If you don't want to forever change the way you think about Friends while it plays in the background as you fall asleep every night, we have a quick message: Ahem, you might want to stop reading right away.
It's become a bit of a TikTok trend to point out Friends Easter eggs and oddities, and the latest one was recently brought to the public's collective attention by an individual with the username @cts.trphe. In response to a prompt about media tropes that become impossible to ignore, the user pointed out a vocalization that Jennifer Aniston used while portraying Rachel Green on the enduring NBC sitcom before it signed off in 2004.
"Jennifer Aniston has this sort of vocal tic that she does at the beginning of every single sentence that she starts on any [episode] that she's in," the individual shared in the viral post. "It's very specific, and it's very hard to unsee once you notice it."
The user then included a short collection of Friends moments in which the actress clears her throat before starting to speak. And now that we think about it, she does appear to have cleared her throat quite a bit throughout the show's 10-season run.
Some users commented that Jennifer obviously made certain choices as an actress, and that this was just the way her character reacted in scenes where Rachel felt particularly awkward about speaking up. However, a YouTube supercut posted in 2019 by a Friends fan appears to verify this was a habit that the performer leaned on more than just a few times.
The supercut is entitled, "Rachel Clears Her Throat 200 Times," and while we did not count the number of throat clears to confirm the tally, we did give it a watch, and 200 does not appear to be much of a reach.
This follows a viral TikTok post from earlier this month pointing out that Ross and Monica Geller's dad was portrayed in one scene by a stand-in who clearly is not Elliott Gould, the actor who typically performed the role. The gaffe appeared to be attributable to a formatting difference between how the episode aired on broadcast and how it looks on streaming platforms.
So, we hope this doesn't actually impact your enjoyment of Friends in any way. If nothing else, maybe it just makes you wish one of Rachel's five besties could have offered the poor woman a soothing glass of New York's finest tap water every once in a while.
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)