Shows famous for their animation mistakes

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Sierra b

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For those who watched cartoons from the 80's and 90's; you may have noticed that their may have been an episode or two where there was a noticeable animation error. But there were also shows where it seemed like they had animation goofs in just about every episode. The most famous one that I can remember is The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 which used to air on Saturday Morning on NBC. Seemed like this show had it all: Wrong character colors, misplaced dialog, heck they even had a character with a severed head!

Anyway that's the one I remember the most and I'm sure they had more shows from even the 60's and 70's that were plagued with animation errors. What are some of the other shows?
 
There are many that comes to mind, but for me there is one that it seems ever episode either had the wrong colors or wrong voices,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
 
Adventures of Sonic the hedgehog deserves a mention, although most of the time you gotta pause the cartoon at the right spot to see the mistake. I remember seeing an episode that Robotnik was wearing a gray suit and all off a sudden you then see his back of his usual red outfit.
 
1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons were usually notorious for this, with Superfriends having things like the colors of Batman's chest insignia switching colors periodically and Green Lantern having three arms in one scene.

I loved how the Batman thing was recently homaged on Batman The Brave and the Bold.
 
The first season of "The Simpsons" had some notoriously glitchy animation. Everyone knows the story of how "Some Enchanted Evening" came back from Korea so horribly off-model that about 80% of it had to be re-animated, but even after the show overcame that hurdle, a lot of early episodes still looked very wonky - missing cel layers (Terri loses her torso in one shot in "Homer's Odyssey"), incorrect colors (Smithers became a black man, also in "Homer's Odyssey"), lip sync that doesn't sync at all with the dialogue (all over the place, but especially noticeable in "Bart the General" and "The Telltale Head"), and dozens of retakes. David Silverman mentioned that one scene in "Bart the Genius" had to be sent back to Korea several times, and it never came out quite right, but they had to put it on the air anyway because they didn't have the time or money to send it back yet again.

Fortunately, by about the eighth or ninth episode, the show had worked out most of its kinks, and the animators had finally figured out how to draw and move the characters. Latter season episodes like "Krusty Gets Busted" and "The Crepes of Wrath" look just fine.
 
Even as a kid, it drove me nuts how often you'd hear Donatello's voice coming out of Michaelangello (or whatever), or how often characters would warp from one side of a room to another, or dozens of other mistakes in literally every single episode. :shrug: Go on TouTube and search for "TMNT Mistakes", and there are literally HUNDREDS of entries. Seriously, how hard is it to make sure each turtle has the correctly-colored bandana? You only have FOUR colors to choose from!

Basically, any action/adventure cartoon of the 80's was rife with these kids of errors, because they were so cheaply-produced, and no one involved really gave a damn, as the shows were just half-hour toy commercials. Only the Disney stuff of the late-80's had any real sense that the creators were paying attention.
 
Pretty much anything from Filmation. That studio's shows were chock full of gaffes, mistakes and errors: characters being present where they shouldn't have been, stock shots of characters jeering when they were supposed to be cheering, the wrong character's voice coming out of another character's mouth, etc.
 
The Super Mario Bros. cartoons made by Dic had many mistakes in almost every episode, whether it was coloring, lip synching, or actual drawings. It really shows how cheap the company was at the time.
 
I laughed when I saw TMNT mentioned in the second post of the thread. Yup... that show was known for it's animation errors and they were plentiful. Particularly early on but errors continued to occur through pretty much the whole show's run.
 
I read on some Star Trek websites that the reason for the wonky coloring choices (A greyish Andorian when they're supposed to be blue, pink Tribbles), was because the colorist was color-blind! :eek:
 
Season 3 of classic Spider-Man have full of this. Wrong animations, cells out of place, mistakes in colors and details, weird camera angles, characters who moved out unnaturally. If you pick the Knights Must Fall/Mischievious Dr. Dumpty, wait to count the many mistakes happened through the entire episode.

"Specialists and Slaves" have also that problem, as the "Rhino" plague of "Horn of the Rhino"/"The Golden Rhino" ideas.
 
Here are some I enjoy:

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 - "True Colors"
Cheatsy said it was a "Midnight Attack", even though it was clearly daytime.

The Simpsons - "Homer's Odyssey"
Marge's mouth movie off-sync with her dialogue after Homer's sign epiphany.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show - "Star Koopa"
Mouser said the beam will fire in 16 minutes, but the actual timer read 4:25.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show - "Raiders of the Lost Mushroom"
THEY FORGOT TO PUT IN INDIANA JOE'S FACE!!!

The Ren & Stimpy Show - "Stimpy's Big Day/The Big Shot".
During the "Stimpy's Breakfast Tips" sketch, one shot has Stimpy with pupils, but no eyes. John K. liked that so much, he wanted it left in.

Mike, Lu & Og
Compare the fluid animation in this promo to the actual show.
 
The errors of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show were often hilarious. You had things like Luigi's hat being red and then you had stuff like Toad's voice coming from Koopa and Toadstool's voice coming from Luigi. I love all the animation errors of that show.

I also feel I should point of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They don't normally have animation errors but the one of the cross-eyed pegasus birthed the character Derpy Hooves, who has recently become an official character. So it was an error that created a character.
 
"The Smurfs" was also quite known for having several constant mistakes, specially in its early seasons.

- Papa Smurf colored with white pants.
- Clumsy being drawn without his "baggy" hat.
- Handy drawn without his overalls.
- Some season 1 and 2 episodes have constant off-modeling in general. The opening scene of "Paradise Smurfed" is a glaring example of this.
- Several animation shots reused between episodes, even if they don't fit the context of the story (like the shot of the Smurf orchestra with Papa directing)
- Repeated non-generic Smurfs in crowd shots (see below).

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Funny you should mention Scooby.

When watching an episode of The Scooby Doo Show, I just realized that during the opening intro, Shaggy has no arms!!!! I never caught this as a kid.
 
Rewatching Ren and Stimpy on Netflix, the show was rife with animation mistakes and cheap shortcuts. For being so high and mighty about his animation skills, John K sure could've tried a little harder to be consistent.
 
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