Did you ever blow your friends' minds pausing the tape on the 'ghost' in 3 Men and a Baby or the 'munchkin hanging himself' on Wizard of Oz?
Posted by Wednesday-Addams9@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 147 comments
I was so bummed to discover as an adult that neither was real. The ghost was a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson, not, as we wholeheartedly believed, the ghost of a little boy who died by falling out of the apartment window (and just wanted to be in the movie!) This scene once scared my cousin so much that she started crying.
The "munchkin hanging himself" is apparently just a woodsman swinging an axe way in the background after they collect the Tin Man and start off toward Emerald City. With a higher quality version of the movie on a high def TV, it's super easy to see. But on a 90s TV on a VHS tape recorded from a televised movie, it was pretty creepy, it really did look like a small person swinging from a tree. I think the urban legend was that the munchkin got fired from the movie, so he hung himself on set. And they just left it in the film. Totally plausible!
Was there other stuff like this in movies that I missed hearing about? I know there's apparently a penis in Little Mermaid, but isn't that real?
AllThe--SmallThings@reddit
Wizard of Oz one had me convinced for years. I dragged my mom into the living room and did the whole big reveal like she hadn't been alive in 1939. Very gracious of her, looking back.
Lughaidh_@reddit
The first six words had me thinking this was going elsewhere…
seiggy@reddit
There’s a Starbucks cup visible in an episode of Game of Thrones. Can’t remember which one, and it’s likely they went back and fixed it after the internet noticed on broadcast date. But always thought that one was a funny mistake.
GivesYouGrief@reddit
No, they digitally edited in the bird wing to cover the hanging munchkin in the mid 1990s. If you have older VHS tapes and could play them, you'd see the hanging midget is still in them.
mittenknittin@reddit
I'm old enough to have watched it on TV every year when I was a kid, pre VCR. It was ALWAYS a bird.
GivesYouGrief@reddit
And they say autism is a newfangled thing.
mittenknittin@reddit
We HAD it taped from one of those TV showings. When I first heard about the "munchkin hanging," I dug out the old tape and looked. It was a bird.
GivesYouGrief@reddit
Fwiw nobody seriously disputes that. I'm just playing along with the urban legend. (the digital edit myth was indeed being spread as long ago as 1998).
mittenknittin@reddit
...except for that other person replying to you who thanked you.
I mean everyone thought "flat earthers" were a joke until some of them turned out to be serious
GivesYouGrief@reddit
I am 95% sure that person was kidding too.
_buffy_summers@reddit
Thank you. I hate when people try to say that it didn't happen.
Distinct-Banana-7937@reddit
No but I paused The Lion King to the part where 'sex' is spelled out and heard Aladdin say 'take off your clothes' when riding the magic carpet up to the window of the princess. I saw the penis on the cover of The Little Mermaid too. I had alllllll of the original VHS tapes of Disney movies as a kid, but let my sister borrow them when she had a kid. She freaking ruined them.
theicecreamassassin@reddit
This stuff used to scare the hell out of me as a kid!
Sodamyte@reddit
Yes the penis is realish. As in it certainly does look very similar to one. However, a couple other disney ones that aren't teal are the "Lion king leaves soell sex" and Aladdin saying "take off your clothes"
The-Good-Bad-Place@reddit
I swear that I heard “teenagers, take off your clothes” as a whisper in Aladdin. Learned about that through word of mouth.
Sodamyte@reddit
What was actually said was "good tiger.. take off, go.. scoot"
The-Good-Bad-Place@reddit
My memory is recalling, “good kitty, nice kitty” and the voice was not quite at the same time, all hushed. (But we probably won’t be able to convince each other!)
Sodamyte@reddit
You don't have to take my word for it.. here's the guy who made the movie: https://youtu.be/kqMJyw9NVfA?si=GjHDlOi9kODLGLAR
The-Good-Bad-Place@reddit
Noted! Memories are funny things.
