Celebrity Paradox - Television Tropes & Idioms

No-one mentions Rose Tyler looks like the girl who married Chris Evans; it gets in the way of the story and doesn't help it along.

— Doctor Who: Ahistory by Lance Parkin

Celebrity Paradox is the fact that celebrities and fictional characters/works don't exist as media within works about or related to them. So, in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't exist and is not the governor of California. There's no Governor Terminator. Or, in the world of Batman Begins, the Batman comics never existed, and neither did Christian Bale. In modern updates of a work, the original may be unheard of. This is an Omnipresent Trope, and there are notable Lampshade Hanging and subversions on part of a handful of cheeky writers who get a lil kick out of toying around with the concept, such as having the character meet the actor/actress playing them somehow or giving out a Shout Out to the original source.

This avoids such awkward issues as why the plucky hero isn't constantly asked for autographs. It can become extremely awkward when the show is set amongst the showbiz industry, and the stars and writers become famous enough to be on the scene where the show finds itself. Also, if a larger-than-life celebrity was chosen to play a nerd, a geek, or a loser (for example, Hilary Duff in A Cinderella Story) — that would also be extremely awkward.

To what extent this is done is a subject for discussions amongst fans. Do the actors themselves not exist? Do other works the actors have appeared in exist? If they do, who starred in them? It's probably best not to overthink these, but some impulsive connections are bound to occur. If taken far enough, such speculation can overlap with the Literary Agent Hypothesis. (In fact the Literary Agent Hypothesis may be the best way out of the paradox: the Tenth Doctor doesn't actually look like David Tennant any more than Erin Brockovich really looks like Julia Roberts.)

If the actors or their works do not exist, this implies an In Spite Of A Nail Alternate Universe. In a recent and amusing example, actress Jeri Ryan divorced her husband to play Seven of Nine on Star Trek Voyager (he refused to move to Hollywood with her). The divorce was contentious, and a lot of salacious dirt was spilled. When Jack Ryan ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, the release of the documents forced him to withdraw, allowing his challenger to win in a landslide against a last-ditch replacement. The landslide victory propelled the challenger, Barack Obama, to a position from which he could then launch a campaign for President, and... well, you know the rest. But it probably goes differently in Voyager's historical database.

Many a show or movie trying to be hyper-realistic do their best to distill this concept to an extent by refusing to cast a Celebrity Star because he or she is not obscure enough and would be too recognisable, as it strains Willing Suspension Of Disbelief.

Note that, in Animated Series and Anime, the Celebrity Paradox wouldn't be as big of an issue. After all, in this type of medium, the characters wouldn't necessarily resemble the actors who do the voices of them. Additionally, the paradox may be avoided if the work is a period piece set before the actors were famous. So, for example, no one in Raiders Of The Lost Ark can wonder why Indy looks exactly like Harrison Ford because the film is set before Harrison Ford was even born.

Playing with this is a form of Post Modernism. The Alkazar can be a form of playing with this. Contrast Your Costume Needs Work.

Examples:

Completely and utterly justified in The Grapes Of Wrath film. In the book, the main character was said to look exactly like Henry Fonda, so guess who played him in the film? That's right, Henry Fonda.
- The exact opposite happened with the Constantine adaptation. John Constantine is stated to look exactly like Sting in the comics, so naturally, they had Keeanu Reeves play him in the film.
The Catherine Tate Show did a sketch for Comic Relief which featured David Tennant as Lauren Cooper's teacher. She frequently jokes throughout the sketch about how much he resembles the Doctor. At the end, he zaps her with the Sonic Screwdriver, turning her into a Rose Tyler action figure.
- And adding onto the confusion, Catherine Tate later played Donna Noble, a companion of the Doctor. Conveniently, Lauren Cooper was killed off before she could watch the show and notice the woman who looks just like her travelling through space with a timelord who looks just like her English teacher.
The British Sit Com My Family featured Nick obtaining a toy of Madame Hooch from Harry Potter. He doesn't seem to notice that she resembles his mother a whole lot...
In season two of House, the title character gets mocked for some of the shows that are saved on his Tivo. One of them is Blackadder, which the actor playing House starred in twenty years earlier.
In the Schwarzenegger flick Last Action Hero, the real world contains the same actors and movies that we know in reality. In the Film Within A Film Jack Slater IV, there is still a Terminator movie — but it stars Sylvester Stallone. Furthermore, when Slater is in the real world, he runs into Arnold, who mistakes him for a look-alike.
In the play Arsenic and Old Lace, one character is told repeatedly (and to his borderline homicidal annoyance) that he looks like Boris Karloff, who played the part in the original Broadway production. The play was written in 1939, so this is Older Than Television.
Possibly the earliest example after Arsenic and Old Lace : In the 1940 film His Girl Friday, a character played by Ralph Bellamy is described as looking a lot like "that actor, Ralph Bellamy."
The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension averts this by treating the movie as a documentary of the real life of Buckaroo Banzai, who also has his life's stories printed in comic book form and uses his fan club as a spy network.
Ocean's Twelve had Tess Ocean, played by Julia Roberts, infiltrating a museum by exploiting the fact that she looks like Julia Roberts. And then she has to interact with several other celebrities like Bruce Willis who know Julia Roberts. The fact that Danny Ocean couldn't do the same implies that this is a case of One Shot Revisionism.
