Toggle Random Buttons
TVTropes

Comic-Book Fantasy Casting

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nick_fury_is_samuel_l_jackson2.jpg
A rare case in which the real-world subject used as a template for the character eventually became actual Comic-Book Movie Casting.

"Mr. Samuel L. Jackson, of course, no discussion."
— Ultimate Nick Fury (as to who should play him in a movie), The Ultimates

Sometimes in comics or animated shows, a character is made to look like a particular actor or other celebrity whom the artist imagines playing the character. This might be out of admiration for the actor, because the character fits with the actor's well-known roles, or in the hope that the actor would be flattered and try to get the comic adapted as a movie. Or it might be unconscious on the author/artist's part.

Fantasy casting can also occur in non-visual media such as (non-illustrated) novels, but can be harder to spot unless Word of God acknowledges it, or the character is closely based on a particular role the actor is associated with.

If the resemblance is outright stated in the text, it's Textual Celebrity Resemblance. For when the character is a direct impression or parody of a celebrity's public persona, see No Celebrities Were Harmed. For when an animated character is designed to resemble the real-world voice actor, see Ink-Suit Actor. See also Hypothetical Casting, for where fans or creators do this as Word of God without making it explicit in canon.

Not the same thing as when a comic book or animation is spun-off from an earlier live-action film or TV show and the characters inevitably are drawn to look like the live-action actors, which would be "Reality Casting". However, sometimes there are borderline cases where a comic or animation is adapted into a live-action medium and artists start drawing a character to look like the actor in the adaptation.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Bakuman。 offers an interesting Manga Within A Manga case: every time Takagi and Mashiro create a new manga series, Mashiro makes the most important female character look like his girlfriend Azuki, a voice actress, hoping that she will get the role of this character in the anime adaptation.
  • Mr. Chang, the head of the local triad in Black Lagoon looks a lot like Chow Yun-fat.
  • Cowboy Bebop:
    • Spike Spiegel was modeled after famous 1970s Japanese action film star Yusaku Matsuda.
    • The couple in the first episode were based on Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek.
    • The debt assistant also known as a conman who's sent to help Faye with her debts after she was revived is based on George Clooney.
    • Decker, the bounty in Heavy Metal Queen appears to be modeled on Woody Allen.
    • The gangster from "Waltz for Venus" is based on Biggie Smalls.
    • The bounty hunter in "Mushroom Samba" is based on Pam Grier (and named after one of her movies).
  • Freddy from Cromartie High School bears an obvious resemblance to Freddie Mercury from Queen. It's never explicitly stated whether or not he actually is Freddie Mercury, but most signs point to no. Just avoids No Celebrities Were Harmed since his characterization has no resemblance at all to Freddy's public persona.
  • It's hard to tell, given the blue hair and gold eyes, but April of Darker Than Black looks a fair amount like Halle Berry. Probably because her Japanese voice actress, Takako Honda, dubs a lot of Berry's film roles – including that of Storm from the X-Men Film Series, who like April, is black and has weather-control powers.
  • Dr. Slump had Dr Mashirito as a recurring Big Bad (as far as that goes in the comedy/satire genre), with facial features based on Akira Toriyama's editor, Kazuhiko Torishima. It's even lampshaded by a few panels where said editor calls up Toriyama to tell him not to draw Mashirito to look like him - for this scene, he is drawn with exactly the same face as Mashirito.
  • It's been noted that Re-L of Ergo Proxy has an uncanny resemblance to Evanescence singer Amy Lee.
  • Eyeshield 21 has some really strange ones considering all the characters are high school football players. Shin (especially in the early days) was pretty much Bruce Lee in football gear, Aoyanagi is Weird Al on steroids, Bud Walker is Johnny Depp, and Shinryuuji has players that resemble Gandhi, Richard Nixon, and the Dalai Lama.
  • Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star fame infamously resembles Mel Gibson's character from The Road Warrior with a bit of Bruce Lee to round him out.
  • In Moldiver, Mad Scientist Doctor Machinegal's robot female minions are all named after (and are designed to resemble) various female movie stars.
  • Doctor Reichwein in Monster bears a strong resemblance to American actor Wilford Brimley. Oddly, this is actually due to Naoki Urasawa's unrepentant Osamu Tezuka fandom. Reichwein was modelled on Brimley because he was the closest Real Life actor to Tezuka's famed "Mr. Mustachio" character. Still, any AMV Hell clip of the character will include the dance remix of "You know, I have diabeetus..."
  • One Piece:
  • Masayuki Ozaki has confirmed that several characters in Tiger & Bunny are supposed to resemble certain famous individuals:
  • Yami No Aegis's Zero really looks like Leon from The Professional. They're also both assassins, and aside from the hats (Zero wears a baseball hat) they dress identically.
  • The Jesus of Saint Young Men is drawn to look like Johnny Depp. The comic occasionally lampshades the similarity - one of his bios says he would want Depp to play him in a movie about his life, and at one point, he distracts a group of Gyaru who are upsetting Buddha by posing at a 'Johnny Depp-like angle' and flirting with them in English. At another point, he tries on a Cosplay of Jack Sparrow, calling it 'fate'. When Buddha tries to persuade Jesus to change his hairstyle, he hands him a movie magazine containing some photos of Depp's various roles — Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow, Sweeney Todd and Willy Wonka — but Jesus decides to keep his original haircut due to the need to protect his celebrity image.
  • According to Naoko Takeuchi, Seiya Kou/Sailor Star Fighter from Sailor Moon was based on androgynous model Jenny Shimizu.
  • Zafal Takie from the Motorball arc of Gunnm is based on Grace Jones in Conan the Destroyer. Overall this seems to be a fairly common practice with black characters in manga. Since there aren't many black people in Japan, artists will often use American movies as photo-reference, as Japanese manga artists' attempts to produce black characters freehand can sometimes show a dubious similarity to Blackface caricatures.
  • In Naruto, the First Raikage is designed to look like Jimi Hendrix.
  • Shougo Sena from Love Stage!!'s physical appearance is based off of one of Daigo, lead vocalist from the band Breakerz, who happens to be author Eiki Eiki's younger brother.
  • Ash Lynx, the main character in Banana Fish, was initially based off the tennis player Stephen Edberg, and later River Phoenix. Another character, Max Lobo, was modeled on Harrison Ford.
  • Gundam:
  • Gendo Ikari and Kozo Fuyutsuki from Neon Genesis Evangelion are heavily based on (respectively) Ed Bishop and George Sewell in their roles as Edward Straker and Alec E. Freeman in the TV series UFO. Their character dynamic is even very much the same as in UFO.
  • Mamura from Hirunaka no Ryuusei is modeled on Kentaro Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi even portrayed Mamura during a collaboration photoshoot.
  • Little Witch Academia: Earl Paul Hanbridge has a pretty uncanny resemblance to Colin Firth, especially as he looks on the Kingsman film series.

