10 Movie Extras Who Completely Ruined Scenes

This is a major understatement, but movies are hard to make, with the production having to keep track of an extensive cast and crew to bring their project to completion. This includes extras, background actors who don't have any scripted dialogue that help fill out a given scene. Even though these performers don't play a significant role in the story, a scene-stealing extra can completely deflate an entire scene. Given how many moving parts there are or costly reshoots can become, sometimes a distracting extra can remain in the final cut of a movie.

For some, these distracting extras have actually become their own offbeat highlight, like a gaffe that eluded the editors. Either way, the extras listed here take audiences right out of the cinematic experience once they're noticed by viewers. From background performers spoiling the tension or just unconvincingly filling a scene, there are a variety of ways that extras can spoil the sequence around them. 

Here are 10 movie extras who completely ruined scenes that they appeared in and somehow made the film's final cut.

One of Alfred Hitchcock's best films of all time is 1959's "North by Northwest," an early spy thriller movie. Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a mild-mannered advertiser who is mistaken for George Kaplan, a fabricated persona made to distract people monitoring the American intelligence community. This places Thornhill in a cross-country plot to steal valuable microfilm by the enigmatic criminal Phillip Vandamm (James Mason). At the Mount Rushmore visitor center, Thornhill confronts Vandamm's lover Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who is an undercover agent secretly working for the American government.

As part of their elaborate ruse, Kendall shoots Thornhill in full public view with a pistol loaded with blanks and Thornhill playing dead. Even before Kendall pulls the trigger, a boy can be seen in the background with his fingers plugging his ears. This telegraphs to the audience that Kendall is about to shoot Thornhill, with the boy either enduring multiple takes or overly preparing for the noise. Alfred Hitchcock taught Cary Grant a simple trick to keep the mood calm on set, but apparently this extra missed the lesson.

This is one of those bloopers involving extras where some fans understandably think it actually made the scene better. During the original 1977 "Star Wars" movie, droids R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) hide out in a Death Star control room. Realizing that their traveling battle station has hostile intruders on board, a detachment of Stormtroopers move to see who's fooling around in the control room. Upon forcing the door open, one Stormtrooper, later identified as background performer Laurie Goode, bumps his helmeted head on the partially raised door.

There are some who think the head bonk ranks among the 100 greatest "Star Wars" movie moments of all time. Recognizing its fan-favorite reception, filmmaker George Lucas not only retained the gaffe in the movie's 1997 Special Edition re-release but added a comedic sound effect to it. When asked about the scene years later, Goode revealed that his participation could've gone a lot worse than a head bump. According to Goode, he almost pooped his pants as well, after developing an upset stomach during filming.

Let's see that make the greatest "Star Wars" movie moments of all time.

The 1985 supernatural comedy "Teen Wolf" revolved heavily around its protagonist Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) playing high school basketball. Howard's aptitude for the sport only increased after being transformed into a lycanthrope, granting him superhuman abilities on the court. Not only are his classmates surprisingly cool that Howard now periodically transforms into a werewolf, but they make merchandising and promotions over it. This excitement spreads to subsequent basketball games as Howard single-handedly carries the team, but one spectator gets too amped up.

For years, there was an urban legend that one male extra in the stands during a basketball scene in "Teen Wolf" was exposing himself in the background. Upon closer inspection, this claim has been debunked, but there is a female extra who visibly has their pants unzipped. Identifiable by the bright red sweater that she's wearing, the extra quickly zips up her pants when she realizes the camera is pointed her way. Sometimes getting some comfort in between filming takes means that some unintentional compromising moments make the final cut.

The movie that gave Wesley Snipes his breakthrough success as a Hollywood lead actor was the 1992 action flick "Passenger 57." Looking back, the movie is genuinely one of the best "Die Hard" knock-offs, with terrorist Charles Rane (Bruce Payne) leading a small team to seize control of an airliner. Snipes plays John Cutter, a veteran law enforcement specialist who's hired to lead an antiterrorism unit that happens to be flying on the same plane. Rane starts the flight in FBI custody, but his escorts are quickly killed when his team reveals themselves mid-transit.

When the terrorists enact their plot, one of the FBI agents that they kill can be seen with blood on his face before he's shot in the head. This background slip-up is seen as Rane's second-in-command, Sabrina Ritchie (Elizabeth Hurley), reveals she's in league with the terrorists, dropping her flight attendant disguise. With movies filmed out-of-sequence, the agent's death was likely filmed earlier that day but without someone removing the bloody makeup from his face. There's always someone trying to ice-skate uphill, and this apparently includes people on set overseeing scene continuity from the extras.

Jon Favreau, one of the biggest blockbuster filmmakers in Hollywood today, got his big break writing and starring in the 1996 indie comedy "Swingers." Favreau plays Mike Peters, a struggling comedian who recently relocated to Los Angeles to take his career to the next level. Mike is also still struggling to overcome a major breakup, striking out consistently when he reenters the dating scene. This changes when he meets a young woman named Lorraine (Heather Graham) who similarly is also relatively new to L.A. and out of a relationship.

