10 Unexpected Reasons Behind Awesome Horror Movie Moments

Ghostface does that badass knife wipe to avoid continuity headaches.

By Jack Pooley /

While it's generally assumed that the most awesome and memorable of movie moments are meticulously planned out by the cast and crew ahead of time, that's not always the case.

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Sometimes an iconic moment comes totally out of nowhere, whether improvised by the cast, changed by the director at the last-minute, or occurring due to an unexpected technical mishap on set.

This is perhaps especially true in horror cinema, where movies are generally produced at lower budgets compared to most other major genres, and so there's a little more wiggle-room to fly by the seat of their pants.

And so, as brilliantly composed as these 10 horror movie moments might seem, they were all actually the result of something most unexpected indeed.

Perhaps an on-set accident forced the filmmakers to pivot, maybe they decided to roll with a creative setback, or a crew member pointed out an issue that nobody else had even thought of.

Whatever the reason, these 10 memorable horror movie moments weren't part of the original plan and had origins you surely never could've anticipated while watching. But now, you'll never watch them quite the same way again...

10. Hooper Survived Due To An On-Set Accident - Jaws

In both the script for Jaws and Peter Benchley's original novel, the character of Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) is killed when the shark destroys the shark cage he's "safely" contained within before promptly devouring him.

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But in the final cut of the movie this was changed, with Hooper scarcely escaping the situation and revealing himself to have survived to a relieved Martin Brody (Roy Scheider).

The reason for this? While footage of Hooper in the shark cage was being shot - achieved by filming a dwarf actor in the shark cage to make the real shark look even bigger - one of the sharks attacked the cage, tearing it up.

Thankfully the dwarf actor wasn't in the cage at the time, but Spielberg was so stunned by the footage that he was determined to use it in the final movie.

And because the footage clearly showed the shark destroying the cage without Hooper inside it, Spielberg decided to change Hooper's fate, ensuring he could use the material without any blatant continuity issues.

Production executive Bill Gilmore seemingly put it best: "The shark down in Australia [where the shark footage was shot] rewrote the script and saved Dreyfuss' character."

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