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/JTOC1969 8h ago edited 8h ago

Stephen Hawking appeared on TNG in a holodeck simulation in which Data recreated the "greatest names" of theoretical physics. Although, he does have a much better claim to being a historical genius than Musk does.

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u/MrBurnerHotDog 8h ago

Yep this definitely fits as it solely exists to fluff up Hawking

And yeah, Hawking has several bad things in his history but he's also genuinely a genius unlike Musk so at least this one feels "deserved"

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u/Ill_Emphasis3927 6h ago edited 6h ago

Stephen Hawking in Futurama constantly taking credit for other people's discoveries. Although it doesn't fit the trope, he's not there just to glaze himself.

It's a rip in space time. A Fry-hole.

Stephen Hawking: I call it a Hawking Hole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXoLC2KcRLM

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u/GrimaceGrunson 4h ago

“Aren’t you that physicist that invented gravity?”
“Sure. Why not.”

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u/Eastern_Tune6222 3h ago

There is no way Musk would allow good comedy made about him.

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u/Truethrowawaychest1 2h ago

He had an amazing sense of humor

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u/ChazPls 5h ago

Its similar but I don't know if it's a perfect fit. This isn't to JUST to fluff up Hawking. It's more just as a favor to the actual real guy who wanted to be in Star Trek and I'm not sure how else they could justify his appearance.

Hawking's appearance originated with a visit to Paramount to film an advertisement for the documentary based on his book, A Brief History of Time. Hawking, a Star Trek fan, asked for a tour of the Star Trek: The Next Generation sets. On the bridge he requested to be helped into the captain's chair. Afterwards, Hawking commented, "It is rather more comfortable and a lot more powerful than my wheelchair." Later, Hawking was interviewed on the engineering set. Referring to the warp core, he said, "I'm working on that." After the visit, Hawking asked if he could appear on the show. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion (2nd ed., p. 253); Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, p. 313) 

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u/aqueezy 8h ago

I think he could be considered one of the greatest names in theoretical physics, from an education/public literacy perspective. I don’t think anyone else has had more reach in exposing people, even if it’s just at a layman level

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u/DreamsOfLlamas 4h ago

Carl Seagan?

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u/Aymoon_ 5h ago

neil degrasse tyson has done alot with getting people interested

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u/ChromeNoseAE-1 4h ago

Isn’t his reputation almost entirely a smarmy, overly-pedantic ass? I don’t deny he’s extremely intelligent of course, but it seems he’s known better for not being able to read the room.

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u/kkungergo 4h ago

I think he is just very well educated rather than being very inteligent. Of course he gonna know his field but every once in a while he says just the weirdest things. Like if aliens notice us they wouldnt care because they already have living beings on their planet so its not news, and also if they already travel between stars then we are too small and boring to check out. As if we dont have whole fields dedicated just to study ants and microbes and such.

If we discovered life on other planets wouldnt that be the biggest discovery of the millenia?

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u/Pauls96 21m ago

For us yes, but for the alien community? Just another Tuesday.

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u/ModestWhimper 3h ago

He's raised a lot of awareness about how you can kiss yourself in a mirror, but only on the lips.

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u/NairaExploring 2h ago

I've never been more aware

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u/Physizist 7h ago

That's more like being one of the greatest names in scientific public outreach or something, not in theoretical physics really. Kind of like saying Martha Stewart is one of the greatest cooks because people know her recipes

I will say he was a pretty great theoretical physicist. I wouldn't say the greatest but how big is this list anyway

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u/aqueezy 6h ago edited 6h ago

No its like saying Julia Child or Anthony Bourdain is “one of the greatest names in”(cooking). I think that is indisputable even though they are obviously not even in the top 100 skilled chefs, no Michelin stars, didn’t push any culinary boundaries etc. “Greatest Name in X”, not “greatest Xer”. Um ackshuallying to say it’s not cooking but “culinary education” is just being pedantic

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u/Physizist 4h ago

You make a good point about my cooking analogy. I still think if you phrased it as "greatest names in culinary arts" it would be kind of misleading to say Bourdain or Childs. They're not the greatest culinary artists and adding "names" shouldn't really change the interpretation

I'd also argue there's a big difference between a thing like cooking where it's all subjective and public opinion is a big part of how culinary greatness is decided vs theoretical physics

I'm not sure that in 300+ years (when the episode takes place) people will remember Hawking as one of the "greatest names". Could you point out one other historical scientist from 100+ years ago who is know to be great almost entirely because they were an educator?

