12 Movie Props So Bad That They Took People Right Out of the Movie

From a De Niro mannequin to Anakin’s backpack, these props are so bad that we can’t unsee them

August 11, 2023

Even the biggest-budget Hollywood projects have to keep the bottom line in mind. Once you factor in CGI, actors, sets, CGI, equipment, music and more CGI, the props department is sometimes left to just grab whatever severed head of George W. Bush they happen to have lying around. They’re hoping you won’t notice, and honestly, most of us don’t, most of the time. That head, for example, shows up in a horrific scene of a teenage girl being forced to witness her father’s mutilated corpse. Which one of you psychopaths was like, “Hey, is that Dubya?”

Sometimes, though, a prop is so cheap/poorly constructed/obviously straight out of a Sharper Image box that it completely shatters the movie magic, as pointed out by redditor ZzzSleep recently on r/movies. They brought up the “key” to a mysterious and omnipotent A.I. technology featured in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One that “looked like a cheap plastic set of car keys that had lights on it for some reason,” and asked, “What other props/macguffins have looked laughably bad?”

We couldn’t help but agree with several responses.