Sodamyte@reddit
I mean.. as a kid when someone told me that's what it was.. it's what I heard too 😄
The-Good-Bad-Place@reddit
I appreciate that! I hate that my own mind gaslit me!
Wednesday-Addams9@reddit (OP)
I would have been all over this if I'd known about it as a kid, because we had a VHS copy of Aladdin that was purchased right after it was released. Actually I still have it somewhere, but no VCR to play it on. I'm a little sorry I missed out on that one.
the_owl_syndicate@reddit
Nope, I remember the Lion King sex one, but I have a feeling you need the VHS anymore to see it
trainwreckhappening@reddit
How about "don't do drugs" in some of the harrowing carpet swoops in the Cave of Wonders as it turns to lava.
Sodamyte@reddit
I had never heard of that rumor.
beccadahhhling@reddit
I did with the naked lady in this scene.
rangeghost@reddit
No... the Little Mermaid penis was on the VHS cover. The pause moment for the film is when an animated fabric fold made the wedding minister look like he has an erection.
Individual-Schemes@reddit
Individual-Schemes@reddit
Sodamyte@reddit
It's actually SFX for the special effects department.
Neither_Internal_261@reddit
The same people at Disney that said it says SFX are the same people that put the picture of a naked woman in one of the windows in The Rescuers.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-rescuers-topless/
rangeghost@reddit
Fair, but I'm also pretty sure Disney Adventures magazine included the "SFX" one in an article about Easter Eggs years before people started accusing it of saying SEX instead.
If they were trying to be sneaky, I'm not sure they'd have let it be pointed out.
thewayshesaidLA@reddit
No way it was years before. The VHS was released in March ‘95. That summer I was at a friend’s house and we were playing and rewinding it over and over. It was hilarious to our soon-to-be 7th grade minds.
AbbyNormalKnits@reddit
I was working at Target when that came out and bought my copy the morning of the recall. No clue where it is now.
sunnyd311@reddit
I bought a copy of that before it got recalled!! I used to know the exact time stamp and would show it to everybody!!...that, and the scene in Alladin where someone whispers "take off your clothes"
EsotericAbstractIdea@reddit
And when the monkey yells "oh shit" in the cave
Do_it_My_Way-79@reddit
It actually isn’t the same people at Disney. The Reacuers were made by a team including Don Bluth that left Disney about a decade before Little Mermaid was made.
TubeScr3ameR@reddit
“take out your claws”
Roland-Of-Eld-19@reddit
Goooood Teenagers.... Take off your clothes
TubeScr3ameR@reddit
“take out your claws”
brainvheart143@reddit
There is DEFINITELY a part in Aladdin. Iirc it’s when Jasmine is on the balcony and it says “take her clothes off “- we rewound it 1000x and it was def there!
WhereItsAt75@reddit
I remember seeing this with a friend. Pretty sure it's really SFX though.
ammodramussavannarum@reddit
CAnt yOu sEE thaT cLeaRLY SaYs “SEX” in WhiTe In tHe ThIrd fRamE?
misdirected_asshole@reddit
Energy
ammodramussavannarum@reddit
Haha that’s exactly what I was going for
Diablojota@reddit
MaiaIndig0@reddit
I used to have 7 copies of this VHS. I was so proud of that lol
Individual-Schemes@reddit
Neither_Internal_261@reddit
My mom still has my original tape with this on it haha
Vegaprime@reddit
In 1996 a copy was selling for 300$.
