One Scene Wonder / Live-Action Films

• Christopher Walken has a habit of appearing in small roles in just about anything. A good solid chunk of his roles are him just showing up in the middle of the movie, stealing a scene, and going on his merry way, as aptly illustrated by the poster on the main page. Walken is firmly on record as never turning down a gig, as long as he has the time in his schedule. It doesn't matter how good or bad your movie is, or how large or small the part is; you give him some money (and it doesn't have to be very much money, either), and Christopher Walken will show up and act.
  • In Pennies from Heaven, he plays a pimp, who shows up for one scene, does a striptease, completely upstages Steve Martin in the dance number category, and disappears for the rest of the movie.
  • He has a single scene in Pulp Fiction in which he tells an inappropriately graphic story to young Butch about the journey of his father's watch.
  • Romance & Cigarettes. He turns up, sings "Delilah," sings "Red Headed Woman," fucks off again, and the best part of the movie is over.
  • MouseHunt sees Walken playing a hammy and delightfully over the top exterminator who completely steals the scene and ends up blowing up a large portion of the house in his efforts to kill a single mouse. The mouse survives.
  • Walken is also the centerpiece of probably the only good scene from Gigli, with some truly absurd dialog at right angles to the rest of the film.
    "Man, you know what I’d love to do? Right now? Go down to Marie Callender’s, get me a big bowl, pie, some ice cream on it, mmm-hmm good! Put some on your head, your tongue would slap your brains out trying to get to it! Interested? Sure?"
  • Walken shares credit with Dennis Hopper for completely stealing the entire film when both appear together for a single scene in True Romance.
  • Likewise, his appearance as Clem the Janitor in the otherwise forgettable Joe Dirt, where he threatens to stab Kid Rock in the face with a soldering iron.
  • Although he might have had a bit too much screentime to count as one in The Rundown it still follows the same general pattern.
  • Does a similar thing as the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow (1999), this time even without dialogue.
  • Again in Abel Ferrara's philosophical vampire film The Addiction, where he shows up just to deliver a five-minute monologue on Sartre and vampirism.
  • An early example is his turn as Annie's disturbed brother in Annie Hall.
  • He has one scene in Mistress as an actor who kills himself after finding out that they changed the ending.
• Absence of Malice: Assistant U.S. Attorney General Wells only appears in the penultimate scene, which he dominates by being a gruff, snarky Badass Bureaucrat and Reasonable Authority Figure. Plenty of critics and casual fans give him more praise than main cast members with six times as much screen time. Despite his limited screen time, Wells is one of the best-remembered characters Wilford Brimley ever played.
• Airport: A number of actors like Maureen Stapleton and George Kennedy dazzled with little screen time. Helen Hayes won a Oscar for her role as an elderly stowaway.
• Bandits:
  • Cheri (Azura Skye) and Phil, the Makeout Kids who become the first people who Joe and Terry take prisoner but treat well. The way Cheri treats the event as an Unusually Uninteresting Sight and Phil makes a bumbling attempt to be a Badass Bystander help make their two scenes memorable.
  • Mildred, the Cool Old Lady bank manager. She is both the bank manager who does the most to defy the eponymous bandits and the manager who is the most amused and excited about being robbed by them.
• Die Hard with a Vengeance: The Federal Reserve guard who tries to hold off Simon's gang with a shotgun.
• Joan Sims as Rigor Mortis in Doctor in the House (1954). She's on screen for less than a minute and spends most of that time munching on an apple, yet still provides a rather amusing scene.
• The Dukes of Hazzard: Two very minor characters are decently remembered.
  • The burly jail prisoner who Boss pays to punch another prisoner who insulted his wardrobe, only for the burly prisoner to insult Boss's wardrobe himself once he collects his money.
  • Farmer's Daughter Laurie Pullman barely has a minute of screen time in the opening and closing scenes but makes a decent impression for two reasons. One is her Lingerie Scene as she makes out with Luke at the beginning of the film and tries to keep her shotgun-toting father and brother from pursuing Luke on her behalf. The second is how she ends up chasing Luke with a shotgun herself after he moves on to another girlfriend.
• Army of Thieves:
  • Dieter's main two opponents in the safecracking contest Gwendoline uses to audition him: Neo (the reigning champion) and Fireball (the red-haired woman with leopard print gloves) make a powerful impression in their one scene for their skills and Neo's Sore Loser moment.
  • Pavel, the Surveillance Station Slacker at the second bank who picks up on signs of the heist despite his initial sloppiness, sounds the alarm and then wounds "action hero" Brad after a fight.
• Freaky:
  • Ginny, the opening scene victim who gets some Meta Guy lines and almost escapes from the Butcher.
  • The Spanish teacher who translates the inscription on the dagger and sternly lectures Josh for being unable to do so himself despite taking her class.
• Get Smart:
  • The plus-size woman Max waltzes with in a hilarious yet tender scene.
  • The vice-president who gets into a shouting match with The Chief.
• Al Pacino in Gigli.
• Jean Reno as "the cleaner" has one scene in La femme Nikita, but it is probably what viewers remember best about the whole movie. In fact, the scene was so memorable that Luc Besson decided to make a similar character the protagonist of his next film, with the role specifically written for Reno.
• Bill Bailey as the Whale in the film of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005).
• The Journey of Natty Gann: Twinky, The Cutie at the reform school Natty is sent to, and Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold blacksmith Charlie are both gone from the film within five or ten minutes of first appearing but make powerful impacts on the viewers.
• Kick-Ass 2: Iain Glen as Uncle Ralph D'Amico seemed even crazier and eviler than Mark Strong as Frank D'Amico in the first one. If this scene was the set up for him to be the Big Bad in the third one, it was a good start.
• Sean Connery's cameo appearance as King Richard at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
  • Parodied by Robin Hood: Men in Tights, where Sir Patrick Stewart turns up as King Richard.
• Orson Welles' role as Cardinal Wolsey in the 1966 film version of A Man for All Seasons. He's in two scenes, and is probably the best thing about this very excellent film. In a later version of the film, John Gielgud did a pretty decent, though less remarkable, job in the role as well.
• Diedrich Bader in Napoleon Dynamite as Rex the patriotic martial arts instructor with the bodybuilder wife.
  • Bader as a mugger in Euro Trip who robs Jamie while he's being orally pleased, though he's unaware of it and confused by Jaimie's remarks.
  • A bi-curious security guard in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
    And then, when he's finished, I want you to say, "Oh, what a lovely tea party!"
• Dwayne Johnson in The Mummy Returns in the prologue, before his transformation.
• Orson Welles as Father Mapple in the 1956 version of Moby-Dick, which also can boast Gregory Peck and John Huston as stars, with a screenplay by Ray Bradbury.
• The Nice Guys:
  • Holly's friend Jessica is pretty entertaining in her two (consecutive) scenes. She's amused when March and Healy discuss the case and has an expressive reaction when an assassin threatens her and Holly.
  • The various porn stars at Sid's party provide a memorable bit of color in less than a minute apiece, particularly the mermaids, the innuendo-dropping Pinocchio, and the costumed man on stilts.
  • The young boy with the Porn Stash who witnesses Misty's death and covers up her body makes a powerful impression.
• Nobody
  • The Barber, the Crazy-Prepared Knowledge Broker played by Colin Salmon warrants his high spot in the credits despite only having one short scene.
  • Yulian's subordinate who is shown casually blackmailing a Pentagon employee to learn about Hutch only to wisely decide she wants nothing to do with him the moment she gets that information back.
  • The Desert Storm veteran who has an Oh, Crap! moment when he recognizes Hutch's military tattoo is only onscreen for a couple minutes, but is quite memorable.
  • The Dark Action Girl who is shown pulling a knife out of her side after the surviving mobsters from the attack on Hutch's house get into their car makes a good impression in her one scene. It helps how she bickers some with Pavel about whether to go straight to Yulian's or drop by a doctor first.
• Alec Baldwin is in Glengarry Glen Ross for exactly one scene, in which he delivers a monologue that establishes the atmosphere of menace that overhangs the rest of the film. It's one of the more famous monologues of cinema. Interestingly, the character and his speech were created exclusively for the film, due to studio executives feeling that the original play lacked the necessary exposition needed to establish the premise.
• Go: Melissa McCarthy only has 57 seconds of screen time but is fantastic in her role as a cheerful, recently exposed Secret-Keeper.
• In Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the main character and his band meet famous musicians of the '60s during the height of their fame. Scene-stealers include Jack White as a conceited, drugged-out, mumbling Elvis Presley with kung-fu skills and Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as The Beatles.
• The Wraith: The couple in the Daytona who Packard and his gang harass in the opening scene as a villainous Establishing Character Moment, stealing their car and threatening to rape the girl. The two are decently expressive throughout it all.
• Dark Passage: Some of the film's best characters only have one scene or (two consecutive scenes in Coley's case).
  • Bob, who gets some good Mr. Exposition lines while delivering a devastating "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Marge. He doesn't crack no matter how much Marge tries to get under his skin, and then shows a good amount of grace upon realizing that there's another man in Irene's life.
  • Vincent's loyal, amiable friend and confidant George.
  • The cop in the diner, who shows some Hyper-Awareness and almost captures Vincent just a few minutes after he starts using his new face.
  • Creepy Good Back-Alley Doctor Coley.
• Rick Moranis as a high-strung businessman in the forgettable 1986 comedy Head Office.
• Rick Moranis's appearance in L.A. Story as a British gravedigger, an homage to Hamlet.
• Vincent Price in Edward Scissorhands, who almost steals the film from Johnny Depp. In fact, the film created him a whole new following, his mannerisms and deep character acting captivating a lot of new fans.
• The Aviator has Jude Law star in one scene as Errol Flynn. He steals the scene completely.
• Red Water: All of the first three shark victims are more memorable than some characters with more screen-time and plot relevance.
  • Tricia, due to her decently expressive warning/Freak Out when she first sees the shark, her wardrobe, and the brutal way she gets repeatedly dragged under the water. Unusually, this is helped by something unrelated to her physical, on-screen appearance (namely her father putting a bounty on the shark offscreen, affecting the rest of the film).
  • The old fisherman who gets some humorous dialogue with his grandson before his death.
  • The nature tour guide, who gets the most memorable death in the movie (and the only one played for Black Comedy) when she's eaten off a low-hanging ripe bridge during the middle of a poignant Rousing Speech about how the sanctuary is a serene place worth protecting.
• Singin' in the Rain
  • Cyd Charisse. The entire "Broadway Melody" sequence is completely superfluous to the plot, and done entirely to try to recapture the glory of An American in Paris (Gene Kelly never did quite grasp that every musical doesn't have to have a ballet), but Charisse's silent performance as an icy gangster moll still stands with the stars' dances as a highlight of the film.
  • The screaming fanboy who shows up at the movie premiere in the opening sequence is also surprisingly memorable. Especially since he goes into hysterics not over the film's stars, but over "Zelda! Oh, Zelda!" — who, played by a very young Rita Moreno, is something of this trope as well.
  • Julius Tannen, who will forever be known as the "Talking Picture Man". Especially his feigned humility anticipating applause at the end.
• Sneakers: Abbott, The Comically Serious (and easily exasperated) NSA spy, only shows up at the very end, but is one of the most memorable parts of the movie. His Fair Cop subordinate Mary counts as well, due to her reaction to Carl flirting with her.
• Spice World: Stephen Fry as the judge sentencing the girls for releasing a single much less good than their previous ones.
  Judge: Melvin B, Emma, Melvin C, Victoria, Geri (pronounced with hard G), you have been found guilty of releasing a single which is by no means as kicking as your previous records, nor does it have such a wicked, fat, dirty, bassline. You are sentenced to having your next record enter the charts at number 179, before dropping straight out the following week. Furthermore, you are sentenced to twenty years of having to appear on cheesy chat shows in Taiwan, talking about how you used to be famous. And may God have mercy on your lip gloss. (Bangs gavel) Call Gary Barlow.
