ever touch me again." Apparently, Raleigh's actor just got carried away, and Pentecost's actor used it.
• Passengers: According to interviews, it wasn't until they were filming the First Kiss scene that Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence discovered the bulky spacesuits they were wearing at the time made it physically impossible for her lips to reach his. They just laughed and went with it, struggling to find a way to make it work... which found its way into the story.
• The Passion of the Christ:
  • During the carrying-his-cross scene Jim Caviezel dislocated his shoulder when he collapsed and the cross fell on him. He insisted that the take be kept in the final film so that the pain Jesus was supposed to be experiencing would seem more real.
  • During the flogging scene, Caviezel was wearing a protective guard on his back while being whipped, but on the last blow the guard slipped and he was whipped for real.
• A slasher film titled Pieces has a scene with a college student cornered by a chainsaw-wielding killer. She pees her pants, which was added to the script because the actress really wet herself during a rehearsal take from being so close to a real chainsaw.
• The Pink Panther series:
  • While filming a scene for A Shot in the Dark, Peter Sellers gave a reassuring wink to Herbert Lom, who started winking uncontrollably in response. Blake Edwards loved it, and thus Dreyfus's famous Twitchy Eye was born. The scene was likely filmed early in production, as it takes place near the end but Dreyfus had already been twitching throughout the film.
  • In The 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 Inspector 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.
• Pirates of the Caribbean and its sequels.
  • In The Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack's statement that he used "human hair — from my back" wasn't supposed to include "from my back.". You can see Orlando Bloom trying not to laugh, and Kevin McNally chuckling in the movie. The commentary states that they initially tried to edit it out, but found that the line was better with the addition.
  • Jack the Monkey's smile when Barbossa explains We Named the Monkey "Jack" was just an amazingly timed coincidence.
  • One of the funnier moments in the trailer for Dead Man's Chest is Will's insistence that he won't leave the island without Jack — until he sees Jack running up the beach, chased by a large group of natives. Then it's "Never mind, let's go!" The line was a blooper where Bloom flubbed his line and said: "Never mind, let's go!" (i.e. keep the cameras rolling), and it wasn't included in the film itself (sadly).
  • Jack's line "I've got a jar of dirt!" was also unscripted. You can also see Bloom temporarily look to his left after Depp walks by. He was looking at Gore Verbinski, expecting him to say "Cut!"
  • All of Jack's jokes about Will supposedly being a eunuch were ad-libbed by Johnny Depp. The creators approved, and it became a running joke.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Predator's iconic design was thanks to James Cameron. When the production's initial design proved to be a spectacular failure, they decided to hire Stan Winston to provide the creature effects. The two were flying to Japan, and Cameron watched as Winston did some preliminary design sketches. He then said "you know, I've always wanted to see something with mandibles." Winston then included them in his design.
• 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.
• The Princess Bride:
  • Cary Elwes improvised Westley's dive into the lightning sand during the Fire Swamp scene. Originally, Westley was supposed to go in feet first holding his nose, and Elwes thought that made him look too much like a wimp and came up with a better, more Errol Flynn-esque idea: the dive. Unfortunately, it was thought to be a dangerous stunt. Fortunately, director Rob Reiner relented after a stuntman tested it and came out OK. Even better, Elwes nailed the dive on the first take.
  • Billy Crystal was given free rein to go off-script in his one scene as Miracle Max. He improvised at least two of the more memorable lines in that scene — "While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?", and comparing true love to a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Carol Kane, who played Max's wife, improvised the line about the magic pill's chocolate coating and not going swimming after.
• The Princess Diaries:
  • While filming, 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 Cute Clumsy Girl anyway. You'll notice Heather Matarazzo briefly slips out of character when this happens. Hathaway did this quite a bit during the film as when Mia accidentally sets fire to a man's arm at the state dinner, the fire was meant to go out in the ice bucket but Hathaway panicked and threw the glass of water on him. It was also her idea that the brush break in her hair when Mia is getting her makeover.