CoffeePieAndHobbits@reddit
The full story behind The Little Mermaid cover art is pretty fascinating!
https://13thdimension.com/the-complete-uncensored-truth-behind-the-infamous-disney-little-mermaid-scandal
menunu@reddit
Can confirm i remember this. Its during the wedding ceremony with Eric and Ursula.
tigerblue1984@reddit
The vast majority of these sexual jokes that were supposedly sneakily edited into Disney films are urban legends, but there really was a real image of a topless woman that made it into The Rescuers. I remember reading somewhere that it was a disgruntled animator who had recently got fired so he spliced in a real picture of a topless woman as revenge, but it's never been officially confirmed how the image got past the editors. Even though the movie was released in 1977, Disney execs didn't realize the images were in the film until 1999, and they had to recall millions of VHS tapes and edit the images out. Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rescuers#Nudity_scandal
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-rescuers-topless/
CantaloupeAsleep502@reddit
Why on earth would someone actually send back a vhs tape because of that??
cannot_care@reddit
It would have been the stores sending them back, not people who had already bought it.
icollectmagiccards@reddit
My cousin used to go to school to Mercer University in Macon Georgia in the 80s. He and his pals would 'punk' each other (I think that's the word he used, this was before the Ashton Kutcher show) by drawing dicks on each other's property to see how long they could go before noticing. A piece of paper on the outside of their chemistry binder, place an extra flascard with a dick on into their presentation flashcards so when they read it on class they would mess up, stupid stuff like that. Fun game back in the 80s for some degenerate college kids. One of them got a job at Disney as an animator and a couple of years later and then this happened
Johnykbr@reddit
I have a framed theatrical debut poster of this i won in a charity auction. It's hilarious.
No-Dig-4408@reddit
Yeah, that's the moment that -- ahem -- stood out to me. My cousin showing me the wedding priest lettin' it all hang out during Eric and Ursula's wedding.
fiendishthingysaurus@reddit
He absolutely popped a boner
trainwreckhappening@reddit
My sister had that cover.
NW_Forester@reddit
One of my high school history teachers told the class about the the alleged hanged munchkin when we watched the wizard of oz (actually she paused it and showed us when it allegedly happened). Overall we watched it to talk about the gold standard and other references/allegories in the Wizard of Oz to that time in history when it was written.
She also told us about synching Darkside of the Moon with Wizard of Oz.
RainPotts@reddit
my brother watched the scene of Ursula turning into a human over and over cause her big chest is front and center ..ruined my VHS . Thanks CHUCK 😒😆
maxpower958@reddit
There's a dude in the stands at the end of Teen Wolf with his dick out.
meleaguance@reddit
My brother and i paused the Rescuers VHS to see the woman taking her top off, which unlike the others was real
InkedAlchemist@reddit
Funny story about this. I basically lived in my high schools art rooms my Junior and Senior years. We had an old big screen TV in the AP Art studio, the kind encased in wood. Well, we got on the topic of these two movies. A few days later we watched the Oz scene and then 3 Men. We rewound to watch the 3 Men scene again. TV went dark and never worked again. We all got a bit of a kick out of that.
EtDM@reddit
Don't forget the Pepsi Neon cans that spelled sex if you stacked two and rotated them the right way!
BlindSpots2ndThought@reddit
No but I did have a screening of Pulp Fiction when DVD was brand new and I paused it right where you can see Bruce Willis's penis
itscrowdedinmyhead@reddit
we had always heard the little boy shot himself with a shotgun, and you could see the boy in one scene, and the butt of the shotgun in the next. family gathered to have a look at the VHS, and if I'm recalling correctly (I was a kid myself) the neighbors came over too.
Rough-Flower8580@reddit
In Aladdin there’s a part where he is scared of the tiger and when he’s backing away he says “Nice kitty” and real fast he says “take off your clothes” Its super creepy
Local_Use4891@reddit
My friend and I went through all my Disney tapes one afternoon to find the hidden dirty messages, and this is the one that creeped us out the most. We rewound the tape to watch the scene multiple times because it was so shocking to hear it. My memory of the line is “teenagers, take off your clothes.”
traminette@reddit
“All good teenagers, take of your clothes!” I also had a night where I watched all the scandalous Disney scenes with a friend who had all the VHS tapes. Core memory!
