The best animated features go that extra mile to immerse viewers, helping the audience forget
that the characters they're investing in have been drawn in pencil or rendered with pixels.
All of that hard work is so easily undone by a simple mistake, however, and they happen
at the top level way more often than you'd think.
Are a few misplaced pixels going to ruin a great animated movie?
Not at all.
Mistakes are unavoidable, but when you do actually notice one of these errors, it ends
up becoming impossible to unsee.
Toy Story
Pixar's surprise hit Toy Story blew audiences away in 1995.
It outperformed blockbusters like GoldenEye, Batman Forever, and Jumanji at the box office
to become the highest-grossing film of the year, and taught us all some valuable lessons
about playing with toys.
"We toys can see everything, so play nice."
But this critically acclaimed smash hit isn't completely perfect.
The mistakes begin during the opening credits as Andy plays with his toys - he drives RV
into his makeshift cardboard bank, but in the next scene he comes out of the closet.
The mistakes continue as Buzz Lightyear arrives on the scene.
As the clueless Space Ranger attempts to take flight, he slides down a Hot Wheels track
and does a full loop, though this clearly wouldn't have been possible — the shot from
his point of view reveals that his wingspan is way too wide.
"That wasn't flying, that was falling with style."
The Lion King
Just one year before Toy Story changed animation forever, Disney released The Lion King.
This truly memorable movie smashed previous records to become the highest grossing hand-drawn
film of all time and went on to become the best-selling VHS ever.
According to The Daily Beast, the House of Mouse didn't even have its best animators
on the job, with the A-team all assigned to Pocahontas instead.
Maybe that's why the animation often has some jarring mistakes.
For example, the "whites" of Simba's eye turn yellow in certain scenes.
Nala's eyes switch from blue to green at different points in the movie, too.
Shrek
DreamWorks' big breakthrough Shrek wasn't afraid to lean heavily into the realm of toilet
humor, and that was one of the things that made it such a huge hit for the studio.
Shrek subverts the typical Disney tropes right from the get-go.
"Wake up!"
"What?"
Even the opening credits are quick to establish that this isn't your typical hero.
Unfortunately, the animators must have been having so much fun showing Shrek brush his
teeth with insect guts that they forgot right from left.
In the scene, Shrek creates a "Beware Ogre" sign for his swamp, but did you ever notice
the mistake here?
When he's painting the sign, we can see from behind it that the top left corner is missing,
but when he plants it in the ground and we see it from the front, it's the top right
corner that's missing.
Does it ruin the movie?
Hardly, but good luck not noticing it whenever the scene comes up.
"I guess you don't entertain much, do you?"
"I like my privacy."
"you know I do too!"
"That's another thing we have in common."
Monsters, Inc.
The tiny details that the animators of 2001's Monsters, Inc. had to contend with took up
a lot of their time, which is probably why some glaringly obvious mistakes managed to
make it into the final cut.
During one scene, hapless scarer George Sanderson emerges from a child's bedroom with a little
white sock stuck to his shoulder, triggering a red alert.
"George and I are like brothers!"
"CODE 2319!"
WE HAVE A 2319!
The Child Detection Agency show up to dispose of the supposedly dangerous item with a controlled
explosion, shaving the monster bald for good measure.
It's a fun, but ultimately flawed scene, because when Sanderson is pinned down by the CDA,
the toxic sock has somehow flipped over.
The Lego Batman Movie
It might have fallen well short of 2014's The Lego Movie in terms of box office returns,
but The Lego Batman Movie still raked in a ton of cash globally.
Critics and audiences loved it, even if it isn't a perfect movie.
Some of the mistakes made by the animators get lost in the madness of the movie's many
action set pieces, but when The Lego Batman Movie slows down, you do start to notice the
cracks a little.
During the scene in which Bruce Wayne talks to the portrait of his dead parents, the pictures
to either side change around between shots.
"Look at that!
The old gang."
Frozen
Disney's Frozen was always likely to do big business.
The studio must have known it was on to a winner just based on the incredibly catchy
songs, but nobody could have predicted that Frozen would take over the world the way it
did.
Elsa is the star of the show, but her sister Anna also seems to be capable of a little
magic.
Apparently, she can let solid objects pass right through her body.
After she realizes that Kristoff has been the one for her all along, Anna surprises
him with a brand new sled to replace the one he lost while helping her.
In his euphoria, Kristoff picks Anna up by the waist and gives her a romantic little
spin, but hit your pause button mid-swirl and you'll see that his thumb actually goes
through Anna's waist.
It's a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but now that you know about it you won't be able to
unsee it.
Wreck-It Ralph
This colorful Disney hit wowed the majority of critics when it came out in 2012.
However, just like the '80s arcade games it features, Wreck-It Ralph comes with the odd
glitch, and we're not talking about Vanellope's predicament.
"But there's one who cannot escape because she's a glitch!"
"Help, somebody help!"
In the opening moments of the movie, Ralph explains his job within the game Fix-It Felix,
Jr — essentially, he wrecks the game's single building, while the hero, Felix, is tasked
with fixing it.
"So yeah naturally the guy with the name 'Fix-It Felix'."
He's nice enough as good guys go
"He definitely fixes stuff really well."
We get a quick run-through of how the game works, and at the end of the explanation,
Felix is awarded with a medal while Ralph gets tossed off the top of the building by
the Nicelanders.
If you look closely, there's something wrong with this scene.
From a wide angle, we see that Ralph is standing right next to the ledge during the ceremony,
yet in the close-up shot that follows he's now square in the middle, giving the residents
of the apartment building enough room for a run-up.
Someone's mama probably wasn't too proud of that moment.
"You wanna go pee pee in your big boy slacks, it's make your mama proud time!"
"I love my mama!"