10 TV Mistakes You Can’t Unsee

Now, this one is better than most TV screw ups, since not only will you never be able to un-see it, in classic David Lynch fashion, it actually manages to be a rare mistake which makes the series it features in more comprehensible and understandable—nifty trick from the Lost Highway helmer.

When crew member Frank Silva accidentally ended up in a shot of screaming Mrs. Palmer as she’s besieged by some (theoretically) unseen force, this set fans speculating as to who the barely glimpsed mystery man in the reflection was. Of course, he was no one—Silva simply hadn’t had time to vacate the room before filming began and was never meant to be visible.

But this happy accident set the show’s creator thinking, and thus Silva was asked to return and embody BOB—the infamously terrifying antagonist of the season.

Initially a fun coincidence, this mistake took on some new significance when the series finale of Twin Peaks revealed, some twenty five years later, that the show’s protagonists had ended up stranded in our reality—a reveal already hinted at by the fact that Silva’s screw up already altered the fabric of the show’s universe years earlier.

What a headf***