10 Iconic Sci-Fi Movie Moments That Were Totally Improvised

5. "And What The Hell Is That Smell?" - Independence Day

In a film about alien invaders blowing up the White House, you’d think that one of the more memorable moments wouldn’t be a guy walking across a dried-up lake.

You’d be wrong.

After outwitting an alien aircraft in a dogfight, Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) finds himself stranded on a salt lake in the Grand Canyon. Hiller drags the body of his extra-terrestrial foe across the lakebed rambling to himself, which crescendos to him asking “what the hell that smell [is]?”

Not only is this line funny in the context of Hiller having to drag a rotting alien corpse in searing heat, but it is one of the more memorable ones in the film. How did it come about?

Improv.

Smith was given the instruction to ad-lib dialogue while walking, and pulled it off like the comedy pro he is. The line about the “smell”, however, came about not in an effort to be funny, but rather from an actual stench emanating from the lake. This scene was filmed on Utah’s Great Salt Lake which is home to a kind of crustacean called Brine Shrimp. When the lake dries up, the shrimp decay in the mud underneath, emitting an odour worse than your Grandpa’s Tighty-whities.

Mystery solved. Turns out all our hero was smelling was rotting shrimp – Let’s hope they never pull a Shrek 4-D on us with this one.