• Superman II: The U.S. President only gets about a minute of screen time but is a very iconic character for being the (dignified and defiant) subject of the original Kneel Before Zod speech.
• David Bowie has been this more than once:
  • Vendice Partners in Absolute Beginners. This character is one of several antagonists in on an evil scheme, and he convinces the idealistic photographer hero to join his advertising agency and become a sellout. He gets one big sequence, a brief appearance beforehand, and a wordless bit prior to the climax. But that's enough time for the spectacular Villain Recruitment Song / Disney Acid Sequence "That's Motivation", and between that and performing the movie's Title Theme Tune (he wrote both songs too, and there was a music video for the latter on top of that), Bowie was billed third in the credits, behind only the young lovers at the story's heart.
  • Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ.
  • Heavily lampshaded in Zoolander, where they give his brief appearance as the Walk-Off judge a ludicrous amount of fanfare — to the point of plastering his name on the screen and starting up the song, "Let's Dance."
    Bowie: I believe I might be of service.
  • In Into the Night he has two brief scenes as a hitman who, among other things, questions Jeff Goldblum while sticking his gun in his mouth. Bowie looks downright scuzzy — a rare look for him — in the role.
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back does something similar to Zoolander for Mark Hamill's cameo, but ratcheted up the cheesiness. George Carlin's cameo as a hitchhiker is also very much an example, as is Chris Rock as the director of Bluntman and Chronic, and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as themselves on the set of Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season. And Gus Van Sant as himself. And Tracy Morgan essentially playing a black version of Jay.
• Jay and Silent Bob turn up in Scream 3 for all of ten seconds.
• Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed: The Girl Scout who offers to sell Shaggy and Scooby a box of cookies after being trapped by Wickles' security system along with the gang barely has twenty seconds of screen time. However, she's utterly hilarious and memorable in those twenty seconds.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • The Mouth of Sauron in The Return of the King, played by Bruce Spence (not that you'll notice), who was cut in the theatrical release. He appears only briefly to negotiate on behalf of his master before Aragon cuts his head off, but his unique character design and mannerisms makes him hard to forget. Some of the videogames have him taking a few levels in Badass and becoming a potent antagonist in his own right - most notably The Battle for Middle-earth, where he leads a force that burns Lorien to the ground in the Evil campaign.
  • Sauron himself in the The Fellowship of the Ring. He gets approximately a minute of combined screentime as a towering warrior wielding a giant mace before spending the rest of the nine-hour trilogy as a giant glowing disembodied eye, but he gets the best set of fantasy "bad guy armor" in any movie, game, or TV show, ever, and looks unbelievably badass.
  • Figwit, short for "Frodo is grea... who is that?" in The Fellowship of the Ring. Three seconds of screen time, but Bret McKenzie had such a large cult following that they even gave his character lines in Return of the King.
  • If you were to talk to a casual fan who has trouble telling the films apart, you can usually hit gold by telling them "The Return of the King is the one with the Giant Spider". Shelob turned up twice for less than ten minutes, total, but she's always remembered.
• In the movie Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, Mark Hamill was cast as Daryl Taylor only to be killed off within about three lines. All of these previously-mentioned tropes are later subverted when, later on, he provides the voice for one of the Haydonite villains.
• Many people (both movie and Tom and Jerry fans alike) agree that Tom & Jerry (2021) is far from perfect. However, there are a few things that audiences found entertaining: any scene where Tom and Jerry get up to their typical cartoon hi-jinks (which, sadly, take up roughly fifteen minutes of the film's total run time) and the animal tornado at the movie's climax.
• Cary Elwes gets one in The Chase (1994), as a smarmy newscaster who has to apologize to his viewers due to Charlie Sheen's flipping off the camera.
• The Crazies (2010): The captured young soldier who was thrust into things with no idea about what is going on and decides to defy Just Following Orders is a huge highlight of the movie despite only having about three minutes of screen time.
• The Princess Bride: Billy Crystal and Carol Kane as Miracle Max and his wife Valerie, a bickering old couple. There's also Peter Cook's role as the aptly titled Impressive Clergyman with the ridiculous speech impediment. And an underrated one with Mel Smith as the albino.
• Four Weddings and a Funeral has Rowan Atkinson in a minor role as Gerald, the priest who keeps screwing up his lines in Wedding Number Two. He gets the names of both parties wrong, mentions the Holy Goat and the Holy Spigot, and utters the classic line "awful wedded wife". He gets the coveted ''and''.
• Rowan Atkinson is in all of two scenes in Love Actually, one of which has him on-screen for maybe 10 seconds, and they're both absolutely hilarious.
• John Gielgud made his later half of his career with these types of roles. Notable examples include:
  • Hospital director Mr. Carr Gomm in The Elephant Man
  • Lord Irwin in Gandhi
  • King Louis VII in Becket
  • Pope Pius XIII in The Shoes Of The Fisherman.
  • The Prime Minister in Murder by Decree
  • Sir Francis Hinsley in The Loved One ...and countless other examples.
• The Outlaw Josey Wales: The Anti-Villain Bounty Hunter Josey faces in Santo Rio, due to how (in contrast to the other bounty hunters who face Josey) he seems to dislike his profession, doesn't mock Josey, and faces Josey in a fair fight despite realizing he may be outclassed by the hardened fugitive. He's also on the receiving end of perhaps the biggest Memetic Mutation of the film.
• John Hurt as Jellon Lamb, the Bounty Hunter who believes in neither God nor evolution, but is a big racist, in The Proposition. Only in two scenes, but completely owns both of them, and is billed as one of the film's stars. In the Making Of featurette on the DVD, he mentions that many of the other actors had originally wanted his role, even though it would mean less screen time than some of them actually got.
  • Hurt's brief scene as the desperate clerk in Dead Man qualifies.
  • Also his turn in Spaceballs, where he hilariously dies yet again.
• William Hurt, in A History of Violence, has a single scene as Joey Cusack's brother. It's about five to ten minutes long. He was nominated for an Academy Award.
• William H. Macy has one scene as a CIA agent in Wag the Dog and is absolutely brilliant. The man keeps up with Robert De Niro.
• True Romance is filled with Wonders (though a few manage to split their appearances in two scenes), including Gary Oldman as the menacing pimp, Christopher Walken as the formidable gangster, Dennis Hopper as the sacrificial father, Brad Pitt as the clueless stoner, James Gandolfini as a hitman who suffers a Rasputinian Death, Saul Rubinek as a coked-out movie producer, and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis Presley.
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation:
  • The British Prime Minster really milks his brief screen time by being a Reasonable Authority Figure displaying Tranquil Fury for half of that time and having some hilarious loopy lines after being tranquilized in the second half of the scene.
  • Badass Israeli Giant Mook Kagan only lasts long enough for one fight scene, but it's a pretty good one.
• Pontius Pilate in Monty Python's Life of Brian is one of the most memowable aspects of the film. Although Biggus Dickus might pothibly give him a run for hith money.
• The foolhardy Black Knight Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "'Tis but a scratch!"
• National Lampoon's European Vacation: The French Jerk waiter who insults the Griswold family while hiding behind the language barrier and sporting an enormous smile.
• Steven Ford in Starship Troopers has an epic pre-drop speech prior to the assault on Klendathu. Of course, he's horribly killed during the actual fighting.
• Powers Boothe and Rutger Hauer in Sin City are completely captivating in their one scene each.
• Patrick Stewart has quite a few of these:
  • His cameo in the final scene of Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which he steals in classic Large Ham fashion. Appropriately enough, the same role (King Richard the Lionhearted) was played in Prince of Thieves by an uncredited Sean Connery who also stole that scene merely by showing up.
  • His role as Mr. Perdue in L.A. Story.. "You think with a financial statement like this you can have the duck?"
    Mr. Perdue: Your usual table, Mr. Christopher?
    Carlo: (played by Chevy Chase) No, I'd like a good one this time.
    Mr. Perdue: I'm sorry, that is impossible.
    Carlo: Part of the new cruelty?
    Mr. Perdue: I'm afraid so.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: The Last Stand has a two scene wonder with Eric Dane as Multiple Man.
  • Patrick Stewart's cameo near the end of X-Men Origins: Wolverine elicited applause from some theater audiences.
  • Lest we forget Wolverine's appearance in X-Men: First Class, complete with Precision F-Strike. Rebecca Romijn when Magneto tells Mystique he'd "wait for a few years" too. (and she said she wanted to have Wolverine's line too!)
    • Wolverine's appearance, apparently, also impressed not only the audience but also Charles, who remembered the event a decade later, when the Mental Time Travel Logan shows up to recruit him.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past:
    • Quicksilver is recruited solely to help break Erik out of prison midway through the movie and returns home shortly afterward. Despite this, he's at the center of the movie's most impressive and hilarious scene, where he enters Bullet Time to stop some bullets while also screwing with the guards. All while listening to "Time In A Bottle."
    • The guy in The Stinger (Apocalypse) also leaves a mark.
    • While they appear in several scenes, most of the future mutants appear for such a small amount of time and have little dialogue, but have such impressive fight scenes that it can lead to this. Blink gets the most, with Bishop getting in on it as well.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse again has Wolverine in one (though unlike First Class, the marketing decided to spoil it), past mutants in an impressive fight scene with the Ancient Egypt Horsemen, and the two scene wonder Caliban, who even inspired James Mangold to include the role in Logan.
  • Dark Phoenix has Dazzler providing the music for an outdoor party.^note A notorious Internet rumor was that she was to be played by Taylor Swift.
• Christopher Lee:
  • Essentially as himself, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The twist is that he takes all of the Dracula and Saruman mannerisms and transposes them onto a dentist. Just imagine Christopher Lee throwing his resonant basso into the word "Lollipops." When he shows up again, he's astonished to see Willy hasn't had any candy at all.
  • Dracula in The Magic Christian
  • He drops into a scene partway through Gary Sherman's Death Line as an MI5 agent who trades insults with Donald Pleasence's grumpy police inspector.
  • His portrayal of the Burgomaster in Sleepy Hollow (1999).
  • And as the voice of the Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland (2010). Apparently Tim Burton liked to put him in roles like these.
• Kathy Bates as Queen Victoria in the Jackie Chan flick Around the World in 80 Days (2004) (Not to mention Arnold Schwarzenegger in a very funny cameo!)
• The Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal Lecter started out as one of these in Manhunter, back when he was Brian Cox. Three scenes, owns the movie. He doesn't even do much except sit there with his jaw hanging out, taunt the hero, and talk on the telephone, and yet... and yet... (In fact, he only has eighteen minutes of screen time in Silence of the Lambs, less than any other (leading) character that an actor has won a Oscar for portraying in a movie.)
• Snowpiercer: The Large Ham, Pregnant Badass kindergarten teacher who provides the main characters with a surprising amount of trouble during her few minutes of screentime.
• The Social Network: Erica Albright is more like a three-scene wonder, but instantly, many were captivated by her brief role as Mark Zuckerberg's estranged girlfriend and instantly wanted to learn more about her. It is astounding to think that she isn't even an actual person and was created specifically for the film. Needless to say, there's a reason why this role convinced David Fincher to pick Rooney Mara for the lead role in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), which earned her a Best Actress nomination.
• Sir Alec Guinness often did this, and the smaller his role, the more memorable it often is. He managed to upstage both Peter O'Toole (in Lawrence of Arabia) and Omar Sharif (Doctor Zhivago) playing roles which, while crucial to the films, had relatively little screen time. He has a memorable role as Pope Innocent in Brother Sun, Sister Moon. He was so mesmerizing as Jacob Marley in the musical Scrooge (1970) that he earned an additional scene that appears in longer versions of the film.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • All three films featured Bruce Campbell in a different cameo role each time, but it wasn't until the third that he became a One-Scene Wonder with his amusing French maitre'd.
  • "Macho Man" Randy Savage's role in the first movie as "Bonesaw Mcgraw", a crazy wrestler who wouldn't look out of place on something like ECW.
