Claim:   Prankish Disney animators slipped a few frames of Jessica Rabbit sans underwear into the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Status:   Undetermined.

Origins:   Several brief, off-color jokes are allegedly hidden within the film, detectable only by viewing the film frame-by-frame on a high-quality VCR or laserdisc player. Some of these gags — if they ever indeed existed — were removed before the movie was released to the home video market. The scenes most often mentioned include the following:

• An incident that occurs during the scene in which Jessica Rabbit is riding through Toon Town with Bob Hoskins in an animated cab. As the taxi runs into a lamp post, Jessica and Hoskins are both thrown from the car; Jessica lands spinning, which causes her red dress to start hiking up her body. For a few frames of Jessica's second spin her underwear supposedly disappears, revealing Jessica's unclothed nether regions.
  The frames in question are frames 2170-2172 on side 4 of the laserdisc version; in these frames Jessica's pubic region is colored darker than the surrounding flesh-colored areas. Whether this coloration was intended to suggest nudity or was the result of a paint error is unknown. The intention might have been to paint the darker regions a color representative of underwear, but an error in the color markup chart produced some ambiguous images instead.
• A scene at the beginning of the film depicts a diaper-clad Baby Herman stomping off the set and underneath the dress of a woman. Watched frame-by-frame, the scene reveals Baby Herman extending his middle finger just before jumping underneath the skirt and re-emerging with a spot of drool on his upper lip. This scene can indeed be seen on the home video release and was clearly intentional.
• In another scene, Bob Hoskins steps into a Toon Town men's room. Graffiti on the wall reads "For a good time, call Allyson Wonderland", with the phrase "The Best Is Yet to Be" appearing underneath it. Allegedly, Disney chairman Michael Eisner's phone number replaces the latter phrase for one frame. Although the "Allyson Wonderland" graffiti is clearly visible on laserdisc, Eisner's phone number is not. If the phone number was in the film originally (as rumor has it was), it was removed before the home versions of the movie were made available.

Animators have traditionally amused themselves by slipping occasional racy frames or other gags into their work, frames which flash on the screen far too briefly to be detected by theater audiences. With the advent of home video and laserdisc players which allow viewers to examine scenes frame-by-frame, these gags can be spotted by sharp-eyed film watchers. Many of these fleeting images are more the product of the power of suggestion than animators' intentions, however.

Additional Information:

      Still frames of Jessica from Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Last updated:   19 August 2007

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2013 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  

---

  Sources:

    Fleming, Michael.   "Jessica Rabbit Revealed."

    Daily Variety.   14 March 1994   (p. 1).

    Thomas, Susan Gregory.   "Toontown Tricksters."

    The Washington Post.   18 March 1994   (p. D1).