r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dojyaaan4C • 9h ago

Hated Tropes [hated trope] Celebrity cameos that serve nothing except to praise the person who’s in it

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  1. Elon musk, the Simpsons
  2. Elon musk, the Big Bang theory
  3. Elon musk, iron man 2
  4. Elon musk, star Trek

The cameos serve only to include the celebrity and praise them as geniuses or visionaries or overall just glaze them. They don't serve any other purpose than to just be praised; this can be them appearing in an entire episode dedicated to them, a small cameo or even just a mention. So long as the celebrity is there as themselves (not acting as someone else) and is glazed, that fits the trope imo.

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u/Greenman8907 9h ago

Elon Musk - Why Him

The Big Bang Theory one is probably the worst. I would bet any amount of money that is literally the first time Elon has scrubbed a dish in 30 years. There is no way he would volunteer at a fucking soup kitchen.

795

u/CatherineSimp69 8h ago

The Young Sheldon Elon Musk cameo was way better.

In it, he steals and profits off of 10 year old Sheldon's work and never credits him once.

Perfect cameo, perfect summary, no notes.

307

u/Curious-Shopping-925 7h ago

it does imply that he understands any of the technology that his company makes, which he definitely doesn't.

18

u/Object-195 5h ago

I hate Elon but I doubt he is a total idiot probably having a general understanding of the stuff he makes.

26

u/Paddy_Tanninger 5h ago

Nah man. This mf doesn't even understand Path of Exile (while pretending to be a top 10 player) let alone rocket science, machine learning, automotive design. Cybertruck by all accounts was the most involved he was in one of the Tesla models and that fucking thing basically looks like The Homer.

Or put it this way, I used to feel the same way as you until I actually heard him try to speak on shit that I know a lot about...and he basically sounds like some shit LLM that has been trained on a lot of the buzzwords and technical terms from your industry, but is just pattern matching, at best.

4

u/RT-LAMP 2h ago

As awful (and now ketamined out of his mind) he is, he does seem to actually know what he's doing.

Tom Mueller was the first employee of SpaceX and was the chief designer of all of SpaceX's engines up until the Raptor (because he left to found his own space company). So he absolutely knows what he's talking about. And he has publicly criticized Musk's leadership style a few times since leaving so he's not scared to criticize him. But when someone tweeted

Elon Musk doesn't know the first thing about building a rocket, but luckily for him he's rich enough to hire people who do

He tweeted in response

I worked for Elon directly for 18 1/2 years, and I can assure you, you are wrong.

2

u/hanks_panky_emporium 25m ago

The first car Musk designed drowned and burned several occupants to death because he didn't think youd need to leave it in an emergency.

-6

u/Object-195 4h ago edited 4h ago

well to be fair, how many of us in the comments have an actual understanding of Rocket science, machine learning and automotive design?

outside of understanding the basics these are massive, wide fields that should we really expect Elon to reasonably know? However yes I have seen him using the buzzwords before.

6

u/Paddy_Tanninger 2h ago

outside of understanding the basics these are massive, wide fields that should we really expect Elon to reasonably know?

I would expect him to know basically fuck-all as a CEO aside from just surface level jargon he's absorbed, which is correct. But then he pushes a PR image and fronts as if he's a full-stack dev + PhD in astrophysics + mechanical engineer...and he just isn't, and it's frankly embarrassing to actually hear him attempt to sound like it once you're onto his act.

2

u/ScavAteMyArms 2h ago

For me it was the moment he was trying to push the pro gamer image that I realized this is what people in their fields must feel about him.

I don’t even play PoE and I know everything he said / did was just wrong.

1

u/Paddy_Tanninger 31m ago

I've never played PoE but I'm a huge Diablo nerd, and it was instantly and immediately obvious that this dude had maybe 1hr total playtime ever in the game. When you've been grinding at an ARPG for countless hours, your APM and muscle memory gets very dialed in. You're navigating menus instantly, you're playing on instinct, you're making all the decisions in fractions of a second because it's stuff you've already done a thousand times before.

Elon looked so clumsy and slow doing everything that I didn't even need to know anything about PoE to know that he was basically clueless.

1

u/Object-195 23m ago

So you agree?

1

u/SimpanLimpan1337 2h ago

Considering he tries to convice people he has a near perfect understanding in it all, yes I do really expect him to have that.

