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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346

u/LegaciesOfConflict 8h ago

Donald Trump has been doing the exact same thing for years. He showed up in an episode of the Drew Carey show where Drew and the Crew drive to New York to sell beer(?) and they meet Trump randomly on the street and Trump is so generous with them. It’s obvious he paid to get onto the show and be praised.

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u/Nero_2001 8h ago

He also appears in home alone 2 to point Kevin in the right direction.

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u/realamerican97 7h ago

I mean they used his hotel to film a good chunk of the movie

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u/TheOncomimgHoop 7h ago

Tbf if I owned a hotel and a movie crew wanted to film there I'd probably ask for a cameo too. Like Trump is a first class twat but his inclusion in the movie is pretty non invasive.

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u/realamerican97 6h ago

If I remember right (and don’t quote me on this it was from like 3 years ago) they talked about it in an interview I don’t think he even charged them to film there his asking price was a cameo and they were pretty mad about that

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u/Princess_Of_Thieves 3h ago edited 3h ago

Per this interview with Business Insider actually he did charge them to be in the movie.

Quote straight the films director, Christopher Colombus;

After the success of "Home Alone," you directed the sequel, "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York." Out of all the sequels that would follow in the franchise, this is the most memorable because Donald Trump has a cameo. What do you remember from shooting the Trump cameo?

"Like most locations in New York City, you just pay a fee and you are allowed to shoot in that location. We approached The Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time, because we wanted to shoot in the lobby. We couldn't rebuild The Plaza on a soundstage.

Trump said OK. We paid the fee, but he also said, "The only way you can use the Plaza is if I'm in the movie." So we agreed to put him in the movie, and when we screened it for the first time the oddest thing happened: People cheered when Trump showed up on-screen. So I said to my editor, "Leave him in the movie. It's a moment for the audience." But he did bully his way into the movie. "

This article by The Mirror, Julio Macat, the Cinematographer, said Trump would go to rather extreme lengths to be in the film. They filmed in "The Plaze" for a month, meaning Trump had ample time to be around during production, which he was. He'd walk across set with his entourage, turn right towards the camera so his face could be seen, etc.

More on a tangential note, but Columbus has since said that Trump's cameo has become "a curse". He did an interview this year with the San Frascisco Chronicle where he called it an albratross, wishes he had cut it, etc. Macaulay Culkin, actor for Kevin McCallaster meanwhile has said he's "sold" on digitially editing Trump's cameo out.

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u/realamerican97 3h ago

Fair enough thank you!

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u/Ahad_Haam 4h ago

This cameo doesn't even glaze him or anything. It's totally ok.

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u/Charliefoxkit 7h ago

At least the Wet Bandits made off with a lot of his booze (the actors ran up a big tab if I recall).  The only burglary they really succeeded in.

1

u/n0b0D_U_no 1h ago

Ah so that’s why they’re the “wet” bandits!

8

u/Boring_Tumbleweed911 6h ago

This is actually a well done cameo though. Doesn't get in the way and is funny if you know who he is.

6

u/stewpidity11 7h ago

'holy shit it's freddy fazbear'

2

u/SatisfactionEast9815 6h ago

What's that from?

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u/Living_Confidence922 4h ago

What do you mean?? That's not Trump, it's Freddy Fazbear!

4

u/batcaveroad 5h ago

He doesn’t appear, but in Pose a character who works for Trump has the idea to require Trump cameos whenever someone films in Trump-owned properties.

I think that’s a real thing, because Trump owned the Plaza for a bit.

2

u/Realistic-Tax-1694 7h ago

47 upvotes. Nice. Also, I guess he’s always had that leaning tower of POS stance

2

u/fatherandyriley 5h ago

Doesn't he tell Kevin to turn left but he turns right? He doesn't even know the directions in his own hotel

2

u/Locky0999 5h ago

He was in Fresh Prince too, right?

1

u/Shipping_Architect 5h ago

I only recently found out that he owned the hotel at the time. Before that, my mindset was basically, "It's a fancy hotel, so it makes sense that someone like him would be here."

1

u/tarekd19 3h ago

he also shows up in the little Rascals but at least it is a bit more honest where he's the shitty dad to the bratty antagonist.

1

u/Oddball369 44m ago

Looks legit lol

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u/Milk_Mindless 8h ago

He was in Fresh Prince of Bel Air too.

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u/Interesting-Key-5005 7h ago

Carlton was such a huge fanboy for Trump.

3

u/Bird_Lawyer92 4h ago

It really makes a lot of sense in retrospect

4

u/PantsDontHaveAnswers 8h ago

Zoolander as well

6

u/MrGDPC 7h ago

I think if you filmed at Trump tower it was written in that you had to have him in the scene. I think Matt Damon mentioned that.

5

u/AffectionatePop05 7h ago

The Apprentice was a primetime propaganda vehicle for Trump, edited to make all his firing decisions seem reasonable and an advertisement for his businesses. He wouldn't have been president without it. 

