“This is brand new information!” – but like, for real. We’ve watched every episode of Friends so many times, and we are still finding hidden details, funny bloopers, small inaccuracies, and even some pretty big plot holes in our favorite series. You know… no one told us life was gonna be this way.
The one with the potato in the cake stand
The gang hangs out at Central Perk so much, we would expect the coffee and the food there to be amazing, which is why we were surprised when we noticed this detail in the eighth episode of the fourth season.
Joey goes into the coffee shop looking for Chandler, and we were too distracted by his hilarious exchange with Gunther to notice there was a large potato sitting in the cake stand, acting like it totally belonged in there.
The one with the nod to Jennifer Aniston’s family
In the episode The One with Chandler and Monica’s Wedding, Joey is stuck at work, so Rachel has the mission of finding a new person to officiate her friends’ wedding. She stumbles across a Greek Orthodox ceremony happening at the same hotel…
…And she reads the sign “Anastassakis Papasifakis Wedding,” which is a nod to Jennifer Aniston’s personal life. Her father, John Aniston, was actually born Yiannis Antonios Anastasakis, but his family name was anglicized when they moved from Greece to the USA.
The one with a message from the burglar
Fans of the show know that every time the Magna Doodle is visible, that’s a little “Easter egg” hidden in plain sight. It’s fun to try to decipher the messages Chandler and Joey leave to each other, but this one’s something else.
Remember in season four episode two, when a man tricked Joey and ended up cleaning out his apartment? When Chandler arrives to the scene, you can see the Magna Doodle behind him has a message from the burglar – “Thanks for all your stuff!”
The ones with the hidden Huggsys
Huggsy is officially introduced in the ninth season of Friends, when Emma becomes attached to it and Joey has to deal with his jealously, but fans might remember the “bedtime penguin pal” is first mentioned in the fifth season.
However, if you’ve been really, really paying attention, you’ll know Huggsy was seen even before that episode, and then in several others, discreetly placed around the guys’ apartment, and in several levels of dressiness – goggles, no goggles, scarf, no scarf -, probably depending on the weather.
The one where Estelle was a nurse
Actress June Gable did such a great job as Joey’s agent Estelle Leonard, it would be difficult to imagine her being cast for any other role in Friends, but it actually happened, in season one.
Before she was giving us unforgettable lines like “Hey Joey, it’s Estelle!” and “Joey, look at me. Look at me! Do I have lipstick on my teeth?”, June had a minor role as a nurse in the episode where Carol gives birth to Ben.
The one where Rachel is replaced
Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler, and Joey have become pop culture icons, and it’s impossible to disassociate those names from the faces of the actors who played them. Which is why it’s so weird when we see them being “replaced” on the show.
In this episode from season nine, for instance, Rachel rushes into Monica’s apartment to tell Joey he got an audition, and for a second, as the camera goes from one character to the other, you see Jennifer Aniston replaced by another woman…
The one where Monica is replaced
In this episode from season eight, Phoebe and Monica are hanging out at Central Perk when Courteney Cox suddenly disappears, and an unknown woman is seen on her spot. Turns now these ladies were the actresses’ stand-ins, and that’s a part of every TV show – we just usually don’t see them.
The reason why we are able to spot them now is because back in the 1990s, shows were done in the 4:3 aspect ratio, but that’s been changed to 16:9, meaning people watching Friends on Netflix get to see more of what was going on on the sides of the screen when those scenes were being shot.
The ones with the ‘Reserved’ sign
Our favorite friends hung out at Central Perk so much, the writers even turned that into a joke a couple of times, like when the gang walked in to see their usual couch taken by a group of six people who looked suspiciously like them.
How did that couch become their usual couch, though? It’s New York City, and it would be basically impossible for them to walk in and find that great spot unoccupied (almost) every single time. As it turns out, those seats were reserved for them! In many episodes, you can see the “Reserved” sign right there on their table.
The one with the creepy shadow
It took us 10 years to notice this one mistake during the filming of The One With the Jam, but now that we’re seen it, we can’t unsee it. While the gang is in the kitchen and in the living room, there’s someone walking behind Monica’s closet!