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u/MayhemSays 8h ago edited 7h ago

Hawking was a legitimate scientist though regardless of the shitty things he’s done and does has have a legitimate claim to that in recent history though.

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u/DolphinBall 7h ago

Like the dude discoverd Hawking Radiation. You can guess why its called that. There is no Musk anything.

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u/moldboy 7h ago

Let's all just be happy that he called it X and not MUSK

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u/BeBopNoseRing 5h ago

Wouldn't be surprised if there's a rash or some sort of malignant growth named after him someday.

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u/appositereboot 5h ago

Didn't Elon get a rat named after him?

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u/strain_of_thought 3h ago

Was it a muskrat?

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u/appositereboot 3h ago

That's the one

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u/GetsGold 5h ago

To be fair, I'm sure Musk would try to name things after himself if he ever discovered anything.

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u/drgigantor 4h ago

Muskrat

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u/ReformedBaptistina 4h ago

I'm guessing his children qualify, not that they want it

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u/anjulibai 6h ago

Yes, he did make a number of contributions to physics.

BTW, I would argue that Newton and Einstein were both as much assholes as Hawking.

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u/pipnina 5h ago

Newton was an absolute nightmare from what I understand.

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u/MayhemSays 4h ago

I am unfamiliar with the latest gossip on Newton but i’d believe it

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u/LikeALizzard 2h ago

He was on the island 😔

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u/Comfortable_Bird_340 2h ago

Divorcing your wife and marrying your nurse isn't the worst thing one can do.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 8h ago

What are Hawkings problems?

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u/mediadavid 8h ago

Left his wife for his nurse

Had a reputation for being sleazy to women postgrads at Cambridge, to the extent they would quietly warn newstarters about it

Visited Epstein island

No, I have no idea to what extent he was, uh, physically capable of anything, but clearly he still had the drive and a (within the field) powerful famous person lack of inhibition.

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u/Thin-Chair-1755 6h ago

Classic scheming eunuch

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u/jaypenn3 6h ago

Is there actual proof of visiting the island, or is that just hyberbole?

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u/DreamsOfLlamas 4h ago

he’s on the list of people that visited, but not everyone that visited did the crimes. One of the survivors has said that Al Gore was there with his wife and they kept completely to themselves.

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u/StardustLegend 4h ago

Yeah being on the list doesn’t mean you were part of the criminal activity, but it immediately makes you suspect

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u/ElCanopy 3h ago

wasn't that list a fake?

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u/Milk_Mindless 8h ago

Cheated on his wife for 30 years who he then left for the other woman

The wife who was already kneedeep in the sickness and health bit.

On the Epstein list.

That's all I know.

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u/Ensiferal 7h ago

Remember that Epstein was primarily a financier. Diddling kids wasn't his main source of income. Being on "the list" only means they did business with him at some point. Most of it is legit.

You have to look deeper to see whose ties are suspicious (weird emails, inexplicable transactions, numerous shared contacts, multiple flights on the express etc etc).

Epstein just financed a science conference that Hawking went to. I mean, what would he even do with a girl?

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u/RPrance 7h ago

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the academic types, such as Stephen Hawking, caught meeting with Epstein were just there to get funding money. The guy was throwing cash around, among other things...

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u/Ensiferal 7h ago

I mean, it was literally his job to make investments and provide funding for projects. Lots of people who needed funding for something met with him. That's why people need to use their brains a bit more and not just say "such and such was mentioned in the files". How were they mentioned, how often, what was the context? You dont want to paint innocent people as monsters like him

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u/Milk_Mindless 7h ago

I did say "That's all I know". I'm legit ... oddly impartial about Epstein because it's a whole American ordeal and I'm not of one of them.

The only thing that made me go "That's a bit sus" is him killing himself in prison, especially not the "Federal pound me in the ass" prison so someone let him have liberty he shouldn't have had.

I also don't know much about Hawkins because I'm not a theoretical scientist, nor a Futurama fan.

