Did 'Axel F' Have a 'Happy Gilmore' Crossover That We All Totally Missed?

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F unsurprisingly reunited Eddie Murphy’s Detective Axel Foley with several of his old buddies from the first three movies. But he also briefly bumped into… the villain from a completely unrelated Adam Sandler movie?

One of the oddest moments in Axel F (which was actually a lot of fun) comes when Foley and his daughter’s ex Bobby crash a helicopter onto a golf course. The conclusion of the movie’s biggest action sequence finds the two cops being confronted by an angry golfer played by none other than Christopher McDonald. While McDonald is credited simply as “Golfer,” some fans naturally assumed that he was supposed to be Happy Gilmore’s nemesis Shooter McGavin. 

Sure, he could have just been playing a brand new character. Or, for that matter, Marty from Hacks, who has been known to play golf occasionally. But it seems pretty obvious that this was an homage to Happy Gilmore, and the shit-eating role that McDonald is most known for. 

Axel F isn’t totally unique on this front. In the decades since Happy Gilmore came out, McDonald has revived the Shooter McGavin character multiple times for commercials, including a recent spot for UNRL.

And it won’t be long until Shooter is back on the big, yet still pretty small, screen, thanks to Netflix’s upcoming Happy Gilmore sequel. Since Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F was also a Netflix release, the cameo might feel a tad suspicious. Kind of like if Jerry Seinfeld popped up in an episode of Squid Game to remind viewers to check out Unfrosted. 

But according to Axel F’s director Mark Molloy, the synergistic qualities of this scene were a total accident. The “golfer” character already existed in the script, but he told the casting director, “I’d love a great cameo.” And, presumably because Bob Barker and Rodney Dangerfield were already dead, they all thought it would be “amazing” to get McDonald. 

Molloy now admits that he “had no idea they were making Happy Gilmore 2” when filming the cameo, adding “there’s no bigger story behind it, apart from me wanting to have some fun” — thus ruining all of our elaborate Happy Gilmore-Beverly Hills Cop cinematic universe theories. 

That being said, if we were to accept that these two movie franchises take place within the same fictional world, that would also mean that every other Adam Sandler movie, which arguably all exist in the so-called “Sandlerverse,” are similarly connected to Axel F. And according to this theory, the Sandlerverse also includes non-Sandler movies like Tommy Boy and the 1998 Godzilla movie. 

Interestingly, the ‘98 Godzilla is also considered to be a part of the original Godzilla series’ continuity. So, by connecting these dots, one could make the plausible argument that Beverly Hills Cop takes place in a world where giant monsters routinely battle each other on the other side of the globe. 

Meaning that we might one day get a sequel where Axel Foley shoves a banana in a kaiju’s butthole. 

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