  • And Hal Sparks' hilariously awkward elevator scene in the second movie.
• Tap dancing duo The Nicholas Brothers were very much this, as they were usually only in all of their films for a dance number - all of those dance numbers being so amazing many people can't remember anything else about the films. Such as this scene from Stormy Weather.
• Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, a troupe pulled from the dance floors of Harlem, would show up in movies like Hellzapoppin' or A Day at the Races (1937), go through some jaw-dropping gravity-defying moves, and exit.
• Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca, as, respectively, the conniving Guillermo Ugarte and the scheming restaurateur Mr. Ferrari.
  • They also appear in this scene in Hollywood Canteen.
• Grindhouse features several:
  • Quentin Tarantino himself has a memorable cameo in Planet Terror as a soldier who attempts to rape the heroine as his zombified genitals decompose in front of her.
  • In one the fake trailers, for Werewolf Women of the SS, features Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu for no apparent reason. It's almost enough to wash the bad taste from The Wicker Man (2006) right out of your mouth.
  • The fake trailer for Hobo with a Shotgun is made of this trope.
• It's hard to see a The Little Shop of Horrors poster that doesn't advertise Jack Nicholson's appearance as "dentist patient number one". In fact, the whole dentist subplot became so memorable, in the Broadway adaptation, it was enlarged to make the dentist a Romantic False Lead. Bill Murray played Nicholson's old part in the film adaptation of the musical.
• Viggo Mortensen has a small part playing Satan in The Prophecy. He only has three scenes, two of which are fairly short, but they're the best part of the movie and and very, very chilling, particularly the first scene. Considering the main villain is Christopher Walken as an evil angel, that's a tall order.
  • Mortensen has a memorable one scene as the wheelchair-bound Lalin in Carlito's Way.
• In Transformers Film Series:
  • Bernie Mac plays a memorable used car salesman in only one scene.
  • Sideswipe is shown being absolutely badass in the opening scene of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, but barely appears in the rest of the movie.
    • Jetfire is one of the most beloved characters in the movie, even though he only appears twice: the first to teleport the main characters and leave, the second to die. Being a Cool Old Guy who is also an SR-71 probably does it.
  • In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, we have (Ken Jeong as) Jerry Wang, a crazy Conspiracy Theorist who works at Sam's office. What did he do that made him so memorable? Faced with immediate termination at the hands of Laserbeak, he decides to forego pleading for his life in favor of suddenly pulling out two very large pistols (which he holds gangsta-style) and pointing them right at Laserbeak's face.
  Jerry Wang: You messed with the wrong Wang, bitch!
• John Houseman started acting in movies (rather than producing them) when he was over sixty years old, and so, his example of this trope in Seven Days in May as one of the military coup-plotters was in fact his first appearance on screen. And then twenty years later, he did the same with his last role, as the hilariously unflappable driving instructor in The Naked Gun.
• Crispin Glover again in Wild at Heart. His role as Christmas-obsessed, sandwich-making cousin Dell, who enjoys putting cockroaches in his underpants and has a terrible fear of black gloves - in lasts for about three minutes and is probably the weirdest damn thing he's ever done, which is saying a lot.
• The Harry Potter film series has a few:
  • David Tennant, while not the best thing about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, certainly puts in a show-stopping performance as Barty Crouch Jr.
  • Jeff Rawle's tragic scene as Amos Diggory crying over Cedric's body.
  • Julie Christie as Madame Rosmerta in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
  • Emma Thompson, as Sybil Trelawny in Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix.
  • John Hurt as Ollivander in the first movie. If you'll pardon the pun, spellbinding.
  • Nick Moran made a short but impressive appearance as the leader of a gang of snatchers in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
  • Also in Hallows, Bill Nighy is Rufus Scrimgeour, inexplicably Welsh Minister for Magic, symbol of strength, beacon of hope to the Wizarding World! Gets maybe ten minutes before being Killed Off for Real.
• Network:
  • Ned Beatty as ominous CEO Arthur Jensen. The guy's onscreen probably five minutes but his speech is utterly fantastic. "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I WON'T HAVE IT! IS THAT CLEAR??"
  • And then there's Beatrice Straight, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for what is the shortest amount of time an Oscar-winning role had been onscreen. (five minutes and forty seconds, mostly in an equally impressive speech) Beatty was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
• Thomas Haden Church as the CEO of Brawndo in Idiocracy. Two minutes of pure hilarity. "The computer's doing that auto-layoff thingy!"
• The Wrong Box has a big cast of British stars including Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, John Mills, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Nanette Newman, and Tony Hancock. But it's Peter Sellers as a pathetic, old, deranged, cat-loving doctor called on to provide a death certificate who steals the movie with two scenes totaling less than 10 minutes screen time.
• William Fichtner, being one of the great Hollywood character actors, has more than his share of these.
  • He's the ice-hearted, millionaire stage dad in Blades of Glory, disappearing shortly after the opening credits.
  • He plays the shotgun-toting mob banker in The Dark Knight.
• Yet another man of the cloth, Peter Vaughan as a hard-assed Bishop of Digne in Les Misérables (1998).
• Gene Hackman's blind hermit character in Young Frankenstein. He evidently took the role because Mel Brooks dared him to.
• Notes on a Scandal. Bill Nighy. He is in two scenes. The first introduces his character, the second is an argument with his wife, (Cate Blanchett) when he discovers that she's been having an affair with one of her fifteen year-old students. The movie stars two excellent actors in Judi Dench and the aforementioned Blanchett, both at the top of their respective games. The subject matter is titillating, and the script is well written. It would take one heck of an actor to draw attention, even momentarily, away from all of that to show the real human cost of such a scandal. Bill Nighy is such an actor.
  • Equally impressive is Derbhle Crotty as the mother of said student when she confronts Sheba.
  Mrs. Connolly (as she repeatedly slaps Sheba): "Slut! Whore! Whore! How could you? How could you? He's a child! A sweet boy! You perverted bitch! Bitch!"
• Robin Williams:
  • As a Russian gynaecologist in Nine Months. He only shows up twice, but you'll remember him (of course you will, he's Robin Williams).
  • He has three brief scenes in Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again as a former psychiatrist that are quite memorable. It's officially a cameo too, as Williams didn't want to be credited or appear in promotional material lest people assume the film a comedy.
  • As the King Of The Moon in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (credited as Ray D. Tutto).
• Tom Waits has done this quite a lot, and very successfully for a non-actor:
  • He plays Carnegie's Engineer in The Book of Eli and holds his own against both Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
  • He gets a couple of scenes in Seven Psychopaths as a rabbit-carrying Serial-Killer Killer.
  • He's ex-husband to Lily Tomlin as one of the nine protagonist couples in Robert Altman's Short Cuts.
  • He pulls Deus ex Machina duty in the otherwise forgettable Domino as a tattooed preacher who rescues the main characters from the desert in his car.
  • A paraplegic homeless veteran in The Fisher King who waxes philosophical about his role in society with Jeff Bridges.
  • He plays The Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and unlike some other actors in said film, his British accent is impeccable.
  • He's one of the only totally sympathetic characters in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and carries an entire segment on his own.
  • He (with the assistance of Sean Penn as a William Holden clone) completely steals Licorice Pizza with about 10 minutes of screentime as the highly exuberant film director Rex Blau.
• King Osric in Conan the Barbarian (1982) is exactly this: he's played by Max von Sydow, appears in only one scene and does his monologue in an incredibly humane and intriguing way.
• Will Ferrell...
  • As Mustafa in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Short scene, infinitely memorable. He even returned in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
  • His role as Big Earl in Starsky & Hutch.
  • His role as Chazz Reinhold in Wedding Crashers.
• Alfred Molina as strung-out drug kingpin Rahad Jackson in Boogie Nights. You will never be able to listen to "Jessie's Girl" or "Sister Christian" the same way again.
  • In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Molina steals every scene he appears as Sheik Amar.
• Ben Stein in...anyone? Anyone?...in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. "Bueller? Bueller?" Also, Charlie Sheen as the hoodlum in the scene in the police station with Jeannie near the end. "You wear too much makeup. My sister wears too much makeup. She looks like a whore."
  • Stein gets a scene in The Mask when Stanley Ipkiss tries to make sense of his zany newfound artifact, and the beginning of Son of the Mask, where his face gets separated from his head and put on display by Loki.
• Marissa Jaret Winokur's sullen fast-food server, Janine ("You are so busted!"), in American Beauty. At a screening of the film, the character's smug little smirk at Annette Bening not only elicited laughs from the audience, but actual applause.
• In Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Ingrid Bergman won an Academy Award for her role as the half-crazy Swedish missionary Greta Ohlsson, who is practically only seen onscreen during a seven minute near-monologue. Bergman herself, however, said that Valentina Cortese should've won. This trope applies to nearly everyone in the film; with the exception of Hercule Poirot, Dr. Constantine, and the director of the Wagon-Lits company, who interrogate each passenger, no one has more than three scenes. Just the same, every actor gives a full movie's performance in their seven minutes on-screen.
• Dame Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I needed only six minutes of screen time to run away with Shakespeare in Love and an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
  "Have her then, but you're a lordly fool. She's been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you...it takes a woman to know it."
• Airplane!:
  • Barbara Billingsley, even though she's only in one scene, has one of the greatest comedic moments in movie history:
  "Pardon me, stewardess, I speak jive."
  • There's also Ethel Merman as the soldier who thinks he's Ethel Merman.
• Sammy Davis Jr., in the film version of Sweet Charity. He shows up, blows the rest of the cast right off the screen with a stunning rendition of the movie's best song ("Rhythm of Life"), then vanishes, his hipster-preacher character and the sequence in which he appears having absolutely nothing to do with the storyline. Classic Wonder.
• In When Harry Met Sally..., Estelle Reiner (director Rob Reiner's mother) brings down the house with her one and only line, which is the most memorable line in the film: "I'll have what she's having!"
• Justin Long as a matter-of-fact gay porn star in Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and Brandon Routh as his boyfriend.
  "I will be your sherpa up the mountain of gayness."
• Christopher Plummer showed up as Nicolas Cage's grandfather at the beginning of National Treasure (one of his earlier roles in his 21st-century comeback, and it was pretty awesome).
• The Street Preacher, Dolph Lundgren's Jesus-obsessed cyborg hitman, is easily the best part of Johnny Mnemonic. Admittedly, that's not saying much, but he easily outshines the film's other attempts at One Scene Wonders (Ice-T playing... Ice-T the urban revolutionary, and Henry Rollins playing... Henry Rollins the cyborg medic).
  Street Preacher: Do you want him brought to Jesus, or to you?
• Morning Glory: Paul is fired and departs from the movie at the end of his first scene, but his unapologetic Slimeball attitude, Hated by All status, and performer (Ty Burrell) make him a memorable part of the movie.
• Star Wars:
  • All the bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back, but Boba Fett's qualifications for this trope are practically archetypical. He has something like ten minutes of screen time, most of which he spends just slouching around next to Darth Vader before leaving with Han Solo in tow, and hardly has any lines, but his striking costume, wicked-cool voice and the fact that he's a rough enough customer that Vader has to tell him to chill out ("No disintegrations!") turned him into one of the franchise's most iconic characters.
  • The other bounty hunters in Boba's introductory scene as well - IG-88, Bossk, Zuckuss, 4-LOM, and Dengar - easily qualify. Less than a minute of screen time, do nothing except for stand around, and none of them have lines, but their unique and striking designs and aura of total badassery spawned entire volumes of expanded universe material.
  • Sebastian Shaw as the (unmasked) Vader in Return of the Jedi. He had only two minutes and seven seconds of screentime and speaks only 24 words, but delivers three entire movies' worth of acting in that time. It's probably the most moving scene in the entire series, and one of the most emotional in all of cinema.
  • Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith (in the suit, that is); the film was built up and marketed to lead to that scene; in the final film, Vader is shown in the suit for less than three minutes, with less than 30 seconds of dialogue by James Earl Jones.