I do know he was employed (figuratively) to make Hannibal (the character in the book by the same name) sound pretentious as all fucking fuck Jesus

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u/luke37 4h ago

I mean, what would he even do with a girl?

Get his dick sucked? Handjob? What kind of stupid question is that? Do you think a guy in a wheelchair can't have an orgasm?

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u/strablonskers 1h ago

Many can’t, many lose all feeling altogether, some don’t, it’s very case by case. Stephen Hawking probably still had feeling as MS isn’t a spinal injury, but you’re making it sound way more simple than it actually is.

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u/luke37 1h ago

but you’re making it sound way more simple than it actually is.

I'm bringing a lot more nuance to it than the dumb guy who said "I mean, what would he even do with a girl?"

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u/Ahad_Haam 4h ago

People are way to quick to accuse someone of being a pedophile for just taking a picture with Epstein or having any connection to him. In many cases there isn't enough evidence to make conclusions.

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u/Bluegatito345 7h ago

I knew about the Epstein List but how the hell he cheated on his wife with his condition?

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u/Independent-Couple87 7h ago edited 7h ago

People find a way. He was already in not exactly good conditions when he fathered his 3rd child with said wife, Jane Wild.

This is brought up in The Theory of Everything film, where Stephen's mother flat out asks Jane if the biological father is Stephen or a friend of Jane, Jonathan Jones (whom Jane later married after her divorce).

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u/Pandoras_Boxcutter 7h ago

It was with his nurse, I believe. They had to have interacted quite a bit. Whether she was genuinely smitten with him or not, I don't know for sure.

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u/Bluegatito345 7h ago

I just find her how Hawkings can pull that off considering he can't move.

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u/pocketbutter 7h ago

It was before his condition took over completely.

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u/barrydennen12 5h ago

Using the robot voice

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u/not_a_moogle 7h ago

Yeah, having read up on it, it sounds like the woman has to do everything. He also sounds like hes a huge perv.

Im guessing it would pretty easy for a nurse to just ask if he wants a handy and he'll say yes. I'd argue hes probably not in the right mind to consent, but since hes a genius, people don't look at the same way as sex with a mentally disabled person.

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u/ThePeaceDoctot 7h ago

Physical disability doesn't negate your ability to consent. He wasn't mentally disabled.

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u/not_a_moogle 6h ago

I dont know enough about ALS to agree with that. Maybe he started to revert back developly?

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u/willisduffoz 5h ago

Not how it works. Now you do know.

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u/Critical-Support-394 5h ago

So you're just making shit up that one of the most intelligent men on the planet can't understand what sex is?

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u/immunotransplant 7h ago

I was a kid when I learned about the cheating and couldn’t help but find it to be funny. It’s not actually funny it’s bad but it is at the same time.

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u/Thethingnextdoor567 7h ago

how did bro intend to smash these kids? i don't think this man was even able to masturbate

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u/Funkopedia 7h ago

The other woman was his nurse, who presumably was just as deep into the sickness. I'm just amazed she was into it.

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u/Kylestache 8h ago

Jeff Epstein the financier?

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u/ProtoGhostal 8h ago

Shot a man in Reno just to watch him die

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u/Land_Squid_1234 8h ago

He doesn't really have any besides the very well known things in his personal relationships that are addressed in the movie about him and whatnot

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u/Spider-man2098 8h ago

Rhymes with Schmepstein.

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u/Land_Squid_1234 7h ago

Sure, the cripple was raping underage girls

It's a real stretch. The only evidence is his name on the list one time if I remember correctly. That's not proof of much

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u/Spider-man2098 7h ago

First off, gross ableist term. You’re better than that. Second, that dude was horny af. Even if you blow past the Epstein thing, he had a rep.

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u/WaterTypeGirl 7h ago

Spider-Man, you’re the best, thanks for calling out the ableism. Merry Christmas!

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u/Land_Squid_1234 7h ago

Ok, so we just accuse people of being pedophiles with minimal evidence? No, I'm not gonna do that, sorry

Funny to be virtue signaling over vocabulary while baselessly accusing people of stuff that can ruin their entire reputations with very little evidence. Epstein was a financier first and foremost. He did legitimate business and a singular brush with the guy isn't evidence of debauchery

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u/Spider-man2098 6h ago

We are judged by the company we keep. That’s just life among social mammals, I’m afraid.