  • The entire Clarisse and Joseph romance was actually a case of this. It was not scripted at all and the dance scene and affection between the two was added by their actors.
• In The Professional, Gary Oldman ad-libbed his iconic shouting of "E-VERY-ONE!!" during Stansfield's Villainous Breakdown as a joke. The scene was left in because of how scarily effective it was.
• The Memetic line "Are you serious? Right in front of my salad?" from the gay pornographic film Private Lessons 3 was improvised.

Q-T

• Rain Man:
  • Director Barry Levinson was coaxed into playing the psychiatrist in the movie's climactic scene after the actor who had been cast didn't show up.
  • Also, the "uh oh, fart" scene was improvised on the spot when Dustin Hoffman actually farted in the phone booth.
• Repo Man has a couple:
  • Miller's monologue about time travel, flying saucers, the Mayans, and plates of shrimp was written for the screen tests, as was Lite's monologue while he and Otto are breaking into the red Corvette. Both were added in when the filmmakers realized how funny they were and the former became a key part of the film's ending.
  • Parnell's erratic driving, including the accident where he hits the gas pump, was real—Fox Harris, the actor, did not know how to drive and found those scenes very nervewracking to film.
• In Requiem for a Dream, the shot of Ellen Burstyn delivering a tearjerking monologue of why her character wants so badly to lose weight and be on television is slightly askew. When Darren Aronofsky confronted his cinematographer who was operating the camera, he admitted he had let the camera slip because his crying had actually fogged up the lens. Aronofsky left this shot in the film.
• The Return of the Living Dead has one scene toward the end where Frank immolates himself in the oven. This is because James Karen didn't want to shoot his final scene in the cold rain and instead suggested that Frank commit suicide because he's a nice guy and didn't want to hurt anybody.
• 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 had to keep that in.
• RoboCop
  • RoboCop:
    • During a car chase, a hubcap comes loose and rolls almost directly at the camera. Paul Verhoeven left it in since it looked very cool.
    • In the scene where RoboCop faces two would-be rapists, the groin shot was a last-minute addition. Originally RoboCop was to just shoot the hostage-taker in the upper body, just missing the woman he was holding (Ocean Software's Licensed Game plays out this way) when they noticed that the way the actress posed herself when struggling would allow a clean shot through her skirt.
    • According to the documentary Villains of Old Detroit, the scene where Murphy takes Boddicker in was originally supposed to merely end with Boddicker demanding his phone call. It was Kurtwood Smith's suggestion that Boddicker spit blood onto Sgt. Reed's papers and drop the f-bomb.
  • According to Jeff Garlin's Netflix special Our Man in Chicago, it was his idea for his character in RoboCop 3, the doughnut shop clerk who's almost robbed, to be snacking on a doughnut during the would-be robbery. He ended up getting sick because he ate 36 doughnuts during the filming of the scene.
• The original Rocky,
  • Loan shark Tony Gazzo is chastising Rocky for not breaking the thumbs of one of his clients when he pulls out an inhaler in mid-sentence and uses it. Gazzo's actor actually had an asthma attack, but the director liked how it made the scene more authentic and kept it.
  • During the shot in which Rocky runs through the market, he has an apple thrown at him. It was actually a member of the public trying to hit Sylvester Stallone. The director liked the shot and kept it in the scene.
  • The original script had Rocky realizing that he was going to lose after going to the arena that night and being intimidated by the size of the venue and realizing he doesn't belong. However, the art department drew Rocky's trunks the wrong color, and there wasn't time to get the poster redone. Instead, producers rewrote the scene so that Rocky has his sad epiphany after complaining about the poster, only for the promoter to blow him off. Similarly, the too-large robe he wears pre-fight is also discussed In-Universe, to cover for yet another mistake by the prop department.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
  • Colombia flashing her nipple was her actress's idea. Creator, Richard O'Brien had always assumed it was accidental until Patricia Quinn told him during the commentary that Little Nell used to practice it in their trailer.
