5 Recurring Movie Extras You Won't Believe You Never Noticed

Remember Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can? He was there, too:

And that's just a small sample of his impressive career. Of course, he doesn't say anything in any of these movies and only appears onscreen for a few seconds, but how many hit movies have you not talked in? Jesse's first role was in American Pie 2, in which he played a non-speaking member of the infamous band camp:

He moved on from high school to college in Will Ferrell's Old School, where he was one of the pledges ...

... and from college to the workplace in Transformers 3. Michael Bay personally picked him for the role of "guy walking in the office."

But Jesse isn't a snob: Unlike some of his fellow film stars, he has nothing against doing TV. In fact, he's been in pretty much every show ever, including The Big Bang Theory, Parks and Recreation, Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, Entourage, My Name Is Earl, Bones, Curb Your Enthusiasm, NCIS, Chuck, Monk, The O.C., and Reno 911!

Despite all this, Jesse isn't satisfied: He dreams of a speaking movie role and hopes to be the next Jonah Hill. Jesse's days of receiving extra's pay to stand awkwardly in the background may be over, though, because just recently he's been approached by the porn industry, since apparently even the most rudimentary fame means that there's a subset of humanity that want to see what you look like naked.

While we wait for that, here's a clip of some of his best appearances:

With the obvious exception of Harrison Ford, the actors in Star Wars haven't had very impressive film careers: Mark Hamill is best known for his voice-over work, Carrie Fisher for talking about her personal problems, and David Prowse for having been screwed over by George Lucas. Pretty much all of them have had terrible luck.

Oh, except R2-D2. The guy is everywhere.

That's R2-D2 flying through a battlefield in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, perhaps as a subtle hint of Abrams' plan to eventually take over every beloved sci-fi franchise (look out for his The Last Starfighter preboot in 2017). Sure, R2 is playing a piece of debris here, but that's still more dignified than starring in a Ricky Gervais series like his Star Wars co-star and fellow dwarfism sufferer Warwick Davis did.

R2 has kept busy lately -- as seen above, he also shows up in Transformers 2, taunting us with horrible visions of an alternate reality where Michael Bay directs the Disney Star Wars sequels and gives C-3PO golden genitalia. This time R2 plays part of a robot that flies through the air to assemble itself into Optimus Prime's body, which incidentally was the exact plot of our erotic fan fiction novel.

The "let's hide R2 everywhere" tradition dates back to the '70s and started with Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in the very same year that Star Wars came out -- the droid can be seen standing on the underside of the alien ship, like Robert DeNiro's character in Cape Fear. Apparently, the SFX people needed more details for the ship's model, so they just threw in whatever they could find.

Spielberg must have enjoyed working with R2, because he included him again in Raiders of the Lost Ark, this time as a hieroglyphic. R2 somehow talked the director into including his buddy C-3PO there, too, along with a bunch of other Star Wars references -- Harrison "Just Fucking Kill Han Solo Already" Ford was probably thrilled.

And then, not content with showing up in two of the greatest movie series of every '80s kid's childhood, R2 appears in The Goonies (produced by Spielberg) as part of the pirate ship. R2's so determined to make an impact among children that the only point of comparison by today's standards is childhood diabetes.

There are over a hundred instances of aliens hidden in the show, a record for guest appearances that's only topped by Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live. Some hidden aliens are pretty easy to spot and barely qualify as "hidden":

Others, not so much:

In fact, some appear only as random patterns in the background or easy-to-miss details:

Others appear for just a few frames -- in the episode "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson!" the smiley face on Manson's forehead temporarily changes to an alien.

The director of animation, Eric Stough, is in charge of putting the aliens in, but even he doesn't know how many there are, because he sometimes forgets to do it. Although they are becoming more infrequent in later seasons, the aliens still show up somewhere in the crowd in the show's opening credits ... so, technically, you could say there's an alien in every single episode.

Remember the classic two-parter, "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut"? Yeah, there was an alien standing among Cartman's possible fathers:

And, amazingly, they still show up in more recent episodes, like the one where the Internet runs out ("Over Logging"), and the one where Stan loses the ability to enjoy anything in life ("You're Getting Old"):

But there's more to this than just some pointless Easter egg. The continuation of the alien theme points to a much bigger plotline in the South Park universe, which is alluded to in the episode "Cancelled." Here it's revealed that the entire Earth is a reality show for aliens. So when we see aliens in the background, what we're really seeing are crew members, runners, grips, executives, etc.

