Viral Theory Says This Weird ‘Fast & Furious’ Scene Is a Deepfake

Did the infamous beef between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson get so heated that they refused to film a scene together? It’s a possibility, at least according to an online theory trying to make sense of perhaps the weirdest scene in the entire Fast & Furious franchise.

At the end of Fast & Furious 6, Dom (Diesel) and Agent Hobbes (Johnson) officially make the jump from enemies to frenemies and begrudgingly express some mutual admiration for one another. It’s a scene you’ve seen a million times before in hyper-macho action movies but the internet points out that what makes this version stand out is the insane blocking of the scene.

Dom and Hobbes don’t even appear to be standing face-to-face and don’t make anything resembling eye contact at any point. The whole thing gets weirder when Hobbes takes a step forward and suddenly his head looks twice as big as Dom’s. And then the shot gets reversed and it becomes abundantly clear that the two are making no attempt to look at each other at all.

Given the bizarre nature of the entire interaction, some people online have theorized that perhaps Johnson and Diesel, whose disdain for each other is the worst kept secret in Hollywood, actually refused to do the scene together. So the two actors shot their lines separately and then forced the editing team to combine the two scenes later.

It’s a fun theory but if you watch the whole scene (starting at 2:53), it’s pretty obvious that is not what actually happened. There is some very weird blocking and editing happening but you can see a few brief moments where it’s clear that Johnson and Diesel are in the same scene together (otherwise, it would be the most impressive CGI in movie history).

They just decided to not stand in front of or look at each other the entire time, for some reason that we will likely never get a satisfying explanation for. As for the weird perspective and shifting sizes between the two, the best guess online is that Diesel did not want to look shorter than Johnson onscreen despite being five inches shorter than him in real life, so that led to some very odd blocking that made Johnson’s head appear significantly larger than Diesel.