It you want to see it for yourself, the shadow starts moving at minute 5:25 of season three episode three, when Chandler is telling Ross and Rachel about the exchange he had with Janice earlier, and how she understood he “was calling her a cow.” We wonder if the person in the closet is… Richard.
The one with Susan Sarandon and her daughter
You probably remember Susan Sarandon’s guest appearance on Friends. She played Cecilia Monroe, who in turn played Jessica Lockhart on Days of our Lives. We get to watch Jessica in action as she plants one of her vicious slaps on the face of her on-screen daughter, Dina…
And Joey later learns that the reason why the slap looked real is because, well, it was real. But did you know that Dina wasn’t just Jessica’s on-screen offspring? Eva Amurri is actually Susan Sarandon’s daughter, which adds another layer of fun to that episode.
The ones with the tributes to the FDNY
Friends is not the type of show that would comment on the tragedy of 9/11, but the whole story was set in New York City, and they were still airing at the time of the attacks; it would have been too weird for them to not touch the subject at all. Their solution?
In the episodes following the attack, the show did several silent tributes to the FDNY and to the city of New York – for example, Joey here is wearing a shirt that sends a nod to their brave fire-fighters, and the message in the Magna Doodle does the same.
The ones with Rachel’s mixed up birthdays
This mistake is probably super annoying for people who are into astrology, but we doubt anyone else noticed it. In season four episode five, Rachel tells Gunther her birthday is on May 5, but in episode 22 of season seven, it’s implied she was actually born between January and February.
How do we know that? Because when she gets pulled over, the cop looks at her license and says, “You’re an Aquarius, huh?” so according to her documents, she was born between January 19 and February 19. Which kinda doesn’t make sense either; if we’re talking signs, Rachel’s more of a Libra, isn’t she?
The ones with Ross’ mixed up birthdays
The complete disregard for the characters’ correct ages and birthdays is something that bothers a lot of Friends fans, and here’s a great example of what we’re talking about – what’s the deal with Ross’ date of birth?
In season four episode five, he tells Gunther his birthday is in December, but a few seasons later, when Joey’s helping him out at the hospital, he says he was born on October 18th. Also, in season one episode four, it’s actually implied his birthday is in March!
The one with Joey’s enduring campaign
If we’re going to criticize the show’s lack of attention for details, it’s only fair that we praise them when they do get things right. Remember when Joey became the face of a campaign warning people about VD, and those posters were hung all over the city?
It wouldn’t have made any sense in they had suddenly disappeared from one episode to the next, so later in the season, you can actually see one of the infamous posters when Phoebe and Monica are out on the street.
The ones where Rachel and Chandler meet ‘for the first time’
In the pilot, we watch Rachel being introduced to Chandler and the rest of the gang as if they’d never met before, but according to a few flashback episodes, that was not the first time they crossed paths.
In season three episode six, we leaned they had interacted as “strangers” at the bar that was eventually turned into Central Perk; and in season five episode eight, we saw they had been introduced even before that, in the 1980s, when Ross brought him home for Thanksgiving and Rachel was also there because she was Monica’s best friend.
The one with the giant hole in the wall
Now here’s a detail that made us say, “how did we never notice that before?” – but there’s an explanation for that. In season 10 episode one, when Joey arrives to his apartment to ask Rachel if she’s talked to Ross about them being an item, there’s a giant hole in the wall near the door.
The thing is that the hole wasn’t visible when the episode originally aired on TV. Back then, the screen format was 4:3, but that’s been changed to 16:9 now, so a lot of things that we weren’t meant to see are right there, waiting for someone to stick a red arrow on it and post it online.
The one with Rachel’s random passport picture
There’s a lot of action on the 17th episode of the last season of Friends, so we won’t judge you if you never noticed this detail about Rachel’s passport – we certainly hadn’t seen it until we were putting this list together.
When Rachel’s at the airport joking about how she was afraid she wasn’t gonna remember any of her high school French, but she understood every word the guy had said, she shows him her document, but the picture on it clearly shows some other woman.
The one where Joey’s pin number spells out ‘J-o-e-y’
As you might recall, Joey once had to ask Phoebe to go to the ATM machine near his apartment to check the PIN number he had scratched into it, but she already knew it – 5639. But did you know those numbers have a special meaning?