    • Also in Revenge of the Sith, Wayne Pygram's cameo as a younger Tarkin was appreciated by many fans.
  • Also from the original trilogy, the Rancor caretaker who cries once he sees its corpse.
  • Greedo only gets one scene where he gets shot by Han Solo. He's since become so popular and well known (most likely due to the whole "Han shot first" thing) that a number of comics and cartoons have been written exploring upon him as a character. The most notable example would be the Underworld comic which reveals why Greedo took the job to kill Han (he was trying to become a well-known bounty hunter but was failing miserably) and why he wanted to kill Han (he was very jealous of Solo, who was kind of a dick to him).
  • FN-2199, the stormtrooper who screams "Traitor!" to Finn in The Force Awakens, and drops his gun to use a Z6 baton against Finn's lightsaber. After a fight, he is killed by Chewbacca's bowcaster by Han Solo. This scene has became a popular meme on the internet.
    • Also in The Force Awakens, Mark Hamill gets third billing, but Luke only appears in two scenes - in a barely lit flashback, and then the final scene, where Luke doesn't even speak^note leading to jokes that he was paid by the line but his mere presence is enough for fans everywhere to cheer.
    • The opening scene was meant to feature a returning character (most likely either Wedge Antilles or Lando) who would deliver a message to Poe Dameron and then get killed by Kylo Ren. When neither accepted, Lucasfilm shrugged and said, "Alright, let's just get Max von Sydow instead."
  • The popularity of a OSW can wax or wane with time. For example, the Imperial officer who capture Han in Return of the Jedi invests his sole line of dialogue, "You Rebel Scum!" with such an outlandish degree of disdain that it became a meme in the days of pre-Internet fandom, even being parodied in the original StarCraft. But the line and scene are rarely referenced anymore, overshadowed by various other, more popular memes.
  • Do a Google search for Rogue One and nine times out of ten the top autofill result will be "Rogue One Darth Vader scene." The Dark Lord of the Sith has less than five minutes of screen time in the entire movie and only talks in one of his two scenes, and steals the entire film with one of the most Nightmare Fuel-inducing sequences in the saga.
    • Similarly, the presence of a digitally-recreated Carrie Fisher as a young Princess Leia (although it was filmed with a body-double and used archive voice clips for her one line) for exactly one line and ten seconds of screen time brought many audiences to cheers, especially poignant in light of her tragic death only a few weeks after the release of the movie.
    • C-3PO and R2-D2 show up for a seconds-long cameo in the base on Yavin 4, letting them keep their status as the only characters to appear in every live-action Star Wars film to date.
    • To the delight of many aggrieved prequel trilogy fans, Jimmy Smits gets a few brief scenes as Bail Organa, making the first time a major prequel trilogy actor has reprised his role in the new movies.
    • The Hammerhead cruiser Lightmaker and its crew, who have something like thirty seconds of screentime and pull off possibly the most jaw-dropping instance of Ramming Always Works in cinema history.
  • Similarly to Vader, but with the exact opposite effect, Yoda's Ghost shows up for exactly one scene in The Last Jedi, but it's easily one of the most lump-in-the-throat nostalgia-inducing and profoundly moving moments in the entire saga.
    • Snoke's Praetorian Guard. Cool-looking guys in armor who spend most of the movie just standing around, but their incredible fight scene against Rey and Kylo Ren to avenge Snoke's death, pushing two trained Force users to the absolute limits of their abilities despite no apparent Force powers turned them all instant fan-favorites, similar to Nines.
    • Rose's sister, Paige, who has a single line and barely three minutes of screentime, but her epic Heroic Sacrifice made her one of the most memorable characters in the whole movie.
    • Tom Hardy's hilarious cameo in a sadly deleted scene as a Southern-accented stormtrooper and former friend of Finn's during a very awkward elevator ride.
  • Solo has Darth Maul as The Man Behind the Man.
  • The Rise of Skywalker manages to bring back Harrison Ford as Han Solo in an uncredited cameo, as Kylo Ren's memory of his father, combined with Luke's apology, Leia's sacrifice, and Rey's act of compassion is enough to have him complete a Heel–Face Turn. Denis Lawson also has a brief cameo as Wedge Antilles as the gunner on the Millennium Falcon in the final battle.
• Chris Sarandon's outstanding turn as Al Pacino's pre-op transgender girlfriend in the classic Dog Day Afternoon garnered him an Academy Award nomination and made his career, despite his appearing in only two scenes.
• Neil Patrick Harris' much-loved cameo in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle as well as Nurse Ryan Reynolds.
• Fire in the Sky is 109 minutes long, and the aliens only appear for approximately ten of those minutes near the end of the movie. It is now considered to be one of the scariest sci-fi movies ever made for that single segment alone.
• Super-obscure example: Danny Glover in Out (aka Deadly Drifter). Granted, he made it before rising to stardom with Lethal Weapon.
• Charles Durning as the Governor of Texas in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which got him nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar. It helps that he has one of the funniest musical numbers in the movie, "Sidestep", where he celebrates his ability to dodge questions put to him by the press.
• Pinhead's brief yet ultimately memorable appearances in the first Hellraiser film counts as this. So much so that he went on to define the entire series. The original plan was to have Julia as the recurring villain, thus turning her into a rare female slasher villain. However, Pinhead's popularity caused the whole thing to be reworked.
• Graeme Garden has two scenes in the 1986 film version of Whoops Apocalypse, both as different (but identical) creaky old servants limping hurriedly down different (but identical) corridors to get to a telephone and complete a call (which they fail to do). It's one of the more memorable sequences in the film.
• Telly Savalas turns up close to the end of Horror Express and stops the story cold with his portrayal of swaggering, vodka-swilling Tsarist Captain Kazan. An aristocrat threatens to send him to Siberia, his reply is a bemused "I am in Siberia."
• Parodied in Wayne's World 2. When Wayne stops at a gas station to ask for directions to Gordon Street, the attendant starts to give a monologue about a "girl who lived on Gordon Street." A disgusted Wayne asks "Do we have to put up with this? I mean, I know it's a small part, but I think we can do better than this." The gas station attendant is led away and replaced by Charlton Heston, whose monologue reduces Wayne to tears.
• Charlton Heston has a memorable scene as the head of the shadowy Omega Sector in True Lies.
• John Wayne as a Roman centurion at the end of The Greatest Story Ever Told, where, after Jesus is crucified, he says only one line: "Truly this man was the son of God."
• In Midnight Cowboy, Sylvia Miles' Cass has less than five minutes of screen time, but it was enough for Miles to win an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. John McGiver (Mr. O'Daniel) and Bernard Hughes (Towny) arguably fit this as well.
• Cedric the Entertainer does an excellent job of this in the first Barbershop movie.
• Meat Loaf and Ronnie James Dio, and Dave Grohl in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, each get a scene dedicated to them; the former as Jack Black's father, who tears down all his posters while singing about how rock & roll is the Devil's music, and the latter as a poster of himself that comes to life afterward. Grohl provides the Big Bad. Tim Robbins also plays a crazy homeless man trying to rob the characters, but can't walk, and demands they come to him so he can stab them.
• During Studio 666, Dave Grohl tries to break out of a writer's block playing "Hello". He then has a vision of Lionel Richie himself, profanely complaining it's his song and Dave should try something else!
• The Wienie King in The Palm Beach Story. "Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young... That's hard to say with false teeth!"
• The movie The Loved One is basically a whole string of these, including scenes with James Coburn, Roddy McDowall, Milton Berle, and, most memorable by far, Liberace playing a coffin salesman.
• If '30s actress Mae Clarke is remembered today at all, it's for that one scene in The Public Enemy (1931) where James Cagney smashes the grapefruit in her face.
• Silent Bob's speech in Chasing Amy is so memorable, it's easy to forget that he and his hetero life mate Jay are only in one scene.
• Richard Harris as English Bob in Unforgiven, who just shoots some pheasants, defends monarchy, gets beaten by Gene Hackman, gets arrested and then goes away in across maybe 10 minutes of screentime. But it's a remarkable performance enough for "The Duck of Death" to be in the poster.
• Viola Davis in Doubt. A single scene, about ten minutes of screen time, and while she's onscreen she overshadows Meryl Streep. It got her nominated for an Oscar, and many believed she should have won it.
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has a few busloads of well-known comic actors all loudly turned up to eleven (both in the main cast and numerous cameos)... then in one scene, firemen and paramedics are shown assembling to save the day, and the last of them are The Three Stooges, standing silently with their gear and waiting to spring into action.
• In the Loop is not short of great performances or funny material. Steve Coogan is in the movie for what must be a grand total of five minutes all up, and interacts with few of the main characters and none of the main plot. However, in those five minutes he easily manages to steal the movie as Paul, the easily frustrated constituent who just wants the U.K. Minister for International Development to do something about the wall of his constituency office (which is collapsing into Paul's mum's back garden) whilst said Minister is self-importantly but foolishly involving himself in grand matters of geo-political diplomacy.
• Pyramid Head in the Silent Hill movie. Two scenes, each lasting approximately thirty seconds, not a single line, and he's still one of the best parts.
• Wholly Moses! has a few of these, but the one that really stands out is John Ritter's one-and-half-minute appearance as Satan.
• Jack Palance had a film career of 50 years and over 70 movies, but when he died in 2006, one film role consistently stood out in all the obituaries and tributes dedicated to him: the role of the taunting, smiling hired gun Jack Wilson in Shane. Palance's Wilson is widely regarded as the definitive Western bad guy. Total screen time: eight minutes. Total words spoken by Wilson: less than fifty, but he makes the most out of two of them: "Prove it."
• Holly Palance (Jack's daughter) had one memorable scene in The Omen (1976) as Damien's first nanny who is compelled by Satan to hang herself at Damien's birthday party. "Look at me, Damien! I'm doing it all for you!"
• Matthew Atherton, A.K.A Feedback, of Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, with a total of two memorable minutes in the utterly forgettable monster movie Mega-Snake.
• In American Pie, then-unknown John Cho's one-scene appearance as the MILF guy. Not only did this scene popularize the term "MILF," Cho arguably went on to have the best career out of all the young actors in the film. It resulted in a movie role being written just for him - the part of Harold in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.
  • He even returns to the fourth movie with a more expanded role - but still credited as only MILF guy.
  • And now he's Sulu:
  Sulu: Attention: John Harrison. This is Captain Hikaru Sulu of the USS Enterprise. A shuttle of highly trained officers is on its way to your location. If you do not surrender to them immediately, I will unleash the entire payload of advanced long-range torpedoes currently locked on to your location. You have two minutes to confirm your compliance. Refusal to do so will result in your obliteration. And if you test me, you will fail.
• Judgment at Nuremberg features Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, and William Shatner. Every single one of them is at the top of their game... and then Montgomery Clift blows them all out of the water with a seven and a half minute performance that got him a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
  • Garland's performance could also, as she likewise has only one or two scenes, but makes a powerful impression.
• The Thor-Axine team (a trio of Viking themed drivers) during the first half of the Casa Cristo rally in Speed Racer. They fire a beehive out of a catapault. From a speeding racecar.
• Mel Brooks' High Anxiety has future big time director Barry Levinson as a high-strung bellboy who gets progressively more irritated with Brooks' requests for a newspaper until...no, it's too good to spoil.
• Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie in National Lampoon's Vacation was only in the movie for a fairly small amount of time (they go to his house, have a BBQ, spend the night, then leave), but he was so funny and so popular they brought him back into a much bigger part for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
• Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Hector Barbossa managed to steal the final scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Fortunately he got a lot more screentime in the next film.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the Spaniard is teased throughout the movie, but only has one substantial scene at the climax. During that scene, however, he pretty much dominates everything with his blend of Anti-Villain, Wicked Cultured, and Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Both in that and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow's father Teague.
  • The opening sequence of On Stranger Tides in London offers great cameos by Richard Griffiths, chewing all the scenery he can as King George II, and Dame Judi Dench, as a noblewoman whose earring Jack steals, then asks Jack "is that all?"
