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Casting Gag: Difference between revisions
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* Possibly the most illustrious example of this is ''[[Sunset Boulevard]]'', in which Gloria Swanson, who was an over the hill, forgotten silent movie actress, plays an over the hill silent movie actress.
** At the same time, she employs a butler who was once a famous, now forgotten, silent film director. This part is played by the once famous, then forgotten silent film director Erich von Stroheim.
** When Swanson's character is seen watching one of her old movies, it is
** And then there's her card-playing buddies from the Old Days ("the Waxworks"), including [[Buster Keaton]].
** To complete the circle, Swanson at one point goes to Cecil B.
* Carrie Fisher has a cameo in ''[[Scream (film)|Scream]] 3'' as "Bianca" who is bitter over losing out for the role of Princess Leia to another actress. She goes as far to state that the actress
** Also Carrie Fisher, Billie Dee Williams and Ray Park have all appeared in ''[[Fanboys]]'' because of their roles in ''[[Star Wars]]''. The fact that they played different characters added to the level of hilarious.
* Sigourney Weaver plays a ([[Dyeing for Your Art|blonde!]]) [[Bridge Bunny]] in ''[[Galaxy Quest]]'', a character significantly at odds to her best known role, Ellen Ripley of ''[[Alien]]''. In the same film, Tim Allen is very convincing as a washed up TV star, and [[Alan Rickman]] is excellent as a respected [[Shakespeare]]an actor playing [[Classically-Trained Extra|a role far below his ability.]]
* In ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' Sigourney Weaver fights to ''protect'' the aliens. And the film is by [[James Cameron|the same director]] of ''Aliens''.
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* In ''[[Shakespeare in Love]]'', Ben Affleck (who was a big name at the time, possibly less so now) has a small role as a big name actor who is tricked into accepting a small role in ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]''.
* David Duchovny in ''[[Zoolander]]'' as a conspiracy nut.
* In the 1970's movie ''[[Cannonball Run]]'', one of the racers has the delusion that he is a famous movie star named Roger Moore, and has lots of zany gadgets including an ejection seat in the car. Of course, the character is played by Roger Moore, who was one of the ''[[James Bond]]'' actors.
* The
* In ''[[Clue (film)|Clue]]'' we get this [[Stealth Pun]] Casting Gag:
** "Mr. Boddy won't be staying with us for very long. In fact, he's just Lee Ving."
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** Ghostface Killah—who uses "Tony Starks" as an alias, titled his 1996 solo debut album ''Ironman'' and opened his 2000 album ''Supreme Clientele'' with a clip of the theme to the old ''[[Iron Man]]'' cartoon—was actually cast in a supporting role in the film as an industrial tycoon (his scene didn't make it to the final cut).
** Additionally, guitarist Tom Morello appears as one of the terrorists who try to kill the first Iron Man suit. To get the gag you have to remember that he is most famous for playing with "[[Rage Against the Machine]]." (Morello later co-scored the sequel)
** And then there were the endless jokes about casting Robert Downey Jr. as [[The Alcoholic|Tony Stark.]] And now{{when}} he will be playing [[Sherlock Holmes]], who had a bit of a thing for cocaine.
* From ''[[Maverick (film)|Maverick]]'':
** A Casting Gag played as [[Actor Allusion]], the title character (played by [[Mel Gibson]]) is in a bank as it is held up by an unnamed bank robber played by Danny Glover who starred alongside Gibson in the ''[[Lethal Weapon]]'' series of movies. Maverick acts as though he recognises the voice of the bank robber and pulls down his mask, leading the two of them to share a moment before shaking their heads and walking away.
** And the unnamed bank robber also mentions that he's [[Catch Phrase|"getting too old for this shit"]] as he makes his getaway.
** Further, The film features the often-referenced-in-the-series-but-never-seen father of Bret Maverick—who, just coincidentally, happens to be played by none other than [[James Garner]], who originated the role of Maverick on TV.
* Very possibly the casting of [[Robin Williams]], TV's ''[[Mork and Mindy|Mork From Ork]]'' in [[The Seventies]], as ''[[Popeye]]'', searching for his long lost father, Poopdeck Pappy, played by Ray Walston, TV's loveable alien from [[The Sixties]] on ''[[My Favorite Martian (TV)|My Favorite Martian]]''.
* Larry Hagman in Oliver Stone's ''[[Nixon]]'', playing a Texas billionaire.
* Since the new resurgence of superhero films began, the late comic book legend [[Stan Lee]]
** Usually he's just being heroic, but he got to play a character he created, Willie Lumpkin, in the first Fantastic Four movie.
* ''[[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]]'' creator Richard O'Brien was probably best-known in the UK during the 90s for hosting ''[[The Crystal Maze]]'', a game show in which contestants had to win crystals (and ultimately prizes) by solving puzzles on a large, labyrinthine set. He was later cast in the ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' film as the master of a large maze from which the heroes have to retrieve a gem.
* In Kenneth Branagh's film of ''[[Henry V]]'', the actor Michael Williams, Judi Dench's husband, was cast as the character Michael Williams after she signed on to the film.
* At the beginning of ''[[Love Actually]]'', Liam Neeson's character is giving a eulogy for his wife, and he jokingly mentions that they had a lot of time to discuss things when she was ill, and one of her suggestions was that he bring Claudia Schiffer as his date to the funeral. This gets a callback later when he tells his stepson that he plans on never finding love again—unless he should run into Claudia Schiffer. At the end, he's at the stepson's school, trying to help him resolve his own unrequited love for a classmate... and he bumps into another parent he's never met before, who introduces herself as <s> Carol</s> Karen (he stammers a bit and calls her Carol, though). She's is played by Claudia Schiffer.
* Thoroughly unintentional example (they initially refused to even let her audition): Paris Hilton in ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' playing... a rich, slutty, fashion-obsessed heiress cultivating a singing career using her name and infamy rather than talent. Better than it sounds, not least because {{spoiler|her face falls off}}.
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* ''[[Blades of Glory]]'' manages to make ''[[Brother-Sister Incest|incest]]'' both funny and pretty much a foregone conclusion by casting [[Cast Incest|real-life husband and wife]] Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as [[Twincest|fraternal twins]] Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg.
* ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'' casts Edward Woodward as {{spoiler|the equivalent of his antagonists from ''[[The Wicker Man]]''}}
* In ''[[Airplane!]]'', {{spoiler|Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who's cast as pilot Roger Murdock, is
** Also, there's one scene {{spoiler|in a mental hospital for soldiers with PTSD. One of the soldiers thinks he's Ethel Merman, and he's played by none other than Ethel Merman herself.}}
*** Additionally, casting Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Leslie Nielsen was in-and-of-itself a Casting Gag because they had never acted in comedic roles before Airplane!.
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* There is an episode of ''[[Dragnet]]'', where they meet a priest who explains that they are looking for a plaster doll of the baby Jesus that was taken from the church. So they question the altar boy, and an old man who runs a pawn shop. Maybe ten years later, they do a remake of the show. They get the actor who played the altar boy, to play the priest, and they get the same man to play the part of the pawnbroker.
* In ''[[Mission: Impossible]]'', Barney Collier's son Grant is played by Greg Morris's son Phil.
* In
** For bonus points, he spends most of his first episode giving [[Hannibal Lecture]]s to Lee "Apollo" Adama.
*** For bonus-bonus points, the armour-piercing lecture was about what it meant to be the Great Captain
** This also works well with the setup that the events of ''BSG'' happen over and over again with everyone being reincarnated into a different role every time.
*** In that case James Callis as Baltar was just a Dirk Benedict stand-in...
* And Dirk Benedict, Starbuck in the original series, does a great double-take as Faceman in ''[[The A
* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode 200, Vala Mal Doran (played by Claudia Black), when challenged to come up with a more obscure property to rip-off for her movie pitch, launches into a full-blown parody of ''[[Farscape]]'' which basically consists of the SG-1 cast as the Farscape crew repeating every single one of Farscape's alien curse words in the shortest span possible.
** There's also a slight subversion in that Ben Browder doesn't play Crichton in the parody—Michael Shanks does. Browder plays Stark.
*** When Vala and Mitchell first meet, Mitchell asks her if they've met before.
* A rare non-comic example: ''[[Degrassi Junior High]]'' and ''[[Degrassi High]]'' would often pick which plots happened to who based on the actors' real lives. For instance, 13-year-old-Joey takes a car out for a joyride... after Pat Mastroiani, who played him, really did take the set crew's van out for a joyride. When the writers wanted to do a storyline about a kid losing his parents, they made it happen to Wheels... whose actor, Neil Hope, had lost his father years before. Kathleen was beaten by her abusive boyfriend... and the actress who played her had been date-raped at age 14. (The writers have not said whether they knew that last bit at the time they wrote the abuse story.)
* [[Tim Curry]] once guest-starred in an episode of ''[[Will and Grace]]'' in which he plays a character with a feminine aspect to him (In this case, it's the character's name, Marion) flirts with several characters, makes a reference to [[
** An episode of the short-lived 1997 series ''Over The Top'' had [[Tim Curry]] dressing in drag. [[The Rocky Horror Picture Show|Now, why does that sound so familiar?]]
*** Speaking of ''[[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]]'', Barry Bostwick played a suspect in a ''[[Cold Case]]'' episode involving a murder outside of a theater during a midnight screening of Rocky Horror.
** This is apparently his thing. He and Meatloaf also showed up as a pair of conservative straw-men trying to stop [[Glee]]'s Rocky Horror production.
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