10 Greatest TV Extra Performances Ever

2. The Shifty Couple (Community)

Community Basic Lupine Urology background extra
Sony Pictures Television

As you'd expect from a whip-smart showrunner like Dan Harmon, Community is chock-full of clever gags that you might not catch on your first viewing, like this shifty pair of extras seen in the background of season three's Basic Lupine Urology.

At roughly the eight-minute mark, our group of main characters walk across a street that's bustling with people. Here, focus your eyes on the top-right corner of the shot to see a man and a woman exiting a building, behaving in a rather odd manner while doing so: the man is zipping up his fly, and the woman is wiping her lips.

We probably don't need to tell you what the implication is here, and upon spotting this extremely subtle sight gag, Community fans naturally assumed that Harmon and his writers were responsible for the idea. Apparently though, these extras were acting of their own volition, and the showrunners had no clue about it.

Most extras will just keep their heads down and do as instructed, which makes it really special when they decide to do something fun with the few fleeting frames they appear in.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!