Local_Use4891@reddit
Ahhh, that’s it! No one (who didn’t take the time to do this) believes me, or they think I was just a kid imagining it. Talking about this to others almost feels like telling a ghost story — “no really, I heard it and saw it with my own ears and eyes! It really said that!”
derps-a-lot@reddit
My friends and I never got this one, even after obsessive replays. He's saying "good kitty. Take off, kitty." and the background discussion of Jasmine muddies it, especially on old VHS and console TV speakers behind wood and plastic.
madeofknives@reddit
It's 'take out your claws '
littlebirdgone@reddit
Pretty sure the actual script line is “good kitty - take off and go”
Heteroclite13@reddit
Also if you listen closely in the flight out of the Cave of Wonders, Abu has quite the potty mouth.
Neither_Internal_261@reddit
I've definitely heard that. Idk if it was just because I heard about it then listened but I swear it's there
Shinespark7@reddit
The most impressive thing about this is how we all knew about it purely through word of mouth.
One_Application2409@reddit
I’m maybe 90% sure I heard about the munchkin thing from Tabitha Soren. Maybe Kurt Loder. (I definitely heard about the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz sync from them.)
Wednesday-Addams9@reddit (OP)
I have this theory that cousin-to-cousin transfer is a big part of how this stuff ends up spreading from school to school. All the kids in your school end up knowing about something, then you tell your cousins when they visit, and they go back and tell kids at *their* school, ad infinitum. Also every place kids interact with kids from different schools, like sports, summer camp, etc.
Of course, that was all pre-internet and social media. I don't even know how it works now. I don't have kids and my niece is only 2.
brainvheart143@reddit
lol cousin to cousin transfer
That’s also how we all got Norovirus one Thanksgiving
orrororr@reddit
Like in the 80s rumors about Rod Stewart/ semen and Richard Gere/gerbil are ubiquitous, and that was all years before internet.
ouijahead@reddit
That makes perfect sense now.
Asleep_Onion@reddit
I'm pretty sure kids at school nowadays mostly talk about internet memes and viral videos
GivesYouGrief@reddit
They talk about whatever game or YouTuber is trending
SangestheLurker@reddit
It was most definitely featured in shows and specials. Hell, I think the "ghost boy" was even talked about in a daytime show like Rikki Lake.
Wednesday-Addams9@reddit (OP)
Yeah, but back then, if you didn't happen to catch something like that when it aired or know someone who had taped it, you'd probably never see it. Not like now where if something airs on TV you can pretty much find a clip of it online within about 10 minutes. We were so in the dark when it came to fact checking anything. But at the same time, that meant we had this sense of mystery and wonder about questions that couldn't just be answered instantly. I don't think I'd trade that even if I could.
oathy@reddit
V
brainvheart143@reddit
This is only loosely related but I highly recommend the show Cursed Films. It’s on Prime.
The episode about The Crow is mind blowing, to hear exactly what happened and how.
BreakfastBeerz@reddit
"What is it, you cunt face?" In the Sound Of Music had us dying.
devour_feculence___@reddit
No, but if you pause Belly just right, you can see DMX's huge wang
bh4th@reddit
No, but we watched The Wizard of Floyd, which was pretty cool.
Sodamyte@reddit
We called it "dark side of Oz"
bh4th@reddit
I’ve also heard The Dark Side of the Rainbow, which kind of rocks. It just isn’t what we called it at the time.
Sodamyte@reddit
I like that name too
Rolands_missing_head@reddit
Say perhaps to drugs!
RemarkableKey3622@reddit
there's a reggae cover version of dark side of the moon called dub side of the moon. it doesn't work as well but still does work. for the comme ts further down, we called that one dub side of the rainbow
RanklesTheOtter@reddit
Reddit app previewed the post to me like this. I was like 🤣. Then I read the rest.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
We literally went out of our way to rent the Wizard of Oz to settle that bet. Then you had to fast forward and rewind frantically to find it.
Did they digitally remove it yet?
mysmallself@reddit
No, but I knew where the Julia Robert’s nipple flash was in Pretty Woman
moonbunnychan@reddit
Ya. I have this extremely vivid memory of watching the Wizard of Oz during a sleepover and us making a huge deal out of it when we were watching.
