Sylvester Stallone has finally addressed one of the most famous "movie mistakes" from the original Rocky. The good news is that the urban legend surrounding the color of Rocky's shorts is actually better than the version movie buffs believed.

The first Rocky is immortalized for plenty of reasons, the most impressive being Sylvester Stallone proving his talents extended well beyond acting, writing the script and eventually directing the sequels. But the movie was also believed to include a scene directly addressing a major mistake behind the scenes. A mistake based on Stallone's shorts for the climactic boxing match against Apollo Creed.

And now, a mistake that fans and movie historians have been getting wrong, thanks to Stallone revealing an image of himself in the costume that Rocky almost wore for his big bout.

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Until now, the urban legend claimed that the scene set the night before the big fight, where Rocky visits the ring and shares words with the promoter was covering up a production blunder. When Rocky notices the massive banners of Creed and himself have him wearing red shorts with a white stripe, he tells the promoter that it's a mistake - his shorts colors are actually the opposite. The lines were added, so the legend claimed, because the props department got the colors wrong when making the banner. People believed the story and spread it like wildfire... until now, thanks to Stallone' s throwback Instagram post:

Seeing Stallone in the red shorts, and his clarification that this was the wardrobe Rocky was supposed to wear prove the existing urban legend wrong. The banners hanging before the fight are now a perfect match for what the filmmakers had planned - until Stallone apparently made the call to change Rocky's shorts to the opposite color "at the last moment." So the blame is finally lifted from either the Set Decoration team and the Wardrobe crew, even if this vindication comes a few decades later. Presumably Stallone made the decision to switch Rocky to white shorts, but wad then faced with the inconsistency.

The similarities between what clearly transpired and the spicier "behind the scenes mistake" rumor are clear enough to cause confusion. Instead of writing the extra dialogue to cover up someone else's mistake, Stallone wrote it to cover up changing his own mind after the makers of the Rocky banner followed the instructions they were given. This clarification from Stallone, even given indirectly, does confirm his writing chops at the time. No matter why the extra dialogue was added to the scene, it drove home the realization that Rocky was a gimmick, and the butt of the joke - since getting his colors right "doesn't really matter, does it?" The fact that those moments wound up in the movie as a fix to such a mundane production issue is downright incredible.

Movie mistake historians of the Internet, time to start correcting Rocky's most iconic mistake. Still a continuity problem, just one now created for all the right reasons.

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Source: Sylvester Stallone