Creator Cameo

"Hey, is it time for the cameo yet? Mine, I mean."

— Stan Lee, Bad Days teaser

One popular form of The Cameo is to have a franchise's creator, or a film's director or producer, appear in the franchise itself.

Similar to Author Avatar, but an Author Avatar is a creator appearing as more or less themselves, as opposed to a cameo as someone else. Many comics will have either their original creators or the artists of the current Comic Book Run drawn in as background characters, although they rarely have dialogue. In video games, very likely to appear in any Developer's Room.

May lead to Death by Cameo. When the creator plays the part of an actual character rather than a simple cameo, they're a Descended Creator. See also Insert Cameo and Company Cameo.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Film
• Western Animation

Advertising

• One of the Air New Zealand Safety Videos, "An Unexpected Briefing", has an appearance from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit director Peter Jackson.
• The Christmas 2015 Sainsbury advert featuring Judith Kerr's Mog the Forgetful Cat has Kerr appear as one of the neighbours.

Art

• Sandro Botticelli: In his "Adoration of the Magi", the main focus is on the Three Magi kings arriving at Jesus' birthplace to shower him with royal gifts and worship him. One of the minor characters is Botticelli himself.
• Raphael Rooms: Raphael Sanzio's self-portrait is hidden in the crowd of Greek philosophers in "The School of Athens"; he's set apart from the others by the Aside Glance he gives to the audience.
• Rembrandt van Rijn did many self-portraits, but one of his best-known is a mostly-obscured figure in The Night Watch, looking directly at the viewer.
  • This was parodied in Paul Kidby's cover of the Discworld book Night Watch, where he put Josh Kirby, who did most of the cover art for the previous books, in Rembrandt's place.
• French author and architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, including the addition of the famous spire at the crossing (which was destroyed in a fire in 2019). The spire was decorated with statues of the Twelve Apostles, and the statue of Thomas was given Viollet-le-Duc's face.
• Velázquez painted himself into Las Meninas; he's the leftmost figure at the easel. This gives the impression that he was about to paint a royal portrait, but then painted himself painting it instead. Notably, he is bearing the honor of the Santiago Cross, which he did not yet have at the time this was made; it may have been added in at a later date.
• Venus and Cupid (Gentileschi): Venus' face bears Gentislechi's features. Since this painting was part of a bigger commission by a rich patron (there were more artists hired), it counts as a cameo.

Comic Strips

• Luann: Creator Greg Evans and his daughter/co-writer Karen showed up in their strip to wish the title character a happy 18th birthday. They could also be seen (along with Greg's wife Betty) among the guests at Brad and Toni's wedding.

Fan Works

• In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, the author Rytex inserted his ponysona Quantum Bit into a few chapters in Neighton, and then had him show up in the finale chapter Brainwashed and Crazy to get the shit beat out of him by Aegis. In the noncanon interlude chapter, Q-Bit even interacts with Aegis a bit more directly as the author, and not as a character.
• In one Mansionverse story, the Hatbox Ghost complains about the fact that one of the authors of the comics never draws his hatbox well. The name of the comics author in question is not cited, but the Hatbox Ghost gives enough clues to conclude that it is supposed to be user Benthehyena, one of the primary members of the team that developed the Fan Verse.
• In The Numbershots, there are occasionally cameo appearances by the author or some of his friends who created the characters:
  • Taylor Gorrel, the author of the Fanfiction, appears as himself in Deckshibition Chapter 10. He is an Armor Monster duelist who ends up dueling Yuma.
  • Yin-Yang Yoh (the original creator of Mia, the love interest for Astral in this Fanfiction) appears in Chapter 3 of Numbershot 1 as a competitor of the tournament with an Alien Deck, where he duels Yamoto.
• In the April Fools' Day chapter of The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, the Man in the Top Hat is quite obviously the author of the story, who appears to to his characters in a body resembling his avatar pic.
• In We Are All Pokémon Trainers, in order to convey the correct amount of surprise in this post, Jacob's author made a gif of himself doing Jacob's expressions.
• In the Doctor Who steampunk AU series A Society of Academics, in which all the Doctors are particularly eccentric professors at a generally eccentric university (under the names of their actors), the university board comprises showrunners (Miss Lambert, Mr Letts, Mr Turner, Mr Davies and Mr Moffat are mentioned in their first appearance). The Baker brothers, Dr Thomas and Dr Colin, have had their father named as "Old Pip".
• In Those Lacking Spines, all six members of Organization VI show up in some capacity only to be killed off in some way, but Gexegee deserves special mention for showing up out of no were on the G.S.S. Existentialist, calling for Xaldin from the bedroom, asking him to bring whipped cream, and then being ejected into space.
• The author of Twice Upon an Age appears in the epilogue of the first story, discussing the events with her "editor," Varric Tethras. She also returns for the prologue of the sequel, and is mentioned repeatedly in the editor's notes which pepper the entire series.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: The story's writer FlowerPrincess11 occasionally makes an appearance, as she is the one who runs the dating service.
• While by its very nature of being an SI fic Chaos Effect has the writer in it the Creator Cameos instead come in the form of the second Christmas Filler Arc, as Mr. Chaos has nearly a dozen of his author friends cameo as guests at his SI's birthday party.
• In the latter half of Chapter 10 of I've Got Your Back, the author's Inkling persona briefly appears after they almost hit a spectating Pearl in the head with a Power Clam.
• In Beyond The Storm, Meshakhad states that Ms. Angelo (Max's history teacher) is a self insert for herself.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles features a few cameos from its creator, mattwilson83:
  • On page 471, from Chapter 25, he has drawn himself in the second panel, standing next to Sasuke.
  • He makes another cameo on page 1519, from Chapter 78. On that page, he appears as a cashier working at the movie theater.
• The Mandela Magazine: Video creator Sr. Pelo appears as both a photograph and an illustration in the section comparing people with their Alternates. The real-life photo of Pelo is used to represent the Alternate.

Literature

• In Thomas Mann's novel Confessions of Felix Krull, the main character successfully cons a Scottish lord who is physically identical to Mann.
• Kim Newman's short story "Pitbull Brittan", in the Temps anthology edited by Alex Stewart, features a brief mention of a bullied schoolboy named Sandy Stewart asking the title character for help. Later in the story, Sandy's pleas having been ignored, a news report reveals he has committed suicide.
• Martin Amis in the novel Money - he beats his protagonist at chess.
• Clive Cussler loved this trope. Cussler's character will usually give the protagonists his current vehicle to aid them in their mission. He can also be a Mr. Exposition to relay some information on a historical event. Even if he doesn't appear, he is still likely to be mentioned in passing, at one point even being referred to "that author," referencing his novels within his novels.
  • Often, the character will be identified by some nickname for a while and only when making his farewell will reveal he's Cussler. Notable is that he's never the same occupation in each cameo. Every time, Dirk Pitt or other characters find something oddly familiar about him but then shrug it off while noting what an odd name it is.
  • The whole thing started by accident. When writing Dragon, Cussler, on a lark, had himself as a guy competing with Dirk Pitt at a race. Cussler figured his editor would get a chuckle out of it and then change the character's name. He was astounded it ended up in the published version and readers loved it.
• Discworld:
  • Jan Kantůrek, the Czech translator of Terry Pratchett's books, managed to include himself in his translation of Jingo. At one point, a character says that Carrot talked like "a little schoolteacher"; naturally, he translated the word as "kantůrek" ("little teacher"), and italicized it for good measure.
  • Amongst the various references to Fandom VIPs and friends of Terry in the business directory of The Compleat Ankh-Morpork City Guide (credited as being "aided and abetted by the Discworld Emporium") are Mitchell and Pearson, mapmakers. This is a reference to Ian Mitchell and Bernard Pearson of the aforementioned Emporium. Similarly, Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook mentions the Mitchell Inn Guide to Quirmian eateries.
  • In Where's My Cow?, there's a portrait of Terry hanging in Young Sam's room.
  • For Night Watch Discworld, the first book to have a cover by Paul Kidby, he did a pastiche of Rembrandt's The Night Watch. In the place where Rembrandt painted himself, Kidby put the late Josh Kirby, the original Discworld cover artist.
• Ayn Rand shows up in Atlas Shrugged as one of the denizens of Galt's Gulch, a fishwife who's also one of the best authors there. She notably also pines for John's affection.
• Don Quixote features a few characters discussing Cervantes' work at a Book Burning. It's massive Self-Deprecation, with the characters offering some pretty sharp criticisms.
• East of Eden being partly about the author's family, obviously has him there a few times, mainly in one intercalary chapter explaining one of his Uncles. But it's most notable that he has a scene where Adam Trask shows up to his mother's house to speak with his Grandma, and they meet as John Steinbeck and his sister stand behind their mother.
• The authors of Star Wars guide book The Essential Atlas, Daniel Wallace and Jason Fry, appear in an illustration as two hyperspace scouts in the book's section on galactic navigation. Chris Trevas, the illustrator who supplied that image, among others in the book, is also seen as participating in a holochess game in another picture.
• John Carter of Mars is Edgar Rice Burroughs's uncle.
• Midnight's Children is written by Salman Rushdie. He disguises his cameo by placing it in the middle of a long list of irrelevant names:
  Naturally, the prefects had the pick of the ladies; I watched them with passionate envy. Guzder and Joshi and Stevenson and Rushdie and Talyarkhan and Tayabali and Jussawalla and Waglé and King...
• Larry Correia makes two appearances in Tom Stranger: Interdimensional Insurance Agent. First as Larry the writer at a sci-fi convention, who was covered under the comprehensive policy of the other Larry Correia, Interdimensional Lord of Hate and CEO of Correia-Tech.
• Roger Zelazny makes a brief appearance in The Hand of Oberon, as a palace guard who chats with Corwin about the "philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity" that he's currently writing.
• Douglas Coupland wrote an exaggerated version of himself into jPod referred to as the "Anti-Doug".
• The Doctor Who Expanded Universe novella The Pit of Death by A.L. Kennedy, later expanded into the novel The Drosten's Curse, is set in 1978, both literally and in terms of Doctor Who continuity, and is written very much in the Adamsesque style of the period. It also happens to feature a character named David Agnew, the Alan Smithee name under which the late seventies production team wrote The Invasion of Time and the extremely Adamsesque City of Death.
• In Twilight Watch, Anton enters Gesar's office and sees his boss berating two human contractors for their poor performance and ordering them to work separately. Based on the humans' descriptions, an astute reader might recognize Sergey Lukyanenko (the author of the whole series) and Vladimir Vasilyev (his Day Watch co-author and author of The Face of the Dark Palmira spin-off).
• The Wheel of Time: Robert Jordan wrote himself into the series as a small bronze statue that's enchanted to contain a library.
• The opening scene of Digging to America takes place at Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI), and Anne Tyler, who wrote the novel, has said she and her daughter are the mother and daughter being described in the arrivals lounge.
• Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen, creators of Tatu and Patu, appear in many of the books on one page, most commonly in crowd scenes.
• In the 2009 Axel Scheffler illustrated edition of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the final illustration of the book shows T. S. Eliot greeting Cat Morgan on his way into Faber & Faber's offices.