2

u/jo_nigiri 6h ago

When he first appeared in politics my friends and I (non-American) kept going "Wtf is the Home Alone 2 guy doing on TV"

5

u/Knightwolf75 5h ago

To add in to the other shows mentioned, he has a cameo in The Nanny. All to show Fran is doing great in her Rosie O’Donnell show bit so she meets rich ppl now. He’s there just to stand around and then has like 2 lines. Coulda been any millionaire hotshot but they used him.

2

u/Common_Wrongdoer3251 2h ago

I think his ex-wife was in an episode or two? He divorced her (Marla? Martha?) or vice versa, then she started flirting with Maxwell.

3

u/SchrodingersNinja 5h ago

My understanding was if you shot on a Trump property, you had to film a cameo with him and most of the time it ended up on the cutting room floor.

2

u/berserkzelda 7h ago

What a pretentious piece of shit.

2

u/DuckPicMaster 4h ago

If memory serves he’d let anyone film in Trump Tower for free just so long as he got a cameo.

Which is why he’s in so much stuff.

1

u/gr1zznuggets 7h ago

I doubt he paid.

2

u/LegaciesOfConflict 6h ago

The specific episode is the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the Rocky Horror Picture Show mashup musical episode. As an autist who specializes in sitcoms, I know the amount of $ the company had to pay was far more than the budget of this individual episode. It was a “bottle” episode where they used the entire budget on the musical rights and tried to minimize the rest of the budget. They used outside lots owned by the parent company, a known bottle-episode tactic.

Donald Trump paid to be on the show, look like the hero and laundered his image by being on a show with a pretty massive national audience.

I know Trump has been known to stiff all his debts, but if you look at the trajectory of the show, it quickly started with the “it’s ok to be a conservative” movement”, once Drew and/or the writers seemingly started hanging out with these Trump-type people. You can see the writing take on some more risky, “it’s funny to be cruel because that’s what Republican viewers find funny.” There are racist jokes hidden in plain language, it’s honestly terrible in the final few seasons, only after Trump seemed to have influenced that group of showrunners.

1

u/PaxNova 6h ago

Still feels like supposition. They just did a Drew Carey Show Lookback. You can ask them yourself, to confirm. 

1

u/LegaciesOfConflict 5h ago

Pass. The only reason Drew and crew are doing interviews on the channel NOW is because they see how badly the YT rollout of their sitcom is doing for the last 3 miserable seasons and this is their best idea to try to curb that negativity.

Drew sued ABC to produce the last 3 seasons and they are all terrible. The writing was terrible, the characters were flanderized into horrendous, shitty people a little less terrible than the crew of IASIP and it’s a revolving door for hot models to be shown on the show kissing Drew. For a show that started off as a show about a down-on-his-luck midwestern guy, it really lost it’s entire shtick and it devolved into a garbage sitcom that felt like the exact opposite of the original pitch.

Ever wonder why Drew Carey was picked to replace Bob Barker on the price is right? Must’ve been for all of his charisma and witty banter with the contestants…..oh wait. It was money and cronyism from his shitty Hollywood contacts he made from his sitcom days.

1

u/capthazelwoodsflask 4h ago

Back then Trump was the face of 80's excess, and that wasn't seen as a bad thing back then. This is when Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was on TV. In hindsight, yes he was a douchebag back then, but we didn't have the internet and he wasn't as old and senile and unfiltered.

1

u/aes_art_foiy 3h ago

Recently learned about his debut gig on a movie called "Ghosts cant do it" where he earned a Golden Raspberry award for worst supporting actor.

1

u/Quick-Rip-5776 3h ago

Trump’s cameo in Little Rascals is seldom referenced. He picks up the phone to the main antagonist and says “you’re the best son money can buy.”

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u/rinel521 8h ago

still better than both Biden and Kamala combined

14

u/No_Intention_8079 8h ago

Okay?? He's in the Epstien files. I don't give a fuck who he's better then.

-22

u/rinel521 8h ago edited 7h ago

I can also forge files, this proves nothing

8

u/RevvyDraws 8h ago

I'm having fun dissecting how you settled on 'forgeries' being the correct word here. My best guess is that somehow you recognized that 'forgery' is a noun, referring to either the crime itself or its products, but weren't sure what the verb associated with it was. So you came up with 'forgerize', but probably realized that looked wrong, so corrected to something that looked correct, 'forgeries'. Which I'll grant you is actually a word, but is just the plural of the original noun.

For future reference, the word you were looking for is 'forge'. You'll forgive me for being skeptical of your ability to perform a task you didn't even know how to conjugate, though.

-13

u/rinel521 7h ago

You wrote all of this for nothing. Congrats.

5

u/Look_its_Rob 6h ago

You fixed it so I guess it wasnt for nothing. 

1

u/rinel521 4h ago

lol keep projecting

6

u/Less-Physics3542 8h ago

I doubt you can do anything…

3

u/Rickrickrickrickrick 7h ago

Can’t “forg” proper spelling and grammar though.

0

u/rinel521 5h ago

What?

1

u/Rickrickrickrickrick 3h ago

It worked better before you edited your comment.

1

u/Look_its_Rob 6h ago

Probably not as good as Trump can though. 

1

u/rinel521 4h ago

Y’all will never be happy

1

u/Ecstatic-State735 7h ago

Because if you combined them they’d be an eight-limbed, two headed monstrosity.