3

An Actor Father And Son Duo Specialize In Playing The Same Characters At Different Ages

Mark Sheppard has sure made a career out of playing irredeemable assholes, including an unscrupulous smuggler on Firefly, an arrogant insurance investigator on Leverage, and a literal demon / king of Hell on Supernatural. Essentially, whenever Sheppard appears on screen, you get the urge to use his head as a ball in a game of Crowbar Tennis. But thousands of actors have made a career doing that -- we're looking for alarmingly specific recurrences here.

In 2011, Sheppard appeared in an episode of Doctor Who, playing heroic FBI agent Canton Everett Delaware III. Fans may remember him pumping a menacing alien full of lead before grumbling "Welcome to America." Non-fans may be shocked to find out badass things like that happen on Doctor Who.

Later, when it came time to show an older version of the character, Doctor Who had a choice: They could either slap a grey wig on Sheppard and stuff his pockets full of mothballs / Werther's Originals for that authentic old man smell, or they could hire his dad, William Sheppard. After they realized they spent all of their makeup budget on highlighter to contour Matt Smith's supernatural chin, the show chose the latter option.

BBCHe has his father's eyes. And dramatic lighting.

This, oddly enough, is something of a habit for the pair. In the 2010 movie Mysterious Island (directed, in fact, by Mark Sheppard), the father and son tag-teamed Captain Nemo. That is, they played the younger and older versions of Jules Verne's famous submarine captain. So that's twice that they A) were in a movie/show that feature a flashback/flashforward showing a character at a different age, B) it was decided they needed a separate actor rather than makeup, and C) they chose the same father/son acting combo. And even this wasn't the first time.

2

The Same Guy Keeps Teaching Robot Girls How To Love

Programmable humanoid sex partners may be a staple of the future, at which point it would be very reasonable to expect "Man teaches robot girl how to love" to be a Hollywood archetype. As it is, it seems like the kind of role that wouldn't come up all that often, unless you're actively seeking it out. And if you are, that's ... kind of weird, right?

In the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, character actor Tahmoh Penikett plays Karl "Helo" Agathon, one of the last survivors of the human race. On the show, humanity is nearly wiped out by Cylons, sophisticated robots who used to look like walking toasters but now can engineer biological bodies and pass themselves off as human. At one point, they send one of their own ("Athena") to seduce Helo and learn about this strange thing we humans call "love," because Battlestar did involve some elements of a middle school nerd's masturbation fantasy.

NBCUniversal TelevisionThe scripts are the series' own fanfic.

Naturally, Helo's penis ends up overriding Athena's programming, causing her to fall in love with him for real and become good. They later have a child and live happily ever after. Until they and everyone else on the show get murdered, probably.

A few years later, along came Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, in which Penikett plays FBI agent Paul Ballard, who's investigating "Dolls" -- people who can be temporarily imprinted with whatever personality their rich clients want, from escort to thief to everything in between (functionally robots, if not mechanically). This includes a cute girl named Mellie, who thinks she's falling in love with Ballard but is, unbeknownst to her, programmed to spy on him to see how much he's uncovered about the titular Dollhouse.

So once again, Penikett gets a lot of attention from a programmed not-quite-human spy until, again, the two end up falling in love for reals. We're assuming that somewhere, right now, the guy is browsing job listings for "Male actor to play role of 'Man whose penis grants free will to automata.' Looking for a Tahmoh Penikett type."

20th TelevisionIsaac Asimov's 69th Law of Robotics

1

Jodi Benson Voices Non-Humans Looking For Their Place In The Human World

Jodi Benson first made a name for herself as the redheaded fish mutant Ariel in Disney's The Little Mermaid. There, her character yearns to be part of the human world after feeling like an outcast in her underwater kingdom, essentially making her the merperson equivalent of a zoophile.

Walt Disney PicturesUnder the sea, you disgust me!

And while you might think that kids' movies only have about five plots, it's still a bit weird that five years later, in 1994, Benson voiced the title character in Don Bluth's Thumbelina, a movie about a redheaded, tiny non-human trying to find her place in the world after feeling like an outcast. Then a toad and a mole try to marry her, because at one time, major animation studios were really betting on interspecies romances being the next big thing.

Warner Bros. PicturesHans Christian Andersen had ... issues.

And despite the other roles that came Benson's way, she always managed to circle right back to voicing non-humans looking for the meaning of life, which they usually hoped to find down the pants of someone from another species. That's the basic, creepy summary of Weebo, Benson's character in Flubber, the Robin Williams movie that answers the question "What if snot was lovable?" Weebo is a flying robot that really wants to be human so she can have sex with Robin Williams. Whom she later almost sexually assaults.

Walt Disney PicturesAnd who built her, technically making him her father.

Ultimately, she/it realizes it's never going to happen, and surrenders to the idea that Williams' character is destined to be with a flesh-and-blood partner. Dammit, where's Tahmoh Penikett when you need him?

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.

Rest in peace, Robin. You've made so many lives so much better.

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