More than 10 years after that episode first aired, we have finally realized that on a keypad, 5-6-3-9 spells out J-o-e-y – which makes the situation even funnier, because HOW could he have forgotten that PIN number?
The one with Matthew Perry’s father
Who could forget the episode where Rachel and Joshua go to his family’s house for a romantic dinner, and they’re caught by surprise when his father and mother come back early from their trip to Europe?
This piece of information made us want to watch that episode again, because Joshua’s father is played by Joshua Bennett Perry, who’s none other than Matthew Perry’s father! Thinking of it now, we can’t believe we didn’t realize it before, because the resemblance is uncanny.
The ones with Gladys’ wardrobe change
Gladys really made her mark in season 10 episode six, when Phoebe has to give her away and the piece of artwork passes through the hands of Rachel, Monica, and Joey. However, she was seen on the background of other episodes, and we’ve noticed something very interesting about her…
Gladys has several wardrobe changes throughout the series! Above, for example, in season two episode nine, she’s wearing a red dress, but in season 10, she’s wearing a beautiful shade of blue.
The one where Matt LeBlanc burst out laughing
We can’t believe it took us this long to see this major blooper that somehow made its way into the final edit, but in the episode The One with the Worst Best Man Ever, Matt LeBlanc literally hides behind his colleagues to burst out laughing.
In the scene, the guys are confronting an adult dancer about a missing wedding ring, and Ross’ inability to “be cool” was too much. Matt probably thought he was hidden from the camera, but we see you, buddy; we see you.
The one where Jennifer Aniston broke character
Whenever we watch our favorite funny moments from Friends, we wonder how the actors were able to shoot those scenes with a straight face – but the truth is that, apparently, they didn’t always succeed in doing that.
In the episode where Ross is showing his bagpipe skills, Jennifer Aniston clearly breaks character when Phoebe starts “singing” along to Celebration. The actress looks over to Courteney Cox as if she’s saying, “help, I can’t do this,” and that’s when we lol.
The ones where ice cream is not too cold
On season seven episode eight, we learn the shocking information that Ross doesn’t like ice cream because it hurts his teeth – “it’s too cold!” However, we had seen him enjoying ice cream in at least two occasions.
Once, when he’s hanging out with Marcel in season two episode 12, and another time when he’s on a date with Elizabeth, on season six episode 18. We thought maybe his teeth became sensitive after his excessive use of whitening strips, but he did that on season six episode eight, before his ice cream date with Elizabeth.
The one where Chandler was not ‘flossing’
Julia Roberts made a memorable cameo on Friends as Susie Moss, a former classmate of Chandler’s who gets the revenge of a lifetime when she steals all his clothes in a restaurant bathroom. However, that revenge ends in a possible mistake. Chandler’s supposed to be wearing nothing but Susie’s underpants, but…
As he’s leaving the restaurant, he visibly has boxers or some type of shorts on. Those are no Joey’s because he states he wasn’t wearing anything, and they’re probably not Ross’, because we never see him accepting Chandler’s 50 dollars offer. The collaborative encyclopedia friends.fandom.com lists that as a goof.
The one with Monica’s misplaced moving box
We wonder who was the eagle-eyed fan who first noticed this detail on the background of this hilarious scene. They must have watched this episode dozens of times, to not have been distracted by all the action and the hilarious dialog.
Remember in season one episode six, when Joey’s filming a shower scene because he’s Al Pacino’s certain-body-part double? Look behind the director – there’s a moving box that has “Monica’s” written on it. How did it end up there?
The ones with Phoebe’s Greenwich Village apartment
Friends has drawn a lot of criticism about the unrealistic size of the characters’ homes compared to how much they probably make. Because so much of the action happens on Monica’s place, that’s the apartment that’s usually the focus of critics, but the show did explain that it was rent-controlled.
What about Phoebe’s apartment? A freelance masseuse living in Greenwich Village? A bit unrealistic, no? Of course, for an unknown amount of time, she had a roommate, Denise, who may or may not have been Santa Claus, so that probably helped.
The one with Ross’ banana lapel pin
Capuchin monkey Marcel is a pretty important character in the first season of Friends, but as he grows older and his behavior becomes erratic, Ross understands that sending him to the San Diego Zoo would be the best for all parties involved.