  • On the same vein as Teague, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has Paul McCartney as Uncle Jackie.
• Zombieland Bill Murray makes a completely out of left field cameo as himself that is one of the most memorable scenes in the movie (they even bring him back in the sequel). Amber Heard, also, as "406", Columbus' hot, blonde neighbor who unfortunately turns into a zombie and tries to kill him.
• A deleted scene in Fun with Dick and Jane features James Whitmore as an elderly ex-Marine, now employed as a security guard in a toy store in the profession of "kicking Jim Carrey's butt". It's quite possibly the funniest, most memorable scene not in the movie.
• Glen Coco in Mean Girls has gone memetic. He does not even have a line, but is mentioned in one of the most quoted lines of the film.
• Bronson Pinchot as Serge in the first Beverly Hills Cop movie.
  • He returns for the third film as an all-in-one gun salesman.
  • Gilbert Gottfried's character in Beverly Hills Cop II.
  • As well as Chris Rock (in his film debut) making a brief appearance as a parking valet.
• James Roday Rodriguez and Maggie Lawson in their 30-second cameo as news anchors in Gamer.
• Forest Whitaker as Amos, the genial pool hustler in The Color of Money.
• Denis Leary has a few brief scenes in Demolition Man as Edgar Friendly, where he basically does his own act for 5 minutes.
• It isn't her only scene, but Ann Miller's dance solo in Easter Parade steals the movie right out from under Fred Astaire and Judy Garland.
• Claude Rains as the slightly creepy, elderly millionaire Frederick Lannington in the 1950 film noir thriller Where Danger Lives. He can't be on screen for any more than five or ten minutes, but you'll remember him. He receives top billing alongside Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue.
• In Revolutionary Road, Michael Shannon has two scenes, in both of which he's able to out-act Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Kathy Bates completely by himself... earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination in the process.
• Dr. Iris appears in Minority Report for one scene (and a brief appearance in the "commercial" for the precogs at the beginning of the film) and her "soul-sick" performance earned her a supporting actress nod for the Golden Globes.
  • Minority Report also gives us the sleaziest Back-Alley Doctor in human history, played to I-need-to-take-a-shower-after-watching-this-perfection by (who else?) Peter Stormare.
• Peter Stormare also provides what is probably the only universally acclaimed part of Constantine - his portrayal of Lucifer as a white-suit-clad, oil-oozing sociopath with a face like melted candle wax is one of the most chillingly compelling movie depictions of Satan ever. It's a close competition between him and Viggo Mortensen (also on this list, higher up) for who made a creepier Devil.
• Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite in Across the Universe (2007). Her Large Ham performance is definitely memorable, and provides some of the funniest lines in the movie ("Have you seen it? It's great. They've got stuff.").
• The nameless cigar-smoking mobster from Ninja Assassin. When your response to getting stabbed in the neck is to hold it with one and do a spinning close-fisted backhand to your would-be killer with the other, well, you will be memorable. The rest is just icing on the cake.
• Christopher Eccleston as a truth-spouting tramp in 24-Hour Party People.
• The three-breasted mutant chick from the original Total Recall (1990). Johnny-cab, as well. 'cab is on screen for a total of two minutes. In this time, he spouts chirpy nonsense, gets torn apart by Arnold Schwarzenegger, starts screaming and glowing, tries to kill Arnie by driving at full speed into him, misses him, and hits a wall and explodes. "Fasten your seatbelt!"
  • The three-breasted mutant chick was indeed so popular that they were forced to include her in the remake and to make sure fans know it was added to one of the trailers.
• Chevy Chase as the jacuzzi repairman in Hot Tub Time Machine. Appears four or five times throughout the movie, but never for more than a couple minutes before disappearing as suddenly as he came, and is easily one of the best parts.
• While we're on the subject of repairmen: in Brazil Harry Tuttle, freelance renegade HVAC repairman (Robert De Niro), shows up for one scene, steals it, then escapes. On a zip line.
• By all accounts, Emily Hampshire's role as the chatty, eccentric Vivienne at the beginning of Snow Cake is one of these moments.
• Eminem and Ray Romano (how about that for unlikely team-ups) completely steal the one scene of Funny People that they're in together.
• Pulp Fiction: Harvey Keitel has a small amount of screen-time, but a particularly memorable speech (the "'Please' would be nice" rant).
  "Pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the fucking car."
• Carla Perez's thirty-second cameo as Rita Repulsa in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie, with all the ham her presence implies, may be the best thing about it.
• Mathieu Amalric appears in the first and last scenes of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec as the titular heroine's revolting arch-nemesis Dieuleveult, dressed entirely in a black trenchcoat, hat and sunglasses like a Gestapo officer, completely unrecognizable under a thick layer of makeup with rotten-looking false teeth and speaking with a wheezy voice, all in all resembling Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark. After stealing the scene with a wonderfully over-the-top creepy performance, his character is mummified alive and only seen at the end of the movie, observing Adèle embarking on the Titanic and ominously wishing her "bon voyage". This is made even more infuriating due to the fact that Dieuleveult is, as previously indicated, her arch-nemesis in the comics and yet has no other role in the plot other than failing to prevent her from stealing a mummy she hopes will bring her sister back to life. Needless to stay, the fans of the original comic were not pleased.
• American Gangster has Ruby Dee in an Academy Award nominated role as Frank Lucas' mother. She had less than 10 minutes of screen time.
• Jackie Earle Haley in Shutter Island. His one scene lasts maybe five minutes and he owns every second of it.
• Jackie Earle Haley as the "particularly dirty hippie" Dukes in Semi-Pro.
• Marlon Brando as Jor-El in Superman: The Movie .
• Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared in The Rundown for about five seconds of screentime, enough to say exactly two words. His appearance is mentioned in just about every professional review of the movie listed on IMDb.
• Bruce McGill in The Insider, as the lawyer who deposes Russell Crowe. "WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE!"
• Peter Stormare. So. Many. Times. Constantine and Armageddon (1998) stand out, though in the latter case, he's a One-Scene Wonder stretched out over a significant part of the film and he is awesome every step of the way.
• Johnny Depp has two very brief scenes in the French film Ils se marient et eurent beaucoup des enfants (also known as Happily Ever After), one of which contains no dialogue (only some cute eye-flirting to the sounds of "Creep"), and then another scene at the end in which he—get this, ladies—speaks French, and then kisses the female lead in a dreamy, magical elevator ride, implying that her romantic life will turn all right after all.
  • Depp also has his Remake Cameo in 21 Jump Street and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as evil wizard Grindelwald, who through most of the movie hides under Colin Farrell's guise as a cop.
• Klaus Kinski as the shackled forced labor prisoner in the train car in Doctor Zhivago.
  • Also, as the hunchback in For a Few Dollars More.
  • Kinski spent most of his career being the best part in awful movies.
• Inglourious Basterds.
  • Mike Myers as an English general!
  • Adolf Hitler is only in the movie for about three minutes, but every moment of it is hilarious, from the first moment you see him calmly giving his opinion on the Basterds.
  • Though his scene is quite long, Denis Menochet's character, Mr Lapadite, in the opening scene of the movie is never seen again.
• Navckid Keyd as Elder Mr. Dawes in Mary Poppins, once you realise who he is.
• Jon Lovitz has exactly one scene in The Wedding Singer as a rival wedding singer to the main character, but thanks to a single line of dialogue, a facial expression and a curtain, it's a scene you'll remember:
  He's losing his mind... and I'm reaping all the benefits!
• Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Expendables. They're in the movie for all of a few minutes, yet their presence is mentioned constantly in the advertising campaign - for good reason, as those two and Sylvester Stallone haven't worked together in movies before.
• The Vegan Police, played by Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr., in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. They have some truly hilarious lines, and make their exit with a slow-motion leaping high five.
  Todd: Gelato isn't vegan?
  Vegan Police: Milk and eggs, bitch.
• John Turturro in The Big Lebowski. Nobody fucks with the Jesus. So much he eventually got his movie, The Jesus Rolls.
• Noah Cross does not appear in Chinatown until the movie is over halfway through. And he doesn't appear again until near the very end of the film. However, he is remembered as one of the most despicable villains in cinematic history. Roman Polański's appearance as the man who cuts Jack Nicholson's nose with a knife also deserves a mention. It's probably the scene most people remember.
• Ghostbusters:
  • Ghostbusters II: As New York City is haunted during the Ghostbusters' involuntary committment, we see that among the ghosts is the wreck of the Titanic arriving at New York harbor, and we see the dock supervisor played by Cheech Marin, who stares in shock at all the ghosts exiting the ship for several seconds before saying "Well, better late than never...".
  • Ghostbusters (2016) has every single Remake Cameo - albeit Bill Murray is a Two Scene Wonder. Also noteworthy is a skeletal ringmaster ghost who appears in the final fight, and Ozzy Osbourne giving a one-liner ("Sharon! I'm having flashbacks!" in the theatrical cut, and "Wankers! Black Sabbath did that shit in '74." in the extended one).
• Ralph Fiennes in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang. In his only scene, he helps set up the film's climax and in the process patches up things with his children and relatives.
• Peter Ustinov will steal any scene(s) he appears in:
  • As Nero in Quo Vadis.
  • As Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus
  • As Kaptah in The Egyptian
    • Also in The Egyptian, Judith Evelyn as Queen Mother Taia.
  And now I'll give you some advice, young man. Never tell the truth to an old woman — especially if she asks for it.
• Gary Busey tends to do this in any film he isn't headlining.
  • As a crazy psycho Vietnam War vet in Black Sheep (1996) opposite Chris Farley and David Spade (although it's two and not just one), and his 'stint' as a Heavy-like demon hunter in Succubus: Hell Bent, in which he gives quite possibly the least rousing morale boosting speech ever submitted to celluloid (he basically tells the kid he has no hope of winning and he should just let the succubus do what she wants because he'll only manage to piss her off worse), dumps a load of weird junk that actually seems to work on the hero, and then drives off to leave him to his fate.
  • There's also his cameo as a very lonely highway patrolman in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
  • He and Lucy Butler stand out as two of the nicer people in Lost Highway, in their brief screentime as Pete Dayton's parents.
• Speaking of Fear and Loathing, there's also Ellen Barkin's moving cameo as a waitress in a depressing café who gets terrorized by the main characters.
• Gary Busey's son Jake Busey had only three scenes and very little dialogue in Contact but was utterly chilling as an insane religious cult leader who blows up the first prototype of the portal machine.
• Jon Hamm's appearance in The A-Team is technically The Cameo, but may also fall under this because he comes out of nowhere (he wasn't mentioned in any of the promotional material) and is pretty darn awesome, despite being onscreen for only about two or three minutes.
• Meat Loaf turns up for a single song, arguably one of the best, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sings it, and then gets brutally hacked to death by Tim bloody Curry.
• Diva Plavalaguna with her insane musical number in The Fifth Element, which many consider the most memorable scene in the film.
  • Also the incompetent mugger who tries to ambush Korben by standing outside his apartment with a fake corridor picture strapped to his head.
• The Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth is probably the most talked about part of the film. Hardly surprising, given that he's played by Doug Jones (who also played the Faun), employing his remarkable physical talents to deliver a memorably terrifying scene.
• John Barrowman appears in The Producers remake, as the lead tenor on "Springtime For Hitler". The results are amazing.
• Liam Dunn made a specialty of these roles in comedies in the early 1970's. He's probably best known for playing the besieged minister Rev. Johnson in Blazing Saddles and as the abused patient Mr. Hilltop at the beginning of Young Frankenstein, but his crowing moment has to be as Judge Maxwell, who has to legally sort out the problems created by his daughter Judy (Barbra Streisand) in What's Up, Doc? He has less than ten minutes on screen, but his reactions to the story being told to him are priceless. Buck Henry's wonderful dialogue was a big help.