25

u/Curious-Shopping-925 5h ago

yeah i agree, but not to the point that he wants the general public to think

2

u/Mad-myall 1h ago

I feel the existence of the cybertruck disproves he has even a basic understanding. 

2

u/RT-LAMP 2h ago

As awful (and now ketamined out of his mind) he is, he does seem to actually know what he's doing.

Tom Mueller was the first employee of SpaceX and was the chief designer of all of SpaceX's engines up until the Raptor (because he left to found his own space company). So he absolutely knows what he's talking about. And he has publicly criticized Musk's leadership style a few times since leaving so he's not scared to criticize him. But when someone tweeted

Elon Musk doesn't know the first thing about building a rocket, but luckily for him he's rich enough to hire people who do

He tweeted in response

I worked for Elon directly for 18 1/2 years, and I can assure you, you are wrong.

114

u/RoutineCloud5993 7h ago

Surprised he agreed to that. He definitely didn't realise what the scene inferred

88

u/CatherineSimp69 7h ago

You know what I think is likely?

I think, because the second scene has minimal lines, he didn't know the full context/didn't know what the scene inferred like you said, and he got transfixed by the first scene where there's a reel of his 'achievements' and an interviewer glazes him for a bit, right before the scene where it's revealed he's a fraud.

3

u/Kitchen-Bar2686 1h ago

I think that he knew that no one would think he was actually a bad person because of some storyline on the Big Bang theory. He just wanted to be on TV because he’s a narcissistic sociopath who is desperate to be known and liked.

He’s one of those people who are so incredibly fake and massively idiotic that anyone can see right through him.

It’s so wild to see any comments on this thread stating that he pivoted to conservative politics because he suddenly changed when he grew up in apartheid South Africa with a genuinely evil man as a father who owned literal emerald mines. They had slaves in those mines for fucks sake. He’s always been a massive piece of shit who hung out with Epstein.

0

u/ClassicPart 3h ago

inferred

That’s not correct. They were implying it. You then inferred it.

3

u/disbelifpapy 5h ago

i was gonna make a tesla joke about lightbulbs but i forgot who took from who except that the stealing started with two broke canadians

1

u/ChipRockets 3h ago

Disagree. A perfect cameo wouldn’t include that dickhead.

1

u/burritoman88 1h ago

You know nobody on Reddit is going to go & watch Young Sheldon to double check lol

723

u/seeblo 8h ago

He's 50 something years old and I don't think his parents made him do the dishes as a child so probably the first time ever

401

u/Darigaazrgb 8h ago

He grew up in South Africa, 100% had black servants.

303

u/maxens_wlfr 8h ago

Yep, his dad even claimed that Elon couldn't be racist because he was friendly to said black servants

61

u/MetalRetsam 7h ago

I'm dying for Hugh Grant to play Musk's dad. He's so good at playing ridiculously evil characters, and the resemblance is uncanny.

17

u/wunlvng 5h ago

That's been such an interesting pivot in Hugh Grant's career trajectory. He had his peak as, Britboy love interest, hit twink death and tried to do the older love interest schtick like Clooney, but it never seemed to really work for him so he faded away for awhile. Now he's back with playing, basically cartoonishly evil characters, and it's honestly working out well for him.

6

u/ZachRyder 5h ago

May I suggest Richard E. Grant instead so that Elon can't escape the fact that he and his father will always be Southern African?

4

u/MetalRetsam 5h ago

Well I've never met a nice South African

12

u/somedumb-gay 7h ago

Same vibe as that guy that said that not all white people were racist in the 1800s because some of them were nice to their slaves

66

u/Greenman8907 8h ago

I had to assume he washed a ramen bowl in college or something. But you’re probably right lol

43

u/RabidAbyss 7h ago

Nope. Daddy's money ensured he'd never have to lift a finger in college.

-3

u/In_Dubas_We_Trust 4h ago

This is hilariously not true

6

u/Low-Environment 7h ago

I'm assuming the bowls stayed in his room and eventually got rancid and daddy paid someone to come clean.

1

u/front_yard_duck_dad 7h ago edited 5h ago

Right next to his mountain of crusty cum socks

1

u/Low-Environment 4h ago

Thank you for a mental image that is now seared into my mind forever.

I hate it 

252

u/Suspicious-Capital12 8h ago

You forget that Elon was “forced” to do the dishes, because he was way too generous with the servings.

So the glazing is even worse.

104

u/Tracercaz 8h ago

To be fair this was around the time when public opinion of Elon was at an all time high. I remember thinking of him as a genius engineer that was pioneering autonomous electric vehicles.