He goes with him to the airport to say a proper goodbye, and just look at what he’s wearing on his lapel – it’s a banana pin, undoubtedly in tribute to his little friend. Such a sweet and unexpected touch, and definitely something we hadn’t noticed until now.
The ones where Rachel’s pregnant for over a year
No wonder Rachel was so anxious about giving birth already – she was pregnant for over a year! We know that Monica and Chandler’s wedding, where she took the pregnancy test, was May 15. And on season eight episode three, Ross reveals they slept together “about a month ago.”
Rachel is pregnant throughout season eight, but by the Thanksgiving episode, when she was supposed to be seven months pregnant, she has a tiny baby bump. On episode 22, she tells Ross it’s “100 degrees outside,” which suggests it’s summer, when her due date should have been around January.
The one with the meta message in ASL
We probably never noticed what Ross was wearing in this scene because they had our focus set on another one of his shirts – the button down one with the faded salmon color / his pink shirt, depending on how you see it.
But look at the t-shirt he’s wearing in the image above. That’s a meta message right there, because the two hands printed on it are signing out the word “friend” in American Sign Language.
The one with the Harrison Ford movie
In season six, Joey goes to a dry cleaner to try and get his photo back on the wall now that he’s starring on his own show, but the owner refuses, claiming the episode he watched was offensive to his people (Russians, not dry cleaners).
Joey argues that Harrison Ford is on the wall, even though his movie Air Force One was offensive to Russians, and the man says the never saw it. What gets people laughing is when Joey replies “you should, it’s great,” but the real joke here is that the actor Ilia Volok was actually in that film.
The one where Ross misspells Rachel’s last name
How weird is it that Ross has known Rachel for so long, and he still doesn’t know how to spell her last name? It’s not like it’s a difficult last name, either – Green -, but he somehow managed to add an extra “e” at the end.
We see his mistake when her envelope is about to be put in the mail box… But we’re sure Ross wouldn’t take the blame for that, as he and Emily had already established they could say Ben was in charge of the invitations.
The ones with the celebrity paradoxes
Friends is supposed to be a somewhat realistic show, so in their fictional universe, they know and love a lot of real pop culture elements – the brands they wear, the magazines they read, the movies they watch, they’re all real.
But they often do celebrity paradoxes, where the characters suddenly don’t recognize a famous celebrity they should be aware of. For instance, the guys are all obsessed with Die Hard, but when Bruce Willis shows up, he’s just “Elizabeth’s father.”
The ones where Chandler does cry
There’s an episode literally called The One Where Chandler Can’t Cry that focuses on how he’s “dead inside” and basically unable to connect with certain emotions – however, we had already seen him crying on several occasions.
For example, in season four, when the guys get real about how lucky they are to have each other, and then again when Phoebe gives him some tough love to get him outside the house. Plus, in season 10, a flashback episode shows he cried in college when he saw Ross with Missy Goldberg.
The ones with the Mad About You connection
Viewers today might think that Phoebe’s twin Ursula is a fun but minor detail about Lisa Kudrow’s character, but the truth is that Ursula is basically Phoebe’s origin story.
Lisa Kudrow was already playing waitress Ursula Buffay in the sitcom Mad About, airing Thursdays at 8pm, when Friends was slotted right after it, at 8:30pm. The writers thought they needed to give some explanation for the audience as to why they were seeing the same girl in two differente series, so they made Phoebe Ursula’s twin sister.
The ones where Ross doesn’t remember his first time
A person’s first time is usually a memorable moment, and in the first season of Friends, the writers certainly made a huge deal about the fact that Ross’ first (and only) time had been with Carol, but they seem to have forgotten this information later on.
In season seven, during a round of revelations about their past, Ross claims Chandler got intimate with a woman in college, but it turns out, it wasn’t Chandler, it was him. So, unless Carol was the lady cleaning their dorm, that’s a major mistake about his backstory.
The one where the apartment number changes
With Monica’s place being one of the main sets in Friends, you’d think the art department would have cared for it down to the last details, but eagle-eyed fans noticed a pretty big mistake that was only fixed in the second season.
When the show started, Monica’s apartment was number 5, while the guys’ apartment was number 4. It didn’t make any sense for the number to be so low because the view they got from the living room window indicated they were up high, so by season two, those were changed to 20 and 19.