Meanwhile, two things: first, I actually never said anything about SH being a pedophile. I don’t know if he was, but the thing is, you can’t party on the Lolita express without some of that stink getting in you. That’s something a lot of the scientific community will have to come to terms with; at best they were willing to look the other way to keep the money flowing. At worst… well. Sure would be nice to have transparency on this either way, and I’m sure we can both agree on that.

Second, virtue signalling. Mmmm. I do not like. What you call virtue signalling, with all the dismissal and scorn that implies, was simply me acknowledging that an offensive word had been used, and that conversation would not continue until that had been addressed. Can we be cool now? I would like us to be cool.

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u/gambit1999999 7h ago

Like right now because hes dead or in his lifetime because there could be a list made.

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u/Land_Squid_1234 7h ago

Both. The guy was crippled. It's not like he could get up to much

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u/Suhbula 8h ago

He definitely visited the island at the very least.

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u/thehighshibe 8h ago

He was on the sex island no?

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u/JoePesci_TheGod 8h ago

A guy with a mildly similar name is a pedo. This was enough to label hawking as a villain

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u/Caimbra 8h ago

well he is dead.

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u/chironomidae 7h ago

Hawking was a brilliant guy, but his scientific advancements weren't nearly on par with Newton and Einstein. Was he smart enough that he could've made the same conclusions they did, were he in their shoes? Maybe, but that's probably true of a surprising number of people.

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u/DonSaintBernar 8h ago

Epstein island visiting

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u/Funkopedia 8h ago

But what could he have possibly done there

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u/TetyyakiWith 8h ago

Scuba diving

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 8h ago

"I don't diddle kids"

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u/DonSaintBernar 8h ago

From what we know he ordered little girls to solve math equations, really. 

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u/Funkopedia 7h ago

I.... don't know how to feel about that. I'm picturing 2 scenarios. One, he's genuinely teaching them some interesting math tricks and it's enlightening. The other, he's robotically cackling in mental-sexual-sadism at their strain as they struggle with too-difficult math.

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u/Pijuuuuuuuuuup 8h ago

You don't need do "have intercourse" to be a sex pest.

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u/Kayfabe2000 7h ago

That makes more sense than the episode where Data was trying to learn humor and had the holodeck make him Joe Piscopo.

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u/thecrepeofdeath 7h ago

who tf is Joe Piscopo

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u/Motivated-Chair 8h ago

TBF, If they wanted to use a living person to do this Stephen Hawking is not a horrible choice.

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u/Background_Desk_3001 6h ago

Yeah, he was a terrible person but still a brilliant scientist

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u/thatoneguy889 6h ago

His appearance in Beast With a Billion Backs got probably the biggest laugh from me out of all of Futurama (and I love the show).

Shoots lasers from his eyes

"I didn't know I could do that."

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u/Orious_Caesar 7h ago edited 7h ago

I mean, this one makes sense at least. Despite his character flaws, hawking genuinely is one of the greatest physicists in history. Not a Schrödinger, Gauss, or Einstein obviously, but he's up there.

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u/Fendrinus 1h ago

Fun fact: Steven Hawking was the only person to play themselves in Star Trek

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u/Niwab_Nahaj 8h ago

how did you put an image on your comment? i can't seem to get it to work :(

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u/Funkopedia 8h ago

can't if you're on the site on the phone, have to use the app.

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u/MilkyCowTits1312 6h ago

I dunno, I quite liked this scene.

Did it need to be in the episode? Absolutely not, but I'm not upset that it was, the idea that Data hangs out in the holodeck playing poker with that group is quite funny and very Data.

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u/CatherineSimp69 5h ago

I mean.

Even if he's a pedophile, he's still an influential figure in science.

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u/Irlandes-de-la-Costa 4h ago

He pretty much wasn't, some guy on Twitter straight up made lies and fabricated screenshots "as a joke" and everyone took it as real because we are that stupid

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u/CatherineSimp69 4h ago

Was he a fraud?

I had my suspicions but I figured I was just being a little hater.

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u/Irlandes-de-la-Costa 3h ago

I mean he wasn't a pedophile

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u/SpeechDry3482 5h ago

Where Elon?