AbominablePloughman@reddit
We thought the ghost was Conor Clapton and that was the window he fell out of.
the_owl_syndicate@reddit
In the Lion King, there's a point where Simba flops into the grass and the dust/pollen spells the word sex. I remember watching it in high school and pausing it to show our teacher.
CherryDarling10@reddit
It’s SFX. Special effects.
JumpingSpiderMonkey@reddit
I enjoy the caddyshack doing lines of coke in the background scene.
My_First_Knife1@reddit
No but bots accounts never ask dumb AF questions for karma farming!
Wednesday-Addams9@reddit (OP)
Huh? Are you accusing me of being a bot? Lmao, that's a first.
Jobeadear@reddit
Now pause that one scene in the first Matrix movie, where the cameraman is visible
c4mbo@reddit
I did an entire school project about ghosts and this was one of my main pieces of evidence they existed. I brought in the tv and showed it during my presentation.
jenesia-CakeEatnNPC-@reddit
the "ghost" in 3 men & a baby wasnt a cardboard cutout of ted danson, it was a cardboard cutout of a little black boy. idk if he died or not, or why they even put it there, but thats wat it was.
_buffy_summers@reddit
As a kid, I watched The Wizard of Oz over and over again. While it's possible that it actually was a bird in the background, these are the same people who decided to dose Judy Garland with uppers and downers every day, during filming. I don't think they were the most honest people. The 'bird' looks very different from the possible suicide, and I watched the alleged 'clearer scene' on the same tv set. If it was still the same thing, on the same tv, it shouldn't have looked that different from the scene I saw at least a hundred times. The lighting was different, the angle was different, and we don't actually live in a world where you can just 'enhance' old video like that. Someone offed themselves. Trying to cover it up all these years later is just stupid.
jadethebard@reddit
One of my friends had a TV with a zoom function and we checked both and saw the bird and the cardboard cutout. It helped to have friends with money and fancy electronics for the time. lol Her dad was the DA of our county. Lots of fancy toys like that.
CharlieMoonMan@reddit
I nodded yes after "did you ever blow your friends"
Was there more after that?
willows_edge@reddit
I worked in a video store and would set the VHS to that near exact moment when doing returns - just for shits n' giggles.
UniqueInstance9740@reddit
I enjoyed pausing and replaying the section when the Stormtrooper hit his head on the doorway in A New Hope when they capture C3P0 and R2D2. Still very, very funny.
dewihafta@reddit
My friend in middle school is the one who introduced me to the munchkin one, and she swore that on her uncles big screen tv that you could see the lines on the munchkin’s suspenders.
I was sad when they removed both “sex” from the Lion King and “good teenagers take off your clothes” from Aladdin.
Dont forget about Jessica Rabbit’s vertical smile from the Roger Rabbit ld!
shigi422@reddit
In the laser disk of who framed Roger rabbit theres a scene when the "baby" walks under the dress of one of the woman on set and when he comes out his finger is wet because it was up the entire time.
Obi_Wan_Benobi@reddit
Nope. Not they there’s anything wrong with that.
(I only read the first 6 words of the thread title)
jackfaire@reddit
I never heard about those two until I was an adult
Verbull710@reddit
Upbeat_Suspect_6100@reddit
Tom Cruise hangs sack accidentally in Legend, his first movie. For an entire shot. It was never corrected but it’s there.
202reno@reddit
Timing the start of wizard of oz and Dark side of the moon on the lion’s 3rd roar definitely worked. Or we were just high.
BillyDMountain@reddit
Pink Floyd made several film soundtracks in the early 70's and synched music to visuals at their own shows. I bet they heard click tracks in their sleep. I think their music could synch to almost any film. That being said I've done Echoes and the Jupiter and Beyond sequence from 2001 and Dark Side of The Moon and Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 (I got the idea from a podcast) and they were both great.
