The original opening sequence of The Simpsons was made unusually long to cut the amount of animation work for each episode.
Guns N’ Roses wanted a breakdown near the end of ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ but never got around to writing it. Once, when they got to that section Axl Rose literally wrote: “Where do we go now?” The band figured that was good enough.
In The Godfather, Marlon Brando would often gaze to the side, giving him that iconic detached look. Well, he did it to read his lines because he never memorized them before shooting.
Baywatch star/producer David Hasselhoff said that the iconic slow-mo running scenes came about because the show was just trying to fill the hour. He explained, “Well girls in bathing suits look good running in slow motion, so we just shot that. And we found out that the audience kinda liked it.”
The Beatles didn’t want to go all the way to the Himalayas to shoot the cover photo for their 11th album, which was going to be titled ‘Everest’ (named after Everest cigarettes). So instead, they just went outside of Abbey Road Studios for the photo and called it ‘Abbey Road.’
Love Actually’s opening scene of people embracing their loved ones in the airport was basically a result of Richard Curtis’ laziness. He had tons of airport footage and asked script editor Emma Freud to “just knock that into some kind of shape” and she did.
South Park’s infamous villains The Crab People were never actually meant to be used. They were just supposed to be a placeholder until they thought of a real villain…which they never did.
Tchaikovsky didn’t really care for ‘1812 Overture.’ He only composed it because he was asked to and didn’t want to say no. So, he just threw together some anthems, folk music, and his own unreleased competitions.
The Ghostbusters theme song was written two days before it was due. And because they couldn’t come up with more lyrics, they filled the song by repeating the classic catchphrases “Who you gonna call” and “I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghosts” nearly a dozen times.
The iconic Infinite Improbability Drive from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was only created because Douglas Adams wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t think of a logical way to save Ford and Arthur from space.
The famously long guitar solo in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song ‘Free Bird’ was added so that the vocalist of the band, Ronnie Van Zant, could take a break during shows.
Samus Aran’s iconic ball morphing powers were created because the Metroid designers realized it would be a lot easier to turn her into a sphere than to animate her crawling.
Stan Lee only created The Avengers because it was the easiest way to get a comic book out in time. The art on Daredevil #1 was late and Marvel would have lost the printing fee they paid in advance if they didn’t print SOMETHING, so they needed a new comic. Instead of creating something new, Stand Lee took a bunch of existing heroes and just had them team up.
The jukebox's blowin' a fuse
My heart beatin' rhythm
And my soul keep-a singing the blues
Roll over Beethoven
And tell Tchaikovsky the news