12 Famous Movie Facts That Are Actually False

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27-07-2025

The famous "SEX" dust cloud in The Lion King was a hidden message, but it didn't say sex — it actually spells "SFX" as a subtle shoutout to the film's special effects team.
The myth of the hidden word, according to Snopes, spread after rumors that a 4-year-old boy from New York or Louisiana spotted the word "S-E-X" in the dust cloud while watching The Lion King and told his mother or aunt. However, that doesn't make much sense because how could a child that young spell, make out the spelling, or understand the word? The "discovery" was likely framed as "a child saw it" to make it more alarming and to fuel outrage by someone or somebodies who wanted to criticize Disney.
There is a widely circulated myth that one of the Munchkin actors hanged himself on camera in The Wizard of Oz, specifically during the scene where Dorothy and the Scarecrow meet the Tin Man. In reality, what people often mistake for a hanging figure is actually a large bird — likely a crane — that was part of the set to make the forest appear more lifelike.
According to Snopes, this urban legend dates back to 1989, when the film was re-released on VHS for its 50th anniversary. OK, now, if you were watching this on video in 1989, the resolution would have been, well, shit, so it would be easy to not be able to make out shadows in the background and interpret them as something else. In the 30-plus years since then, the movie has been remastered and cleaned up several times, and if you watch it today you can clearly make out that it's just an exotic bird walking in the background.
Three Men and a Baby was not filmed in a haunted New York apartment, and there's no ghost lurking in the background of any scene. The "ghost" people often point to is actually a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson's character, which was part of a deleted storyline. The movie was filmed on a soundstage in Toronto, not in a real apartment, haunted or otherwise.
Just like The Wizard of Oz, Munchkin one, this urban legend started after the film was released onto home video. The story went that a 9-year-old boy had killed himself in the apartment where the movie was filmed and that he can be seen hiding behind the curtains as the camera quickly pans across the room. But the "ghost" is actually a cardboard cutout of Ted Danson's character (which can be seen earlier in the film). There are a few theories as to how this rumor started — like how it was the studio trying to drive up VHS rentals. It could just be that, again, just like in the case of The Wizard of Oz, the low resolution of VHS tapes, and the fact that TVs were smaller in the '80s and '90s, made it hard to determine what the figure was.
It's a common misconception that Heath Ledger stayed in character as the Joker 24/7 while filming The Dark Knight. While Ledger did immerse himself deeply in the role — notably spending weeks alone in a hotel room developing the Joker's voice, mannerisms, and personality — he did not remain in character off-camera throughout the entire shoot.
Cast and crew members, including Christian Bale, have said that while Ledger took the role very seriously and delivered an unforgettable performance, he was professional, collaborative, and able to step out of character between takes, where he cracked jokes and skateboarded. The myth of him being consumed by the role (and it leading to his death) adds to the film's mystique, but in reality, Ledger approached the part with intense preparation, not constant method acting.
In Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the scene where Indy shoots the swordsman was not improvised because Harrison Ford was tired of doing takes of it and refused to do anymore.
Ford and the actor who played the swordsman had actually trained for a much longer scene that was going to be elaborate and just be between the whip and the sword. However, Ford was combating dysentery and was not feeling well, so the night before the shoot, he approached the film's director, Steven Spielberg, about shortening the scene (as it was going to take at least two to three days to shoot) by just having Indy shoot the swordsman. Spielberg had had a similar idea, so the scene was cut down before it was even shot.
Leonardo DiCaprio did read for the part of Max in Hocus Pocus. However, he never turned down the role because he couldn't even accept it, as he was already committed to filming two other movies.
It's a bit convoluted, but he was asked to come in to read for it, with director Kenny Ortega being fully aware that he was unavailable to do the movie because he was already committed to filming What's Eating Gilbert Grape and This Boy's Life. According to Ortega, DiCaprio was brought in to read for the role because the casting people knew he would be very good and that it would inspire Ortega to find the right guy to play Max.
