A “Blatantly Obvious” Friends Blunder Is Going Viral On Reddit

It’s been almost two decades since Friends aired its final episode, but eagle-eyed fans continue to spot errors in the long-running show all these years later. The latest mistake to catch viewers’ attention can be seen in the Season 8’s “The One with Rachel’s Date.”

In the episode, which originally aired in 2001, Monica (Courteney Cox) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) converse on the famous Central Perk couch. At one point, Cox is replaced with a stand-in actor, and it looks like Phoebe’s talking to an entirely different person. Fans are calling the mix-up a “blatantly obvious error.”

But as one Redditor pointed out, “It’s very common for stand-ins to deliver lines” when one of the show’s leading stars isn’t available on set. The user went on to explain why stand-ins are used: “If there was no one there, the actor (in this case Lisa Kudrow) would not have anyone to make eye contact with while filming the scene, which is incredibly disorienting.”

Another Redditor speculated that the error wasn’t visible in the original broadcast, and is only apparent now thanks to changing technological standards. “The original TV format was 4:3 aspect ratio,” the Redditor wrote. “So the stand-in wasn’t visible in the broadcast version. When they remastered the aspect ratio to 16:9 (wide screen) she became visible.”

If this is the case, it would explain why there’s a similar error in Season 9’s “The One with the Mugging.” In one scene, Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel is clearly replaced by a stand-in actor, who isn’t even wearing the same outfit.

Several other Friends mishaps have been doing the rounds online as of late, and they’re not all related to stand-ins. Just two that have recently gone viral: a Joey Tribbiani continuity error in Season 1 that “ruins the character,” and a mistake in Season 7 regarding Rachel Green’s sailing history.