The moment that Mike and Lorraine meet marks a shift in "Swingers," transforming Mike from the sad sack he was at the start of the movie. The two's meet-cute is at a dimly lit bar in the City of Angels, with Mike approaching Lorraine alone. This pick-up attempt isn't entirely appreciated, with an unnamed extra standing close to Lorraine reacting indignantly at Mike moving next to her. After noticing he's being filmed by looking directly into the camera, the extra quickly shuffles out of the frame offering some unexpected reality to this indie flick.

At this stage this isn't even a hot take, but "Scream 2" is actually the best movie in the franchise. The escalation in horror set pieces and expert use of mounting suspense is perfected by filmmaker Wes Craven here. One extra that unintentionally and infamously undercuts the tension of a scene also occurs in this 1997 slasher sequel. The movie has several of the preceding movie's survivors go to college together where they're menaced by new Ghostface killers around campus.

One of the standout sequences in the movie has college student Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Gellar) murdered at an empty sorority house. When a nearby party learns about this, the partygoers chaotically leave their festivities, either to check out the murder scene or get home safely. This includes an attendee holding a bowl of snacks and comically lulling his head by Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) before he finally runs out of frame. Any existing tension coming off Cooper's brutal murder is completely dissipated by this extra pretending he's drunk and panicked in his exit.

The 2000 war movie "The Patriot" starring Mel Gibson is one of those movies best watched on the Fourth of July and not much else. Gibson plays South Carolina plantation owner and widower Benjamin Martin, who raises his seven children at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Initially trying to avoid the conflict, Martin sides with the Continental Army after the sadistic British officer William Tavington (Jason Isaacs) razes his home and murders one of his sons. Drawing from his experience in the Seven Years' War, Martin employs guerilla warfare-style tactics against the British military, ambushing them rather than facing them out in the open.

There are a lot of dead soldiers seen on-screen throughout "The Patriot," being a war movie and all. This includes the shot of a dead British soldier laying evidently deceased in a wagon who begins rising as the scene fades to black. The cameras had either kept rolling a bit longer to accommodate the planned scene transition or the extra just thought the production got the shot they wanted. Years before making "The Passion of the Christ," Gibson appeared in a movie with someone else coming back from the dead.

With trouble behind-the-scenes, 2008's "Quantum of Solace" is the biggest disaster in James Bond history, though not for the reason you think. Among the more laughable flaws in the movie takes place while Bond (Daniel Craig) is shadowing a person of interest in Haiti. While observing his target from afire and calling MI6 for information, Bond comes to a stop on coastal docks. During this phone call, a street sweeper is seen brushing the docks vigorously behind Bond with a large broom.

The issue with the sweeper is that for as much effort he's putting into his broom, he's visibly brushing several inches above the ground. The scene briefly cuts away from Bond as the call continues, with the sweeper still diligently brushing the air when the camera returns to the British super-spy. Once you notice it, the extra's comedically ineffective cleaning becomes the focal point of the scene whenever he's on camera. There are some who consider "Quantum of Solace" the second-best Daniel Craig 007 movie, but I wonder if they think this street-sweeping extra adds to its appeal.

After conquering the world of big screen comedy, Will Ferrell shifted to more dramatic roles in the late 2000s. This included the 2010 dramedy "Everything Must Go," with Ferrell playing salesman Nick Halsey who loses his job over his alcoholism. This leads to the complete collapse of Halsey's personal life, including his marriage and access to his financial accounts. As Halsey contemplates what to do with himself, he reconnects with his old high school classmate Delilah (Laura Dern).

Halsey speaks with Delilah on her porch while her children play in the background, or at least presumably play. As Halsey and Delilah's conversation progresses, her children visibly stop frozen solid in their tracks for several seconds. No attention is called to this, the kids were probably instructed not to do anything too distracting for several takes and just stopped moving altogether. This gives "Everything Must Go" an oddly surreal moment in a movie that relatively plays things straight that distracts from the scene's conversation.

Fight scenes in big studio blockbusters are usually tightly choreographed set pieces, especially if there are a significant number of performers involved. This includes a rooftop fight scene in 2012's "The Dark Knight Rises" as Batman (Christian Bale) and Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) team up against a squad of henchmen. The scene is the first time that the Caped Crusader and Catwoman are seen working together in action, quickly forming an effective team. However, judging by the ill-timed reaction of one of their attackers, this Dynamic Duo might be a touch too effective.

One of the stunt performers on the far left as the fight commences is seen falling down before he endures a hit. What probably occurred is that the performer missed his timing cue and took himself out of the sequence too early. Another possibility is that the performers strayed from their rehearsed marks unless this extra decided Batman suddenly learned how to use the Force. Either way, it underscores that while "The Dark Knight Rises" provides worthwhile spectacle, it's also a bit of a mess.