Top 20 Friends Mistakes That Were Kept in the Show

The 19th episode of the first season is called, “The One Where the Monkey Gets Away”. But it seems it really should have been titled “The One Where the Table Gets Away”. Watch as Rachel and Ross are arguing about her having lost Marcel. See that little table against the wall, beside the door, under the piece of art? Okay, now let's cut to a few minutes later when Rachel opens the door for the animal control woman… The piece of art is still there but what happened to the table? Did they cut out the scene where Ross gets so angry he picks it up and smashes it against the ground, then cleans up all the pieces? They must've, right?

Have you heard about this amazing clothing technology that can magically clean fabric while you wear it? No? Well it looks like that’s what Joey was wearing back in 2003 when they filmed “The One With the Late Thanksgiving”. In this episode Joey falls into a cart of food, covering clothes in the process. Now, if this was a normal sweater he’d probably remove it and throw it in the washing machine. But this isn’t any normal piece of clothing. One moment it’s covered with food and a minute later, as the gang all go in for a group hug, the front of it is almost as clean as it was before the cart incident. Okay, so, where do we get self-cleaning clothes? We’ll pay good money!

One of the great memories many married couples have is sitting at home together and opening their wedding presents. Well, Chandler and Monica are not one of those couples. Not because Chandler didn’t want to open the gifts together, but because Monica couldn’t wait for him. She tried, but she just couldn’t control herself. In fact, she tried so hard, at one point that it seems she kept unwrapping and rewrapping the same gift in a matter of seconds, from one shot to the next! The internal moral struggle is strong with this one… If you’ve never noticed this one before, you’ll definitely never not notice it again.

In the first episode of “Friends”, Monica introduces Rachel to Ross, who she already knows, and to Joey, Phoebe, and Chandler, who she’s meeting for the first time. These introductions all made sense at the time but, later on in the series, the idea that Chandler didn’t recognize her that day kind of falls apart. Let’s not forget that Chandler’s best friend in college was Ross, and Monica’s best friend was Rachel. And, as we see in numerous flashbacks, Chandler had met Rachel many times in that context. Maybe we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s forgotten his best friend’s sister’s friend… Probably not. Plus, given his lack of success with the ladies, we can’t imagine he would also not have recognized Rachel from their college party make out sesh. Even with her new nose.

In a scene, if items on a table move around a little from one cut to the next it, it’s easily chalked up to multiple takes, especially if the items are being interacted with. However, if the items on the table change completely, well that’s a mistake worth listing. That’s exactly what happens in this scene where Joey calls Monica to tell her he smells gas in the apartment. At one point during the call, there’s a dirty casserole dish and a bottle of water on the table and the next time we cut back to Joey and Phoebe there’s just a bowl of fruit.

In the season nine episode “The One With the Mugging”, Joey discovers that he gives a better acting performance when he has to… relieve himself. So, for his next callback he decides to really lean into it and raids Monica’s fridge for a whole bunch of liquid help. He emerges from the fridge with three cans in one hand and two bottles in the other. But, we guess he didn’t like his initial selections because when we cut back to him he’s ditched the bottles and added a few more cans to the mix.

We’ve already discussed Joey’s self-cleaning sweater, but this shirt is even more amazing. It has the ability to change into a completely different top. When Joey first spots the hot girl in Monica’s apartment, he’s wearing a black pullover with a zipper. However, when he makes his way over to Ross’ building to find her, he’s suddenly wearing a maroon or purple (fight about it in the comments) button-up. Now, he might have decided to change, so that’s not too weird. However, as Ross opens the door, something magical happens. That purple button-up morphs back into the black pullover. Wow! If you were missing the button-up, not to worry! It makes a reappearance in the following scene.

They say it’s impossible to be in two places at once. Well, those laws of physics obviously don’t apply to extras in the final episode of “Friends”. As you might remember, in the episode, Ross and Phoebe rush to the airport so that Ross can tell Rachel how he really feels about her leaving. The only problem is that they go to JFK when Rachel is actually flying out of Newark. Which means they are in two totally different locations right? Well, tell that to the extras in the scenes. You see that lady in a headscarf and the guy in the black shirt behind Phoebe and Ross at JFK? Now, look who’s also in the background in Newark.

As Monica’s sous-chef, Tim, explains, the word sous-chef comes from the French word “sous” which means “under”. In the scene, Phoebe is clearly learning this information for the first time. Maybe that interaction made her wish she knew how to speak French and she secretly spent the next couple years becoming fluent. What other explanation could there be for the fact that, in season 10, Phoebe attempts to teach Joey French for an audition and is able to have a full conversation with the play’s director. We just don’t sous-stand.

You’d think that keeping a character’s birthday consistent would be easy. The first time you mention it in an episode you write it down somewhere and make sure you don’t differ from that going forward. Well, it looks like the writers forgot to write it down for a couple of the “Friends”. Let’s start with Ross, whose birthday is mentioned as being October 18th on multiple occasions. Later, however, he tells Gunther his B-day is in December. Then there’s Rachel. Her birthday is said to be May 5th. But, according to her driver's license, she’s an Aquarius, which covers the period from about January 20th to February 18th. We’ll let you be the judge of which astrological sign suits them best!

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. During the shots where it can’t be seen on her, eagle-eyed viewers may notice that it’s actually dangling from the tray she’s holding, which means it must have fallen off during certain takes!

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. 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!