Also, taking the time to find these things can pay off. For Season 13, they ran a contest where they offered prizes to whoever found all the aliens.

Yep, either the "bald head, goatee, and Number 9 shirt" look is more popular in the future than we thought (perhaps it's the new attire for the Crips), or the same guy keeps showing up in many crowd scenes across the years. Here he is in the very first episode of the show, during the New Year's Eve 3000 celebration:

Naturally, the Number 9 Guy's mysterious appearances inspired several crazy theories among the show's devoted fans. According to one, he is a reference to John Lennon's disapproval of people who read too much into the Beatles' music -- the number 9 is supposed to come from the song "Revolution #9" from The White Album, the one that fueled the whole "Paul Is Dead" conspiracy theory. The idea is that Matt Groening is such a huge Beatles fan (three-fourths of the band has guest starred on The Simpsons so far) that he put that Easter egg in the show just to fuck with people.

However, the audio commentary from the Futurama DVDs revealed that the Number 9 Guy's actual origin is even crazier than the fans thought. Originally, he was part of an unexplained caste system and was actually a kind of slave -- the number 9 represented his rank in society, and presumably we would have seen other people being forced to walk around with big 9s on their clothing to show how unimportant they were.

The plot was abandoned, though, and the writers must have completely forgotten about it, because they eventually brought back the Number 9 Guy for a major part in a plot ... that involved him wearing a tin foil hat. OK, so maybe the whole "screwing with obsessive fans" theory wasn't so far from the truth. He has continued to show up in crowd scenes in the most recent seasons, now with the tin foil 'do permanently on.

... before jumping to the Marvel universe and arresting Spider-Man:

Note that it's always a brown-haired dude with sideburns and a red-headed guy with glasses and a soul patch. Here they are again, being molested by Catwomen ...

... then going off to capture Doctor Octopus:

The characters have unofficially become known as the Mystery Hipster Cops, the most prolific photobombing law enforcers in the comic book world (granted, there isn't a lot of competition there). They were even featured in the kid-friendly tie-in to The Dark Knight Rises (yes, that exists) supporting an injured Commissioner Gordon while seemingly dressed as Ghostbusters, which is infinitely better than anything in the actual film.

Their weirdest characteristic is that they show up in Marvel books as well as DC, showing no regard for the laws of continuity or copyright. Nobody seems to know who they really are or what they want. Sideburns and Soul Patch are usually policemen, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of job security for cops these days, because they sometimes show up as businessmen, park rangers, secret service agents, or even criminals:

When it comes to stalking superheroes in their secret identities, they prefer to wear regular clothes -- Clark Kent appears to be on to them:

Here they've followed Peter Parker to an airport and are wondering why he's suddenly 13:

They then stopped by Gotham City again and successfully blended into Bruce Wayne's party by copying his tuxedo:

Perhaps they are superheroes with the mutant power to make cameos everywhere, like revamped Muppet Babies versions of Stan Lee. Some fans believe they could be dimension-hopping characters, hinting at a Marvel/DC crossover, but that wouldn't account for the fact that they've also shown up in Transformers books:

Although these superheroes are owned by different companies and the books are written and drawn by different people, it turns out that all of them are published by HarperCollins, so the mastermind behind this conspiracy is most likely someone who works there. Whatever the case, the hipster cops have captured the imagination of fans everywhere and even have their own terrible rap -- let's see who wises up first and gives them their own comic/movie.

We don't have a comic movie yet, but we've got a new Star Wars mini-series and that's even better.

Aaron Short is a film student. He's not allowed within 50 feet of George Takei, and he writes this blog about movies.

For more awesome pop culture Easter Eggs, check out 7 Insane Easter Eggs Hidden in Movies and TV Shows. Or discover 5 Things Hollywood Reuses More Than Plots.

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To further expand your noggin, check out Cracked's De-Textbook: The Stuff You Didn't Know About the Stuff You Thought You Knew.