Actor Allusion/Film: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* In ''Are We Done Yet'', John C. Macginley's character was explaining about [[Scrubs|dangerous pathogens]] to the main characters.

* In the 1999 movie ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'', [[Liam Neeson]] played the role of Qui-Gon Jinn (a mentor who taught Obi-Wan to conquer fear, to be mindful of his surroundings, etc...) and in the 2005 movie ''[[The Dark Knight Saga|Batman Begins]]'', [[Liam Neeson]] played the role of Henri Ducard, (a mentor who taught Bruce to conquer fear, to be mindful of his surroundings, etc...) and it's easy for those familiar enough with ''[[Star Wars]]'' to feel reminded of Qui-Gon when watching ''Batman Begins'' scenes involving Ducard. One cannot help but suspect this was on purpose. Furthermore, the ninja training Ducard offers Bruce is also noticeably similar to jedi training as well, in involving strong self-discipline, careful stealth, refined swordfighting skills, etc... {{spoiler|the difference between the two mentors becomes apparent later in ''Batman Begins'', when it's revealed that Ducard is in fact Ra's al Ghul and is shown to be a genocidal [[Knight Templar]], absolutely convinced that destroying all of Gotham was the right thing to to... contrast this with Qui-Gon, who (save for [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|making it his dying wish for Obi-Wan to train Anakin]]) was portrayed primarily as having sound moral judgement.}}

* In ''[[The Naked Gun]] 2½'', actor Lloyd Bochner has a small role as a member of a consortium of villains. Towards the end of the film, there's a hysterical crowd scene which features a split-second shot of him holding a large book entitled "[[To Serve Man]]", yelling "It's a cookbook!!" This is a reference to a [[wikipedia:To Serve Man (The Twilight Zone)|famous episode]] of the original ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' TV series which Bochner starred in.

** The climax of ''Naked Gun 33 1/3'' occurs at the Academy Awards, complete with a number of celebrities showing up as usual. Two of them are [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] and [[Wheel of Fortune|Vanna White]]. Frank and Jane tie them up with lights and drag them into the bushes, leaving a small but notable number of viewers wondering why they weren't [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/weirdalyankovic/stuckinaclosetwithvannawhite.html stuffed into a closet] instead.

* ''Fanboys'' has several, including, but not necessarily limited to; Ray "Darth Maul" Park doing some of the acrobatics from his ''Star Wars'' role, and Carrie "Princess Leia" Fisher responding with "I know" to "I love you".

* [[Mark Hamill]]'s appearance in ''[[Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back]]'' is immediately followed by the message "Hey Kids it's Mark Hamill! (Applause!)" referring to his role as the voice of the Joker in ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]''. Also when Jay cuts off his hand during a "bongsaber" fight, he [[Fourth Wall|looked at the camera]] and moaned "Not again."

** Earlier in the same film there's a scene where air traffic controller Steve McCroskey (played by Lloyd Bridges) is shown residing in a nursing home. A nurse explains that he's gone senile and "thinks he's Lloyd Bridges," and we see him donning a scuba mask (an allusion to Bridges' role on the '50s TV show ''Sea Hunt'').

* Coy example: in ''[[Batman (film)|Batman]]'', [[Jack Nicholson]]'s plastic surgeon uses an assortment of crude, rusty tools to reconstruct his wounded face as the Joker. At least one of these implements closely resembles one used by the evil dentist in the remake of ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]''. Who'd appeared in the original ''[[The Little Shop of Horrors]]'', as a masochistic client of this evil dentist? Jack Nicholson.

* An odd case occurs in ''[[Forgetting Sarah Marshall]]''. Kristen Bell plays the title character, an actress, and at one point, other characters mock her for a bad movie she was in, in which she was attacked by a killer cell phone. The writers insist that they wrote the line not knowing that Kristen Bell actually was in a movie, ''Pulse'', about a killer cell phone.

* Combined with a [[Parental Bonus]] in ''[[Monsters, Inc.]]'', when the character voiced by [[Steve Buscemi]] threatens to put another character [[Fargo|through the shredder]].

