Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Facts

FOTR: The Car

On the film's first theatrical release, a story circulated that when Sam tells Frodo that he is now the farthest he has ever been from home, a car is visible driving by in the background (top-right corner of the screen). Arguments ensued. Some said it was smoke from a chimney, others said they saw the glint of sunlight reflected from the windscreen of a fast-moving vehicle. In the version of the film released on DVD there is definitely no car, only chimney smoke and a one-frame flash of light that could conceivably be a car, but not in any sense that could be considered a goof. Peter Jackson says (in the commentary track on the Extended DVD) that he looked at every frame on a computer and has never seen anything resembling a car and claims that it's nonsense. In the documentary of extended DVD version, editor John Gilbert says that there was a car in the background, but they thought no-one would notice it. They got rid of it in the DVD version. In a subsequent magazine interview, Jackson agreed that the car was there.