    Comic Books — DC Universe 

    Comic Books — Marvel Universe 

    Comic Books — Other 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Paul Kidby's illustrations of Sam Vimes in Discworld cover designs and other art deliberately depict him as Clint Eastwood. By contrast, Melvyn Grant, the artist of Where's My Cow?, drew Vimes like Pete Postlethwaite, who was said to be Terry Pratchett's own fantasy casting for the role.
    • Similiarly, Kidby has based his drawings of Carrot Ironfoundersson on a young Liam Neeson.
  • Cornelia Funke based Mo in Inkheart on Brendan Fraser, who went on to play the character in the film version. (And in her less-famous novel The Thief Lord, she based Viktor on Bob Hoskins. It was also made into a film, but not with Bob Hoskins in.)
  • Harry Dresden is generally described (and in illustrations and the comics drawn) in fashions that evoke a young Clint Eastwood, which carries over into the art. Tall, lean, dark haired, stubbly, sharp features... yep, that's Clint.
  • Doctor Who Expanded Universe examples:
  • Word of God from Marissa Meyer is that Linh Cinder from Lunar Chronicles was modeled after Mew Azama, the actress who played Sailor Jupiter in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
  • Barbara Hambly:
  • Supposedly, J. K. Rowling based Hagrid on Robbie Coltrane when she was writing the first Harry Potter book. Either way, when the movies rolled around, she insisted that Robbie Coltrane was the only choice for the part of Hagrid and, fortunately for her, they got himnote . JK has also said that she imagined Professor McGonagall as being Maggie Smith. This also worked out for her. One that didn't however, was her vision of Tim Roth as Snape (Roth later confirmed he was offered the part, but was unable to appear in the first film due to his commitment to Tim Burton's version of Planet of the Apes (2001)), although it's clear that Alan Rickman did start to creep into her image of him in later books.
    • She initially modelled Dumbeldore on John Gieulgud.
  • Tamora Pierce often "casts" characters in her head in both her Tortall Universe and Circle of Magic books—sometimes the actor themselves or a role they've played. Rosethorn, for example, is based on Kira Nerys. (Yes, she's a Trekkie.) Rosto the Piper is played by James Marsters, which is pretty clear when you read Beka's description and then look at a picture of, say, Spike.
  • Played with in Gaunt's Ghosts. In the books, Gaunt is described as having blonde hair and it's generally agreed he was modeled after Sean Bean's performance in Sharpe. The funny thing is that the cover art also looks like Sharpe, only this time as he's described in the books.
  • Christopher Fowler's novel Hell Train is conceived as the novelisation of a fictional "lost" Hammer Horror film, with a framing narrative around the planning of the film. This includes an in-canon casting chapter where it's discussed which of the Hammer regulars and other well-known English character actors would play the major characters.
  • Happens in-universe in Nora Roberts' Tribute. After meeting Former Child Star Cilla McGowan, graphic novelist Ford Sawyer is inspired to create a new superheroine and bases her appearance off of Cilla's.
  • A.J. Butcher, the author of Spy High, said that he envisioned Lori as the tennis player Anna Kournikova, and would want her to be played by Kournikova in any screen adaptation (although Kournikova isn't an actress.)
  • William Goldman says he wrote Fezzik in The Princess Bride with André the Giant in mind. They got him for the movie, even though he didn't speak English!
  • Rex Mundi, the co-hero of Robert Rankin's Armageddon trilogy, is repeatedly described as looking like a young Harrison Ford. The third book in the trilogy finishes with "credits" (including actors who at the time of publication were obviously far too old for the characters (or, in the case of Orson Welles, too dead)). It also has a bunch of minor characters arguing over which film star they resemble as they fight to get more page space. Note that Rex's co-hero is a time-travelling Elvis Presley.
  • Writer Ian Fleming based the James Bond's original appearance on that of singer/actor Hoagy Carmichael. In later books, however, Fleming made Bond more closely resemble actor Sean Connery (including making the character part Scottish).
  • Recurring Star Wars character Kell Tainer resembles Jason Segel in illustrations. Both of them are very tall, so it's possibly intentional.