The producer of Gone With the Wind, David O. Selznick, was not fined $5,000 for including the word "damn" at the end of the movie because it violated a Motion Picture Association Production Code.
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," is one of the most iconic lines in cinematic history. However, Selznick didn't have to pay a fine because he didn't violate anything. He wanted to stick to the book as much as possible, so he got special permission from the Motion Picture Association to use the words "damn" and "hell" in specific situations in the film. But, just in case he didn't get the permission, Selznick and story editor Val Lewton came up with a list of alternate lines that Rhett could say to Scarlett at the end of the movie.
Mad Max: Fury Road had a script, contrary to internet rumors that said director George Miller used only storyboards to make the film.
Obviously, this is not true, because it would be impossible to make a movie like Fury Road without a script. In an Oct. 2020 email to IndieWire, Miller shut down the rumor once and for all, saying, "I'm not sure how the notion that Fury Road had no script came about. I suppose it's because of the [photo of the] room lined with storyboards. Of course, there was a script! How else could we have presented the project to a studio, cast, and crew to elicit their interest?"
Janet Jackson never demanded that Tupac Shakur get an HIV test before he kissed her for their film Poetic Justice.
While this didn't happen, it does have an origin; according to the film's writer-director, the late John Singleton, it was actually a joke (not the most tasteful joke, I know) he started when they were filming. The backstory is that both he and Tupac had HUGE crushes on Jackson (who was not interested in either of them, 'cause she was secretly married at the time), and he would jokingly say, "We're gonna have to get you an AIDS test for you to kiss my actress!" as a way to one-up Tupac. The joke became a rumor even before the movie was released.Also, it's important to note that HIV/AIDS had been a known disease for over a decade-plus when the movie was filmed — it was already a known fact that you could not transmit the disease through kissing, so it doesn't even make sense.
Universal had high hopes for Jaws, and knew it would be a hit (obviously not the massive blockbuster film it would become). The movie was based on a bestselling novel, and the studio believed the thrilling concept and beachside setting would have a strong appeal for summer audiences, which is exactly why they chose to release it in the summer. At the time of its release, 1975, summer was considered a dead zone for movies, with studios typically dumping lower-priority releases during those months. In the decades since, this has led to the misconception that Universal didn't expect much from Jaws.
Additionally, Universal backed the film with an aggressive marketing campaign, which was unusual for the time. The campaign included an unprecedented number of TV and radio spots, which helped build nationwide buzz.
Contrary to popular belief, Cleopatra was not a box office bomb. In fact, the 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was the highest-grossing film of that year, earning around $57 million at the box office, which was an impressive figure for the time.
The misconception largely stems from the film's behind-the-scenes chaos, production problems, and notoriously bloated budget, which ballooned to close to $44 million (roughly $460 million today with inflation), making it the most expensive movie ever made up to that point. The movie struggled to make an immediate profit due to its staggering production costs. But Cleopatra eventually recouped its budget through re-releases and international earnings.
And lastly, no, a disgruntled Disney employee who had just found out they were fired did not secretly draw penises on the VHS cover of The Little Mermaid — despite what you may have heard as a kid. The now infamous image, which appears to show phallic shapes hidden in the castle towers, was actually the result of an innocent mistake by a freelance artist hired to create the marketing artwork.
In 1998, Snopes interviewed the artist responsible for the original Little Mermaid VHS cover to get to the bottom of the infamous "phallic castle" rumor. The artist, who had previously worked on other official promotional materials for the film — including the theatrical poster, CD artwork, and Happy Meal boxes — insisted it was purely accidental. He explained that he was rushing to finish the artwork around "four in the morning" and didn't notice anything unusual in the castle design. In fact, that exact castle illustration had already been used in the film's original poster (below) and was simply reused for the VHS cover, with only Ariel, Prince Eric, Sebastian, and Flounder being newly redrawn.