The one where Phoebe’s birth mom disappears
Season three is a big one for Phoebe, because that’s when she finds out Lily Buffay wasn’t her biological mother – that’s Phoebe Abbott, a woman who’s alive and well. She struggles with the information at first, but they eventually bond, and it’s cute seeing them together.
However, after season four, Phoebe Abbott completely disappears. She’s mentioned in season five, when she sends her daughter a fur coat, but that’s it – we never see or hear about her again, not even at Phoebe and Mike’s wedding.
The one where everyone was an Arquette
Netflix’s “skip intro” function is a gift from the gods, but it kinda prevented us from noticing this gem even after the many times we’ve watched the first episode of season six, The One After Vegas.
Courteney Cox had just married David Arquette and added his last name to hers. To celebrate their union, the show did something adorable in the opening credits – they added “Arquette” to the name of every cast member, as you can see above.
The one where the chick and the duck go to the “farm”
The chick and the duck made their first appearance during season three, and for a while, they played an important part in Joey and Chandler’s lives. But they were mysteriously phased out during the following seasons…
…And we don’t see them again after season six (though the duck is mentioned in season seven). During the series finale, it’s revealed they went to a “farm” some time ago, but they were such beloved pets – it’s just weird that their passing was completely ignored by the show.
The one where Ross stops aging for three seasons
Ross takes great pride in his intelligence, and yet, he can never remember his own age. On season three, when Chandler asks if he wants some chocolate milk, he replies “no thanks, I’m 29.”
The following season, when the guys admit they don’t like to party anymore, it’s said they’re 29 years old. And then, on season five, when Ross is wondering what to do about Emily and Rachel, he complains he could be getting divorced for the second time before he turns 30.
The one with Monica’s dollar jar
You might remember that in the beginning of season eight episode five, The One with Rachel’s Date, Phoebe is in the kitchen at Allesandro’s flirting with sous-chef Tim, when Monica loses her patience and kind of yells at them.
She claims she didn’t, though, and says she’s not putting a dollar in the jar. We always thought that was only an expression, because there was no jar to be seen, but that was a continuation error. If you go back to before Monica comes to Phoebe and Tim, the jar is visible near the door.
The ones where everyone failed geography
Phoebe’s heart is broken in the 10th episode of the first season because her new boyfriend David leaves her to go to Minsk; and geography and history lovers’ hearts were broken because everyone in the series keeps referring to Minsk as a place in Russia.
Mink is the capital and largest city of Belarus, which gained independence in 1991; and that episode aired in 1994. We’re not sure why they said Minsk was in Russia, and we certainly don’t know why they insisted in the same mistake in other episodes where David mentioned his workplace.
The ones where soulmates exist, then don’t exist
We’re always overcome with feelings when we remember Monica’s wedding vows to Chandler, which is probably why we never realized this little inconsistency. When they’re getting married, she calls him “My prince, my soulmate, my friend”…
…But in another episode down the line, when Phoebe introduces the gang to the man she thinks is Monica’s soulmate, Chandler gets all upset, and Monica calms him down by saying she doesn’t believe in soulmates. What’s that all about, Mrs. Bing?
The one where Joey didn’t come straight away
In the end of season six episode 10, Joey and Janine finally become an item when they kiss after a taping of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. The moment was highly anticipated, and he couldn’t wait to go share the news with him friends.
In fact, the following episode starts with Joey running into the other apartment to tell everyone about what happened, and he claims to have come to them straight away – however, he’s not even wearing the same clothes as before.
The one with the longest dinner date ever
When Pete finally gets to take Monica out on a date, he claims to know a great little pizza place that just happens to be… in Rome. But the issue is that a flight from New York to Rome is at least eight hours, one way.
This means they had probably the longest dinner date ever, flying eight hours to have pizza – they must have been starving when the food arrived – then flying another eight hours to go back home.
The one where Joey’s bedroom has no walls
We were too distracted by the duck showing off its amazing tricks to Joey’s lady friend to realize there was something weird about his bedroom in season 4 episode 22, The One With the Worst Best Man Ever.