- The original Ocean's Eleven, starring the Rat Pack, also played with this. In the final shot, the characters played by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford walk past the marquee of the Sands hotel. The marquee advertises the Sands' featured entertainers: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Despite this, Dean Martin plays a completely different singer named Sam Harmon, who does a few shows in Vegas without anyone mentioning he looks familliar.
- The remade Ocean's Eleven flirted with this in one of the earliest scenes, when Danny and Rusty walk out of the club where they've been teaching celebrities to play poker. It's very odd to see Topher Grace and Joshua Jackson get mobbed by squealing fans, while George Clooney and Brad Pitt stroll by unnoticed.
The webcomic Darths And Droids is about roleplayers playing a tabletop RPG following the basic plot of the Star Wars movies, but the notes have specifically stated that there is no Star Wars in the universe where they are, and then extrapolates on how that would impact things such as Mark Hamill's and Harrison Ford's careers, Spaceballs, the fate of sci-fi in media, and even what the webcomic Darths And Droids would be parodying instead of Star Wars.
- Although its spiritual predecessor DM of the Rings never explicitly referenced this trope, Fridge Logic leads one to wonder how D&D became popular in a world without Lord of the Rings.
  - It wasn't Fridge Logic for this troper — that whole idea was the fundamental absurdity that made the whole thing funny in the first place.
  - This troper was under the impression (at least until epidoe 50) that they were merely a group of people who all happened never to have heard of Lo TR, even while playing D&D (this troper knows people like that. This troper knows people who thought the movies were an original work), and the DM was merely capitalizing on their ignorance.
- It features a sample page from the alternate universe where the authors are doing a Harry Potter screencap comic instead. Which features an extrapolation on careers in a world where Harry Potter AND Star Wars never existed. Then it does it again for The Sound Of Music. Currently, it stops with the X-Men.
  - Actually, they've added Aliens now. It's the joke that just keeps on going!
MacGyver starring lead Richard Dean Anderson, is lightly brought up in the very first episode of Stargate SG-1.
- SG-1 got even more confusing by having a guest appearence by Dan Castellaneta while The Simpsons had a guest appearence by Richard Dean Anderson. In SG-1, Jack is a fan of The Simpsons, but doesn't seem to recognise Dan, whereas in The Simpsons, Anderson plays himself.
- The Stargate Verse has yet another circular dependency: with World Of Warcraft. Dr. Lee is a fan of the game (and curiously claimed to have a level 75 character, which was impossible at the time the episode supposedly took place)... while the Champions' Hall in WoW contains NPCs named after SG-1 characters.
- In another interesting case, Carter tells O'Neill that they can't call the first X-303-class spaceship "Enterprise" in homage to Star Trek. Given that NASA has already named a spaceship after the fictional Enterprise, were this not a television show — whose creators would certainly be sued by Paramount for their insolence — there would be absolutely no reason not to name the ship Enterprise. Realistically speaking, it would in fact be a virtual certainty.
In the Doctor Who episode "The Idiot's Lantern", the Doctor refers to Kylie Minogue. Kylie later appeared in the Christmas Episode "Voyage of the Damned" playing Astrid Peth. However she was a Human Alien and who had never been to Earth until that episode and was from a race with very fuzzy knowledge of our world thus probably wasn't aware of the fact. She only met two people who would recognise her as Kylie, The Doctor who probably chose not to confuse her by mentioning it and Wilfred Mott who only talked to her for a few minutes. That being said, despite the fact she's very famous in the UK one elderly lady did confuse her for a real waitress during filming.
- "Spatial genetic multiplicity" was referenced in a later episode. May or may not apply here.
Also in Doctor Who, the Harry Potter books exist and have been made into movies. The person playing Barty Crouch Jr. has not been revealed though.
- Clearly, it's going to be Christopher Eccleston.
  - Hm. He'd probably be pretty good, actually...
- The Doctor does have a Hogwarts uniform in his cupboard. Perhaps it's him, acting under the assumed name "David Tennant".
  - And Barty Crouch Jr. has a box that is bigger on the inside than on the outside.
- In fact, one of the oddest things about the new series of Doctor Who is that many episodes are set in some bizarre version of Britain where people can walk past a police box without recognising it as the TARDIS.
  - That is explained by the TARDIS's "perception filter", which prevents people from even noticing the TARDIS.
- Just to further twist the self-reference, an Episode with the 7th Doctor in the original series was set on the day the TV show actually launched, and a voice on the telly is briefly heard to say, "It is now 5:15, and its time for the new science-fiction series Do—" before it is cut off.
- Though no odder than the fact that the cast of Star Trek aren't constantly saying "You know, this reminds me of that old Earth TV show..."
- The Whoniverse does have Star Trek (a companion from the 26th century mistook it for a documentary)... and, in a weirdly recursive spin on this trope, has "Professor X", an in-world equivalent of itself. Complete with deranged fandom arguing with itself on the Internet and everything.
As mentioned above, in the world of The Simpsons, Futurama is just a show and The Simpsons doesn't exist. Conversely, in the world of Futurama, The Simpsons is just a show and Futurama doesn't exist.
- Bender exists on The Simpsons, but only in the future as the result of a Negative Space Wedgie from going through a tunnel, and he's kicked out of the car.
  - And as an operator in a TV telethon.
  - Matt Groening has appeared on The Simpsons, playing "Matt Groening, creator of Futurama."
Robin Williams does exist, as himself, in the Mork And Mindy universe. And Mork is horrified when people think they look alike. This is actually almost believable, until Mindy mentions he's a star of "TV, film, and nightclubs". Maybe Robin Williams was part of the cast of whatever TV show replaced Mork And Mindy in said universe.
In an episode of Sabrina The Animated Series, Sabrina questions about "Who needs Melissa Joan Hart's autograph?" Melissa Joan Hart plays both of the aunts in the animated series, and she also played the title character in the earlier live-action series of Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
The TV show Mad About You exists in the Seinfeld universe, but characters from Seinfeld have appeared on Mad About You. Some sort of Seinfeld series also exists on Mad About You, but it's unclear whether the series in question is the one from the real world, starring real Jerry Seinfeld, or the fictional sitcom Jerry, starring the real Jerry Seinfeld's character portraying a character named Jerry Seinfeld (who might himself be the real Jerry Seinfeld).
In Back To The Future, Huey Lewis makes a cameo appearance as an audition judge — and Marty has a Huey Lewis and The News poster on his bedroom wall. The Cafe '80s scene in Part II shows brief clips of Family Ties and Taxi — featuring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, respectively. However, whether the actors were featured in the shows of the universe is subject to debate.
Furthermore, in an episode of Back To The Future The Animated Series, Marty sarcastically claims to be Michael J. Fox (who played Marty in the movie trilogy) — prompting Verne to comment that there is a similarity in appearance.
In one episode of The Honeymooners, Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton meet Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. This was done by alternating the actors and their roles: Ed meets Gleason just as Ralph is conveniently absent, while Ralph meets Carney while Ed is out.
Averted and played with extensively in the Thursday Next series — almost inevitable, since the series is about the BookWorld and the title character can travel in and out of works of literature. In the most recent installment, Thurs is forced to work with two alternate versions of herself from "fictionalized" book versions of her adventures.
- The Thursday Next books take this much, much farther than any sane person could go. There are many "meta" levels — for example, there's the real world, the "real world" of the Thursday Next novel, fiction that exists in the Thursday Next world (which is largely unchanged from ours), how the fictional characters act outside their novels, etc...
- It gets even more confusing because the Thursday Next novels as shown in the fifth Thursday Next book are actually nothing like the real-world novels; the rights were sold and the plot and characterization was thrown out the window. At the very end of the fifth book, apparently one of the fictionalized Thursdays begins "rewriting" the fictional Thursday Next books and it looks like they'll end up identical to the real-world versions. Confused yet?
Like everything else they do, comic books (particularly those from Marvel and DC) tend to be pretty up and down when it comes to this. One storyline will explicitly state that the other version of heroes are simply limited to fictional comics, another will confirm that they all coexist with the same world, and in another, Alternate Universes come into play. All in all, most writers try not to stress over this too much, as more often than not, the main objective is to either have two heroes duke it out in a prize fight or simply deliver some cheap shot.
- DC, prior to 1986, did this using Earth-2 and claiming that the Earth-1 characters had comics about the Earth-2 characters but not about themselves. This explanation worked for characters like the Flash, but wouldn't make sense for someone like Superman, where both versions had the same secret identity.
- However, at least in the Marvel Universe, there is Canon evidence from comics such as She-Hulk and The Fantastic Four that the exploits of the (in-universe) real live heroes are actually recorded in comics and sold to the general public. These comics (in the She-Hulk comics) are then used as evidence by lawyers defending and prosecuting super heroes and super villains. And, at least once, to save the world when all the characters had forgotten some hugely important fact or Mac Guffin which they found out about by reading the comics. One wonders, though, if the comics published in-universe are the same as the Real Life ones, and the references to comics are infinitely recursive. But then one's head starts hurting.
  - Marvel actually released a set of in-universe comics during a Fifth Week Event in 2000. These were titled "Marvels Comics" and how similar they were to the "real" superheroes varied — the Fantastic Four licensed their comic officially and appeared in their real identities, but since nobody knows who Daredevil or Spider-Man are, the in-universe comic fabricated origins for them.
- Similarly, in the Ultimate Marvel universe, one issue of Ultimate Spider Man involved Spidey's exploits being filmed by Sam Raimi to save money on CGI for a blockbuster movie starring Tobey Maguire.
  - Marvel did another joke on this in Spider-Girl; Mary Jane comments that Reilly Tyne (son of Spider-Man's clone Ben Reilly) looks sort of like like Peter; Pete, on the other hand, thinks he looks more like Tobey Maguire.
- Subverted in Superman: Secret Identity, where there are no superheroes, but Superman comics do exist — they're, in fact, the reason Mr. and Mrs. Kent decided to name their perfectly human boy Clark. Then, after being constantly bullied about his nonexistent superpowers, he actually gets them, and the rest of the plot explores the differences between comics and "reality".
  - This is also the origin of Super~~boy~~man-Prime. His psychopathic behaviour in pursuit of Silver Age values can be at least partly explained by the fact he still thinks of these people as fictional characters.
- A Golden Age Superman story had Clark taking Lois to the movies... where a Fleischer Brothers Superman cartoon was showing before the main feature. Hilarity Ensues as Clark goes to great lengths to ensure that Lois is distracted every time his on-screen counterpart changes identities. The story ends with Clark and his on-screen counterpart winking at each other, even as he wonders who the Fleischer Brothers are and how they found out all they did.
On a more metatextual character level than a literal actor level, Smallville falls particularly afoul of this. In every other incarnation of the Superman mythos (comics, TV, movies, radio etc.) Superman is, by the very nature of his existence, a world-famous figure, probably the most famous person on Earth. Therefore all the kinds of nicknames, catchprases and allusions to the fictional character in the real world (e.g. "Faster than a speeding bullet", "The Man of Steel" etc.) are equally well known in the various fictional realities where Superman is actually real (with the exception of "And who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter..."). But in Smallville, a prequel show set explicitly in the present day, the viewer is faced with the bizarre dissonance that these characters exist in an early 21st century version of America who's popular culture has not been irrevocably impacted by the existence of Superman (real or fictional), who originated the entire superhero genre and flooded the lexicon with all manner of specific phrases and ideas.
- This is rendered even more head-numbingly dissonant by the show's sheer volume of sly references, homages and shout-outs to the Superman mythos that has yet to actually take place, with constant winking deployment of terms that contextually shouldn't have been coined yet, like "Man of Steel", "Faster than a speeding bullet", "mild-mannered" etc. etc. They have even shown that words/concepts like "superhero" are already in common parlance, despite their actual existence not yet being known to the wider public.
  - The most glaring example is when Chloe asks Clark "Are you man or superman?"
  - Well he had just dropped his Nietzsche book. In fact most examples are fairly organic; someone sees bullets bounce off Clark and calls him "a man of steel" (not "THE"), etc. We're seeing the in-universe origins of these phrases not the common use of them.
  - Partly justified, since superhero comics do exist in the Smallville universe, since Lex was shown to have been a fan of one such comic (featuring a bald protagonist) growing up, called Warrior Angel — ironically a very historically-accurate '90s style archetype. This leads one to wonder who was the first superhero character to be published in the Smallville universe, since it obviously wasn't Superman...
  - In vitruvian's "Myriad" series of fanfics, when Clark does something dickheaded to Lois Lane, like erasing her memory, she wishes the entire world of costumes and capes into fiction, causing a series of reality reboots. The muses are quite happy to convert all these real life events into stories, but when the time comes to restore Superman to reality, they have to go through and spot edit the fiction into pale copies of itself, like 'Warrior Angel', with the bare minimum of foreshadowing. The muses, being spirits of creativity, find deleting stories really annoying. Especially when it happens again... and again...
- There is also some limited amounts of doubly-metatextual actor paradoxes in later seasons, as past actors associated with earlier film & TV versions of Superman guest-star as different characters, such as Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Dean Cain, Helen Slater... You can't help but wonder why Clark isn't constantly saying "Hey, didn't I used to look like you?" (or, perhaps, "Man, will I really look like you when I grow up?).
  - It gets even weirder when you consider that Clark's mother is played by Anette O'Toole who previously played his love-interest Lana (no, not the boring one) Lang in Superman III, and that the AI "ghost" of Jor-El featured through most of the middle seasons is brought to life by the very distinctive voice of Terrence Stamp, the indelibly memorable villain General Zod from Superman II.
  - Lampshaded a bit — the first time Christopher Reeves shows up, they start playing John Williams' Superman themes.
While maybe not textbook, Watchmen played with this a little bit. Since superheroes exist, they became commonplace and nobody bought superhero comics anymore. To fill the publication vacuum, comics starring pirates became popular.
- Astro City plays with this as well, with one issue detailing a comic company that publishes accounts of "real life" heroes and villains. Thing is, the guy in charge embellishes; the hero Nightingale threatens to sue when he paints her and her crimefighting partner Sunbird as lesbians, and the villain Glowworm almost kills him when he's portrayed as a racist. (Glowworm has a radioactive sheen due to the accident that gave him his powers — underneath it, as he puts it, "You know what color I used to be?") The company decides to deal with "cosmic" (alien/otherworldy) heroes and villains, since they can't register complaints. The building has been vaporized when the central character arrives for work the next day.
- Runaways mentions The DCU a few times, but it's implied they only exist as TV shows.
In Love, Actually, Liam Neeson makes several jokes about having Claudia Schiffer appear and start a relationship with him. Towards the end of the movie he meets a woman named Carol...played by Claudia Schiffer.
In Looney Tunes: Back In Action, DJ Drake says to Daffy: "Have you seen those Mummy movies? I was in them more than Brendan Fraser was!". At the end of the movie, Drake runs into the real Fraser (obviously played by Fraser as well) then punches him in the face for acting like a dick.
The novel Bridget Jones' Diary is based in part on the plot of Pride & Prejudice — the love interest is named Mark Darcy, and the title character is obsessed with Colin Firth's portrayal of the original Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of the Jane Austen novel. In the film, Pride & Prejudice isn't mentioned, but Mark Darcy is played by... Colin Firth.
- Bridget interviews Colin Firth in the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. This was filmed for the movie but ended up being a deleted scene.
In Friends, Ross, Joey and Chandler are die-hard fans of Die Hard. However, when they meet Paul Stevens (played by Bruce Willis), he doesn't seem to remind them of anyone.
- In earlier episodes, Ross has Winona Ryder on his "list," but when Rachel's sorority sister shows up, nobody says, "Wow, you look just like Winona Ryder."
- Ross also rejected Susan Sarandon for the list. She also turned up in a later episode, not playing herself.
Pretty much averted in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where Ben Affleck plays the character of Holden McNeil, the same character as in the earlier Chasing Amy. The movie's central conflict is that a movie is being made about the titular characters and they aren't being paid for it, so they start discussing who's going to star in the movie. Ben Affleck's character comments that, because it's Miramax, it's probably going to be Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Later on, Affleck shows up again, as himself, shooting Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season with Damon.
- It gets better when Jay and Holden talk about how they hate Good Will Hunting, which Affleck starred in and co-wrote, and Holden citing that Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.
- Come to think of it, before Affleck and Damon do their part in Hunting 2 Damon mentions that Affleck talked him into Dogma. Jay and Silent Bob were in Dogma, as main characters.
  - For the hat trick, at the very end, two characters leaving a theater say that the movie they saw was "Better than Mallrats," (which one of them was in) but that Chasing Amy, the movie the other one was in, would never work as a movie.
- Even better is the DVD documentary where the writers talk about how for a while, they were actually considering having different actors play that universe's Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. They even considered the Wayans Brothers for it. Sadly, they chose in the end to just keep the originals.
In one episode of This Is America, Charlie Brown, the Peanuts gang visit the Smithsonian Institution. Among other things, Charlie Brown and Lucy discover the lunar and command modules from Apollo 10 (nicknamed "Snoopy" and "Charlie Brown", respectively), and a Peanuts Sunday strip.
- In the January 1, 1974 Peanuts strip, Linus and Lucy watch the Tournament of Roses Parade on TV. Linus asks if the Grand Marshal had gone by, and Lucy tells him yes, "but he wasn't anyone you ever heard of." The actual grand marshal of the parade that year was Charles M. Schulz.
One episode of Jackie Chan Adventures has Jackie and company going to Hollywood. Of course, the actor Jackie Chan doesn't exist and this is confirmed by people asking "Who's Jackie Chan?" Furthermore, once Jackie is found by a studio and Hilarity Ensues, a hot-shot director claims that there will never be a Jackie Chan in Hollywood.
Hiro Nakamura from Heroes is a Star Trek fan. George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on said series, plays Hiro's father.
- Kaito Nakamura could well also be a fan- his car's number plate reads NCC-1701.
Played with in Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip: Allison Janney of The West Wing appears as herself, guest hosting the titular Show Within A Show. Timothy Busfield plays the director of said show. Busfield formerly played Janney's character's love interest/husband on The West Wing, and their interactions in the Studio 60 episode play this up. Note that The West Wing exists in the Studio 60 universe, and fictional Janney was in it, while fictional Busfield apparently wasn't, since he doesn't exist. Confused yet?
- This becomes even more confusing when you think about how many other actors were in both shows.
- Be glad that the guy who played Josh wasn't in that episode.
- Adding another layer of confusion, the fictional Janney is annoyed at being confused with Christine Lahti. The reporter played by Christine Lahti wasn't in that episode, but she hadn't been gone long.
In a late episode of The Nanny, Fran Fine meets actress Fran Drescher. She mentions how everyone says she looks like her, and Drescher is not happy. She also comments on her voice, her hair, and on how the episode she's taping is very similar to what's happening in Fine's life at the moment.
The 2006 film of Casino Royale faithfully reproduces a scene from the original novel where James Bond orders a very specific kind of martini — three parts Gordon's gin, one part vodka, 1/2 part Lillet. In the real world, this drink, called a "Vesper" after Bond's love interest in the novel, has become well-known enough to have an entry on That Other Wiki, and a bartender presumably wouldn't need to be instructed on how to make one — of course, in the movieverse, the James Bond novels don't exist and so presumably nobody has ever heard of a Vesper martini.
- This is also lampshaded in the movie, when Bond mulls over what to name the newly invented drink until telling Vesper flat-out that he's naming it after her.
  - Not really a lampshading—again, that's a reproduction of a scene from the original novel, and presumably that was where/how the drink got its name.
In the 2004 made for TV movie Frankenstein, the story of Frankenstein is mentioned a few times. When asked about it, the original creature says that Mary Shelley's novel was actually Based On A True Story.
Lucky Star has quite a bit of this thanks to its numerous modern-day media references to anime, manga, video games, etc. Prime examples include multiple shoutouts to its fellow Kyoto Animation anime The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya and the guest appearances of the character's own seiyuu.
- Probably the prime example of this is in the last episode. Patty bribes Konata (voiced by Hirano Aya with a ticket to a live event where she can meet... Hirano Aya
- Of course there's also an earlier episode where Konata attends the 'Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekisou' live concert and sees Hirano Aya on stage.
The Fourth Wall-shattering climax of Blazing Saddles — just watch it.
Similarly, in Spaceballs the villains are able to track down the heroes' location by popping in a Spaceballs VHS. No really.
- That's more of a fourth-wall break rather than a confirmation that Spaceballs actually exists in-universe. They do something similar in Robin Hood Men In Tights where they pull out the film script to see what happens next.
  - Or in Blazing Saddles, where Hedley Lamarr — and later Bart and the Waco Kid — go to Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to watch the movie they're in. Mel Brooks seems to be a bit fond of this device.
On a similar note, in Heroes some of the characters learn what is going to happen by reading the comic book "9th Wonders." Which is basically the show, but in comic book form.
- However, the comic book tells the story of the show because it was created by a person with precognitive powers.
The Scream franchise made it big in part because it was a horror movie that acknowledged that people will know about horror movies and thus display at least some Genre Savvy, compared to all the horror films that take place in universes where apparently no such things exist.
- Scream 2 took it further with the (fictional) film Stab, which was based on the events of Scream, scenes from Stab having Heather Graham and Luke Wilson playing the the characters played by Drew Barrymore and Skeet Ulrich. Courtney Cox's character also mentions David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston.
- In Scream, Neve Campbell's character Sidney jokes that if they did make a movie of the Woodsboro murders, Tori Spelling would probably play her. In Scream 2 with Stab... cue "Sidney" being played by Tori Spelling.
Like most rapper-actors, Method Man can most often be found portraying gang members and fictional rappers in his numerous television/film roles. Wonder if any of them listen to Wu Tang.
- Even more confusingly, RZA has a role as a detective in American Gangster. At one point, the Wu-Tang tattoo on his arm is clearly visible. Note that the film takes place in the 1970s.
An episode of Scrubs has J.D. mentioning that he thought he noticed the Janitor in the movie version of The Fugitive. Neil Flynn, who plays the Janitor, was indeed in that film. The Janitor later implies that it was indeed him in the movie. Whether this means that all of Neil Flnn's roles in the Scrubsverse are played by The Janitor or if this was a one off is unclear.
- Of course, nothing the Janitor says can be taken seriously. It is perfectly plausible that in the Scrubsverse, the Janitor just happens to look like Neil Flynn and was messing with JD/the Audience's head(s).
In the world of the forgettable 1998 Godzilla film, there was no such thing as a Godzilla movie. The titular monster was named after a supposed mythical Japanese sea creature called Gojira (Godzilla's name in Japan) whose name gets mispronounced.
The Disney Channel appears to enjoy this trope. In an episode of The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, Maddie (played by Ashley Tisdale) auditions for the part of Sharpay in High School Musical (who was also played by Ashley Tisdale). She claims all her friends say she looks the part, but no one else sees it.
Similarly in Hannah Montana, Robbie Ray (played by Billy Ray Cyrus) puts on a mullet wig and claims to be Billy Ray Cyrus. The woman he's talking to thinks he's crazy and quickly leaves.
In Futurama, Katey Sagal (the voice of Leela) is one of actresses in the head museum.
In the KateModern episode "Fictionality", Ralf Little's character, Gavin, complains that people keep accusing him of being a professional actor.
Hook handles this quite nicely. J.M. Barrie's play Peter Pan does exist, as do all of its adaptations like the Disney film. It was based on a true story that Wendy told him. Hence, everyone knows about Peter Pan but thinks he's a fictional character, including Peter himself after he grows up, so he's understandably reluctant to believe it when he finds out.
Subverted in Airplane!, in which Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then a basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers, played the co-pilot. A child is brought up to the cockpit, recognizes Kareem, and begins making disparaging comments about his basketball skills; the co-pilot at first denies that he is Kareem, but eventually defends himself.
- Furthermore, when the co-pilot is removed after falling ill, he is clearly wearing goggles and a Lakers uniform, as if he was ready to hit the court the second the scene wrapped.
A complete aversion occurs in the unaired pilot Heat Vision and Jack — character actor Ron Silver plays character actor/assassin Ron Silver.
In the sequel to the novel Forrest Gump, titled Gump and Co., Forrest is inserted into events from the 80s and 90s. As such, he gets to meet famous people from that time. One such celebrity whom Forrest gets to meet is Tom Hanks, the actor who played him in the film. In fact, the movie is mentioned several times throughout the book — the first book exists in that world as Forrest's autobiography, and he's rather upset throughout the second that the film got almost everything wrong. "Don't ever let anybody make a movie out of your life" are practically Arc Words.
Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong is apparently set at the same time that Merion C. Cooper is directing a film for RKO Studios starring Fay Wray.
- In the movie, when the characters are trying to come up with a lead actress, one of them suggests "Fay," but the other says, "She's doing a picture with RKO."
In the fictional world of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert's other works do exist, but Colbert (the actor) doesn't — all of his roles were played by Kevin Spacey instead.
This Troper once wrote a crossover fanfic in which Willy Wonka blithely mentions that he has fangirls mistaking him for Johnny Depp (who played him in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory). Wonka himself didn't see the resemblance.
A case in Detective Conan once revolved around the titular character and his friends meeting singer Minami Takayama. Minami happens to do the voice of Conan Edogawa, and their similar voices were not only pointed out by other characters, but it also was a vital plot point in solving the mystery of the week. The weird part? That story appeared in the original Manga.
Skins had Anwar reciting a list of Hugh Grant films in order to stave off orgasm during sex: "I never get as far as About A Boy". About A Boy being a film in which Skins actor Nicholas Hoult played a leading role.
In the U.S. version of The Office, Creed Bratton plays a fantastical (and waaay crazy) version of himself. He was a bassist in the Grass Roots in the 60s and 70s, and now (instead of acting) works at a paper company.
- In the second Christmas episode, he sings a Grass Roots song on a karaoke machine, which the real Creed Bratton did the vocals for. Wrap your head around that.
Also on the U.S. The Office, Michael Scott has mentioned that he is a fan of The Wire, yet does not notice Holly Flax's strong resemblance to Beadie Russell (both played by Amy Ryan).
An episode of Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge has two of the Hokke sisters meeting their own voice actresses and then proceeding to argue about which one of them is better.
One episode of Sue Thomas FB Eye had Sue (the character) meeting Sue (the real FBI agent that sparked the series); IIRC, one of them said she'd always wanted to be an FBI agent while the other said she'd always wanted to be an actress.
Veronica Mars is said to get nightmares when she watches Paris Hilton movies. Quite understandable, as there was a girl at her school played by Paris Hilton.
The title character in Suddenly Susan finds herself unable to remember Andre Agassi's first wife — because it was Brooke Shields herself.
- Similarly, the main character in The Naked Truth could only remember that David Duchovny's wife was "that goofy blonde sitcom bimbo"... whom we know as Téa Leoni.
Likewise, an episode of Quantum Leap features an heiress played by Brooke Shields, whose resemblance to herself causes no comment from Sam or Al. Then again, in this case it may be a Justified Trope because Sam is amnesiac and the show takes place in a timeline which is (at least at first) significantly different from ours.
Completely pulled off in Nogizaka Haruka No Himitsu, Meido Nanami Nanashiro distracts the proud Otaku Nobunaga Asakura by telling him that seiyuu Kana Ueda is nearby and proceeds to mimic her voice to make Nobunaga 'chase' the seiyuu. Of course, Kana Ueda herself IS the seiyuu of Nanami.
Played with in the Hellboy film, which is based on a comics series: the titular demon is actually a pretty popular myth, on par with stuff like Yeti and Bigfoot (though perhaps slightly more believed), and has comics based on him, prompting a supporting character, upon meeting him, to be surprised that his comics hero from childhood is real, and for Hellboy himself to comment that he dislikes the comics as they get his eyes wrong.
According to Word Of God, Saturday Night Live does not exist in the world of 30 Rock for this reason. Tina Fey has said that making reference to Eddie Murphy is about the closest the show could ever come to acknowledging the existence of SNL.
- In one episode, Liz and Tracy argue about Wayne Brady. A few episodes later, Wayne Brady appeared on the show as a character.
- In an early episode, Jack mentions watching Friends and asks about Ross and Rachel. Both David Schwimmer ("Ross") and Jennifer Aniston ("Rachel") later guest starred.
Bobby Flay cameoed in an episode of Law And Order SVU as a TV chef who's enough like real Bobby Flay that if he wasn't playing himself he might as well have been. He had cheated on his wife—only since Flay is married to Stephanie March (Alex Cabot on SVU) in Real Life, on the show he had no wife to cheat on.
Both Spin City and Just Shoot Me have celebrities appear in regular roles as well as themselves, though no celebrity has ever done both.
At the end of the Clint Eastwood movie Any Which Way You Can, the cast is musing over their drinks in a bar, where the lounge singer is singing the song, "You're Just a Coca-Cola Cowboy," with the line "You've got a sexist smile and Robert Redford hair." The actual line in the song is "You've got an Eastwood smile and Robert Redford hair."
Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet was the R2D2 or C3PO of its day and has been used almost like a live action Animated Actor, making this one of the few times this trope applies to a nonhuman character. The Blu-Ray/HD home video version of the movie includes a Thin Man episode and a movie The Invisible Boy where Robby appears, under his own name; needless to say, characters are astonished by the robot but never associate it with a movie.
Arguably, this can occur in literature when characters are based around real people. For example, in Anthony Trollope's Palliser series, there are characters clearly based on real people like Gladstone and Disraeli, but on at least one occassion, the real people were referenced. Another example, is the problem of how to deal with Arthur Conan Doyle in a universe where Sherlock Holmes is a real person. A common idea is making him a literary agent, but if that was true, he likely wouldn't be as wealthy and famous in that universe as in reality.
A bonus cutscene in Metal Gear Solid 4, from the Verse's bizzare television, shows the actress Lee Meriwether (rather creepily) interviewing the screenwriter David Hayter — Meriwether and Dayter being the voice actors for Big Mama and Solid Snake respectively. In case we didn't get it, Dayter is dressed in a snakeskin jacket and digital eyepatch, and Meriwether talks to him in the somewhat stilted, poetic, dramatic tones of a Metal Gear character giving an important speech, only addressing him by his full name. Did we mention Metal Gear Solid has No Fourth Wall?
- More subtly, Metal Gear Solid 3 mentions many movies which served as an inspiration for the game, and the first Metal Gear Solid ends (if you submit to the torture) with Snake openly discussing his Theme Naming with his new friend, Otacon (they're called Dave and Hal).
In an early Dawsons Creek episode, Joshua Jackson comments on how great "those ducks movies" were — a coy shout out to his role as Charlie in the Mighty Ducks films.
Averted in The Young Ones, where the characters are quite aware they are in a sitcom which is being broadcast. In fact, in one episode Neil's parents upbraid him for appearing in such a offensive sitcom and asked why he couldn't be in something nice like The Good Life.
3rd Rock from the Sun referenced William Shatner a couple of times before he became the Big Giant Head.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was played largely as a Fish Out Of Temporal Water comedy in which the Enterprise crew goes back to The Present Day (1986). You have to wonder why they never meet anyone who has heard of Star Trek.
In the real world, the first (test) Space Shuttle was named "Enterprise" in honor of Star Trek. That Enterprise does appear among the models of earlier ships to bear the name that Picard keeps in his ready room, and appears in the montage during the opening credits to Star Trek Enterprise, though the reason for its name is presumably different (presumably, the same reason as Kirk's Enterprise: "Enterprise" is a name with a long naval history).
In a Saturday Night Live sketch from the 2008 U.S. election with Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton mocks her "Tina Fey glasses".
In the 2007 St Trinians movie, Colin Firth plays the Minister for Education — which means that we get jokes about a dog named "Mr. Darcy" and a reference to The Girl With A Pearl Earring.
On Will & Grace, Britney Spears is referenced many times by the characters, particularly Jack, who has memorized her dance moves and even swears on her name ("Britney Spears Federline!"). Yet when she appears as a special guest star as Jack's new co-host, he doesn't comment on how much she looks like his idol.
- Similarly, Jack says, "Me digs Taye Diggs," in one episode. When Grace later married Will's boyfriend James, Jack never noted the resemblance.
In Kids Incorporated, they did a cover version of "More Than You Know" by Martika, herself a former star of the series, making one wonder if she exists in the KI universe.
- Almost every character in the series was The Danza, playing a character of the same name as the actor, so one might suppose that the character and the actor were meant to be the same person. Ironically, Martika was one of the few characters who wasn't (her character was named Gloria).
Final Destination. It's Very Loosely Based On A True Story. Nobody remarks about the extremely similar 747 crash four years earlier.
In one episode of Hermans Head, Louise angrily snaps "I do not!" into the phone, slams the receiver back into the cradle, and then asks, "Herman, I don't sound like Lisa Simpson, do I?" Louise, of course, was played by Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson.
A particularly complex example is in Man on the Moon, a Bio Pic of Andy Kaufman. Danny DeVito plays Kaufman's agent George Shapiro. DeVito was also a producer of the film, and explained in a making-of short that he had wanted to play Shapiro from the beginning — not realizing that this paradox would be created because he had played Louie DePalma on Taxi, which was Kaufman's biggest mainstream success and thus had to be brought up in the film. The solution was to write out Louie (and thus the real DeVito) from the Taxi-related scenes (though, in an early script draft, there was going to be an aside referencing the character and thus the paradox as an in-joke). At least one critic admitted he hadn't noticed Louie's absence until later, perhaps in part because most of the other Taxi cast members appeared as themselves.
Monk: In the season one finale, Tim Daly makes an appearance as himself. Sharona mentions that he was in the show Wings. So who plays Antonio in the Monk-world? If it's Tony Shalhoub, Adrian must be pretty sick of people telling him how much he looks like Antonio.
All the remakes of Miracle on 34th Street (there are no less than four of them, five if you count the Broadway musical) are presumably set in a world where the 1947 classic doesn't exist.
The Harry Potter spin-off books Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages each begins with an introduction purportedly written by Albus Dumbledore in which he describes how proceeds from the book will go to a fund set up in Harry Potter's name by Comic Relief UK and JK Rowling. This, of course, raises the question of how exactly Rowling can exist within the Harry Potter universe.
- She could've written books about Harry's rise to fame within the universe. Happens all the time about real life heroes; they're called documentaries.
  - Fyre's The Eighth Weasley — a Harry Potter crossover fanfic set after Voldemort's defeat — explicitly states that the Harry Potter books exist alongside the Wizarding World (to the consternation of the latter), and strongly hints that "JK Rowling" is merely a pen name behind which is hiding Hermione.
- Three words: Literary Agent Hypothesis. Presumably, J.K. Rowling says that her books are fiction so that Muggles don't know that the Wizarding World actually exists.
- Actually, The Tales of Beedle the Bard specifically mentions that there are seven volumes chronicling Harry's life in-universe. J.K. Rowling is mentioned by name, too.
In one Dark Tower book (The Wasteland?) Eddie Dean compares a haunted house the characters escaped to the one in Kubrick's The Shining. This Troper rationalized it by figuring that since King didn't consider it a faithful adaptation maybe in the book universe Stephen King didn't exist but The Shining did. This was blown to hell by the fourth wall breaking metafiction of the last three books.
The first scene of Tango and Cash has Tango saying "Rambo is a pussy." Guess who plays Tango.
Adaptation., starring Meryl Streep and Nicolas Cage, is about a playwright's struggles to adapt Orlean's book The Orchid Thief to film. Streep plays the film version of Orlean (who really existed, and really did write The Orchid Thief), with Cage starring as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Guess who wrote the actual film? Charlie Kaufman.
- And then you realize that the screenplay being written by the film's Charlie Kaufman is the screenplay for the actual film you are watching.
Super Robot Wars loves to play with its Hey Its That Voice casting like this, with characters mentioning other characters' similar voices, and even making Shout Outs.
The Double Dragon arcade game makes a cameo appearance in a scene in The Movie adaptation, and is then destroyed during the fight that follows. The Nostalgia Critic made a big fuss about this in his review of the film and points out that the game being destroyed is an appropriate analogy.
In the Super Mario Adventures comic serial that ran in Nintendo Power, the first thing we see Princess Peach doing is playing a Super Mario Bros game.