Ridley Scott is another director who sneakily got his frisky digits an IMDb credit, in this case in a scene in Alien. But not the scene you're thinking:

20th Century Fox It wasn't this one. As far as we know, that's not Scott's hand, nor any other part of him.

No, it was Scott's hands creating the fluttery movement in the alien egg, right before John Hurt gets his face impregnated. And once you know that the effect was simply Sir Ridley making bird-shaped shadow puppets in a pair of dishwashing gloves, you'll never unsee it.

20th Century Fox If you'd even want to.

OK, Abrams didn't make them sit inside the droid during the shoot. Here's how Hader described his job: "J.J. f**king around with this sound effects app on his iPad that was attached to a talk box operated by me. It looked ridiculous but it made BB-8's voice. At first I tried doing a voice, but we all agreed it sounded too human."

Lucasfilm "Damn, we gotta get the f**k out of here! Beep beep, motherfuckers!"

Schwartz's work didn't overlap with Hader's, but he did break down his experience in a little more detail. Essentially, while looking at a fairly final cut of the movie, he and Abrams decided what BB-8 might be saying in those scenes. Whatever words they came up with weren't important, but the cadence and comic timing were. Schwartz isn't sure whether any of that got translated into the beeps and squelches BB-8 used in the film, but he did get to mess around with Abrams and a synthesizer for a few days, so he considers it a success on that basis alone. (So would we, come to think of it.)

Disney does this a lot. For example, Aladdin's "appearance and demeanor" was modeled after Tom Cruise, apparently after long debates about whether he should be a Michael J. Fox type instead.

Walt Disney "Hey Genie, we better back up, we don't have enough room to get up to 88."

And Ariel from The Little Mermaid was based on Alyssa Milano.

Walt Disney You can really see it there in Milano's famous red hair and lack of feet.

This isn't like something the celebrities are paid for, mind you. Milano wasn't even aware of it until a year after the movie came out, when she was asked to take part in a behind-the-scenes special. She seemed OK with it, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all.

via clipsism/YouTube But getting paid is also a very nice form of flattery.

Oh, and here comes James Cameron again, whose list of voice credits is exactly as long as his entire body of work. From "random dude on the radio" to the inhuman growling of the alien queen, Cameron's voice has a resume that live-action actors would kill for. Here's a montage of all of them.

You know the scene on Nero's ship at the beginning where one of the Romulan crew members says "It's time"? Who could forget that? Well that was him! And not just that; Wheaton provided the voice for every Romulan on the ship. It was pretty straightforward, really: Abrams was looking for voice actors, Wheaton had a voice, and so the two got on the phone to hammer out the details. The end result was a Romulan vessel staffed entirely by Wesley Crushers, which really ought to be the plot of the next movie.

Why? No particular reason at all. Gotta makes heads look like something, right? And speaking of out-of-nowhere cameos, Game Of Thrones (a series which already has a bizarre penchant for giving cameos to famous musicians) based one of their decapitated heads on the former leader of the free world.

HBO That's George W. Bush, for those of you keeping track of decapitated leaders at home.

The creators didn't bother denying that poor Dubya somehow wound up on the Traitor's Walk, but they did deny that their motivations were political, stating that "we just had to use whatever heads we had lying around." No one seems to have any explanation for why a special effects shop had a replica of the 43rd president of the United States' severed cranium lying around, though witchcraft seems likely.

E. Reid Ross is the author of Nature Is The Worst: 500 Reasons You'll Never Want To Go Outside Again, which is in stores now and available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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