7 Casting Choices That Were Secretly Hilarious In-Jokes

Which is hugely significant if you think back to a previous era of Batman movies, where Batman was 5'10" and casually set people on fire. In the 1989 version of Batman, Billy Dee Williams played the role of Harvey Dent, who every Batman fan knows will eventually become the villainous Two-Face.

Warner Bros.

But even though Williams took the part with "the hopes" of one day playing Two-Face, the part was recast when the series changed directors. Which meant that until the LEGO movie, the most interesting part of Harvey Dent's character arc had been robbed from Williams, making it the worst deal he'd been involved in since a little incident in Cloud City.

So why cast the guy who blew up two Death Stars in such an inconsequential role? It turns out that Hamill's casting is actually a reference to the movie's source material. In the comic The Secret Service a similar scene plays out where the hostage was not a renowned scientist, but rather Mark Hamill, the actor -- who naturally gets shit about the prequels from his captors.

Icon Comics

Mr. Hamill is soon rescued by a suave, and pretty violent secret agent--

Icon Comics

Icon Comics

Who stages a daring, snowmobile-aided, BASE-jumping escape...

Icon Comics

... then in a satisfying moment for anyone who's ever scoffed at the idea of someone surviving such elaborate stunts, both the agent and star of Corvette Summer are horribly killed.

Icon Comics

Insanely, the author of the comic didn't actually know Mark Hamill or get his permission until "the night before the comic was going to the printers." Seeing as Hamill agreed to show up in the movie, that seems to indicate he was cool with the whole thing -- though in the movie he wasn't playing himself getting murdered, to the relief of Star Wars fans everywhere.

And, you know, his family.

But even more than that, the casting of Connery in The Last Crusade was also a brilliantly meta personal message from Steven Spielberg. The key to understanding what's going on here is to know that Spielberg always wanted to make a Bond movie, but was rejected by the producers. Twice. A bitterness he still carries with him, judging by a comment he made a few years ago when he explained how he couldn't get a job with the Bond franchise and "now, sadly, they can't afford me."

It would seem that the entirety of Indiana Jones was borne out of that frustration of not being able to get the Bond gig. On one of his -- presumably many -- beachside chats with George Lucas, Spielberg was complaining about his unrequited Bond love when Lucas pitched him the idea for Raiders Of The Lost Ark as "just like James Bond but even better."

Raymond Twist/Wiki Commons

So when it came time to cast Indy's dad for the third movie, they had to get James Bond. He's literally the father of Indiana Jones. But this wasn't just going to be a cute wink to the audience, Spielberg crafted an elaborate web of Bond references to go along with it. Like how Indy's nemesis was a former Bond villain himself:

Paramount Pictures

And Indy's love interest was Alison Doody, a former Bond girl, the terribly named Jenny Flex from A View To A Kill.

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

It's also interesting that both of these characters begin the movie as Indy's friends, then turn on him, almost as if Spielberg is saying that the franchise he loved betrayed him. And the main character arc of Indy reconciling with his father parallels Spielberg's attempts to reconcile with James Bond, who he looked up to as a child, even though the franchise rejected him. And if that's not enough for you, check out the finale, when Sean Connery is gunned down by the villain who's wielding a Walther PPK -- James Bond's trademark weapon!

Paramount Pictures

Spielberg is seemingly making the point that the Bond franchise is killing the Bond franchise. And seeing as this was occurring during a bit of a low point in the Bond era -- what with all the outer space laser battles and snowboarding to Beach Boys' songs - he's not wrong.

If you were alive in the 70s, or are unemployed and spend your days eating cheetos and watching TV Land, you might realize this is a reference to Happy Days. When Winkler's super-cool Fonz character was starting to look less like a young badass and more like part of a To Catch A Predator sting operation, suddenly his cousin Chachi showed up -- an obvious effort to court younger viewers.

Paramount Domestic Television

And when Bob Loblaw sits down with the Bluths, he straight-up mentions that he's replaced Barry Zuckerkorn before:

20th Television

20th Television

Given AD's habit of tying in the activities of real-world actors to the characters they play, will we see this again? Like during the upcoming season of the show will they explain that all of "Bob Loblaw's" recent erratic behavior has just been a side-effect of Teamocil or something?

So why him? Does Two Broke Girls pay so little the poor guy has to take barely speaking roles in comic book movies just to get by? And even if they did want to get an old SNL star, they probably could have gotten Chevy Chase for just free food and some PAs to verbally abuse.

Well it turns out there's a very good reason why Morris shows up here -- he was the first person to play Ant-Man onscreen, in an SNL sketch about a party.

NBC

So that's a nice little callback. Incidentally, this skit also featured Dan Aykroyd as The Flash, so maybe if we're all lucky we'll get a cameo of Aykroyd in the upcoming Flash movie, looking dumbly at a series of Flash-shaped holes in the walls of his house or something.

That's Amilyn, the Vampire henchman played by Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman, aka ... there's really no other way to describe him. This was Reubens' first screen appearance since his 1991 arrest for indecent exposure in a porno theatre, and his whole character in Buffy was a joke of sorts, Reubens' attempt to confront the scandal head-on. He even insisted his costume be made to look like his mugshot -- it was even written into his contract that if he were to do the movie he wanted to look like a vampire who'd just been hauled into the Sarasota Sheriff's department for jerking off.

20th Century Fox, Sarasota County Sheriff's Department

Critics at the time caught the reference, though today's modern audiences might find it a bit impenetrable, possibly just assuming that his character is a version of Nickleback's Chad Kroeger as an unholy servant of the night.

Similarly, Wright's follow-up, Hot Fuzz, provides a tip-off about where the plot is headed through one key casting choice. The movie finds Simon Pegg as a police officer reassigned to a small English town where he has to unravel the secret behind a series of murders. That secret? Most of the town are secretly members of a creepy cult that have been orchestrating the murders.

Universal Pictures

Now hold onto your tight-fitting argyle socks, because one of those English villagers is played by Edward Woodward who's perhaps best known for his role in the original The Wicker Man where he played a policeman who uncovers a murderous cult in a small English town.

British Lion Films

Not surprisingly, it turns out that The Wicker Man was one of the first movies Pegg and Wright turned to for inspiration. Of course, instead of ending with people getting burned alive in a giant sculpture made of Pier 1 furniture, Hot Fuzz instead opted for a shootout straight out of Bad Boys, so it's not exactly the same.

Universal Pictures

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Also check out 4 Movie Theories That Explain Bizarre Casting Choices and 7 Characters Clearly Designed For (Different) Famous Actors.

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