Out-Of-Place Cameos That Just Didn't Work

Most audiences love a great cameo. When executed well, a cameo from a beloved actor, celebrity, or character can really enhance the story of a film or television show and create a crowd-pleasing moment that often comes as a shock to unsuspecting viewers. Cameos have always been popular in film and TV. Famous directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino have cameoed in the majority of their films and celebrity self-portrayal cameos have long been a staple of comedies. Major franchises from. the likes of Marvel and DC have also increased the popularity of character cameos, bringing in beloved heroes and villains from the source material for bit parts.

Of course, while a well-done cameo can elevate a project, a poorly integrated cameo can really bring a project down. Unfortunately, there are many such examples of the latter situation, with certain cameos famously hurting a project. Cameos can fail for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it's due to a stiff or cringeworthy performance. Other times, a celebrity's inclusion may ruin a viewer's suspension of disbelief, or a character's appearance might create issues with a film's narrative or canon. Whatever the reason, these out-of-place cameos failed to do any favors for their respective projects, and it's likely these films or television shows would have been much better without them.

Sometimes the biggest surprise cameos have nothing to do with the story or characters in a film or television show, but rather the actor portraying them. This was the case in the Season 7 premiere of "Game of Thrones." The episode, titled "Dragonstone," featured a scene in which series mainstay Arya Stark happens upon a group of Lannister soldiers singing a song that she'd never heard before. To the surprise of many viewers, the most prominent voice among the group belonged to singer-songwriter superstar Ed Sheeran. Sheeran's character is later revealed to be named Eddie, a name taken straight from the famed crooner himself.

Sheeran's performance in the brief scene wasn't bad. In fact, the bit of the in-universe song "Hands of Gold" that he sings sounds quite amazing. Unfortunately, it didn't matter whether his performance was good or not. "Game of Thrones" is a show that rarely, if ever, used stunt casting to surprise audiences. The show had a dark and serious tone, and the worldbuilding was done in a way meant to pull audiences into a believable and fleshed-out universe. Seeing Sheeran pushed many viewers out of the story and reminded them that they were watching a show affected by our own world and its creators (who'd welcomed other musicians to cameo with far less backlash). 

Horror and suspense director M. Night Shyamalan loves to cameo in most of his films, following in path of many auteur-style directors, including Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino. But while some of these cameos are small or well integrated into the story, others feel self-indulgent to the point of taking viewers out of the movie. In his early films, Shyamalan's cameos tend to be more well-done. For instance, in "The Sixth Sense" the director pops up as a pediatrician treating Haley Joel Osment's character Cole, and it was meant as a tribute to Shyamalan's parents, who are both doctors.

Later, his roles grew bigger and bigger, leading to a full-blown supporting role in "Lady in the Water," which painted him as a sort of savior figure. However, it was the cameo leading up to "Lady in the Water" that opened the door to Shyamalan's apparent savior complex. The director appears at the end of "The Village" as the boss of a park ranger who rescues the main character, Ivy. He helps the other ranger get her the medicine she needs. Shyamalan showing up to save the day feels too much like the director patting himself on the back, and it rubbed many audience members the wrong way.

The excellent show "Peacemaker" continues the story of the titular character after the events of "The Suicide Squad." Set in the DC Extended Universe, or DCEU, the show shared its canon with many of DC's biggest films of the time, including "Justice League." The series takes full advantage of this during the final episode, which included a cameo that surprised many viewers. In the show, the Justice League themselves arrive to assist Peacemaker, only to find out that he'd already won the battle. While it may seem like a cameo from DC's biggest heroes would excite any DC Comics fan, there was one big problem: only Ezra Miller and Jason Momoa reprised their respective roles as the Flash and Aquaman.

This leads to a strange scene that features a CGI Superman and Wonder Woman standing in a lineup beside the Flash and Aquaman, while the latter two do all of the talking. The scene not only proved off-putting but viewers were quick to notice that Batman and Cyborg were missing from the lineup, which resulted in the production crew adding the final two members via CGI and reuploading the episode. Luckily, the brief banter between Aquaman and the Flash is still fun, but odd silence of the background CGI heroes just serves to remind audiences that are watching a show as beholden to actor schedules (and budget) as it is storytelling needs.

Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier is arguably one of the most beloved portrayals in the "X-Men" franchise, if not superhero films as a whole. Still, as exciting as it is to see him in every film he appears in, when it comes at the cost of the story, or the canon of that story's universe, that cameo suddenly falls flat. This occurred with his appearance in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." The film is a prequel to the first "X-Men" adventure and tells the untold story of Wolverine, including his childhood, and how he was inducted into the Weapon X program and lost his memory.

During the final sequence, Wolverine rescues a group of mutants from an experimentation program orchestrated by William Stryker, leader of the Weapon X program. As the group escapes from the facility, Xavier, in a surprise cameo appearance, helps rescue them. Unfortunately, this creates numerous questions and issues with the chronology. In the scene, Xavier is shown to still have the use of his legs in 1979, while "X-Men: First Class" shows him losing the ability to use them in 1962. In addition, his timely rescue would seem to indicate that he possesses knowledge of Stryker's experiments and program, something that was a mystery to him in the original "X-Men" trilogy.

"Jurassic World," the first film in the "Jurassic Park" franchise in nearly 15 years, managed to revitalize the property enough to spawn two sequels. The film centered around Isla Nublar, the location of the original Jurassic Park, which had finally been opened as a fully operational theme park named Jurassic World. Of course, as things do in a "Jurassic Park" film, this goes wrong and dinosaurs get loose and cause havoc in the park, leading to it being shut down. The film contains some surprising cameos, including Jimmy Buffett and Jimmy Fallon.

Fallon's inclusion was thanks to his ties with Universal Pictures, which owns NBC, where Fallon serves as the host of "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon," as well as the "Jurassic Park" franchise. Fallon appears as himself during a scene where two of the protagonists ride a guided tour, showing up on their screen as the host of the tour, mimicking the videos that he did as the host of the Universal Studio Tour at Universal Studios. However, none of this makes sense in-universe. Universal would not have a stake in a dinosaur park in Costa Rica, turning Fallon's cameo into a meta reference rather a bit of worldbuilding. This only serves to pull viewers out of the fantasy and remind them that are watching a Universal Pictures film.

In the third act of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," Miguel O'Hara, also known as Spider-Man 2099, introduces a concept to hero Miles Morales called canon events. These events occur in the lives of every Spider-Man and spider-hero across every universe and involve the tragic loss of an individual close to them that allows them to mature and become the superhero they are meant to be. During the scene where Miguel explains canon events, he shows Miles glimpses of canon event moments in the lives of several variants of Spider-Man. But one of these stands out among the rest — for not fitting.

That variant is Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man. In the scene, Miles sees the moment from the first "Amazing Spider-Man" film in which Spider-Man witnesses the death of Captain George Stacy, the father of his girlfriend Gwen. Only, this scene doesn't really work as a canon event. Captain Stacy and Peter Parker were never particularly close, with Captain Stacy serving as an antagonist to Spider-Man for much of the movie. While the death is sad, it hardly feels like it would qualify as a life-changing canon event. In fact, Garfield's Spider-Man himself seemingly disputed the notion in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." During the scene where the Spider-Man variants discuss the tragic death that made them Spider-Man, Garfield's Spider-Man references Gwen Stacy's death, which makes much more sense as his canon event.