• TRON: Legacy:
  • Michael Sheen as Castor/Zuse^note "Between this, Twilight, and Passengers, it's clear Michael Sheen could make a good living just stealing the sh*t out of middling sci-fi movies that start pretty people." - CinemaSins
  • Same scene, Daft Punk (who wrote the soundtrack) as DJ Programs.
• Sheen steals his scenes in New Moon, due to extensive use of Ham and Cheese.
• Grandpa Chapman in Silent Night, Deadly Night.
  "You see Santa Claus tonight you better run boy, you better run for ya life!"
  • And the Scary Black Man from the sequel. He doesn't even speak, yet he is remembered almost as much as the film's star.
• Joan McCracken, who performs the show-stopping number ("Pass That Peace Pipe") in the MGM musical Good News, and has basically no other role in the rest of the movie. McCracken, who was a terrific dancer but only a moderately good singer, and who was quite plain-looking, especially by Hollywood standards, specialized in these kinds of roles.
• Gary Sinise as the reporter in The Green Mile. The scene is a powerful one in the book, illustrating perfectly why John Coffey was convicted, even through doubts that he actually did the crime, and Sinise certainly put his stamp on it. Despite only being in that one scene, his obvious connections with Tom Hanks gave him a spot in the movie's trailer.
  • Graham Greene only has one major scene lasting slightly over a minute, but he delivers a haunting monologue that's one of the best things in an already very good movie.
  • The late, great Harry Dean Stanton as the sarcastic janitor Toot-Toot is in more than one scene, but he's only really the focus of one, and in it he easily gets some of the best lines in the whole film.
• About half the cast of Barton Fink, though most of them have about two scenes.
  • Tony Shalhoub as Ben Geisler. About two scenes and five minutes and he owns every second of them. "Well, tell Lipnick he can kiss my dimpled ass."
  • Steve Buscemi as Chet, the wormy bellhop at the hotel.
  • Mastrionotti and Deutch, the detectives that question Barton.
  • Pete, the elevator operator who Barton asks if he's read the Bible. "Holy Bible? Yeah I think so. Anyway I've heard about it."
• Also from The Coen Brothers' oeuvre, Shaloub's turn as Billy Bob Thornton's existentialist lawyer is arguably the single most memorable scene in The Man Who Wasn't There (2001).
• And again from the Coens we have J. K. Simmons as the befuddled CIA Director in Burn After Reading, who only appears in two scenes in the whole film for a screen time of just under five minutes, but easily won the audience's affection due to being the Only Sane Man Audience Surrogate. He reacts with baffled exasperation and annoyance at the chaotic, random and increasingly absurd events the film depicts, and memorably sums up the film when he tries to identify a possible lesson from what has happened only to conclude that if there is one, it's entirely lost on him.
• Bill Bollender appears as Elmo Blatch in one shot lasting under a minute in The Shawshank Redemption, and delivers an entire movie's worth of supporting acting in that space.
• Roscoe Lee Browne's enigmatic appearance as the cyborg Box in sci-fi thriller Logan's Run deserves mention here even though it might be more of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
• Martin Scorsese's under-appreciated mid-'80s gem After Hours is rife with one-off appearances and small recurring ones, but none more lustrous (or self-contained) than Teri Garr and Verna Bloom.
• Frederic Forrest as the psychotic neo-Nazi in Falling Down has one scene, and if it's not the best one in the movie, it's the one that caused the most laughter. Every line he spouts is caustic and vitriolic, and usually loaded with at least one slur, and five curses. The role could have been played spooky and subtle, but Forrest instead decided that no scenery would go unchewed in his performance. If anyone quotes the movie, chances are good it'll be from that scene.
• Tommy Chong's only scene in Evil Bong is easily the best part of the movie, something the filmmakers seem to be aware of, considering that he's on the DVD box cover art◊.
• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle has Jaclyn Smith reprising her role as Kelly Garret from the series.
• Adrien Brody as Salvador Dalí in Midnight in Paris. His only scene turns out to be one of the funniest scenes in the film and he even got above-title billing on the posters with Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard.
• Eric in Mystery Team. He has three rather short scenes, but steals every single one he's in. Jamie too, to a lesser extent.
• Dennis in Cabin Fever. He's in it for one scene, and that's the Signature Scene of the moment. He really wants pancakes, he can be mistaken for a girl, and he has some kickass fighting moves.
• Rajat Barmecha as Shomu in an unusual Bollywood movie Shaitaan.
• Tiny Lister as the Scary Black Man convict on the ferry in The Dark Knight. He has less than three minutes of screentime, and just one brief monologue delivered in a hushed whisper...and does more to thwart the Joker than Batman and the entire Gotham City police force combined.
  • The Hanging Judge (Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow) in The Dark Knight Rises is extremely entertaining even if you don't recognize The Cameo.
  Exile or death? (...) Alright. Death... by exile.
  • The CIA agent in the opening scene of The Dark Knight Rises has become this due to the entire opening scene becoming a Fountain of Memes.
• The Batman (2022) has one near the end, as the inmate in the cell next to Riddler in Arkham is the Joker himself, played by Barry Keoghan.
• Susan Backlinie deciding to go swimming at an unfortunate moment in the opening scenes of Jaws. Not only is the scene itself one of the most memorable in cinema, but the bit-player actress gives us one of the most heart-stoppingly real depictions of terror and pain seen on screen.
• John Ratzenberger as the swashbuckling repairman in House II: The Second Story.
  • So much so that he's even featured on one of the posters.
• David Carradine:
  • As the drunk at the bar who fights back when a gangster shoots him and then takes forever to die in Mean Streets.
  • As the hilarious Dirty Old Man Poon Dong in Crank: High Voltage.
• Alan C Peterson as the Mayor in Sucker Punch. In his brief appearance, he steals the scene with his utterly badass pimpin' entrance and Leitmotif: a mash-up of "I Want It All" and "We Will Rock You".
• Rod Steiger's appearance as the Judge toward the end of The Hurricane definitely qualifies. "You assumed ... wrong."
• Liam Neeson as the writer who instructs Russell Crowe on prison escapes in The Next Three Days. So much they had to put him on the trailer.
• In (500) Days of Summer, Chloë Grace Moretz is this as Tom's little sister.
• Braindead: The priest who has had only a few unremarkable appearances shows up in the graveyard once the zombies start appearing and goes to town on the zombies in the most epic scene of the movie, ripping/kicking off limbs, throwing and beating up zombies with lines like "This calls for divine intervention" and "I kick ass for The Lord!"
• James Cagney reprising his role as George M. Cohan (which won him the Best Actor Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy) for the Bob Hope vehicle The Seven Little Foys. Cagney and Hope trade hilarious barbs for a couple minutes, then do an epic tap dance number together.
• Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man has almost an entire cast of them. Crispin Glover as the philosophical but illiterate train fireman, Robert Mitchum (in his final role) as the shotgun-toting town boss, Iggy Pop as a crossdressing, bible-thumping psychopath, Billy Bob Thornton as a creepy mountain man, and Alfred Molina as the racist missionary.
• Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) movie, despite having a genuinely good, if rather hammy, cast (even Keanu Reeves is passable) is clearly dominated by Michael Keaton's Constable Dogberry.
  • If you want a film that's utterly loaded with these, just watch Branagh's full-length version of Hamlet. The supporting cast (and roles) include Billy Crystal (Gravedigger), Robin Williams (Osric), Gérard Depardieu (Reynaldo), Charlton Heston (Player King), Rufus Sewell (Fortinbras), Richard Attenborough (English Ambassador) and BRIAN BLESSED (King Hamlet's Ghost) all in absolutely perfect roles! There's also a cameo by John Gielgud and Judi Dench.
• The punk on the bus with the ghetto blaster in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  • Robert Picardo has one scene in Star Trek: First Contact as the Enterprise's Emergency Medical Hologram and comes close to stealing the entire film.
• The 1933 film Dinner at Eight alludes to this trope in-universe. One of the characters is a washed-up, alcoholic actor who learns he's been demoted from the lead in an upcoming play to a minor one-scene role. His agent persuades him to accept the smaller part on the grounds that he can make a bigger impression on the audience with his single scene.
• Prometheus has a pretty huge one in the last minute of the film. It's the first Xenomorph, which pops out of the Big Bad. It's particularly creepy.
• Stan Lee, one of the masterminds of Marvel comics, makes a Creator Cameo in just about every single live-action movie adaptation of the heroes he created (and even those he didn't, such as Deadpool and Captain America: The First Avenger). Sometimes he's a plain old man, sometimes he gets a few speaking lines, or sometimes he even does some Leaning on the Fourth Wall by playing himself.
  • But the best of them all is animated, in Big Hero 6, or Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, DC Comics animated movie.
• Drew Carey gets a brief scene when his cab ride gets delayed in Coneheads, addressing himself as a decorated star to make sure all know this snafu is Serious Business.
• Full Metal Jacket has two: the Da Nang prostitute ("Me love you long time"), and the door gunner who shoots Vietnamese civilians from a helicopter ("Get some, get some!)"
• The Labyrinth film has a Worm with its own fanlisting.
• The Hunger Games has Clove, who, despite while showing up in other scenes, has one scene dedicated to her almost sadistically killing Katniss.
  • Thresh only gets to speak in one scene, in which he shows up out of nowhere, rescues Katniss from Clove by smashing Clove into a wall until she dies, and then spares Katniss' life because of what she did for Rue.
  • Foxface, who appears briefly here and there, says very little throughout the movie, and doesn't look like the kind who would survive this, but nearly makes it to the end without killing a single person, and probably could've won if not for one mistake. It helps that the actress, Jacqueline Emerson, is super cute.
• In the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, there's Jeffrey Wright as the deeply troubled Cpl. Al Melvin, who has a scene near the beginning of the film and doesn't show up much afterwards, but casts such a haunting shadow over the proceedings of the whole film.
• Jerry the CIA agent in Apocalypse Now - "Terminate with extreme prejudice."
  • To say nothing of Robert Duvall at the Trope Naming Colonel Kilgore and Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz.
• Kevin J. O'Connor in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra as Dr. Mindbender in Rex/The Doctor's Flash Back.
  • Walton Goggins in G.I. Joe: Retaliation as the Warden of Cobra Commander and Destro's prison, who utilizes every second of his screentime.
• In Flight, protagonists Whitaker and Nicole meet in the hospital stairwell as they wanted a smoke. Then comes a cancer patient from Utah that only appears in that scene, but provides some insightful dialogue.
• Stark's fire extinguisher robot and Nick Fury inIron Man . Both have larger roles in the second film.
  • Iron Man 2:
    • Bill O'Reilly, who makes a surprising cameo as himself, commenting on his show about Pepper Potts becoming CEO of Stark Industries. It's much like the segments on his show in real life, but the fact that he's in Iron Man 2 makes it hilarious.
    • O'Reilly also appears in Iron Man 3, where Joan Rivers and her Fashion Police cohorts also appear to comment on War Machine's new paint job. Both segments get extended in the deleted scenes, with hilarious results.
    • The Suitcase Armor. It's used for just three minutes and has the living crap beaten out of it, but the activation was so cool that the armor was used on the DVD cover instead of the Mark VI upgrade. Elements of it were also adapted into the Mark VII of The Avengers.
  • Adam Pally as a cameraman who is a Tony Stark fanboy in Iron Man 3, providing one of the funniest moments of the film.
• Harry Dean Stanton's unnamed security guard in The Avengers. Not only does he take witnessing a giant green rage monster fall out of the sky in stride, but is also considerate enough to bring a change of clothes for the human that the monster changes into. His scene-closing line is one of the movie's most memorable.
  • Kenneth Tigar as the German Old Man who refuses to kneel to Loki.
• Dieter Laser in the German drama film Big Girls Don't Cry. He is in it for less than 10 minutes and scares the living shit out of the viewer as a pedophile.
• There are quite a few cameos in Hot Fuzz and every actor is hilarious. But special mention must go to Bill Nighy as Kenneth, the chief inspector and Martin Freeman and Steve Coogan in the opening scene.
