8 Insane Ways Movies Tried To Save Money

This practice is basically unheard of nowadays, but back in the era of hand-drawn Disney animated classics, the studio would regularly take footage from one of their movies and place it directly in another, keeping the core animation the same, and just adding in new characters and objects on top.

This was done to both save on production costs, as well as to meet tight deadlines. If the filmmakers didn't have enough time to hit their date, they would simply take footage from an older film, and rework it to fit their current project.

There are far too many examples of this to list here, but one of the most notable is 1973's Robin Hood. Not only does that film include a bear character called Little John, who looks and moves exactly like Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book (the two even share a voice actor), but work on the film fell heavily behind schedule, resulting in the crew recycling several dance sequences from prior films, including The Aristocats and Snow White.

To give Disney's animators some credit, it's almost impossible to notice this re-used footage unless you're actively looking for it. As we mentioned, new characters and objects are drawn over the top of the core animation, and sometimes, the footage is flipped or altered in other ways.

The best way to spot every instance of this is with a YouTube compilation (like the one below) that provides a comprehensive selection of these similar scenes.