Live-Action TV

• Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: Liu Lian Zi, author of the novel the series is based on, has a very minor role as the duchess of Xianqin.
• Whedonverse:
  • Angel:
    • In "Through the Looking Glass" and "There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb" Joss Whedon gets to play Lorne's brother Numfar, who does both the Dance of Joy, the Dance of Honor, and the Dance of Shame.
    • David Fury later played the Jim Henson Expy in "Smile Time" and appears as an audience member in the front row along with script supervisor Petra Jorgensen during Lorne's performance in "The House Always Wins".
    • Marti Noxon sang the theme song for Cordy! in "Birthday".
    • David Fury appeared as a demon worshiper in one episode.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In "Once More, With Feeling", writers Marti Noxon and David Fury both have small singing parts - bemoaning a parking ticket and celebrating successful dry cleaning, respectively.
    • In "Lie to Me", the fake vampire lying in a coffin who greets Willow enters a club ("Hi" Vampire in the credits) is played by Todd McIntosh, the show's makeup supervisor.
    • Joss Whedon was the voice of a newscaster in "I Robot, You Jane".
  • Firefly:
    • Joss had planned to perform the theme song (the "Ballad of Serenity"), which he wrote; before Sonny Rhodes was chosen to record it. A recording of Joss singing the theme song is included as a special feature in the DVD box set.
    • Joss Whedon appears, though just in the background, at the end of "The Message".
    • He also played the scientist interviewing River in "The R. Tam Sessions". She kills him.
  • In a cross between Whedon and Marvel, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, as a train passenger who berates an undercover Coulson (Lee also appears in Agent Carter).
• Cougar Town: In episode 2 series creator Bill Lawrence plays one of the cops who first reprimand then party with Jules.
• Game of Thrones: Subverted. George R.R. Martin was a guest at Daenerys' wedding in the unaired pilot, but scheduling conflicts have prevented him from making another despite his prominent involvement in the production.
  • Played straight in Season 8, where writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss play two wildlings after the Battle of Winterfell.
• Terry Pratchett plays the toymaker in the Sky One miniseries based on the Discworld book Hogfather.
  • And the Arch-Astronomer of Krull in The Colour of Magic.
  • And a postman in Going Postal.
    • And gets the literal last word of dialogue in all three!
• Neil Gaiman appears in the background in one scene in the TV version of Neverwhere. On the commentary for the film version of Stardust, he laments not doing a cameo in the film, but the only scene he was on set for (the scene at the fake inn) was one where an extra's presence would make no sense.
• J. Michael Straczynski shows up to switch off the lights before the station gets demolished in the Grand Finale of Babylon 5.
  • Fans swear he's the one who starts the Slow Clap when Sheridan comes back from the dead, but he denies it.
  • Before this final episode, he was fond of saying "I don't make cameos, my initials do."
  • The entire production crew shows up right before the credits, with group photos in rapid fire freeze-frame style.
  • Creative consultant Harlan Ellison also makes a brief cameo in one episode as a Psi Cop.
  • In the season 5 intro, Straczynski's creator credit is actually written on the back end of the station.
  • Executive producer Douglas Netter appeared as President Luis Santiago in the first season.
  • Most of the cast, crew and even their children were mobilized for mass scenes such as those in the Casino, both in the pilot movie and during the series.
• Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter novels, appeared as a police officer in the third season of the TV series.
• Executive producer/showrunner Carlton Cuse has done multiple voice cameos on Lost, including a newscast in "Through the Looking Glass" and Jacob's call for help in "The Man Behind the Curtain." Co-creator/showrunner Damon Lindelof voices the pilot of the plane Jack is on in "Through the Looking Glass" and claims to have "played" Locke's hand when Locke flips the Pearl's lightswitch in "?"
• Longtime Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont shows up in an episode of The Gifted (2017) as a conspiracy theorist obsessed with mutants.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Spearhead From Space", producer Derrick Sherwin appears uncredited as the UNIT commissionaire.
  • In "The Brain of Morbius", the faces seen during the mind-bending contest are production unit manager George Gallaccio, Robert Holmes, production assistant Graeme Harper, director Douglas Camfield, Philip Hinchcliffe, production assistant Christopher Baker, writer Robert Banks Stewart, and director Christopher Barry.
  • In "Arc of Infinity", producer John Nathan-Turner is seen briefly on a street in Amsterdam. He was (in real life) keeping Amsterdam people out of the frame, and a lot of people think he was filmed by accident, and since they were in a hurry, they decided to keep it.
  • The 25th-anniversary story "Silver Nemesis" featured a number of current and previous crew and cast as extras in the Windsor Castle scenes.
  • Mark Gatiss appeared, uncredited, as a Spitfire pilot in "Victory of the Daleks", a role which he reprises in "A Good Man Goes to War" (also cameoing in "The Wedding of River Song" under heavy make-up and a pseudonym in the credits). Downplayed as Gatiss is a writer-actor who previously appeared in a major credited role as the villain in the episode "The Lazarus Experiment", and later as Captain Lethbridge-Stewart in "Twice Upon a Time".
• Gatiss' appearances in Sherlock, which he co-created, as Mycroft Holmes were initially intended to be only brief cameos, but he ended up gradually becoming more and more important to the series in later seasons (hence why he is uncredited in the first series, but credited in all others).
• Tony Kushner has a cameo as a rabbi in the Angels in America miniseries.
• In the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, Ron Moore appears as a bystander reading a magazine article on robotics as Head Six and Head Gaius read over his shoulder.
• Kathy Reichs, the author of the Temperance Brennan books, gets a cameo in season 2 of Bones.
• Douglas Adams appeared a couple of times in the televised version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981). Most notably, he walks into the ocean stark naked after the actor who was hired didn't show up.
  • He can be seen enjoying a beer in Arthur's local when Ford and Arthur take their six pints to a table.
  • His likeness also appears in animated sequences as a director of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation ("a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes"), and in a dress and hair-bunches as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.
• jPod has a cameo by Douglas Coupland, who wrote the novel that inspired the series.
• Susan Nickson had a small role on Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.
• Bryan Singer appears in at least one, possibly two, episodes of House
• Ed Bye, director of Red Dwarf, appeared as the Grim Reaper in Only The Good...
  • And Rob Grant, one of the writers, appeared in Backwards as a man unsmoking a cigarette.
  • Andrew Ellard, the script editor of Back to Earth and Series X, has a blink and you'll miss him appearance in a chase scene in Back to Earth Part 3.
  • Richard Naylor, co-producer of Series X and son of co-creator Doug Naylor, has a background role as a student in the classroom scene at the start of The Beginning.
• Colin Dexter, writer of the Inspector Morse novels, has appeared in nearly every single episode of the TV series. He also turns up, though less frequently, in the spin-offs Lewis and Endeavour.
• Series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas appear in a late first-season episode of How I Met Your Mother as fake paramedics who take part in Barney's "greatest pickup line of all time."
• Mark Wahlberg appeared as himself on Entourage, playing with Vince and Drama at a charity golf tournament.
• Robert J. Sawyer, author of the novel Flash Forward, has a brief, no lines cameo in the pilot of the TV series
• Stephen King, as with his films, tends to make cameos in his TV works. These include a bus driver in episode 5 of Golden Years, a pizza delivery guy in the TV adaptation of "Rose Red", and the finale of Kingdom Hospital, in which the Running Gag of their janitor Jonathan B. Goode never being around finally ends, as Goode is played by King himself.
• Grahman Linehan can be seen in The IT Crowd, as a scientist who runs across the screen during the Fight Scene between Reynholm Junior and his girlfriend who was from Iran used to be a man.
  • He's a bit of a fan of this one. He's turned up in The IT Crowd 4 times, Black Books twice and a fair number of times in Father Ted. In the script book for the latter, he expresses particular satisfaction that the final image of series two is a lingering close-up of his face.
• "Two Cathedrals," the second season finale of The West Wing, has flashbacks to the president's teenage years, where we meet his abusive father. He's played by Lawrence O'Donnell, who was a producer on the show. The cameo wasn't planned, but O'Donnell read the part at a read-through before it had been cast and it was decided that he was very convincing in the role. In "The Debate" a heckler during the titular debate by played by director and executive producer Christopher Misiano. In the series finale, Aaron Sorkin also appears briefly and silently in the inauguration scene.
• Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, is seen in Merlotte's talking to Sam in the final episode of the second season of True Blood. She reappears as a camerawoman on the set of Eric and Pam's commercial in the series finale.
• In the first season The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Giuoco Piano Affair", series co-creator/executive producer Norman Felton, series co-creator/producer Sam Rolfe, associate producer Joseph Calvelli, and episode director Richard Donner all have cameos as guests at a party hosted by episode guest star Jill Ireland (then-wife of series co-star David McCallum).
  • And in an episode ("The Little John Doe Affair") of the Distaff Counterpart Spinoff The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., episode co-writer Joseph Calvelli also has a part as a police chief.
• Stargate SG-1 episode 200 had a number of spoof concepts of how the series might look if it were based on another popular series. In the case of the Star Trek: The Original Series spoof, the Scottish engineer was one of the producers.
  • Also, writer/directors Peter DeLuise and Martin Wood had a habit of appearing briefly in their own (and each other's) episodes.
• Donald P. Bellisario:
  • Appeared very briefly in a few episodes of NCIS. The episode "SWAK" has him in a walk in role [1] at a hospital and in "Cover Story" where his portrait is sitting next to McGee's as authors in a book publishers office [2].
  • He also appears, along with his son, as a man and child being evacuated from the island of Boragora when its volcano is erupting in the Tales of the Gold Monkey episode "A Distant Shout of Thunder."
  • And in Quantum Leap's "A Portrait For Troian," he plays the man who Scott Bakula's leaped into that episode.
    • In a strange subversion, Bellisario appears in "Lee Harvey Oswald" although played by a different actor.
  • Also appears in JAG: First As Himself at a Quantum Leap fan convention in season 3, as Hugh Blackadder in "To Russia With Love", and later on in the ninth season, his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is directly shown.
• In Monk:
  • Andy Breckman makes an appearance in "Mr. Monk and the TV Star" as the guy that walks past the golf cart Monk and Sharona are riding on at the studio
  • Executive Anthony Santa Croce is in "Mr. Monk and His Biggest Fan" where he is one of the guys sitting down in the background when Marci Maven begins bidding
  • In the start of "Mr. Monk and the Actor", when Monk and Natalie meet Randy at the crime scene, they see Stottlemeyer chatting with the show's producer David Hoberman and looking at a TV script.
  • And on a series-long version, Tony Shalhoub is not just Monk, he is also one of the executive producers.
• In a season 2 episode of NUMB3RS, two guys from the Russian mafia come and threaten Charlie by sitting in the back of the room while he's teaching. One of them is Nicolas Falacci, one of the show's creators.
• Simon Nye cast himself in two minor, non-speaking role in Men Behaving Badly - as "Catatonic Man" in 'Gary and Tony', and as Gary's Only Other Friend, Clive (previously The Ghost) in 'Wedding'.
• Sons of Anarchy: Increasingly blind Big Otto is played by Series Creator Kurt Sutter.
• In the first episode of Wire in the Blood, Val McDermid can be seen in the crowd outside the police station as a suspect is being transferred.
• Chris Carter appeared in two episodes of The X-Files: in the final episode of season 2 he has a brief role as "Another Agent" questioning Scully in one scene, and has a non-speaking cameo as a cinema audience member at the beginning of season 7 episode "Hollywood A.D." He also appears in the background of a hospital scene in the second movie.
• Most of Stephen J. Cannell's on-camera appearances were in other people's productions, but he also appeared in Tenspeed and Brown Shoe and Silk Stalkings, and had a recurring role on Renegade (as the Big Bad, no less).
• In Charmed the costume designer Eilish appears in season 4's "A Knight To Remember" seen in a picture with Paige from one of her work parties.
• Frequent Farscape director Rowan Woods plays an acting role (rather more than a cameo) in the episode "John Quixote" as the fat male Zhaan-impersonator. Woods also had a cameo in "A Human Reaction" alongside production designer Ricky Eyres and actor Anthony Simcoe (who normally plays D'Argo but appeared without his extensive prosthetics) in a scene where Crichton steps into the men's room at a bar.
• Homicide: Life on the Street: Barry Levinson, one of the show's producers and directors, makes a cameo As Himself in "The Documentary" when Lewis, Kellerman, and Brodie chase a suspect into his movie set.
• In Slings & Arrows, creators Susan Coyne and Mark McKinney play supporting roles as Anna Conroy and Richard Smith-Jones. The final member of the creative team, Bob Martin, makes his cameo as accountant Terry and gets a chance to deliver the "brief candle" monologue from Macbeth.
• Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, in addition to having an Author Avatar as a main character (George), appears in extra and bit roles, sometimes thinly disguised but just as often clearly recognizable. In spite of the frequency, this is never lampshaded, and he never develops into a consistent character as in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
  • Writer Larry Charles, easily recognizable by his huge beard, had a few cameos too, most memorably the guy who stinks up the airplane bathroom before Elaine uses it in "The Airport."
• Dan Harmon appears as English Memorial in the Community episode "Pillows and Blankets", and may also be seen on some admissions posters at Greendale.
• Pretty Little Liars had Sara Shepard, the author of the original books the show is based from, as a substitute teacher.
  • Ditto showrunner I. Marlene King showing up in the last episode as one of the guests at Ezra and Aria's wedding.
• Mark Goodson turned up on the panel of Match Game when panelist Charles Nelson Reilly was late.
• The Price Is Right was created way back in 1956 by Bob Stewart, who infrequently turned up, notably on the nighttime show, to assist in staging merchandise the contestants were bidding on.
• The Kids in the Hall was told to hold a contest to add interest to the show. Not wanting to give away standard prizes like a free ticket to attend a taping, they decided the prize for their contest was going to be the right to poke Paul Bellini with a stick, one of the shows writers. The fact that Paul Bellini appeared in his skits wearing only a towel, never spoke, and the contest was called "Touch Paul Bellini," increased the absurdity of it. Before long, the Paul Bellini fan club had a larger membership than the Kids In The Hall fan club. He had a few more cameos (including a second contest where the prize was to have breakfast with him) before one speaking line during the final scene of series.
  Paul Bellini: Thank God that's finally over. [dances on their graves]
• In the last episode of Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner appeared as a judge. (Members of the crew also guested as — the crew of a television show.)
• Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the Gossip Girl books, has a cameo as herself in "The Wrong Goodbye" meeting Serena van der Woodsen.
• On the first season of Twin Peaks, David Lynch voices an FBI (ahem) director that Agent Cooper talks to over the phone. By the second season, that character, Gordon Cole, became an Ascended Extra, and in The Return (the renewed series, made over twenty years later) he's now one of the leads.
  • Mark Frost, who co-created the show with Lynch, had a cameo in one episode as a news reporter on TV. He appears again in The Return walking his dog in the woods. It's meant to be the same character, named Cyril Pons, but you could be forgiven for not recognizing him.
• Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence appears as bohemian Justice of the Peace "Van" (stretch it out - Vaaan[3]) in season 8 "My Soul on Fire: Part 1" and "My Soul on Fire: Part 2". He marries the Janitor and Lady with the line "It is now time to join these two, as only the creator can."
  • Later, in the show's finale (My Finale: Part 2), he appears as a janitor and he and J.D. deliver the final goodbye of the show.
• Terry Deary, author of the Horrible Histories book series, has frequent cameos on the show, including one singing role as the bishop in the Funky Monks song. Historical consultant Greg Jenner appears occasionally in nonspeaking roles, and producer Caroline Norris makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in the "Stupid Deaths" introduction.
• Person of Interest: In the second season finale, "God Mode," Jonathan Nolan, Greg Plageman, and Richard J. Lewis all make a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo appearance near the end.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: Douglas Adams, who co-authored several sketches in the fourth series, had brief on-screen appearances in two episodes: near the beginning of "The Light Entertainment War" as a surgeon, and in "Mr. Neutron" as a Pepperpot loading a missile.
• Reacher: Author Lee Child is the very tall, older gentleman passing Reacher as he leaves the diner in the final minutes of the first season's last episode.
• Reading Rainbow: Laurence and Cecily Lancit, as well as other real-life crew members, are seen in the third episode, Bea and Mr. Jones, making an episode of the show.
• On Soap, creator Susan Harris appears in a few episodes as Babette, the prostitute.
• Power Rangers
  • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Writer/Director/Producer Doug Sloan appeared as Kimberly's uncle Steve, Kimberly's mom's date for Parents Day, and had two separate stints as a reporter before becoming a Descended Creator in the latter half of Zeo as the voice of Prince Gasket.