BulimicMosquitos@reddit
Tonight, we're doing the same thing, only with "Weird Al" Yankovic's Greatest Hits and Apocalypse Now.
soundbombing@reddit
Wait is that a thing? I've done Dark Side of Oz, but this could be crazy fun.
BulimicMosquitos@reddit
Ha, no! It was a quote from How I Met Your Mother from the dude from Lost.
GivesYouGrief@reddit
The movie theater at my college showed this. Probably the only school sanctioned event I went to where at least 90% of attendees were on mind altering substances besides alcohol.
TerpeneTiger@reddit
It worked and we were high.
Iron_Butterflyy@reddit
The "penis" was actually lazily disguised, very subtly drawn into one of the castle turrets on the original cover of the VHS version. We were 9 when it came out, a friend down the street had that version. We laughed a LOT.
trainwreckhappening@reddit
My sister had that version too. It was unmistakably a penis.
Iron_Butterflyy@reddit
Ok, maybe I did underplay it a little. Probably should have said "artfully rendered".
trainwreckhappening@reddit
It was definitely lazily disguised. I'm just saying it wasn't just imagination. It was definitely someone intentionally drawing a dick on a children's movie cover just because they hated Disney.
GivesYouGrief@reddit
Or just to be funny and try to get away with it.
Initial-Progress-763@reddit
I have it. Literally on a shelf in my living room. It's undeniably a penis tower on the castle.
trainwreckhappening@reddit
Pointedly, hard to miss, shoved right there on the full frontal cover...
Sodamyte@reddit
There was a rumor of a "flasher" in the 1985 movie Teen Wolf during the final basketball game. Supposedly you can see a guy "whip it out" but it was actually a girl fixing her jeans.
Wednesday-Addams9@reddit (OP)
Ha! That just reminded me of the *actual* scene in Dirty Dancing where you can see Patrick Swayze's bare ass for a few seconds when he gets out of bed. Once I was spending the night at my friend's house, and her older sister also had 2 friends over, and we were watching that and paused it on that frame - JUST at the exact moment my friend's poor dad came inside from the garage. We all looked at him, and he just stood there taking in Johnny Castl's buff form for a few seconds, then he just turned and without saying a word went right back out the door. I think we must have laughed for half an hour. God, I miss sleepovers!
BeMoreKnope@reddit
I can one-up that with the time my Dad decided to rent Pulp Fiction, never having seen it before. It was a scene near the end with a man in a leather mask when my mom came home and walked into the room…
Sodamyte@reddit
Ahh yes the gimp.
LasagnahogXRP@reddit
I still have a mark on my arm from where my best friend dug get mail into my arm and genuinely cried out in terror. She cried real tears.
I bet she feels like a real rube nowadays since we all know it was not a ghost.
OskeyBug@reddit
I blew their minds by pausing street fighter 2 on the frame where you can see chun li's butt
BrazilianMerkin@reddit
In earlier VHS copies of Aladdin, when Aladdin is floating on the carpet out Jasmine’s balcony trying to woo her, there was a subliminal whisper that said “teenagers take off your clothes”
I heard this on my friend’s VHS copy so I know it existed. It was removed from later copies on VHS though, as I tried playing it for someone years later and their VHS copy was fairly new. So, guessing it’s definitely not on any DVD or Bluray formats.
trainwreckhappening@reddit
I always felt like it was too far off to actually say that. Same with "poke a mouse." I think it was just "take off" and "your too close" as in telling the big scary cat to "take off, your too close."
Sodamyte@reddit
That's not what was said at all. It was an adlib line that said "good tiger.. take off..go.. scoot..".
epidemicsaints@reddit
The 3 Men ghost was convincing on VHS but when you see it now it's plain as day Ted Danson. It really did look like a child caught on frame.
Now we get to see the camera crew in reflections.
Reasonable-Wave8093@reddit
I never believed those thankfully
cellrdoor2@reddit
He craziest thing is that the local zoo just let them rent birds to wander around on the Wizard of Oz set!