7 Casting Choices (That Were Secret In-Jokes)

In this universe, further Star Wars movies recast Skywalker with Billy Dee Williams too.

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.

Fuck, this man has got a way with words.

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:

Julian Glover, if you didn't know, who's been in about half the movies you've ever loved .

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

She was still pretty flexible in Last Crusade, admittedly.

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!

"No, Mr. B-- uh, Jones. I expect you to ... not ... live."

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.

Which meant that when filling his role as the family's attorney, the show's producers brought in well-known actor/ guy-who-isn't-racist-because-his-wife-has-a-black-friend, Scott Baio as Bob Loblaw.

Years from now we're going to learn that plant in the corner was part of some in-joke too.

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.

And save valuable production money on sleeves.

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

Kids these days love subtle jokes about 30-year-old TV shows.

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?

"That sounds like a tiny, tiny man landing on my car."

Other than the fact that it's nice to acknowledge some of the victims of all this wanton superhero destruction, why show us the driver? Some may notice that the driver is actually played by Garrett Morris, known for his role in Two Broke Girls, and also as one of the original Saturday Night Live cast members.

That's him leaning away from Chevy Chase, as all are right to do.

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.

So much cocaine went into the making of this picture it defies belief.

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.

Keyvn? Vynce? Feels like there's a superfluous Y in there somewhere.

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.

Way to own your mistakes, Pee-wee.

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.