  • The reason Dr. Scott burst through the wall of Frank's lab is that they forgot to put in a door when building the set.
• 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 William Wyler being aware of it in advance. Audrey Hepburn's scream and her relieved laughter were genuine reactions. According to Peck, he borrowed the joke from Red Skelton.
• Many things were ad-libbed or kept in for The Room, particularly as production dragged on and the crew lost all enthusiasm, thinking the film would never be screened. For instance, the "hospital on Guerrero Street" was improvised by Greg Sestero because this was the location of Tommy Wiseau's condo in San Francisco. Naturally, Wiseau was furious because any info about him is super-secret. However, it was kept in because that was their best take. Sestero lists more instances in his memoir The Disaster Artist, including the origin of the framed spoons.
• In a "take advantage of coincidental circumstances" move, The Stinger of Runaway Bride where the couple are having a snowball fight was only filmed thanks to a lucky unseasonable snowfall.
• In the roulette scene of Run Lola Run, 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.
• The famous "blood explosion" at the end of Sanjuro was supposedly accidental. According to Tatsuya Nakadai, the actor playing the losing samurai, the pump that was meant to make him bleed blew a coupling when activated, causing the blood to blast out at full pressure rather than the intended rate. The unexpected force almost knocked him over, and it was all he could do to finish the scene, but they ended up using the take anyway — partly because it looked impressive, and partly because it would have been very difficult to clean the "blood" off the set and costumes for a second take.
• Matt Damon's story about his brothers in Saving Private Ryan was ad-libbed. Tom Hanks' gaze flits 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"?
• In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Wallace bursts into the apartment drunk and throws his keys at Scott's head. Kieran Culkin did this as a joke, but Edgar Wright loved it so much that he kept it in.
• Scream
  • The bit 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 fuckin' hit me with the phone, dick!" The moment made director Wes Craven laugh so hard, he chose to keep it in.
  • Also, in the climax when Billy is attacked with an umbrella, his screams are real as the stuntman had hit an implanted wire in his chest. The wire was from heart surgery he got as a kid and touching it causes him immense pain.
• Scream 3: when Roman is searching for Sid and tries to find her with his phone, she beats him to the punch, distracting him. She pops up from behind a bar and stabs him in the shoulder with an ice pick. The scream from actor Scott Foley is real as she had missed the pads and actually struck flesh.
• At the end of Sea of Love, Al Pacino bumps hard into an approaching passerby while walking and talking. He gets hit so hard, that he's actually knocked back a few steps, yet doesn't even so much as blink, and fluently continues his speech. That wasn't scripted, in fact, the guy wasn't even an extra. In the DVD commentary, the director explained that they couldn't close off the whole location, it being a public street in New York, and that the pedestrian was real. It's realistic because he's trying to convince the woman he loves to give him a second chance, so it's understandable that his character completely ignores it. Plus it's New York, people who live there probably don't even notice anymore.
• In Serenity Mal's "Faster! Faster would be better!" is such a Whedon line. It turns out it was ad-libbed when Nathan Fillion was asked to "say something Mal would say".
• 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 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 response to Klaus saying "Our parents just died," Count Olaf says, "Ah yes, of course. How very, very awful. Wait! Let me do that one more time. Give me the line again! Quickly, while it's fresh in my mind!" The dialogue was supposed to end after Klaus says "Our parents just died", but Jim Carrey felt he didn't get the reaction right. Director Brad Silberling just kept the cameras rolling and Carrey ad-libbed without breaking character.
• The Shape of Water: During filming of the scene where the villain Strickland arrives at Elisa's flat, Michael Shannon accidentally lost control of the car while trying to park it, mounted the sidewalk, and crashed (at low speed) into a telegraph pole. Guillermo del Toro decided to use the take, as it fit Strickland's desperation and Sanity Slippage at the time in-universe.
• Probably the most bizarre example on this page: this gargantuan Narm from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon was a John Barrowman ad-lib, to try and make his co-star laugh. They kept it in the freaking movie!. Why? Well, honestly, what did they have to lose?
• "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.
• Silence of the Lambs:
  • Hannibal Lecter's famous hissing was improvised. Indeed, it 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.
• In-universe, in Singin' in the Rain, 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.
• 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.
• The Sound of Music:
  • Julie Andrews tripping at the end of "I Have Confidence" wasn't scripted, but was so perfectly in character that it was left in.
  • Captain von Trapp mistakenly calling Maria "Captain" while arguing with her was a mistake by Christopher Plummer, which was left in because director Robert Wise felt it perfectly fit the scene.
• 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 Dark Helmet in the movie.
• The 2021 Irish film Spears:
  • At one point when filming in Germany, the crew took lunch in the Mall of Berlin, and noticed a nice-looking corridor outside. They quickly filmed a sequence of Rebecca Rose Flynn walking through it, and speaking German into her phone.
  • Ashaki was scripted to wear all black in her scenes at the nightclub. Kaireht Yovera supplied her own clothes, but she then noticed a purple leather jacket owned by producer Fatima Fleming. Finding that made her look more striking, she wore that on camera instead.
• 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.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • During the otherwise serious and foreboding scene in Spider-Man where Norman Osborn is subjecting himself to his Super Serum, he twitches and quips "Oh! That's cold!" when strapped onto the table. Apparently, that was Willem Dafoe actually being caught off-guard by the ice-cold metal prop, and the director left it in as it perfectly fits his personality as The Green Goblin.
  • 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.
• Spider-Man: Homecoming:
  • In between takes, Tom Holland fell asleep on set in the Spider-Man suit. Someone took a photo without Holland knowing and edited it into the image seen on the first teaser poster.
  • Jacob Batalon and Tom Holland came up with the gag where Ned wears Peter's mask while they were bored and playing with the props.
• In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter-3's line "I love you guys!" was improvised by Andrew Garfield, with Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire's slightly confused reactions being genuine.
• 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.
• In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, producer Harve Bennett signed off on the sketch of the design of the U.S.S. Reliant, while looking at it upside-down. The visual effects people realized that it looked better upside-down, and was more easily distinguished from the Enterprise with the nacelles turned down from the center line, rather than up. So the production staff built the model according to the "upside-down" view. ^note The design was so well-received, that it was both given a class name (Miranda), and used repeatedly in multiple TNG-era Trek series.
• In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, when Kirk learns the Klingons have murdered his son, David, 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 William Shatner was improvising or if it was inadvertent (since Shatner kept going), but he felt that it was perfect for the scene and left it in.
  • In his book Star Trek Memories, Shatner confirms that he did, in fact, fall on his ass by accident.
• In Star Trek, 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 the latter since he's trying not to laugh — they actually had to re-shoot the scene (with the line now officially added in) because when Simon Pegg first did the ad-lib, both Zachary Quinto (Spock) and Chris Pine (Kirk) cracked up completely. The original (blown) take can be seen on the blooper reel.
• In Star Trek: Generations, Kirk's line, "Oh my..." during his death scene was improvised on set.
• Jaylah slouching up in the captain's chair in Star Trek Beyond was something Sofia Boutella decided to do during rehearsals.
• Star Wars series:
  • A New Hope:
    • When Han has to pose as a Stormtrooper to an Imperial commander via radio, Ford intentionally did not memorize his lines so Han's slightly panicked on-the-spot bluffing would sound more authentic. In the same scene, Ford also improvised the line "We're all fine now, thank you... How are you?", as well as Han's remark "Boring conversation anyway" after shooting the speaker.
    • 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 iconic, recent DVD releases have added a "thud" sound effect when it happens. Jango Fett gets banged slightly by a descending ship door in Attack of the Clones in homage to A New Hope, even though that scene was done in CGI.
  • 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 accurate to Solo's Loveable Rogue character.
  • Attack of the Clones:
    • The mysterious Jedi Sifo-Dyas who ordered the clone army on behalf of the Republic was originally supposed to be Sido-Dyas, a corruption of Palpatine's Sith name Sidious, and a subtle hint about the true mastermind behind the Clone Army. At some point, someone misspelled the name due to the D and F keys being right next to each other, and Lucas and decided to rewrite the scene to make Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas a real person who had died several years prior. Sifo-Dyas is, incidentally, one of the most mysterious characters in all of Star Wars.
    • There is at least one instance of a "throw it in" in the prequel trilogy. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman improvised the dinner table scene in which Anakin mentions "Aggressive Negotiations". Apparently, George 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."
  • In Rogue One, most of the character traits for Chirrut Îmwe and K-2SO were improvised by their respective actors Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyk. Donnie Yen convinced the crew to make Chirrut blind and improvised the hilarious "Are you kidding me? I am blind!" line. K-2's sarcastic remarks and his slapping of Cassian Andor were all made up by Alan Tudyk.
  • The Last Jedi:
    • When DJ betrays the crew, and Finn argues his philosophy is wrong, DJ's scripted response was something more standard like: "Yeah, wrong and rich." Benicio del Toro ad-libbed the line "maybe" that eventually made it in, which fits well with DJ's code of avoiding moral scruples.
    • Carrie Fisher also had several ideas that made it into the final cut, notably for her to comment on her hair when meeting Luke again, Leia and Holdo saying "May the Force be with you" at the same time, and the twin medallions worn by Rose and Paige, which became a critical symbol in the film.
• In Stir of Echoes, in the scene where Tom gets angry after digging in the back yard and kicks the bucket towards the wall, it was not supposed to hit and break the window. This was a "happy accident" and it could be used in the film as Kevin Bacon stayed in character and continued the scene.
• The Stunt Man: Peter O'Toole read the script a few years before the film was made and told Richard Rush, "I read the screenplay and if you don't give me the part, I will kill you." Eli Cross (O'Toole's character) says a similar line in the movie.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
  • Also, "You Talkin' to Me??"
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, 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. Even funnier since he somehow has an Oh, Crap! expression on his (animatronic) face.
• 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.
  • After the T-1000 is defeated, the T-800's line, "I need a vacation...", was ad-libbed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cameron was well aware it didn't make any sense for the T-800 to say that, but it was too funny to take out.
• "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum" from They Live! wasn't in the script. Roddy Piper took it from a list of ideas he had for his wrestling promos.
• The whole Milky Way conversation between the actors in This Is the End was improvised.
• The ladies' bathroom scene in This Means War was improv on the part of Reese Witherspoon... except the bit where she leans into the mirror and says "Has that been on my teeth the whole time?" They had filmed an eating scene earlier in the day, and she had a piece of schmutz stuck in one of her front teeth, and her reaction to seeing it was real. They used it in the film anyway.
• Once an Episode with the Thor movies.
  • In the original Thor, Loki tries to step in between Odin and Thor only for Odin to just roar at him. Anthony Hopkins genuinely did scare Tom Hiddleston.
  • In Thor: The Dark World, Chris Hemsworth improvised the gag where Thor hangs his enchanted hammer on a coat hook, figuring it would be the polite thing to do.
  • Thor: Ragnarok had a kid from the "Make a Wish Foundation" on set the day they filmed the gladiator brawl between Thor and the Hulk. The kid suggested they add in the now-famous line from Thor saying "He's a friend from work!" referring to the Hulk.
  • One of the effects houses in Thor: Love and Thunder, inspired by the "Taylor Swift Goat Remix" meme, added some screams to the giant goats from the movie. The director found it hilarious and turned it into a Running Gag.
• Threads: While a scene set in the centre of Sheffield before the nuclear attack was being filmed, a Salvation Army band accidentally marched into shot. The band could have ended up on the cutting room floor, but the decision was taken to include them in the final version as their unscripted appearance added to the reality of the scene.
• 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. [1]◊
• Titanic
  • Leonardo DiCaprio telling Kate Winslet to get on the daybed in preparation for him sketching her nude portrait, saying "Get on the bed — errr, the 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 too perfect to leave out.
  • When the ship is sinking, Jack jumps in the rising water and says, "Oh, SHIT, this is cold!" — apparently, unscripted. 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 ad-libbed was Jack's line as he left 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.
  • Michael Ensign (Guggenheim) added his request for brandy after saying he wishes to go down as a gentleman. Originally, he was supposed to say goodbye to Astor after this (which was cut for time), but they were unsure how to block it, so Cameron suggested he say something else.
• 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."
• 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 Orson Welles' 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 Trading Places, when Don Ameche has his money clip tossed to him, he bobbles it spectacularly a few times before catching it.
• The diner scene in Training Day where Alonzo cuts Jake off while he is talking by shouting "Boom!" was thrown in by Denzel Washington to catch Ethan Hawke off guard to see if he could keep up with him since the majority of the film is the two of them together. Ethan's surprised response was genuine and not scripted.
• In the Transformers Film Series Michael Bay is known for encouraging improvisation 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 that 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...).
• Tropic Thunder:
  • The scene that had Tugg talking to a flying mantis; it flying in his face actually happened by accident.
  • When Tugg nearly fell into the river while he was crossing alone, Ben Stiller really did trip and nearly drown.
  • The dance sequence at the end came from Tom Cruise randomly deciding to start hip-hop dancing during a make-up test. The crew thought it was funny enough that they worked it into the script.
• True Lies:
  • Word of God says that Jamie Lee Curtis' slip and fall during the stripper dance wasn't scripted, and you can even see Arnold Schwarzenegger 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.
  • A scene when Arnold breaks a car window in frustration is also this — Tom Arnold's reaction is authentic, as Schwarzenegger broke the wrong (read: non-stunt) window without noticing.
• In Top Gun, Maverick describes flying upside down over a MiG and Iceman coughs, "Bullshit!" This line was ad-libbed by Val Kilmer and likely left in because the other actors in the scene found it very funny.
• In Tora! Tora! Tora!, in one scene an American plane was supposed to explode while trying to lift off. However, the explosives failed, and instead the plane continued taxiing at high speed, veered off to the side, and collided with other planes, causing a lot of mayhem and destruction. Several extras in the film are seen running away from it, and almost being crushed by the destruction or hit by flying debris. They were not acting. They were running for their lives. Fortunately, nobody got hurt in this accident, so it was left in the film.

U-Z

• Unknown Island When a horde of Ceratosaurs descends upon the heroes, who are throwing grenades at them, a little mistake made it in for the better. Because they were filming in mid-day in the desert with heavy rubber suits on. An explosion went off near one actor, who then promptly fainted from the heat. They kept it in the scene.
• The Usual Suspects:
  • The lineup scene was scripted as a serious scene, but the actors didn't play it as such. One of the actors was constantly making funny faces and apparently, Benicio del Toro was stinking up the room with a bad case of gas, which made it impossible for the other actors to stay serious. Bryan Singer was initially pissed off about it, but ended up using some of the funniest takes in the final film (so much that there's a take of everyone laughing).
  • In the scene where Redfoot the Fence flicks a cigarette into McManus' face, the reaction is entirely genuine: he was aiming for the chest.
  • Fenster's status as The Unintelligible wasn't in the script. According to Benicio Del Toro, he came up with it (and Singer let him run with it), because Fenster was intended to be the Sacrificial Lion, and Del Toro figured that if he was going to be killed off early, he'd be memorable. Singer told the other actors to make del Toro repeat himself if they didn't understand a line. A few of these exchanges make it into the final film.
• Venom: The part where Eddie Brock climbs into the lobster tank wasn't scripted. Tom Hardy came up with the idea the moment he saw the restaurant set, and the crew immediately made it a priority to reinforce the tank so that it could support his weight.
• 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.
• WarGames:
  • Early in the film, Jennifer playfully pins David between her legs. According to Ally Sheedy, it was done on a whim, and she didn't realize the sexual implications until after the scene had been included in the final film.
  • When David, Jennifer, and Falken were rushing to NORAD, the Jeep they were driving wasn't supposed to crash, but it was kept since it added more dramatic tension.
  • McKittrick asking David about his flight reservations to Paris wasn't in the original script. One of the crew saw the implication while filming and informed the director.
• In The Warriors, when the Rogues arrive at Coney Island, director Walter Hill realized that the scene was missing something, so he asked David Patrick Kelly to think of something to say. Kelly improvised the famous, "Warriors, come out to playyyyyay!" taunt, inspired by a man who used to make fun of him in New York. He requested that he have dead pigeons in his hands, but they were unavailable, so he improvised the rattling of the beer bottles.
• In West Side Story (2021), when Riff buys the gun from a black market dealer, it was not scripted for him to press his forehead against the barrel. Mike Faist improvised this, and the production felt it perfectly fit Riff's character in this version.
• 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.
• While filming White Heat, the crew ran into a problem. The scene takes place in the prison cafeteria, where Cody Jarrett 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.
• 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.
• Val Kilmer ad-libbed most of his lines as Madmartigan in Willow.
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
  • During "Pure Imagination", the only direction the cast got was that they could not stand in front of Gene Wilder. As they're descending the stairs into the Chocolate Room, Julie Dawn Cole and Denise Nickerson decided to throw in some shoving and clawing at each other.^note Fun fact: According to the DVD Commentary, the two kept fighting on-set because they both had a crush on Charlie's actor. Also, at one point, Paris Themmen steps in front of Wilder but does not step back with him. He improvised that.
  • While filming the Everlasting Gobstopper scene, Julie Dawn Cole thought it would be in character for Veruca to do a Lying Finger Cross when the kids promise not to share their treats with anyone. Director Mel Stuart paused filming because he was unfamiliar with the gesture, but once it was explained to him, he filmed it in closeup.
  • Jack Albertson threw in the line "educated eggdicator".
  • After Veruca goes down the garbage chute, Mr. Salt nervously fiddles with Wonka's bow tie, who returns the gesture by adjusting Mr. Salt's necktie. This was ad-libbed by Roy Kinnear and Gene Wilder.
• 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.
• 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.
• Witchfinder General: The film's memorable ending was unscripted. Originally, it was intended for the soldier to fatally shoot both Hopkins and Marshall, but it was realized at the last minute that an earlier scene had established that he only had one (single-shot) pistol. As a result, the soldier only shot Hopkins, and Ian Ogilvie improvised Marshall's psychotic freak-out.
• Woodstock: Richie Havens was asked to take the stage and open the festival because the scheduled opening act hadn't arrived yet. He improvised "Freedom" on the spot. It was captured on film and became one of his signature songs.
• 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 meets 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?"
  • The scene in the train station where a young boy smiles at Cyclops and he smiles back was unplanned. The boy was a huge X-Men fan, and Cyclops was his favorite. The scene originally called for Cyclops to look at the train schedule, but according to Bryan Singer, the boy could not stop smiling at James Marsden. Finally, during one shot, Marsden just looked back at him and smiled, much to the boy's delight. Bryan Singer liked the idea so much, he kept it in the film, and told the actress playing the boy's mother to react the way she did.
• 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.
  • Another improvised moment by Marty Feldman was when Madeline Kahn's character arrived at the castle. After saying the line "Soitenly! You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the toiben," Feldman starting biting and tearing at Kahn's fur piece, which was not expected from either the other actors or the crew. This choice was eventually kept in the final cut, but multiple takes had to be shot because both actors and crew couldn't stop laughing at that point in the scene.
• 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.
• In You've Got Mail, there's a scene where the Tom Hanks character, holding balloons in one hand and a bagged goldfish in the other, 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.
• During the graveyard scene in Zoolander, right after Prewitt explains why male models are trained to be assassins, Ben Stiller (who was also directing) 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." Fortunately, the error was perfectly in character, so it was left in.

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