Top 10 Friends Mistakes That Were Left in the Show

In this episode from the first season of “Friends”, Ross is bummed out because he realizes it’s the anniversary of the date when he and Carol first slept together. Chandler and Joey try to convince him to come see the Rangers and Penguins hockey game with them and Joey tries to cheer Ross up by offering to buy him a foam finger. But it seems that the finger he gets him has some magical properties because one moment it’s there, and the next it appears to have disappeared entirely. While Ross could’ve put it down, it seems unlikely he’d do it so soon after since he made the guys promise to buy it for him.

In “The One Where Ross Finds Out”, Rachel learns that Ross and his new girlfriend Julie are planning to get a cat together. The scene takes place in Central Perk, and viewers were understandably distracted by Rachel’s reaction to the news. Most people probably missed the fact that as Rachel hears about the couple’s adoption plans, a necklace appears and disappears from her neck several times. Clearly the scene was shot at two different instances and someone in the costume department dropped the ball on the accessories Rachel was supposed to be wearing!

Every serious “Friends” fan has probably noticed that the Magna Doodle in Joey and Chandler’s apartment frequently has funny phrases or sayings written on it. In this scene, however, it has two completely different things displayed just moments apart. When Ross comes to tell his buddies that he’s getting married (again), the sign simply says “Poop”. A couple of seconds later however, when the camera pans away and then pans back, it says “get out”. Throughout the scene, it flip flops through these two inscriptions, showing that the scene was clearly shot at two different times.

The focus of this episode is Monica and Chandler’s engagement announcement—and Chandler’s utter inability to take a decent photo for it. When the audience finally sees the announcement at the end of the episode, Joey has acted as a stand-in for Chandler. This is, of course, intentional, but if you actually pause and read the announcement you’ll notice that it’s a bit nonsensical. There are a few spelling and grammatical mistakes, and a couple of words and phrases are repeated. We’ve gotta say: we are not impressed with this newspaper!

After Ross and Rachel bring baby Emma back from the hospital, Rachel is so enamored with her that she can’t possibly leave her alone to sleep. In one scene, Rachel wakes her up in her bassinet, to predictably terrible results. Only the most eagle-eyed viewers were likely to notice that Emma wasn’t wearing the same hat throughout this scene. In one shot, it’s a solid pink hat, while in another it has a white background and a print on it. Considering how difficult it must be for crews to shoot with infant actors, we’ll give them a pass on this one.

We all know Monica is a control freak, but in this episode Rachel actually grants her full control—at least as far as her love life is concerned. When Rachel goes rogue however and starts ignoring Monica’s advice, things start to go downhill. In this scene, Rachel locks Monica out of the apartment and Monica frantically knocks on the door to be let in. When we see her, her hand is bare, but when Ross opens the door a moment later, she has a sock covering it. Interestingly enough, in the longer version that appears on DVD, Monica actually knocks for almost a minute, which explains that perhaps she put the sock on because her hand was starting to hurt.

We’re not sure what was going on when they filmed the season nine episode, “The One With the Mugging” because it was full of errors and inconsistencies. When Joey goes to steal beverages from Monica’s fridge, in one shot he’s holding cans while in another they’re bottles. (xref) While this next one may be hard to catch if you’re not watching “Friends” in HD, it’s a pretty egregious error when you do notice it. Joey and Rachel are standing next to each other in one shot, but in the next the woman beside him is clearly a stand-in rather than Jennifer Aniston. Not only that, but she’s not even wearing the same shirt that Rachel was wearing!

For most of the later episodes of the show, any fan could tell you that Monica lives in apartment 20 and Joey and Chandler live in apartment 19. At the beginning however, the numbers were completely different. In earlier episodes, a number 4 is seen on the guys’ door while the girls live in apartment 5. The reason for the switch is a logical one—they clearly live on an upper floor of a decently sized building, so it didn’t exactly make sense for their apartment numbers to be so low.

In this fan-favorite episode, the gang is trying to get ready for a formal event at Ross’s work. Unfortunately, there seem to be countless impediments when it comes to them actually getting out the door. Phoebe manages to get a huge amount of hummus on her dress, and is forced to figure out how to cover it up. Each time we see the stain however, it seems to have changed sizes. We don’t understand exactly how costuming works, but we’ve gotta presume they shot this episode over several different time periods, perhaps requiring a new dress each time.

The changes in technology have revealed some mistakes that were originally hidden. This is because “Friends” was originally aired in a 4:3 aspect ratio, meaning the shots we saw on TV were slightly cropped. In HD versions however, we see an expanded version of the show we know and love. In this episode, Monica and Phoebe are talking in Central Perk. Near the end of the segment however, when we’re supposed to be seeing Phoebe’s reaction, it’s clear that the person she’s talking to is no longer Courteney Cox, but - much like in our previously mentioned example with Jennifer Aniston - a stand-in!