  • Did you know that Peter Jackson is in the movie, uncredited? He's in for all of 2 seconds, stabbing Nicholas in the hand dressed as Father Christmas.
  • Don't forget Cate Blanchett, also uncredited, as Simon Pegg's girlfriend, hidden from view in a hazmat suit.
• Iain Glen as Uncle Ralph in Kick-Ass 2.
• Pacific Rim: Onibaba is rather popular even though it only appears once and its fight is off-screen, mostly remembered for its non-alien/dinosaur design (it looks like a Giant Enemy Crab).
  • Otachi Jr.
• Peter Stormare in Pain & Gain as what may be the most awkward oncologist in recent memory.
• The black truck driver from the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; nameless, no lines, one minute of screen-time, but he's one of the funniest parts of the movie.
• Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderas as "The Chameleon" in Machete Kills.
• In the 2003 live action Peter Pan, one of the Lost Boys, Theodore Chester, who only ever did that film and eight years later put up a Youtube video expressing his shock at having so many fans for such a small role.
• Donald Sutherland as X in JFK. An unusual example though. It's played straight in that he's in one scene, it amounts to about fifteen minutes of screen time of a three hour movie, and it's arguably the most memorable scene in the movie. However since it's essentially a monologue it's probably the second biggest speaking part in the movie.
• Taken to a shocking degree in the 1951 film Scrooge. Towards the end of the film, Scrooge arrives at his nephew's house and hesitates before going into the party. He is comforted by the door maid who nods for him to go in. She has no lines but it is a very warm and tender scene. For years there was a massive discussion online about the actress's identity as she was uncredited in the film. Eventually a relative of hers surfaced online and this blog post identifies her as Theresa Derrington.
• Peter Sellers as the title character in Dr. Strangelove, where he's trying to talk to the President (also played by Sellers) while being attacked by his own prosthetic hand. Yes, it's so funny that Sellers steals the scene from himself.
• Zach Galifianakis, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard and M. Emmet Walsh in Youth in Revolt.
• Dean Carol Gladstone and Officer Watkins from Neighbors, although the former is more of a Two Scene Wonder.
• Sam's unnamed bus-driver in Godzilla (2014), who manages to get a couple of dozen kids through the apocalyptic battle of the Golden Gate Bridge without a scratch.
• An uncredited Max von Sydow, in the extended version of The Wolfman (2010), as the mysterious man who gives Lawrence the silver cane.
• Stephen Bishop was best known as a musician (most notable for singing the theme to Tootsie) but his one-shot appearances in three of John Landis' films all made an impression.
  • The "show me you're nuts" guy in The Kentucky Fried Movie.
  • The performer of "I Gave My Love a Cherry" in Animal House.
  • The customer who says "Do you have the Miss Piggy?" that immediately leads into the mall chase in The Blues Brothers.
  • In all three movies, he's so charming that his character name is some variation of "Charming Guy" (i.e. Charming Guy with Guitar, Charming Trooper)
• Benicio del Toro as The Collector manages to do it twice, in The Stinger of Thor: The Dark World and a slightly bigger role in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). In the latter, sharing a post-credits scene with another scene-stealing cameo, Howard the Duck.
  • Also from Guardians, Tiny Dancing Groot
  • Chris Evans / Captain America's cameo in Thor: The Dark World is not more than thirty seconds long and easily the most hilarious scene of the whole movie.
• Thor: Ragnarok has Doctor Strange in just one scene right as Thor and Loki arrive on Earth (which had been alluded in The Stinger for Strange's own movie), but it's absolutely hilarious and makes great use of Benedict Cumberbatch.
• Nearly every review of Harry Brown, positive or negative, makes note of Sean Harris' ten-minute performance as Stretch, one of the sinister drug dealers from whom Michael Caine's character attempts to purchase a gun (and to whom he directs his now-famous Bond One-Liner "you failed to maintain your weapon, son"). A few other directors, including Deliver Us from Evil's Scott Derrickson and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol 's Christopher McQuarrie, have cited the performance as the reason for casting him in other, usually equally-scary roles.
• Carroll Baker as Dorothy Stratten's mother in Star 80. She essentially has only one scene, a monologue addressed to the camera— but that's all she needs. "I never signed."
• The hot dog vendor in Highlander, who mocks the police about their utter inability to find out anything about the recent rash of be-headings in New York.

  "What does IN-COM-PE-TENT mean?"

• From the mostly-forgotten RoboCop-ripoff movie R.O.T.O.R., we have the female hostage. She starts out looking nonchalant at being held at gunpoint. And after the man holding her at gunpoint is shot by the main character, she takes out his partner with a flurry of powerful kicks, ending by pinning the guy against a pole by the throat with her foot.
• 'A League of Their Own'' has a couple:
  • The role is so small that it's credited only as "Dollbody Kid," but the youngster who drives Dottie to the roadhouse makes the most of his two memorable lines with a perfectly timed delivery:
  Dollbody Kid: What's your rush, dollbody? What do you say we slip in the back seat, and you make a man out of me?
  Dottie Hinson: What do you say I smack you around for a while?
  Dollbody Kid: Can't we do both?
  • Less humorously, when a foul ball goes into the segregated black section of a stadium, the woman who tosses it back hurls a mean pitch that impresses Dottie, but sadly there was nothing anyone could do since black players weren't allowed. The movie takes place four years before Jackie Robinson broke the MLB's color barrier.
• Towards the end of Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, a man (played by Large Ham Raymond Devos) tells a sad story about his attempts to fall in love with women. He is triggered by a simple melody, singing the line ''est-ce que vouz m'aimeeeeez''. His performance is highly memorable due to the fact that it's the longest shot of the film.
• Michael Kroecher as Lord Stanhope in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. His campy portrayal of the nobleman is fondly remembered by the audience and he eventually became a character actor for this kind of roles.
• Bride of Frankenstein has the titular character, who appears for only a few minutes at the very end. Somehow, those few minutes inspired an entire mythos.
• Tony Randall has a memorable cameo in Down with Love, a cockeyed tribute to the kind of romantic comedy he used to costar in during The '50s.
• Then unknown Matt Smith has a wonderful, sadly cut scene as the younger Ralph in In Bruges.
• The Doors has at least two:
  • Crispin Glover shows up at a party as Andy Warhol, in one of film's great "What the hell was that?" moments.
  • Mimi Rogers makes a sharp impression as the publicity photographer who helps Jim Morrison access his seductive side for the camera.
• The student in Back to the Future Part II who thinks Marty stole Biff's wallet. There's something about his persistence in trying to help Biff that makes the scene very memorable.
• The wolf in Into the Woods. It's no wonder they got Johnny Depp.
• Paddington (2014):
  • Jim Broadbent as Mr. Grueber the antique dealer. He's such an important supporting character in the books, that it be impossible to do an adaptation without him, and as a fellow immigrant he understands what Paddington is going through better than anyone else. That and his tea train he uses at Elevenses is really cool.
  • The Royal Guard outside Buckingham Palace who takes pity on Paddington and offers tea service and a sandwich that he keeps under his hat.
  • Simon Farnaby in both films as a lecherous security guard with a distinct inability to recognise (or ability to overlook) when a man is less-than-convincingly dressed as a woman.
• Avengers: Age of Ultron:
  • Klaw leaves a lot of an impact on the audience for an Early-Bird Cameo.
  • Julie Delpy's performance as Madame B (along with the appearance of the Red Room in general) is mesmerizing.
  • Thanos does this once again, this time taking a more hands-on approach toward what he plans on doing.
• Jupiter Ascending:
  • Advocate Bob, an android pro-bono lawyer assigned to Jupiter to help her be officially recognized as the rightful owner of Earth.
  • Also, a brief cameo by Terry Gilliam as an Inspiration Nod.
• Cinderella (2015):
  • The Fairy Godmother only physically appears in one scene (she narrates the rest of the movie) but Helena Bonham Carter steals the show to the end.
  • Likewise the King, who appears in only three scenes. Probably because he's played by the likes of Derek Jacobi.
  • Master Phineas, the painter of the Prince's portrait, has some of the funniest lines in the film despite appearing in one scene.
• The film The Desert Fox features a brief appearance by Jewish actor Luther Adler as one of the best renditions of Adolf Hitler ever committed to film.
• José Ferrer once told an interviewer, "If I were to be judged by any one performance, it would be my five minutes in Lawrence of Arabia." That's saying something given Ferrer's distinguished career, and his frightening portrayal of a sadistic Turkish general is far more memorable than his screentime suggests.
• Not an actor, but the scene in the notorious flop Raise the Titanic! wherein the RMS Titanic is raised is widely cited as being one of the few reasons to actually watch the film.
• German actor Udo Kier showed up in so many productions, starting with underground films with Andy Warhol's troupe, to Giallo movies, European Arthouse and Blockbusters that his face alone brings joy to the cineast's heart.
• Captain America: Civil War had one in the form of Florence Kasumba, who only has one line in one scene in the entire movie. She is escorting T'Challa back to his car and Black Widow is standing in front of it, and she simply says: "Move, or you will be moved." For those who follow the comics, it's implied that she is one of the Dora Milajae, the Black Panther's Praetorian Guard/Bodyguard Babes. That one line alone made her a memorable character, in spite of her not even having a name. The character proved so popular that they brought her back in a bigger role in the subsequent Black Panther movie, with her name being given as Ayo.
  • From his first line, King T'Chaka comes off as a wise statesman, and a nice, funny guy in general, like your dad, uncle, or grandpa. Shame about the explosion.
• James Bond:
  • Goldfinger has both Jill Masterson, whose death is one of the franchise's most enduring images, and the old lady who suddenly pulls out an MP 40 and shoots at Bond's Aston Martin.
  • Thunderball with Patricia Fearing the nurse, especially when she's out of uniform and being massaged.
  • You Only Live Twice features Donald Pleasence as Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He's got a white cat, a bald head, and a scar. He's also one of the most memorable James Bond villains, parodied and referenced ad nauseam. Total screen time: Approximately ten minutes.
  • A View to a Kill has Pola Ivanova, a sexy and very charismatic Russian agent who only appears briefly, and who many fans feel that she deserved to be the main Bond Girl in the film instead of Damsel Scrappy Stacey Sutton.
  • The Living Daylights features two, the hilarious Marshmallow Hell distraction Rosika Miklos, and the agent only known as Green Four who gives Necros a good fight in the MI6 safehouse kitchen.
  • Judi Dench's debut as M in GoldenEye. It was ironic enough to watch James Bond take orders from a powerful older woman who wasn't swayed by his charms, but she gives him an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech before sending him on his mission, while still telling him to come back alive. It was normal for the previous M to appear just long enough to give Bond his mission briefing and send him on his way, but Dench's debut was so well-loved that she was given an expanded role in subsequent films, even becoming a significant part of the plot in two of them (and a posthumous appearance in Spectre, showing the series wasn't ready to let her go).
  • Tomorrow Never Dies with Vincent Schiavelli as Torture Technician Dr. Kaufman, delivering a wonderfully hammy performance with a comically exaggerated German accent which is one of the highlights of the movie.
  • The World Is Not Enough has the Cigar Girl assassin. The director actually wanted her actress to be Elektra King, but upon realizing that her English wasn't up to par, he gave her this small role, which only has two lines - one of whom, her panicked, terrified response of "Not from him!" (when Bond promises that he can protect her from Renard) just sells the whole story. Also helping is how she kicks off the boat chase.
  • Madonna as a fencing instructor in Die Another Day. (She also sang the theme to the movie.)
  • Casino Royale has Mollaka, the freerunner (played by one of the real life inventors of Le Parkour) in the amazing chase scene; Mendel, the affable Swiss banker; and the eyepatch-wearing henchman from the fight in Venice.
  • Spectre brings back Jesper Christensen as Mr. White, and in just a couple minutes, the film transforms him from the smug Quantum leader he was in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to a broken father desperate to save his daughter.
  • No Time to Die has Ana de Armas as Paloma. In a contrast to most minor Bond Girls, she leaves a great impression on the audience by not only looking good, but spending her ten minutes on screen being an absolute badass in a gorgeous black cocktail dress.
• The Blues Brothers is full of these. Most notably, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown in their respective musical numbers, but also Twiggy, Steven Spielberg as the clerk at the Cook County Assessor's office, and Kathleen Freeman as 'the Penguin' in one of the film's most memorable scenes. Cab Calloway, John Candy and Carrie Fisher are equally awesome, but have too many scenes each to qualify as being a One-Scene Wonder.
• Malice has this with both George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft. Scott, as Alec Baldwin's former professor during the deposition scene, and Bancroft as Nicole Kidman's mother.
• There is a litany of incidental characters in the Laurel and Hardy films who do this:
  • In The Music Box, Professor Theodore von Schwarzenhoffen, M.D., A.D., D.D.S., F.L.D., F-F-F-and-F, who goes ballistic on being asked to take a step to the right.
  • In Tit for Tat, a genial thief who constantly steals from Laurel and Hardy's store.
• While The Greatest Showman was criticized a lot, one performance critics loved was none of the major cast members. In "The Other Side," Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron are doing a song and dance number about joining up as partners in a bar. But to many, the real highlight is Daniel Campos as the mustached bartender who doesn't say a word but expertly dodges the duo, sweeps up, throws them chairs and does a fantastic routine of lining up shot glasses in perfect choreography to the music.
• Notorious Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper is on scene at the end of Sunset Boulevard to report on Norma Desmond's downfall, hilariously interrupting a police detective's call to get the scoop ahead of all the rest - and indignantly telling him to get off the phone because her call is more important.
• The swordsman from Raiders of the Lost Ark, just for getting unceremoniously (and hilariously) shot. Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit has loads of iconic animated characters the that pop-up here and there.
  • Droopy as the Toon Hotel elevator bellman, the Toon Penguins from Mary Poppins and a ton of others that appear towards the end.
  • Even some original film characters have become one.
    • Lena Hyena, a crazy, obsessed, Jessica Rabbit-impersonating Toon woman who chases Eddie Valiant voiced by voice acting legend June Foray. Said to one of the movie's funniest, most memorable sequences.
    • A tragic, traumatizing example with the Toon Shoe that Judge Doom dissolves in Dip for really no reason.
    • The Toon octopus bartender at the Ink-N-Paint Club.
• Agitator Puntarpää had only one scene in Red Line, but thanks to Jussi Jurkka hamming it up, he sure made an impression.
• He has more than one scene, but John Cleese's minor role as an overly straight-laced and authoritarian British sheriff of a frontier town in The Western was widely considered a very memorable part of Silverado.
• John Savage as Clifton, the white bicylist who gets confronted by Buggin' Out for causing a mark on his shoes in Do the Right Thing.
• Marilyn Monroe's 30 seconds in Love Happy are easily the most remembered part of the film.
• Lady and the Tramp: Clancy Brown does his usual expertly scary voice work as the alley dog who corners Lady.
• The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit: Sid Caesar and Howard Morris appear in a single scene as two brothers who are the proprietors of the store where the suit is being sold and absolutely steal the show from the five leads during their time on screen.
• The Report: Tim Blake Nelson and Fajer Al-Kaisi only show up for a few scenes, but make big impressions as Raymond Nathan and FBI Agent Ali Soufan, two of the few government operatives we see object to the EITs.
• Danny Elfman makes a memorable appearance as The Devil in the cult movie Forbidden Zone (not counting when he sings the titular song) along with some of the future members of Oingo Boingo doing a remix of "Minnie the Moocher" called "Squeezit the Moocher". He has no speaking lines and he's only in about 3 minutes of an 80-minute long movie, but you would think from the movie posters and the small amount of fans this movie has that he was one of the main characters.
• Men in Black II has Michael Jackson as a collaborator who insists "I could be Agent M!"
  • In Men in Black 3, Bill Hader as Andy Warhol, who is secretly an MIB agent.
• The Postman: The Mayor of Benning makes his one scene an interesting one. Partly because of his idealistic excitement about the Postman's return, partly because of his pragmatic and well-reasoned concerns about picking a fight with the Holnists (given their limited arsenal), and partly because he's played by George Wyner (who is better known for his comedic roles).
• Field of Dreams Ray's dad shows up seven minutes before the end of the movie and completely changes your perception of why the field was made in the first place. Manly Tears ensue.

  Ray: Dad? Wanna have a catch?

• Crazy Rich Asians brings in YouTube music artist Kina Grannis for the film’s wedding scene to perform the wedding song. As one of the earliest prominent Asian YouTubers, it is considered a nice nod toward her influence in increasing Asian representation in mainstream media.
• Signs:
  • Tracy Abernathy, the teenaged pharmacist who insists on confessing her sins to Graham (despite him reminding her he isn't a pastor anymore) in her one scene due to fear of the aliens and can remember every time she's sworn in the last month.
  • Ray Reedy, the guilt-ridden driver who killed Mrs. Hess, gets an emotional scene apologizing to Graham before revealing he has an alien trapped in his pantry. Ray does appear in two other scenes, but only briefly and without speaking.
  • SFC Cunningham, the local recruiting officer who is a fan of Merrill's baseball career and correctly analyzes the aliens' probing attacks during his sole scene.
• Free Guy has an amusing one when Guy suddenly pulls out Captain America's shield, leading Chris Evans himself to appear commenting on the moment with "What the shit?".
• Snow and Fire: Not a character, rather an authentic and rare vehicle. If you're a World War II tank enthusiast, you can't help but rejoice that a film used a real Königstiger (the one belonging to the French tank museum of Saumur) and not a mockup, even for only one scene.
• Solarbabies: The quirky, insightful, and slightly creepy Tchigani Wasteland Elder gets quite a lot of mileage out of his two minutes or so of screen time.
• They Live!:
  • The couple who are having sex in the final seconds of the film when the man (an alien) experiences a Glamour Failure.
  • The brave, shotgun-wielding Badass Biker sentry at the resistance meeting, who has less than a minute of screen time but has a pretty impressive presence.
• The Stinger of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) brings in a very unexpected Tails in a Sequel Hook.
• Velvet Buzzsaw:
  • The main homeless vendor from the very end of the movie, who ends up selling the valuable Dease paintings for minuscule sums. This is helped by the debate about the Ambiguous Ending nature of his scene.
  • The raspy-voiced VA janitor and Private Investigator Ruskinspear, with their well-acted, back-to-back Mr. Exposition scenes that lay out some of the creepier details about Dease's past.
• Yesterday (2019) has an uncredited Robert Carlyle as John Lennon, suddenly alive in this world that forgot the Beatles.
• Licorice Pizza has a brief, barely recognizable, but memorable appearance from John C. Reilly as Herman Munster at the Teen-Age Fair (a sort of World's Fair for young people) where Gary goes to sell waterbeds.
• Despite her role being only a single scene, Taylor Hickson's portrayal of Meghan Orlovsky in Deadpool, a girl whom Wade helps with a stalker, became her breakthrough.
• Space Jam: A New Legacy has lots of cameos, a few entering straight here: Wonder Woman oversees Lola Bunny's test to join the Amazons, Rick and Morty return Taz to the Tunes.. and in the Tune Squad's Darkest Hour, Michael Jordan shows up to help the Tunes win the basketball game... only it's Michael B. Jordan.
• Iceman only appears in the flesh for one scene of Top Gun: Maverick, and it's absolutely heartbreaking, specially when Val Kilmer actually talks (given throat cancer took away his voice).
• Kill the Messenger:
  • Ray Liotta gives a nuanced performance as a guilt-ridden CIA agent who anonymously gives Webb information as his way of atoning, explicitly comparing it to a confession.
  • Robert Patrick as drug dealer Ronny Quail, whose assets were claimed by the government with civil forfeiture.
  • Michael K. Williams only shows up once as "Freeway" Rick Ross, but his sole scene is easily the best part of the movie.
  • Paz Vega as Coral Blaca, the woman who sets Webb off on his investigation by giving him evidence of the government's participation in cocaine sales.
• The Lost City has Brad Pitt as Jack Trainer, a super competent ex-Navy Seal operative who manages to rescue Loretta from Fairfax's compound, but ends up getting shot before he can get her to the airport, only to later be revealed to somehow still be alive in the mid-credits scene. Many noted Pitt's performance as one of the highlights of the film, even though he has what amounts to a glorified cameo appearance.
• J. T. Walsh, in his relatively short career, had a few of these:
  • He only appears in a couple of scenes in The Grifters in a Flashback as Myra's former partner (showing how the two of them teamed up for The Con, though it also shows how he eventually becomes crazy), but he's one of the most memorable parts of the movie, along with other scene stealers such as Pat Hingle (as Lily's boss) and Eddie Jones (as Roy's former mentor).
  • Walsh also dominates his few scenes in The Last Seduction as Bridget's lawyer, and gets the film's most memorable line ("Anybody check you for a heartbeat lately?").
  • Though he only shows up in one scene in Outbreak as the White House Chief of Staff, his scene is such a memorable defying of A Million Is a Statistic he even gets shown briefly in the movie's trailer.
• Wrong Turn:
  • Halley, the female rock climber from the opening scene, makes a good impression due to showing some decent resourcefulness and expressive acting while trying to escape from the hillkillers.
  • The Creepy Gas-Station Attendant played by Wayne Robson is only in two short scenes but is delightfully eerie in both of them.
• The Fabelmans offers two, Judd Hirsch as the protagonist's uncle who encourages him on taking a career in art (it even earned an Academy Award nomination), and David Lynch as John Ford.
• Joy Ride 3: Roadkill: Barry, the Conspiracy Theorist trucker who vainly warns the protagonists about the dangers of traveling Rusty’s favorite section of highway, milks his one scene for all it is worth.
• The Parallax View:
  • Kenneth Mars as the ex-FBI agent is pretty memorable for his hilarious snarkiness and Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic with Frady.
  • Anthony Zerbe shows up uncredited to play the eccentric professor Frady goes to to help him fake his Parallax questionnaire. It's pretty hard to forget a guy who plays video games with a chimpanzee and starts rattling off about how a chimpanzee bit off his colleague's ear.
• Seraphim Falls: Every character or group of characters who Gideon and his pursuers briefly encounter get a lot of respect from most fans, but some are particularly memorable and feel like much bigger parts of the movie than they actually are.
  • The Nice Mean And In Between bank robber brothers and cousin who encounter Gideon.
  • Carver’s wife is quite haunting in the flashbacks of her Plot-Triggering Death.
  • Little Miss Badass Determined Homesteaders daughter Charlotte.
  • Cold Ham Magical Native American Charon and the eerie saleswoman Madame Louise amp up the Magical Realism during their brief screen time.
• SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods ends with Billy dead and the wizard Shazam saying his magic staff can only be reignited by a god. Then one demigod shows up... Wonder Woman!
• Meinhardt Raabe as the Munchkin Coroner in The Wizard of Oz.
• Kenau: Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, only appears in one scene to berate his Smug Snake of a son Fadrique for not living up to his father's reputation as a Four-Star Badass. He makes quite an impression.
• One of the most talked about scenes in Glass Onion is the cameo of Hugh Grant as Benoit Blanc's husband Philip.
• Up the Front: Zsa Zsa Gabor as Mata Hari. With less than ten minutes of screentime, Gabor gives a performance that is camp, alluring, and hilarious, even Breaking the Fourth Wall just as well as Frankie Howerd does.
• The V.I.P.s:
  • A 29-year-old Maggie Smith sheds tears in a scene opposite Richard Burton where she pleads with him to save her boss and his company from bankruptcy. Richard Burton later said she stole the movie.
  • Then there was Margaret Rutherford who wasn't particularly integral to the pathos of the film and won an Oscar for her physical comedy, but she dazzled in multiple small bits.

---