  • Word of God says that Shadow from American Gods by Neil Gaiman was supposed to look like Dwayne Johnson.
  • An odd partial example - the The Pirates books make a point out of describing the Captain in the introduction to every book as "all teeth and curls" and with "a pleasant, open face", both notorious clichés used to describe Tom Baker and Peter Davison's Doctors in Doctor Who ("teeth and curls" coming from a notorious Take That! line by Jon Pertwee's Doctor in "The Five Doctors", and "pleasant open face" from Terrance Dicks' Target novelisations). However, when the author was asked about whether he imagined the Captain being 'played' by those actors in an interview, he admitted that he didn't imagine him as anyone specific at all. The version of him that appears in The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! looks slightly like a mixture of Tom Baker and Peter Davison, but in the art style it's hard to tell, and his voice performance (by Hugh Grant) and animation is nothing like how either of them would have played the role.
  • Word of God is that in Star Trek: Vanguard, Admiral Nogura is "played" by Mako and Jon Cooper is James Naughton.
  • The depiction of Frost in the last book's cover of the Magic University series has a staggering resemblance to Kiera Knightley.
  • In Catch-22, Major Major Major Major's life is plagued by his resemblance to Henry Fonda:
    Major Major had three strikes on him from the beginning – his mother, his father and Henry Fonda, to whom he bore a sickly resemblance almost from the moment of his birth. Long before he even suspected who Henry Fonda was, he found himself the subject of unflattering comparisons everywhere he went. Total strangers saw fit to deprecate him, with the result that he was stricken early with a guilty fear of people and an obsequious impulse to apologize to society for the fact that he was not Henry Fonda."
  • The children's book Out of the Dust features a non-celebrity example. On the cover there is a historical photograph of a girl named Lucille Burroughs. Word of God is that Billie Jo looks like her.
  • In the illustrations for the short story "Peaceniks" in The Esential Book of K9, the character Starjakk is modelled, with permission, on the actor Vitas Varnas.
  • Trainspotting: Mark Renton is described as looking like footballer Alex McLeish due to his ginger hair, while Tommy is described as looking like a young Harrison Ford. In the sequel Porno, Sick Boy is described as looking like Steven Seagal.

    Puppet Shows 

    Tabletop Games 
  • A few characters from Warhammer 40,000 are based on famous movie characters and are thus designed to resemble the actors who played them (though how much the models and/or official art reflect this is pretty hit or miss). Fabius Bile is pretty blatantly modeled on Richard O'Brien as Riff Raff, Sly Marbo is Sylvester Stallone's Rambo, etc., though sometimes there's no particular rationale for a character's resemblance to a particular celebrity. There's one cover painting for one of the Horus Heresy books where Horus bears an uncanny resemblance to James Gandolfini of all people.
  • At COTG Live Event, several wrestlers dressed as characters from the Champions Of The Galaxy card game. These characters then got special cards made to resemble the wrestlers portraying them, Thantos even getting altered abilities to make him even more like Chuck Taylor.

    Video Games 

    Web Comics 

    Web Original 
  • Used literally by the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. Real Life celebrities Leland Orser, Mick Jagger, Avery Brooks, and Miley Cyrus are all super-powered, among others, and two (Leland Orser and Miley Cyrus) are a villain and hero, respectively.
  • In the Whateley Universe, Gunnery Sgt. Oscar Bardue (ret.) plays Nick Fury - in front of the in-universe majority shareholder of Marvel - thus giving readers their first real impression of who and what Bardue looks like.
  • Conversational Troping by El Sandifer in TARDIS Eruditorum when discussing the Doctor Who Missing Adventures novel The Dark Path as though it was actually published in 1968, just to show why this doen't work. She notes that the evil Member of the Doctor's Race (don't mention the Time Lords!) who appears in the book is drawn on the cover to look like character actor Roger Delgado, suggesting McIntee had some casting ideas in mind when writing it.

    Western Animation 

:: Indexes ::

Previous

Index

Next

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComicbookFantasyCasting