10 TV Moments They Didn't Want You To See

From the accidental (?) exclusion of CGI to the horrendous inclusion of it, we have The Sopranos' infamous use of burgeoning VFX technology to keep a character in the story following the death of the person who played them.

Between the second and third seasons of The Sopranos, Nancy Marchand - who played Tony Soprano's (James Gandolfini) cantankerous mother Livia - passed away. And so, series creator David Chase was forced to both toss out her planned storyline for season three and explain her absence for the show's remainder. Rather than merely have Livia die off-screen, though, Chase opted to construct a final exchange between Livia and Tony with the help of CGI.

In the season's second episode "Proshai, Livushka," Chase had unused footage of Marchand from prior episodes combined with VFX to create a digital double of Livia. Yet even when the episode aired back in 2001, the effects were laughably unconvincing, and to modern eyes seem outright embarrassing. 

Any hope from Chase and HBO that audiences would be so captivated by the scene that they wouldn't notice the effects were optimistic at best, delusional at worst. It was certainly a tough creative bind for Chase, but considering how distracting the wonky CGI ultimately is, it probably would've made more sense to just have her die off-screen without this interaction.