Funnily enough, after Joey says, “stare at the wall,” the duck seems to stare at the exact spot where the wall to the bedroom ends. It’s just another one of those things that became visible when the screen format changed from 4:3 to 16:9.
The one with the magic unwrapping present
When Monica is trying to refrain from opening the wedding presents without Chandler, she fools herself into believing she could open only one, which turns out to be a tiny salt shaker – for tiny salt.
She goes for the other “half” of the present (the pepper shaker) and prepares to start opening the biggest box of them all, when Rachel arrives and she turns to ask her about the pregnancy. Look at the box – it’s already unwrapped, and in the following shots, it keeps getting wrapped, unwrapped, wrapped, unwrapped.
The one where Chandler is ok with dogs
There’s an episode in season seven that’s literally called The One Where Chandler Doesn’t Like Dogs. In it, despite Joey’s warning, it’s revealed that Chandler can’t stand the animals – even puppies.
However, if we go back only a season, there was an episode where Phoebe asked him and Monica if they’d like to spend a day taking care of three “incredibly cute little puppies” – and he agrees to do it. The “puppies” were actually Frank’s triples, but if Chandler was really that averse to dogs, he never would have accepted Phoebe’s initial proposition.
The one with the wrong wedding dress
The first time we saw Rachel Green, she was bursting into Central Perk soaking wet after leaving her fiance at the altar, so yeah, that scene was pretty memorable, and so was her dress.
Which is why we were bothered when we noticed in season four episode 20 (“The One With All the Wedding Dresses) that the costume department put her in another gown, thinking we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Well, we did!
The one where Monica and Chandler hadn’t been trying for over a year
You might remember that the exact moment Monica and Chandler decided to start trying to have a baby was at season eight episode 23, when Emma was born and they got extra… inspired.
Then on season nine episode 21, Monica claims they had been trying to have a baby for over a year, and that’s why they needed to go to the clinic and do their exams. However, it’s not until season 10 that we get the memorable episode with Emma’s first birthday, which means they actually hadn’t been trying for over a year.
The one with the moving toilet
In season five, Monica and Chandler are still hiding their relationship from everyone, so she sneaks into his apartment in the middle of the night. When they are nearly caught by Joey, they trick him into thinking the reason it’s still dark outside is because that’s what 9am looks like.
He goes to the bathroom to wash up and “watch that sun rise,” but moments later, we see he’s fallen asleep brushing his teeth, sitting on the toilet. That’s the only time the toilet is visible from outside the bathroom, though; in other episodes, it seems to be located to the right of the door.
The one with the switching Snufflebumps
We don’t mean to sound like a Grumpus here, but now that we’ve seen this continuation error in season nine episode six, we can’t seem to unsee it. It’s the moment where Sandy, the male nanny – or, the “manny,” if you prefer -, is introducing the Snufflebumps.
In the first scene, Sandy had Mr. Wigglemunch on his left hand, and the Grumpus on his right; but when the camera cuts to Ross and back to him again, the Grumpus is on his left, and Mr. Wigglemunch is on his right.
The ones where Monica only aged four years in seven seasons
The 22nd episode of the first season, The One with the Ick Factor, is centered around the fact that Monica, who’s 26, had a fling with a much younger guy, so that was pretty noteworthy.
However, in season seven, we’re watching Rachel turning 30 years old, and we see that Monica, who graduated high school with her and therefore is the same age, had also recently turned 30. Which means, Monica only aged four years between seasons one and seven.
The one where Ben wasn’t invited
By season four, when Ross and Emily became an item, Ben had already been phased out from the series, but we still heard his name often – he was even cited by Ross as the reason why he could never move to England.
It’s weird, then, that we the viewers never got an explanation as to why Ben wasn’t at Ross and Emily’s wedding. He was such an important part of Ross’ life, and he wasn’t even mentioned in those two episodes.
The one where Phoebe saw her brother for the first time
Phoebe first meets her half brother Frank Jr. in season two episode 21, when she’s searching for her biological father and learns he walked out on his other family as well. However, you might recall that was not actually the first time she saw him.
Their first encounter was in season two episode 6, when she was playing her music outside of Central Perk, and he ran to her to pick something he had accidentally dropped on her guitar case (and then he ran off yelling, “Hey Christina, I got it!” – remember it now?).
