High School Musical fans question how they never spotted Vanessa Hudgens being replaced by another actor

High School Musical is arguably one of the most iconic noughties movies, but one of its main characters was briefly replaced, seemingly without anyone noticing.

Gabriella Montez, who was played by Vanessa Hudgens in the hit franchise, was actually portrayed by a stunt double in one of its most famous scenes.

News of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it replacement has recently been doing the rounds on TikTok, where fans have been shocked by the small detail in High School Musical 2.

A shocked fan of the movie posted a TikTok of his reaction to the iconic pool scene that sees Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) flirtatiously wave to Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) as he makes his way to a pool party in the 2007 flick.

Well, from Sharpay's perspective at least.

From on top of a rock, Gabriella proceeds to wave back at Troy, which leads Sharpay to dramatically 'fall' into the pool.

She is clearly played by Hudgens at the start of this scene, but when the camera pans to her character as she dives off a rock formation, it's pretty obvious that another actor has taken on the role as Gabriella makes the quick jump into the pool to save Sharpay.

This went far from unnoticed on TikTok since the clip was posted four days ago (23 December) and it's been liked over 350K times by shocked viewers.

remyeasterling/TikTok

Reacting to the clip, one fan said: "yall vanessa hudgens is allergic to chlorine and they had to use it in the pool so they used a stunt double for her [sic]."

While a second added another fun bit of HSM trivia: "my favourite is that people don't know zach didn't sing his parts for the first one [sic]."

"The wig," wrote a third alongside a laughing emoji, while a fourth remarked: "feeling a little bossy for noticing it several years ago."

"Fun fact!" joked a fifth. "Vanessa Hudgens is actually a mermaid so production wouldn't let her get wet."

"The fact they had the budget and time to hire a stunt double for a literal jump in the pool," wrote a sixth alongside a laughing emoji.

"I always noticed and I remember feeling betrayed as a kid," remarked a seventh.

An eighth added: "[To be fair] the tvs back then were so bad how were we supposed to notice anything [sic]."

"Just a head's up," added a ninth. "My house is by this pool in St George, Utah. The pool isn't very deep so she could have injured herself jumping incorrectly."

All of this begs the question, did you notice the stunt double replacement?