6 Hilarious Blink-And-You'll-Miss-It Jokes In Recent Films
Sometimes the best jokes in a movie aren't the ones that world-famous actors got paid millions of dollars to deliver, but the little gags that like five people will spot on their first watch. So if you want to know why that guy in the other row laughed so hard when everyone else in the theater was silent, he was probably feeling smug for spotting things like ...
Deadpool 2 Took A Subtle Jab At T.J. Miller
Last year, one of our favorite actors was accused of sexual assault. No, not that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or th- no wait, go back. Yeah, that's the one -- T.J. Miller, best known for Silicon Valley, Deadpool, and, of course, The Emoji Movie. After the accusations came out (in the midst of Johnny Law kicking his ass for calling in a fake bomb threat, FYI), Deadpool fans began to wonder if Miller's already-filmed role in the sequel would end up on the cutting room floor.
Miller's character was kept, but in true Deadpool style, the movie found a way to call him out:
During the standoff at the orphanage / mutant torture center, footage from a news helicopter appears onscreen, along with a chyron about how Christopher Plummer has refused a role in Deadpool 2. The movie you're currently watching. If you've been keeping up with the ins and outs of Hollywood of late, you know that's a reference to the fact that Plummer replaced serial sex pest Kevin Spacey in All The Money In The World at the last possible minute (that is, a month before the movie came out). As hilarious as it would have been to get the real Plummer to stand in for Miller (if it was too late for reshoots, there's always CGI), we can't say we'd blame him if he really turned down the part. With all the scandals going around, the dude's agenda is probably booked for the rest of his life.
And hey, this wasn't the only use of the ol' insulting chyron bit this year ...
Related: 13 Movie And TV Jokes That Perfected The Art Of The Slow Burn
Jurassic World 2 Threw Some Quality Shade At Trump
Let's be real here, the only bright spots in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom were the all-too-brief cameo by Jeff Goldblum and the surprisingly high number of burns directed at President Trump. Which makes sense; the franchise is one long indictment of rich white guys who don't care for the consequences of their inept ventures.
The first comes in the opening moments of the movie, when news footage of the soon-to-explode dinosaur island plays with this chyron: U.S. PRESIDENT QUESTIONS "EXISTENCE OF DINOSAURS IN THE FIRST PLACE." That's a jab at President Infowars' well-documented tendency to make up wild conspiracy theories about inconvenient truths. It's such a frighteningly feasible Trump moment that we have to wonder if Steve Bannon didn't do an uncredited punch-up on the screenplay.
We can't see the end of the chyron, but it wouldn't be surprising to find out it ends with him alleging that the Democrats created dinosaurs, DNA, and natural history museums just to make him look bad.
Later in the movie, the resident "paleoveterinarian" (read: dinosaur doctor) gets called a "nasty woman" (read: Hilary Clinton) by the resident violent asshole mercenary. And the movie's big reveal of the Indoraptor -- or to give it its full title, Indoraptor Macguffinous -- is presented in the exact same way that Trump was introduced at the 2016 Republican National Convention, complete with the same dramatic lighting, silhouette, and word that "the gentlemen from Russia" is already interested in buying him up.
Related: 5 Brilliant Jokes Almost Everyone Missed In Famous Movies
Black Panther Makes A Shockingly Deep Cut About Comics Lore
During the casino sequence in Black Panther, professional money-burner / arms dealer Ulysses Klaue banters with Agent Ross about his forthcoming mixtape, an encounter which ends with him almost giving Ross the link to his SoundCloud.
Ross cuts him off before we hear the name of the mixtape, but we're going to take a guess that Klaue's DJ name is "Master of Sound" -- mainly because that's the name he took in the comics when, through superhero science, he got turned into a being of pure sound. Many of you probably assumed that Klaw's comic book counterpart must be a badass with a huge claw, but nope! He's an audio-themed villain with a tiny satellite dish for a hand.
The film version of Klaue isn't made of sound, sure, and he definitely doesn't have the immortality that his comic-book version does, but his robot arm does indeed have a sonic weapon, and he can still be a master of sound in another way. In the end, the true tragedy of this movie is that Ross never got to hear that killer mixtape.
Related: 13 Crazy Clever In-Jokes Hidden In Famous Movies And Shows
During the cinematic tour-de-force that is Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2, there's a scene wherein giant pies rain down on Mount Rushmore, hitting everyone square in the face. Or almost everyone ...
Oh yeah, this lighthearted kids film went there. Not content with besmirching the faces of the country's greatest men with pie, this scene also soft-recreates how Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth. This raises no small number of unanswered questions, such as "Does this make Flint Lockwood the equivalent of Mary Surratt?" and "Wait, is there a slavery metaphor we're missing here?"
See, this is what we meant earlier when we said "cinematic tour-de-force." Here's hoping the inevitable Criterion Collection release includes a whole documentary about this one gag.
Game Of Thrones Gave A Shout-Out To A Silly Fan Meme
Perhaps not surprisingly for a show about dragons and porking your sister, Game Of Thrones produces some weird-ass running jokes. For instance, when Davos sends Gendry away in a rickety rowboat and tells him to keep going in the same direction, the final moments with the character became a meme, with people suggesting he'd be stuck forever on that boat:
That was way back in Season 3, which aired in 2013, a whole lifetime ago. And so when Gendry finally showed up again in Season 7, the meme had grown to the point where the writers had no choice but to acknowledge it:
In a medieval manifestation of the concept of "meme magic," when Davos sees Gendry again after all those years, he greets him by saying, "Thought you might still be rowing." This could only mean one thing: Cleganebowl is CONFIRMED.
Related: 7 Split-Second Movie Jokes You Totally Missed
The best thing we can say about Solo: A Star Wars Story is that we enjoyed the scene where that tiny robot danced on that computer console. That might be a harsh verdict, but this movie was always going to be a victim of high expectations -- not only because prequels are to Star Wars what the Death Star was to Alderaan, but also because it was the first film to feature another actor as Han Solo, a role that Harrison Ford had mutteringly begrudged for decades.
You can tell that the film's writers were aware of this significance, thanks to a throwaway gag that wound up excised from the final cut.
During the sequence in which Han and Qi'ra are fleeing from Lady Proxima's forces, one moment had the two running through a bazaar and hiding in a barrel of eels. The bad guys pass by and the two emerge ... but before he takes off running, Solo stops to pull an eel from his pants.
That's a reference to a similar moment in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. You know, the movie that opens with River Phoenix, in the shoes of another iconic character played by Harrison Ford, pausing a chase sequence to pull a snake from his pants.
The reference was even confirmed by Jon Kasdan, one of the co-writers of Solo, in a Twitter post. You can watch the scene in question here, and if you can work out why this got the chop instead of the part where they over-explained how he got the surname "Solo," you're a better pop culture analyst than us.
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Despite that fun joke, there are at least six better Star Wars movies to watch, check out one of those instead.
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