  • Power Rangers Zeo: Director Koichi Sakamoto guest starred as the alien warrior, Tritor in the episode "King for a Day." And his stuntwoman wife later played A-Squad Pink in Power Rangers S.P.D. and a mother in Power Rangers RPM.
  • Power Rangers Turbo:
    • Writer/Director/Producer Judd "Chip" Lynn appeared as a floating head in the two part finale.
    • Writer Jackie Marchand appeared as a bongo player in "The Song of Confusion" and later voiced Monster of the Week Mamamite in "Grandma Matchmaker" the following season.
• In the Masters of Horror episode "Imprint", watch for Shimako Iwai, writer of the original novel. She plays the torturer.
• In "Charlie X" of Star Trek: The Original Series, Gene Roddenberry himself voiced the ship's cook.
• In an episode of True Detective, creator Nic Pizzolatto makes a cameo appearance as a bartender. Possibly lampshaded as well. Woody Harrelson's character is interogatting the bartender. He then asks the bartender, "why are you making me say this shit?"
• In "Endless", the Series Finale of Warehouse 13, Jack, the equivalent of Artie at the future version of the Warehouse, is played by executive producer Jack Kenny, who also directed the episode.
• In an episode of The Incredible Hulk (1977), Jack Kirby played a police sketch artist.
• Judd Apatow, executive producer of The Ben Stiller Show, played the pseudo-network mascot Foxy the Fox, and also did a Jay Leno impersonation that he reprised on one episode of The Critic, on which he worked as a consultant.
• Sledge Hammer!! creator Alan Spencer can be seen in the backgrounds of several episodes, usually at the precinct.
• Unusual for the Game Show genre, but 1000 Heartbeats creator Paul Farrer conducts the live string quartet that plays to the beat of the contestant's heart. (He also wrote all the music for the show.)
• In Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, series co-creator Tina Fey plays Marcia, an incompetent prosecutor in the case against Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne.
• Madam Secretary executive producer Morgan Freeman guest-stars as the chief justice of the US Supreme Court in the season two premiere "The Show Must Go On".
• Scott Gimple, Executive Producer ofThe Walking Dead (2010), has appeared in the show five times as a zombie, as of the beginning of the sixth season.
• In one episode of Sunes Jul, the titular protagonist is watching a parody of the julekalender series Vilse i pannkakan. The hosts in this parody are played by Anders Jacobsson and Sören Olsson, the authors of the original Sune books.
• On episode 14 of The Ministry of Time, series co-creator Javier Olivares and director Marc Vigil appear in portaits as two former Ministry undersecretaries.
• Round the Twist:
  • Paul Jennings, the script writer, had several non-speaking cameos in the first series: he appears as a hospital patient in "Birdsdo", Ben Byron's ghost in "Without My Pants", and among a crowd in the finale "Lighthouse Blues".
  • One of the series directors Steve Jodrell also appears in "Birdsdo" (which he didn't direct) as a doctor.
• The Pilot Episode of The Kicks features an appearance by Alex Morgan, the author of the books.
• The Young Ones: Series creator Ben Elton appears in the episode "Bambi" as Mr. Kendall Mintcake, part of the opposing team on "University Challenge".
  • In the first episode ("Demolition") he also played Baz, the presenter of "Nozin' Aroun'", a program for young adults, by young adults, focusing on issues that affect young adults, that Rik was interested in watching.
• The Welsh radio newsreader in episode 9 of Torchwood: Miracle Day is Russell T Davies.
• Kamen Rider Double: The writers of the direct-to-DVD sequel movies each appear in their respective movies: Keiichi Hasegawa in the Kamen Rider Accel movie as a bar patron who almost gets pick-pocketed, and Riku Sanjo in Kamen Rider Eternal as the Sweets Dopant fought by Double at the start of the movie.
• The original M.A.N.T.I.S. TV movie saw Sam Raimi, who co-created it, as a loon interviewed by the police who claims to know M.A.N.T.I.S.
• Neil Gaiman is the voice of God in the Lucifer episode "Once Upon a Time". Gaiman created the Lucifer comic which the show is based on.
• Gaiman cameoed in two episodes of Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories: in "Foreign Parts" he's the Voice on the Radio and "Looking for the Girl" ends with TV show the main character was being interviewed for continuing with an interview with Gaiman As Himself, with the result that he's discussing how his stories work as the credits run.
• In The Sandman, Gaiman has a voice cameo in "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", as the Skull Bird that the central character meets in her dream.
• Starsky & Hutch:
  • In "Silence," assistant director Eldon Burke can be seen polishing the Torino. He later appears in "The Action" as a gambler and in "Photo Finish" as a patrolman.
  • Makeup artist Layne "Shotgun" Britton appears in "Murder on Stage 17" as a crew member named Shotgun.
• The 4400: In the Series Finale "The Great Leap Forward", the series' executive producer Ira Steven Behr makes a cameo appearance in a crowd scene.
• The Boys (2019):
  • A tweet by Eric Kripke shows up in episode 6.
  • Seth Rogen appears as himself in the same episode.
• A Running Gag in Frontline is writer/producer/director Tom Gleisner appearing in one episode per season as photocopier repairman Colin Konika, who gets no lines.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Person or Persons Unknown", the patient who believes himself to be Winston Churchill is played by the director John Brahm.
• In Good Omens (2019), Neil Gaiman is a cinema patron in the scene where Hastur takes control of a film about cute bunnies to contact Crowley, and is also the voice artist in the film. Several creative methods are used to give Terry Pratchett cameos despite his death, including his hat being left in Aziraphale's bookshop, and Paul Kaye, who played him in the Docudrama Terry Pratchett: Back in Black, as the Electricity Board spokesman on the radio (referencing Sir Terry's early job as a press officer for three nuclear power stations). (According to Gaiman, when Sir Terry was alive, he proposed that their cameo should be in the background of the scene in the sushi bar, so they could spend it eating sushi.)
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • Robert Downey, Sr., who directed "Children's Zoo", "Teacher's Aide" and "Tooth and Consequences", played Mr. Miller in "Wordplay".
  • Wes Craven, who directed seven episodes, played Edgar, one of the imprisoned parents, in "Children's Zoo".
  • In "Opening Day", the director John Milius plays a party guest who tries to sexually harass Sally Wilkerson.
• In the Season Finale of Season Three of Black Lightning (2018), when the heroes are giving evidence at an inquiry into the ASA's actions, the judical panel includes Judge Isabella, played by Tony Isabella, and Judge von Eeden, played by Trevor von Eeden; the original Black Lightning creative team.
• All the masks used on King of Mask Singer are designed by Hwang Jaegeun. He eventually appeared as a contestant in episode 219.
• Crazy Like a Fox: Director Paul Krasny appears in an episode he directed, "Fox in Hollywood", in a cameo as a director whose shot is interrupted by Harry chasing the bad guy across the movie set.
• For Life: 50 Cent, the producer, appears as scary prison gang leader Cassius Dawkins.
• Philip Martin, writer of The BBC series Gangsters appears as a gang leader in the original Play for Today pilot, who gets killed by the main character, Kline. He also appears as another character in the Grand Finale, where he kills Kline.
• In a variant, the director of the original The Princess Bride, Rob Reiner, makes an appearance in Home Movie: The Princess Bride first playing the Grandfather, and later playing the Grandson.
• She's Gotta Have It: Spike Lee, who had created the original film it's based on and executive producer here, briefly shows up as a waiter in one episode.
• HEX: In the first episode, writer Julian Jones and producer Julian Murphy both get cameos, respectively as a cop and as the owner of a parked car.
• CSI-verse:
  • Franchise creator Anthony E. Zuiker appears in three episodes of the original series; first as a casino cashier, then as a heckler at at stand-up comedy joint, and finally as a security guard.
  • CSI: NY: Writer/producer/editor John Dove appears as Det. John Scagnetti in three episodes of Season 2.
• A few examples from Mike Schur series The Good Place include a food worker who calls the police on Pillboi in a flashback, one of Eleanor's soulmates during the reboot sequence, and a violin street performer in season 3, much of which is discussed during the podcast series. Perhaps the most notable example would be Glenn, the lovable Bad Place demon played by writer Josh Siegal, who would go on to be an occasional guest star throughout the four-season run of the show.
• Las Vegas: Gary Scott Thompson turns up as the psychiatrist's patient Sam interrupts in "3 Babes, 100 Guns and a Fat Chick".
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023): Executive producers Rick Riordan, the author of the original books, and his wife Becky have cameos in the series:
  • In the first episode, Rick appears as a Yancy Academy staff member who is present during Percy's expulsion.
  • In the third episode, statues of Rick and Becky are present in Medusa's collection.
• Writer Jimmy Perry played a plaster bust of Napoléon Bonaparte in the final episode of The Gnomes of Dulwich.
• At this point, Lorne Michaels, the producer/creator of Saturday Night Live has made so many cameos over the show’s nearly 50 years on the air, you could practically consider him a recurring character of the show as well. A full archive of all his appearances can be found here.

Music

• Round Trip, writer of "Alternate Realities", voices Shining Armor's only line in the song.
• Derek Riggs, creator of Iron Maiden mascot Eddie, inserted himself on a piece of art (left on the front row - he's even wearing his signature on a jacket) and had Eddie throw him out of an airplane in another ("did you think that was an accident or a co-incidence? it was a comment"). He also put the band in the back cover of Somewhere in Time, and the singers who were being expelled in two singles (Eddie holds the head of Paul Di'Anno in the rejected cover for the EP Maiden Japan, and impales Bruce Dickinson in "Hallowed Be Thy Name").
• Klaus Voormann, a friend of The Beatles who did the cover of Revolver, hid his face in George's hair, right below John's mouth (he even wrote his name right above). When he was brought back for a collage in The Beatles Anthology, that piece of the cover was reused with a contemporary picture of Voorman.
• Nelly's song "Dilemma" samples Patti LaBelle's "Love, Need and Want You", and Patti LaBelle guest stars in the music video.
• Van Halen's "Unchained" famously has producer Ted Templeman cutting out David Lee Roth's banter with "Come on Dave, give us a break!" ("One break, coming uuuuup!").
• The video for George Harrison's 1988 song "When We Was Fab" features a cameo from the song's producer and co-writer Jeff Lynne.
• Arin Hanson tends to cameo in the music videos he directs for Ninja Sex Party (given that he's friends with both members). His cameos range from being a backup dancer in "Attitude City" and "Road Trip", the DJ killed by Ninja Brian in "Party of Three", and the homeless man Danny hires to dress as a dragon in "Dragon Slayer".
  • Arin also animated and provided grunts for the dinosaur segments in the NSP video "Dinosaur Laser Fight".
• The 1984 video for The Doors' song, "Strange Days" features a cameo from keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
• Destiny's Child's video for "Bootylicious" features a few brief shots of Stevie Nicks playing a guitar, as the song samples her song, "Edge Of Seventeen".
• Stevie Ray Vaughan's video for "Superstition" ends with the black cat getting picked up by Stevie Wonder, who walks off singing the chorus.

Pinball

• According to the artist, the driver shown on the backglass of The Getaway: High Speed II is designer Steve Ritchie.
• In Capt. Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, Bally artist Paul Faris and Marketing Vice-President Tom Nieman can be seen in the backglass crowd.
• Paul Faris likes to insert himself or his family members in his pinball art:
  • Faris and his wife are the Barbarian Hero and Damsel in Distress featured in Lost World and Paragon.
  • In Data East Pinball's Back to the Future, Faris and Brian Schmidt (music) are on the right side of the playfield.
• On the backglass of Red & Ted's Road Show, creator Pat Lawlor is driving a red Corvette, while Country singer Carlene Carter (who voices Red) appears on a billboard.
• White Water has a surprised man on the backglass that was modeled after the artist, John Youssi. Also, Bigfoot is modeled after the designer, Dennis Nordman.
• Lots of them on the backglass in Fish Tales:
  • The fishermen are artist Pat McMahon and designer Mark Ritchie.
  • The fisherman in the water filled waders (wearing a baseball hat) is Carl.
  • The worm is Jim Patla. According to Brian Eddy, "it kind of fit his personality at the time."
• The crowd for Gottlieb's Rocky pinball includes designer John Trudeau and artist David Moore.
• The Joker playing cards in Stern Pinball's High Roller Casino have the face of company president Gary Stern on them. This might have also been intended as a stealth Take That!, due to designer Jon Norris' relationship with Stern at the time.
• For Medieval Madness, artist Greg Freres did the voice of the jousting announcer.
• Pat Lawlor is the man driving the "Storm Blasters" weather van in Whirlwind.
• Cirqus Voltaire shows designer John Popadiuk as a high-wire artist on the backglass. Also, some members of the design team appear as the score judges at the end of each ball.
• According to John Trudeau, the backglass for Black Rose shows himself, Greg Freres, and Pat McMahon among the pirates.
• The Champion Pub uses programmer Duncan Brown as the model for the boxing man.
• Dennis Nordman can be seen on the sides of The Party Zone's cabinet.
• In Time Machine (Data East), artist Margaret Hudson is the Granola Girl hippie in the time machine.
• The truck driver in Truck Stop is Joe Dillon, who was Williams' Sales Vice President at the time.
• Baywatch:
  • Gregory J. Bonann, producer of the television show and a Real Life lifeguard, appears on the far playfield panel as the man carrying a surfboard.
  • Producer Douglas Schwartz is the man with the mustache near the bumpers, while across from him is executive producer Michael Berk and Jolly Backer, Sega's Director of National and International Sales.
  • Artist Markus Rothkranz' girlfriend appears as the surfboard-carrying blonde in the corner of the backglass.
• For The Phantom of the Opera, artist Paul Faris' daughter was the model for Christine Dae on the backglass.
• The Director's assistant in Lights... Camera... Action! (a woman wearing a tank-top with the name "Jeanine") is artist Constantino Mitchell's wife.
• Two of the buildings in Fire! (1987) include "Oursler's Arcade" (for designer Barry Oursler) and "Sprenger 1st National Bank" (for artist Mark Sprenger).
• Keith Elwin's games tend to have him appear in out of the way places:
  • An Easter Egg in Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast occasionally depicts him running through the woods during "Fear of the Dark" (which was originally a placeholder animation that was later replaced with a different one, before being re-added even later).
  • Jurassic Park (Stern) has a picture of him smoking a pipe taped to a computer screen◊.
• Dialed In! shows designer Pat Lawlor whenever you tilt (saying "Hey, it's only pinball!", no less).

Professional Wrestling

• Ron Feinstein, who owned Ring of Honor's first distributor, RF Video, served as the Christopher Street Connection's manager, Fun Athletic Guy. The other man who got the idea to start the promotion, Gabe Sapolski, served as commentator Jimmy Bower.

Puppet Shows

• During the Club Dubonet scene in The Great Muppet Caper, Gonzo starts going around the tables taking pictures of people. His first subject is none other than Jim Henson himself.
• At the end of A Muppet Family Christmas, Jim Henson is shown at the kitchen door, looking approvingly at the Muppets enjoying themselves, before deciding that he's going to have to wash the dishes.
• Similarly, at the end of The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years, Grover gives Jim the bill for the evening.

Radio

• In the Audio Adaptation of Neverwhere, the security guard at Richard's work and the Fop With No Name are played by Neil Gaiman. He also plays the Ferrymen in the adaptation of How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.
• In the Tertiary Phase of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) Agrajag is voiced by the late Douglas Adams, who recorded his bit before his death. In the Quandary Phase, Arthur's producer at The BBC is played by the original Hitchhiker's producer, Geoffrey Perkins.
• In the Audio Adaptation of Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are the cops who try to stop Crowley's Bentley (and named as Terry and Neil). Available as a trailer (with Ink-Suit Actor comic-panels) here.
• Lux Radio Theatre: Noël Coward was interviewed on the air during the December 28, 1936 broadcast of Cavalcade.
• In the Audio Adaptation of Stardust, Gaiman plays Seth, the villager who discovers baby Tristran.

Theatre

• William Shakespeare was an actor (or "player", as they were called back then) as well as a playwright and was known to act in the plays of others (particularly those of his longtime friend/rival Ben Jonson) and tradition holds that he originated several of the roles in his own plays, particularly the Ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It.
• On the 1960 Columbia recording of On the Town, composer Leonard Bernstein not only conducts but also sings the part of the barker at Coney Island ("Rajah Bimmy"). When the recording was first issued, the singer was credited as Randel Striboneen. (It also had Betty Comden and Adolph Green in their original roles, which are hardly cameos.)

Theme Parks

• At Universal's Islands of Adventure, Stan Lee makes not one, not two, but six cameo appearances in The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man.
• Mary Blair, the art director for "it's a small world" at the Disney Theme Parks, makes a hidden appearance in doll-form in the ride's Western Europe scene.
• Several of the windows on Main Street, USA contain references to various Imagineers and others who worked on the parks. These include Marc Davis, an animator, Ken Anderson, an art director, Blaine Gibson, an animator and master sculptor, Fred Joerger, a miniature and model builder, Wathel Rogers, a pioneer of the Audio-Animatronic technology that is now synonymous with the parks, and Elias Disney, Walt's father.
  • In the same vein, Fess Parker's name appears in Frontierland as the proprietor of a Coonskin cap company. In the Magic Kingdom's version of Tom Sawyer Island, Harper Goff, one of the major designers and planners of the parks, is immortalized in Harper's Mill.
  • Although Walt Disney's face is hard to miss in the parks, the Magic Kingdom features a smaller statue in the Hub of Walt's brother Roy and Mickey Mouse reclining on a bench. Roy spearheaded much of "the Florida project" after Walt's death, and was the one to suggest the name change from "Disneyworld" to "Walt Disney World" in his honor.
• Both versions of the "pre-flight" video in Star Tours feature Imagineers and their families acting as space travelers.

Toys

• The head sculpt for the G.I. Joe action figure "Tunnel Rat" is based on Larry Hama, the longtime writer of the Joe Comic Book. This was done by the toy developers as a tribute.

Video Games

• The first Ace Attorney has a cameo by Shu Takumi's dog Missile, as an enthusiastic (but not very useful) police dog.
  • A different Missile becomes a full-on cast member in Takumi's later game Ghost Trick. This time he's a Pomeranian, which is the same breed as Takumi's Missile.
  • Jacques Portsman's design is based on his voice actor, Yuuki Furukawa.
  • Buddy Faith was originally based on another member of the design team, who later asked them to make Buddy look less like him. Apparently he wasn't comfortable seeing himself as a corpse.
  • In a more minor example, the characters' voices are provided by members of the dev team (the localization team for the English versions) rather than dedicated voice actors - for instance, Manfred von Karma is voiced by the first game's composer, Masakazu Sugimori, in the Japanese version, while his daughter Franziska is played by localizer Janet Hsu in the English version.
  • In the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney film adaptation, Shu is seen in the gallery celebrating with Larry Butz after Edgeworth's trial.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Shuhei Yoshida, the head of PlayStation Indies, appears as a resident of Skopp City discussing his love of video games.
• Mothense, the composer of APICO's music, can be found on the upper-left island. They sell the game's OST as CDs that can be played in the jukebox.
• Aquaria has a Developer's Room^note located (spoilered in case you wanna find it yourself) in The Abyss with two unattractive (according to Naija humorous narration) fish that happen to have hair, one short and blonde, the other long and black. Now, in case you didn't know before, one of the amazing features of this game was that it was made just about entirely by two men.
• Jeff Vogel is a fourth-wall breaking Easter Egg near the end of Avernum 3.
• In Bayonetta, as Bayonetta and Jeanne are fighting on top of the missile, the missile flies by the Platinum Games building at one point. The P+ logo is also seen at the bottom of the screen during the Angel Attack mini-game.
• The last level of the freeware Binary Boy has the game's creator, Jared Johnson, standing in your path halfway through. Walking into him results in a trippy Interface Screw.
• The Binding of Isaac features the Mini-Boss Ultra Pride, which is a Dual Boss modelled after Edmund McMillen and lead programmer Florian Himsl. Edmund's attacks are based on Sloth.
• The BioShock series has Ken Levine as the uncredited voice for the Circus of Value machines as well as the Dollar Bill ones from BioShock Infinite...using the exact same voice. He also appears (still uncredited) in the original game as Martin Finnegan, one of Sander Cohen's pupils. Concept artist Mauricio Tejerina voices the El Ammo Bandito machine.
• In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, IGA himself appears as an Optional Boss as part of the Kickstarter stretch goal. His attacks are very remnescent of Dracula, and he even opens the fight by tossing his wine glass.
• The Borderlands series has Gearbox president Randy Pitchford voicing Crazy Earl, a minor character who serves as a questgiver in the first game and the Black Market vendor in the second.
• Brütal Legend has (as of its second piece of downloadable content) a bust of some guy available to put up on Mount Rockmore. The Guardian of Metal thinks he knows him from somewhere.
• Sonic Team's Saturn firefighting game Burning Rangers has you rescue civilians, who email you with letters of thanks after each mission. Several of the civilians are Sonic Team members, who include cheat codes, production sketches and the like with their emails. (There's also a real-life Japanese poet who sends you a couple of poems - she's a friend of then-Team head Yuji Naka.)
• Chrono Trigger famously based its most elusive ending around this trope. Should the player manage to access the fight against Lavos without checking the bucket in the End of Time or by using the Epoch and then defeat him (this can be done using a gate that appears in Lucca's teleportation device at the start of a New Game Plus or by being strong enough to defeat Lavos during the normally-Unwinnable by Design encounter with him in the Ocean Palace), they'll gain access to a special version of the End of Time where they can travel around and speak with the game's development staff, who all share their own thoughts and feelings on the game and its development process. In Spekkio's room, they can even speak with the game's higher-ups (who Gaspar calls "The Dream Team"), who are all given their own custom sprites for the game (save for Nobuo Uematsu). Afterwards, the credits will zoom by in the span of five seconds as a way of acknowledging how quickly the game was beaten. Chrono Cross did the same thing if the player beats the Time Devourer right at the start of a New Game Plus, though this time everyone is just depicted with regular enemy sprites.
• Sid Meier has served as an advisor to the player throughout the Civilization series; in later games, his digital avatar even runs the tutorial.
• Clive Barker's Undying: Ambrose Covenant's voiced by none other than Clive Barker himself.
• Dominic Lockhart in Crysis 2 is modeled after Cevat Yerli, Crytek's CEO.
• Cyberpunk 2077:
  • Morro Rock Radio's Conspiracy Theorist DJ Maximum Mike is voiced by none other than Cyberpunk tabletop game creator Mike Pondsmith. And even better? Those conspiracy theories of his are actually plot points from various supplements and adventures from the game's prior editions. Of course, in-universe, this just means his theories aren't as crazy as they sound... and yes, this includes the one about Vampires roaming Night City, with some in notable positions of power.
  • CDPR founders Marcin Iwiński and Adam Kicinski show up in the Phantom Liberty DLC selling braindances from a van, a reference to their start selling cracked copies of games in the Warsaw marketplace.
• Death Road to Canada has K*E*P*A mode, a game mode where you try and keep designer Kepa Auwae alive for the entire run.
• Divekick has creator Adam Heart voicing the character Kenny.
• Doom:
  • To win Doom II, you must defeat the Icon of Sin, whose inner core takes the form of oremoR nhoJ.
  • In Doom³, one of the guards is voiced by John Carmack. "Welcome to the Dungeon, Marine" indeed.
• A hard-to-find Easter Egg Random Encounter in Dragon Age: Origins features a "Gaider" (i.e. David Gaider, the lead writer for the series) fleeing from a crew of bratty kids yelling at him about what they want to hear in a story (including "zombie kittens!"). (Oddly, he's not voiced by Gaider, making it sort of a half-cameo.)
• In EarthBound (1994) and Mother 3, the voice that says "OK desu ka?" ^note which translates to "Is this OK?" in English when a player names a character is actually a recording of creator Shigesato Itoi. He was recorded without his knowledge while speaking to one of the game's sound designers.
• Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong-Nou lets you get inside its creator's head in more ways than one. The green-tinted face of Osamu Sato represents the island of Tong-Nou, and you'll have to crawl into one of its orifices to retrieve your soul from the Acid-Trip Dimension within.
• Epic Battle Fantasy composer Phyrnna has cameoed twice in the series:
  • Bullet Heaven 2 features her as a playable character, unlocked in the Shop for 10,000 coins.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 5 gives Phyrnna a cameo in the video game Matt plays in the opening cutscene. She also appears in the Battle Arena as an NPC, giving the aptly-named Phyrnna's Blessing skill once all five solo challenges there are finished.
• Escape Velocity has various Ambrosia Software employees as NPCs.
• Fahrenheit, David Cage is modeled for and voices the intro/tutorial of Indigo Prophecy.
• In Fallout 4, Parker Quinn is voiced by and modeled after Emil Pagliarulo, the game's lead designer.
• Final Fantasy XIV has Naoki Yoshida appearing as himself during every Rising event, usually to thank the player for sticking by the dev team by playing their game.
• Scott Cawthon, creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, is the voice of the "Phone Guy" who leaves voice-mail messages for you throughout the game. He reprises his role as Phone Guy in Five Nights at Freddy's 2 because it's a Stealth Prequel, and Five Nights at Freddy's 3 in what is basically archival recording, and also as "Phone Dude", the employee of Fazbear's Fright.
• The author of the fanmod Five Nights at Vault 5 voices the robots and Nicolaus Ainsworth (aka the mod's Phone Guy).
• Football Manager occasionally creates new players that take the name, birthday, birthplace and a few other traits (such as favourite teams or personnel) from Sports Interactive staff members, or voluntary nation researchers. You can find them all by searching for "faceinthegame".
• Jane Jensen appears in Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within, on the cover of a German newspaper Gabriel picks up at the Hunt Club, and in Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, when Gabriel looks through the bookstore's window in Rennes-le-Château.
• In Glider PRO, the four creators of "Slumberland," john calhoun, Paul Finn, Ward Hartenstein and Steve Sullivan, each have their portrait on the wall of a room named for them.
• Goat Simulator allows you to visit an in-game version of Coffee Stain Studios' offices, where you can encounter various employees and play Flappy Goat.
• In God of War Ragnarök, part of the main quest has you meeting a dwarf named Raeb in his tavern. He's voiced by his Ink-Suit Actor and one of the game's composer, Bear McCreary.
• In Going Under, Jackie has a poster of Aggro Crab, the game's developer-company, in her bedroom, and the opening cutscene displays Aggro Crab's logo among those companies' logos who were acquired by Cubicle.
• In Goodbye Volcano High, several background dinosaurs seen throughout the game are based on members of the game's development team.
• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game:
  • One of the Scoia'tael units, Pavko Gale, is based on and voiced by community manager Pawel Burza. He sometimes cosplays as Pavko for various media outings such as this Studio Tour.
  • Walter Veritas, a Syndicate unit, is based on game director Jason Slama.
• Half-Life:
  • Gabe Newell has an office in Black Mesa's administration center.
  • Earlier than that, the lockers of the employees of Sector C all have the names of Valve team members. Same goes for the lockers in the Security Facilities in Half-Life: Blue Shift, which feature the names of Gearbox Software employees.
  • The names mentioned by the Black Mesa Announcement System are also those of Valve developers.
• In The Jackbox Party Pack, various Jackbox Games employees make cameos, especially as incidental characters or background voices during sign-in.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User: Hirohiko Araki, the mangaka of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure appears as the Super Boss representing the hardest fight of the game.
• In Katawa Shoujo, the convenience store "Aura Mart" is named after one of the lead writers of the game.
• Keiji Inafune:
  • In Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, say hello to a weaponized Keiji Inafune.
  • The third game of the series introduces him as a freaking battleship! Oh and he brings former Xbox Mission Division spokesman Izawa along for the ride.
• In Killing Floor, the characters of Masterson and Briar are voiced by Tripwire Studios executives Alan Wilson and Mark Hayler. The roles were recast for Killing Floor 2, but "classic" versions were still available, this time with the Classic characters actually modeled after their actors.
• In both King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, some of the portraits of the randomized nobles are based on various members of the creative teams. As a result, a few Six Ages nobles have an uncanny resemblance to those in King of Dragon Pass. Distant ancestors, perhaps?
• Many of the newer LEGO Adaptation Games feature cameos from the creators of their source material:
  • Steven Spielberg and Colin Trevorrow appear as playable characters in LEGO Jurassic World, unlocked after beating all the story missions.
  • Peter Jackson's aforementioned carrot-chewing cameo in Fellowship of the Ring is recreated in LEGO The Lord of the Rings.
  • LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, LEGO Marvel's Avengers, and LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 all have Stan Lee as a civilian who must be rescued in every level and in multiple parts of the hub world. Avengers also has him filling the role of various one-liner characters, such as the old man who stands up to Loki in Stuttgart. In all three games, rescuing him every possible time rewards you with the ability to play as him, and in all three games he has the powers and abilities of almost all the main heroes combined.
  • LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham has Kevin Smith and Geoff Johns as Quest Givers in the hub world, who can eventually be unlocked as playable characters. Adam West also appears as the "In Peril" character, with the game featuring several references to the campy Batman series he starred in, culminating in a bonus level that plays out like an episode of it.
  • LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens has J. J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy as unlockable characters.
  • While technically not part of the LEGO Adaptation Game series, the Ghostbusters (2016) Story Pack of LEGO Dimensions features Paul Feig as the "In Peril" character.
• Stan Lee continues his trend of Marvel cameos in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, appearing in-game as Senator Lieber, whom you rescue from Titanium Man. Deadpool, per his Fourth Wall breaking antics, claims he knows him from "somewhere".
• Mercenary Kings has six of its top Kickstarter backers appear as abducted hostages. This includes Pendleton Ward.
• Metal Gear:
  • Hideo Kojima lends his voice to Psycho Mantis' passing-on scene in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
  • He also acted as the motion-capture actor for the sailor aboard the Missouri.
  • He is also recruitable in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, found inside a truck at the Crater Base before fighting the Pupa. The console versions give you a trophy/achievement for finding him.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes expands this cameo as having Kojima go undercover at Camp Omega and Snake having to rescue him during one of the Side Ops. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain turns him into a recruitable soldier like in Peace Walker, complete with a Side Op involving rescuing him if you didn't in Ground Zeroes.
  • He also appears briefly in the prologue of Death Stranding as one of the BTs that tries to drag Igor into the tar.
• Naming a mob either "Grumm" or "Dinnerbone" in Minecraft flips it upside-down. Naming a sheep jeb_ makes it cycle through all possible wool colors in a loop, though it will still give wool in its original color when sheared. These are the screen names of a few of Minecraft's developers.
• Mortal Kombat sound and music designer Dan Forden appears in a few of the games (II 3, and all since 9) popping up in the corner of the screen to say "TOASTY!" when one of the fighters performed an uppercut. The falsetto soundbite also shows up after Scorpion's Kill It with Fire Fatality in 4 (it's even "TOASTY, 3D!"), as a minigame defeat taunt in Deadly Alliance, and during combo chains in Shaolin Monks''.
• The Mummy Demastered seems like it keeps Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll from the movie, but the director said that it's actually him with Crowe's hair given the actor denied to license his likeness.
• In Never Gives Up Her Dead, you can read graffiti written on the walls of the Stonehenge area. The tags listed are the (usually first) names of people who helped beta test the game.
• One title in the NHL Hockey series allows you to basically create members of the EA development team if you input their names in the Create-A-Player option.
• The news anchor who appears in the opening sequence of Ninth Rock is in fact the lead programmer.
• Wolf in PAYDAY: The Heist and its sequel was modeled after and voiced by Overkill Software's then-CEO, Ulf Andersson. The two also share a similar backstory (software designers whose companies went bankrupt in the recession) and name ("Ulf" is Swedish for "Wolf").
• The writer of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh has a cameo as the female patient in the mental asylum who tells Curtis that he's "Sick and Wrong!"
• Pokémon has one in every single one of its main games. They are in the developers room. They also usually give you a certificate if you fully complete your Pokédex.
  • In Pokémon Black and White, you actually get to battle one of the employees. Shigeki Morimoto to be specific. Too bad he doesn't have Mew on his team...
• Postal 2 developers Running With Scissors have an office in the game's town of Paradise. The game's first day has the Postal Dude pick up his paycheck from the RWS offices for being a part of the game.
• Rabi-Ribi features CreSpirit's office as a location you can visit in-game, but only during one particular point as it is in a one-time arva. Defeating each member of the development team will make them tell you about the secret techniques that are required to perform a Minimalist Run.
• The opening cutscene of Rampage reports on three humans mutated into the playable monsters. The people pictured are designer Brian Colin as George, his wife Rae as Lizzie, and programmer Jeff Nauman as Ralph.
• Rescue on Fractalus!: The programmers posed in costume as pilots for the packaging and manual.
• Rise of the Triad's cast of enemies consist of some members of the Developers of Incredible Power, such as George Broussard as the Triad Enforcer, Joe Siegler as Sebastian "Doyle" Krist, and Tom Hall as the Final Boss El Oscuro.
• In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, in Lucas Lee's stage, twice a guy jumps into the action with one of those things you use to yell "Cut!" or "Action!" and begin an encounter. The guy is Edgar Wright, the director of the film. Wright can even be seen within the pile of dead bodies in the Stage 2 end cutscene.
• Monkey Island:
  • George Lucas makes a brief cameo in The Secret of Monkey Island as a man in a troll suit.
  • In Tales of Monkey Island, there is a mention of a "Nor Treblig" (Ron Gilbert backwards) through the series, and Murray mentions many staff members of LucasArts and Telltale Games in the end credits of Chapter 3, including Dan Connors and Kevin Bruner (whose portrayals in two picture frames as "D.C. Grosscup" and "K.B. Popnecker" appear in the Courthouse in Chapter 4).
• Yuji Naka is referenced in dialogue as a civilian in Shadow the Hedgehog.
• Sierra is found within their own games. Staff are found in Leisure Suit Larry 3, King's Quest IV and Space Quest III, a programmer is in The Hoyle Book of Games, and future versions of Sierra are referenced in Space Quest IV. Magazines and hint books establish a Direct Line to the Author. Al Lowe is found in the Leisure Suit Larry VGA remake. The Two Guys from Andromeda, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, appear or are mentioned in Space Quest III, IV, V, VI, and Quest for Glory I. Ken and Roberta Williams are inside Daventry castle in Space Quest I; Ken Williams appears in some versions when typing Ken in the opening screen. Other characters resembling Ken Williams appear in Space Quest I and III, and the manual for V.
• Due to budget limitations members of Cryptic Studios often do their own voice-acting for Star Trek Online. A particular case is Jeremy "Borticus" Randall, a programmer who voiced Captain James Kurland, the CO of Deep Space 9. After one of his lines in "Boldly They Rode" went memetic, he commented that it wasn't his best work and even added the line to his forum signature.
• While not technically the game's creators, the band Steam Powered Giraffe shows up as performers in bars in SteamWorld Heist, while one of their songs is playing.
• Current Super Robot Wars series producter Takenobu Terada states he's part of the chorus for the new song from Jam Project for Super Robot Wars X, "The Steel Warriors".
  • Also, Tomino's character from Gundam: Reconguista in G appears in one stage as a secret. If you land on a certain square with a UC Gundam main character, he'll give you some special items. Amuro even remarks that he "almost feels like father".
• Masahiro Sakurai lent his voice to King Dedede in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• The PSP visual novel Sweet Fuse: At Your Side features the afformentioned Keiji Inafune as the manager of an amusement park, with the player assuming the role of Saki Inafune, Keiji's (fictional) niece.
• In The Talos Principle, you can pass through a fake wall and end up in a secret area where androids with the devs' names and faces are running around. There's also another one if you manage to ascend the tower without releasing Shepherd.
• Katsuhiro Harada, creator of the Tekken series, appears as an opponent in Soul Calibur V (which he helped work on as part of the Project Soul team) using the "Soul of Devil Jin" fighting style.
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 allows you to play as staff members of the game's developer Neversoft. After entering a cheat at the main menu, you can go to Create Skater and enter one of several names (such as Joel Jewett and Mick West, two of the company's founders), and your character will change into them.
• Ultima: Richard Garriott is on Neptune in Ultima II, and in prison in Ultima IX. In Ultima V, Christopher the farmer is Chris Roberts, a game designer at Origin. Dr. Cat in Ultima V and Ultima VI is writer David Shapiro. Denys in Savage Empire is artist Denis Loubet. Warren Spector is referenced as Dr. Spector in Savage Empire and Martian Dreams, and "a spectre named Warren" in Ultima Underworld. In Ultima IX, the stove in the Avatar's house shows the stove designer's reflection.
• In Vanquish, Shinji Mikami appears as an NPC ally.
• Welcome to the Game: Adam, the protagonist's friend who teaches the player how to play via Skype, is both voiced and named after the creator.
• Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts:
  • He provided the voice for the Communications Officer for the TCS Coventry, one of the destroyers escorting your carrier later in Wing Commander III.
  • Roberts also has a cameo in the big trial scene at the end of Wing Commander IV when you win the game, as the Black Lance member who proclaimed "...and I couldn't go on!"
• The Wonderful 101 has Hideki Kamiya as one of the unlockable secret characters. He is very much a Lethal Joke Character, with a variant of Unite Goggles that is different from Wonder-Goggles', but take so much as a scratch with him as the leader, and it's a one-way ticket to the continue screen.
• In Wreckfest, a large balloon in the shape of Bugbear Entertainment's bedsheet-ghost logo flies over Drytown Desert Circuit.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown lets you get super-units when you use the names of certain members of the staff on your troops. Sid Meier and Ken Levine are among them.
• In Xenonauts, you can get its creator's, Chris England, face on one of your poor redshirts.

Web Animation

• Bad Days sticks its animators and writers into a number of scenes, such as one in which they get squished by Godzilla. As seen in the page quote, sponsor Stan Lee also frequently shows up, and almost always becomes the only person to deliver spoken dialogue.
• Broken Saints writer/director Brooke Burgess (a bit reluctantly) agreed to be the voice actor for Gabriel when voices were recorded for the DVD. Like with Shayamalan's cameos, this is actually a meaty role and more than just a regular cameo.
• At least once an episode of Etra chan saw it!, the name 'Etra' will be mentioned as a company or as a brand.
  • Etra herself appears in the one-year anniversary video and as the announcer of the short film festival in this video.
  • Etra appears in a restaurant named after her in this video.
• Helluva Boss: In the pilot, I.M.P accidentally enters a church when using a portal to the living world. Everyone in the church is a crew member of the series.
• Inanimate Insanity creator Adam Katz calls MePhone from time to time letting him know about an aspect of the show that needs changing, usually regarding fan favourite Bow. In addition, Baseball, Nickel and Test Tube are all voiced by Adam Katz. Taco was also voiced by Adam, but upon her appearance in season 2, she got a new voice actor due to Adam being too old to play the part.
  • In episode 9 of Inanimate Insanity Invitational, the cartoons created by the teams feature Adam himself playing the main character.
• In Battle for Dream Island, all of the characters were voiced by the creators Cary and Michael Huang (except for the Announcer, for obvious reasons). In Battle for BFDI they still voice nearly half of the characters, with Cary voicing Ruby, Match, Pin, Marker, 8-Ball, Bracelety, Grassy, Spongy and X, and Michael voicing Woody, Donut, Eraser, Firey, Yellow Face, Flower, Blocky, Coiny, Snow Ball, Cloudy, Robot Flower, Pencil, Pen, Loser, Leafy, Golf Ball and Four.
• In one of the episodes of If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, upon hearing about the Second Founding and the current state of Space Marines, the God-Emperor proceeds to rant how now there could be Space Marines Chapters the teachings and acceptance standards of which go against what the Imperium stands for, and that some of them might even be so bad that they look like something "out of disgustingly horrible and shitty fanfiction." And then the camera cuts to a scene of the show's creator Alfabusa's own Alfa Legion, featuring Alfabusa himself along a couple of other real-life members of Alfa Legion. This is Played for Laughs, of course.
• Rooster Teeth tends to have its employees doing small roles - for instance, composer Nico Audy-Rowland as an informant in the miniseries MIA, Monty Oum as a waiter in the miniseries Holiday Plans and a soldier in a season 12 episode, and machinimator\director Josh Ornelas does the closing narration in one season 14 episode.
• Spooky Month:
  • Sr. Pelo himself appears down the street in "It's spooky month", screaming as he gets abducted by Frank.
  • In "The Stars", one of the various ice creams advertised on Frank's van is based on Pelo's Author Avatar.
  • One of the background artists for "Deadly Smiles", Sifyro, snuck a plush of her author avatar◊^note More specifically, the "imp" version◊ of her into one of the backgrounds she did.

Webcomics

• Cirque Royale has the author and artist, atomicbritt, as a minor character based on herself named Java Chip who's the owner of the Clowny Island comic shop, Atomic Comics. She's in multiple background shots and during the town meeting during Lantern Day, she hangs a lampshade on various comic issues under the guise of complaining about an unnamed in-universe comic to Quinn and Kingston.
• Close To You Heart: The comic artist Afrothunder briefly appears in a Fourth Wall break in Blixer's Travel Montage where he's traversing multiple settings to get home.
• Commander Kitty has its author, Scotty Arsenault (or at least a Funny Animal version thereof) show up in a stasis chamber.
• Tagalong, the writer, and Tria, the artist, make occasional appearances during Breaking the Fourth Wall moments of Dubious Company. This usually ends with Tiren chasing them off. Tria also appears as a random student in the High School AU arc giving Elly Valentines Day chocolate before bolting out the door.
• This El Goonish Shive strip (panel 6) has Dan Shive in a comic shop. Note that this is different from the Author Avatar character that appears in some non-canon strips.
• Girl Genius authors performed "radio dramas". Note how their colorist Cheyenne Wright voices ham-tastic Othar Tryggvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!).
• Sarah Ellerton puts herself in Inverloch as a mage who takes Acheron to see the Archmage of Aydensfell.
• Two differently aged Shaenon Garritys appear in the Li'l Mell story "Homeschool Joe Goes To School" accompanied by versions of Jeffrey Wells, co-creator of Skin Horse. The younger pair are Mell and Sergio's classmates (back row, behind half the Skin Horse cast), the older pair are teachers.
• In Strip 864 of The Order of the Stick, the thumb of Rich "The Giant" Burlew appears as "Sir Thumb the Digit Knight".
• Jeph Jacques appears as an extra in this Questionable Content strip.
• Schlock Mercenary webcomic sometimes have own author appear, most notable one being one where he complained about many new characters being difficult to draw!
  • Also contains a meta example. The storyteller is more or less identical to Phil from What's New? with Phil and Dixie.
• Sleepless Domain: When Tessa changes schools, series author Mary Cagle makes a cameo as her homeroom teacher, Miss Cable. If the name doesn't tip you off, she's almost identical to Mary as she appears in Let's Speak English, her autobiographical comic about teaching in Japan. She's described by her students as being "kinda goofy," and apparently wastes time during class talking about "life or dogs or something."
• An interesting take on this is that Tom, one of Stjepan Sejic's major characters in Sunstone looks identical to Sejic's drawings of himself, but Tom is a fleshed out character in his own right.
• TwoKinds: The creator appears as the pizzaman who joins the main cast as they awkwardly walk in on Trace and Flora. He appears again as caricature letting the readers know about about the scene along with a break occuring.
• Ashley Jane is checking out the view on the first page of Uncommon Animals.
• David Willis occasionally appeared in the Walkyverse, mainly in the more comedic comic Shortpacked!, in which he is apparently Ethan's 'rival' on the Transformers Wiki. Willis states his 'character' does exist in Dumbing of Age as the creator of Dexter and Monkey Master and Ultra Car, but won't make a physical appearance in the comic.
• Occasionally, a stick figure addressed or referred to as "Randall" will show up in xkcd.

Web Original

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has quite a few:
  • All three Whedon brothers lend their voices to the Bad Horse Chorus.
  • Jed Whedon also plays both Chorus member #2 onscreen, and ELE member Dead Bowie.
  • Zack Whedon gets a bit part as a paramedic during the ending.
  • Maurissa Tancharoen is one of Captain Hammer's groupies.
  • And it's actually Joss Whedon's fist that smashes Dr. Horrible's van-controlling device.
• Gameboys - Director Ivan Payawal drives the brown Innova fake-out in Episode 4. You can also see the names of various people involved in production sprinkled around as social media accounts.
• On the LEGO Indiana Jones website, there is a short cartoon that ends with minifigs of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg watching the short itself, complete with a E.T baseball cap and a plaid T-shirt.
• "Nightfall": As typical for a college film, writer/co-producer Demi Jong appears in the film with a bit part; the news anchor giving Exposition in the background.
• Sam & Mickey have dolls that look and sound like them sometimes appear in their videos.
• In Super Academy, director Ben Lifson appears as "Blifson the Clown", whose sole role in the film is to fall victim to Dark Cop's Establishing Character Moment.
• In Welcome to Night Vale, Carlos the Scientist is first voiced by series writer and co-creater Jeffrey Cranor.

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