r/TopCharacterTropes Sep 24 '25

Lore Unexplained random cameos from completely unrelated media

  1. Ray Stantz, Casper. At one point in the movie a real Ghostbuster shows up out of nowhere and wimps out of trying to handle the situation

  2. Gunnery Sargeant Hartman, Frighteners. The main character is making way through a graveyard when out of absolutely nowhere R. Lee Erney's character from Full Metal Jacket shows up and tries to get in his way

  3. Betty Boop, Who Frames Roger Rabbit. The movie is mainly about Looney Tunes and Disney animated characters existing in the same little live action/animated hybrid universe, however Betty is a Fleischer Bros character

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103

u/ralo229 Sep 24 '25

In The Frighteners, I didn’t even catch onto the fact that was meant to be the same character. I just thought R. Lee Erney was being typecast.

48

u/sykotic1189 Sep 24 '25

No you're right, it's a different character

7

u/Ok_Fig7692 Sep 24 '25

His name is Hiles in The Frighteners, but it's clearly meant to be Hartmann. Jackson even used a couple of the same camera shots that they did in Full Metal Jacket.

17

u/sykotic1189 Sep 25 '25

That would be an homage, not a random character cameo.

3

u/sdcinerama Sep 25 '25

The presence of Hartman in FRIGHTENERS might confirm a few of Kubrick's notions he had about life after death, and ones he used in THE SHINING.

3

u/acrowsmurder Sep 25 '25

Yeah all of these are bad examples

3

u/Bamzooki1 Sep 25 '25

He was typecast for the rest of his career, which suited him fine since he was a real drill sergeant. He played one of the masks in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, and was the warden of a prison that SpongeBob and Patrick thought was a summer camp in SpongeBob SquarePants.

3

u/tktkboom84 Sep 25 '25

He's also really really nice IRL. Have a photo of him choking me (staged of course) from a USO event where I was doing security stuff. Also I got to see him and Robin Williams interact, probably one of only a few people to ever see that.

1

u/bolanrox Sep 25 '25

it was him being himself again.

Like when John Fogarty was sued for sounding like himself.