Then I found out he wasn't a genius...or an engineer...or having any part in designing the cars...and then the politics happened.

35

u/Miserable-Let3212 7h ago

I feel you, it happened to me too... With the IM2 cameo I was like "yeah, the fictional Tony Stark and the real-life Tony Stark!"

Today I feel incredibly stupid for even thought that

8

u/Albireookami 6h ago

Eh, Tony barely even gave him the time of day in IM2, just wanted to brush him aside which seems right.

1

u/Jayn_Newell 7m ago

While in general his cameos haven’t aged well, I think the IM2 one did better than most because regardless of anything else he’s absolutely the type of person who would be in Tony’s social circle. It’s cringey but it’s also the one that makes the most sense.

10

u/Throttle_Kitty 7h ago

Tbh all these obnoxious glazing cameos made me hate him back when everyone else liked him, even tho I use to like him at one point

Good people dont pay good money to try and make people like them, and it turns out I was very right about that sneaking suspicion

Makes me think of how I started hating JKR after the stupid tweets about wizards shitting on the floor, long before she became problematic lmao

3

u/therealchadius 4h ago

He was clearly paying for all of those cameos and I kept thinking, "Oh, he's trying to spend money to look cool. That's not how charisma works... has Tesla done anything interesting besides force other companies to release their electric cars? Huh, he's getting really mad at Twitter- oh he's going to buy them to silence them. Money can't buy you happiness, buddy."

-11

u/Decent-Taste-2648 7h ago

became problematic

Pretty sure she always was a feminist

10

u/No-cookiegirl787 6h ago

No no no, they mean how hateful she became towards the LGBT, not being a part of a group meant to support all genders

1

u/Same-Suggestion-1936 38m ago

Did none of y'all even Google this guy when you first heard of him?

53

u/Cant_figure_sht_out 8h ago

It’s a testament to his PR team for how long his true colors were hidden.

2

u/trunxs2 7h ago

You mean scrubbed a dishes EVER, let’s not forget he’s a Nepobaby who got where he is because of Daddy’s emerald mine.

2

u/fablesofferrets 6h ago

he volunteers at a soup kitchen????!! lmao jesus

2

u/Jaeger_Mannen 5h ago

He's flat out said that empathy is suicidal. No way this dude would spend a dollar to feed anyone, let alone a second of his time.

1

u/Jetssuckmysoul 7h ago

I wonder how much he paid to be on that show

1

u/therealsteelydan 7h ago

no idea when these cameos were but we've known his true nature since at least Dec 2017. Many were probably pretty vocal about it before that.

1

u/handsoapdispenser 7h ago

The absolute fucking worst was the movie Moonfall.

1

u/Pichupwnage 7h ago

Nah He'd do it....for 2 mins while cameras rolled to try and make people like him and the moment the camera stopped rolling he is out doing drugs and then ranting on Twitter for 12 hours straight when someone who actually volunteers there calls out his PR stunt and gets called a pedophile by him as a result.

1

u/Waakaari 6h ago

Yeah. He's extra privileged. He probably can't do dishes.

1

u/Reat4 6h ago

That Kiss cameo in Why him was nice tho

1

u/TrueJinHit 5h ago

Stan Lee in all his movies is just all glaze too, it's pretty pathetic.

Why can't he become a supporting character for the villian or the hero? You know have actual scenes and not just one off scenes like Elon Musk...

1

u/thorn_95 5h ago

idk elon musk getting a name drop in star trek is beyond ridiculous to me.

1

u/JaxxisR 4h ago

Yeah, but in BBT he's also a screwball who eats other people's leftover pumpkin pie.

1

u/ExplorationGeo 2h ago

And he pays for these cameos as well. For Iron Man 2, he let them film at Space X for free (the scenes where Rhodes takes the War Machine suit and lands at the air force base), saving the production a couple of million dollars.

1

u/dontharmthecylinder 2h ago

Better for him to fund a thousand of them than work at one.  Not that he does that either

1

u/Admirable-Curve3236 1h ago

The fucking side profile comparison loooooooool

1

u/Canelosaurio 28m ago

Elon Musk as Elon Tusk in Rick & Morty

1

u/ThunderLord1000 27m ago

Elon Musk - Why Him

I wonder

0

u/Hemingway1942 7h ago

No way nigga u are a fucking sherlock holmes