* The well known [[Jackie Chan]] movie ''[[Drunken Master]]'' has him playing a Drunken Boxing expert. He also plays a Drunken Boxing expert in his American film, ''[[The Forbidden Kingdom]]''. ''[[Shanghai Noon]]'' was supposedly going to feature a Drunken Master fighting sequence too but Hollywood knows they're not good enough for cool fight scenes...Jackie does get drunk at one point, however, if that's good enough.

* In ''[[Inception]]'', the song that is played to wake everyone up is Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien". Marion Cotillard (Mal) played Piaf in the biopic La Vie En Rose and won an Oscar for it. Also, the song title translates to "I have no regrets." This was apparently coincidental, the song was chosen before Cotillard was cast, and the director didn't realize the connection until it was too late to change the score.

** Crossing over with [[Wrestler in All of Us]] and [[Fridge Brilliance]]. At one point, Arthur locks a hostile projection in a hold known as the Cobra Clutch. The move was used (and named after) Sgt. Slaughter, a wrestler who was also a character in GI Joe. Levitt portrayed Cobra Commander in the GI Joe movie.

* In ''[[The Princess Diaries]] 2'', at the sleepover, Queen Clarisse says to Mia, "I've done quite a lot of flying in my time." This is referring to her part in [[Mary Poppins]].

* In the ''[[Apocalypse]]'' film series movie ''Revelation'', Jeff Fahey's character Thorold Stone enters an ultra-realistic virtual reality simulation of a beach...[[The Lawnmower Man|guess which movie he starred in where he also entered a virtual reality program?]].

** Interesting contrast is that one of Fahey's characters claims to be God and the other is claiming that he isn't looking for God.

* In ''Love and Other Impossible Pursuits'', [[Natalie Portman]] plays the stepmom of a precocious eight-year-old, as he considers his future education options. When he brings up Harvard, Portman's character Emilia blurts "Harvard sucks!" No prizes for guessing which university is Natalie's alma mater.

* Antonio Banderas is well known for his role as the masked caped crusader Zorro as well as the cheesy line "you are the love of my life" which Puss in Boots (who Banderas voices) repeats to a female cat just before getting on the boat in Shrek the Third.

* In ''[[Star Trek Generations]]'', we see a wet-behind-the-ears Captain Harriman, played by Alan Ruck. According to the ''Memory Alpha'' wiki, Harriman's personnel file from one of the video games says he has "[[Ferris Bueller's Day Off|a wife named Sloane and a son named Ferris who both live in Chicago, as well as interests in 20th century Italian sports automobiles.]]"

* Andy Griffith is forever remembered for the character he played on [[The Andy Griffith Show]]: an aw-shucks, small-town do-gooder with a heart of gold. But in the film ''[[A Face in the Crowd]]'', Griffith plays Lonesome Rhodes: an immoral, power-hungry egomaniac who becomes one of the most popular personalities on television...by ''pretending to be'' an aw-shucks, small-town do-gooder with a heart of gold. Yikes.

* ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (film)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'' was not [[Helena Bonham Carter]]'s [[Harry Potter (film)|first time playing an insane, corset-wearing, mentally unstable yandere with a crush on a ruthless serial killer]].

** Even more bizarre is that [[Johnny Depp]] seems to have copied her hairstyle from that role.

** David Duchovny as [[The X-Files|a conspiracy theorist]].

** Ben Stiller's character's manager is played by his father, and his love interest is played by his wife.

* In ''[[Some Like It Hot]]'', gangster Spats Columbo (played by George Raft) asks a coin-flipping hoodlum, "Where'd you pick up ''that'' cheap trick?" Raft became famous playing coin-flipping gangsters in movies like ''Scarface'' and ''If I Had a Million''.

* In ''[[Tapeheads]]'', the FBI agent who says "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" as he arrests [[Tim Robbins]] and [[John Cusack]] ''is'' [[Jello Biafra]], who less than two years earlier had been prosecuted for obscenity based on complaints from the [[Moral Guardians|PMRC]].