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Casting Gag

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This is where an entire role mirrors or parodies an entire previous role or Real Life situation of the actor. A conscious casting choice can be assumed; thus, it can also apply to cameos and guest stars. This forms a small joke or minor piece of merriment. Note that the gag is entirely dependent on the casting and the role rather than some later effected plot or dialogue.

Contrastingly, an Actor Allusion is when the role being played can be nothing like the actor's real life or previous roles, but contains a Famous Role Shout Out: an allusion to the actor's work, but nothing more.

An actor can use this self-consciously when parodying themselves for Adam Westing. Compare with Playing Against Type, when an actor's role is (often consciously) very different to their typical ones, though this is less likely to be a gag. If the gag is that the character being played is untalented in something the actor excels in, then it's Irony as She Is Cast. If the Casting Gag is that the actor appeared in an earlier version of the same story, it's a Remake Cameo. Compare also to Actor-Shared Background, when the gag doesn't reference a large part of the actor's real life, but matches certain elements. See also I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime 

    Fan Works 
  • StarSword usually includes in a forum post a list of the actors he'd prefer to have voice the characters of his fics. To complete the Babylon 5 homage in one scene in "Solaere ssiun Hnaifv'daenn", the local police chief is voiced by Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi on B5), and local tough Rabak tr'Venku is played by John Saint Ryan, who played a nearly identical disgruntled local (credited as "Troublemaker") in the scene the homage was based on.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Sunset Boulevard:
    • Gloria Swanson, who was an over the hill, forgotten silent movie actress, plays an over the hill silent movie actress.
    • She employs a butler who was once a famous, now forgotten, silent film director. This part is played by the once famous, then forgotten silent film director Erich von Stroheim.
    • When Swanson's character is seen watching one of her old movies, it is ACTUALLY an old Gloria Swanson movie (Queen Kelly) - directed by Erich von Stroheim.
    • And then there's her card-playing buddies from the Old Days ("the Waxworks"), including Buster Keaton.
  • Carrie Fisher has a cameo in Scream 3 as "Bianca" who is bitter over losing out for the role of Princess Leia to another actress. She goes as far to state that the actress 'must have slept with George Lucas'.
  • Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and Ray Park have all appeared in Fanboys because of their roles in Star Wars. The fact that they played different characters added to the level of hilarious.
  • Sigourney Weaver plays a (blonde!) Bridge Bunny in Galaxy Quest, a character significantly at odds to her best known role, Ellen Ripley of Alien. In the same film, Tim Allen is very convincing as a washed-up TV star, and Alan Rickman is excellent as a respected Shakespearean actor playing a role far below his ability.
  • In Avatar, Sigourney Weaver fights to protect the aliens. And the film is by the same director of Aliens.
  • In Paul, Sigourney Weaver plays the Big Bad that hunts the titular Alien.
  • In Shakespeare in Love, Ben Affleck has a small role as a big name actor who is tricked into accepting a small role in Romeo and Juliet.
  • David Duchovny in Zoolander as a conspiracy nut.
  • In the 1970's movie Cannonball Run, one of the racers has the delusion that he is a famous movie star named Roger Moore, and has lots of zany gadgets including an ejection seat in the car. Of course, the character is played by Roger Moore, who was one of the James Bond actors.
  • Freaky Friday (2003) wanted to do this with Jodie Foster, who played the daughter in the original 1976 Freaky Friday, now playing the mother, however she declined the role and it went to Jamie Lee Curtis instead.
  • In Clue we get this Stealth Pun Casting Gag: "Mr. Boddy won't be staying with us for very long. In fact, he's just Lee Ving."
  • Sky High (2005): Lynda Carter, former Wonder Woman, as the Sky High Principal. At one point, she quips "I'm not a wonder woman, you know."
  • Iron Man:
    • The after-credits-appearing character Nick Fury is played by Samuel L. Jackson who serves (with his permission) as the model for the appearance and personality of the Ultimate Marvel version of Fury. Within the comic The Ultimates itself, when the team was amusing themselves speculating on who would play them in the movie about their adventures, Fury said that he would of course be played by Samuel L. Jackson. A popular theory is that Jackson, a real-life comics fan, agreed to provide his likeness for the Ultimate Universe Nick Fury, with the understanding that if ever there was a movie with Nick Fury, he would get to play the role.
    • Ghostface Killah — who uses "Tony Starks" as an alias, titled his 1996 solo debut album Ironman and opened his 2000 album Supreme Clientele with a clip of the theme to the old Iron Man cartoon — was actually cast in a supporting role in the film as an industrial tycoon (though his scene didn't make it to the final cut).
    • Guitarist Tom Morello appears as one of the terrorists who try to kill the first Iron Man suit. To get the gag you have to remember that he is most famous for playing with "Rage Against the Machine". (Morello later co-scored the sequel)
    • And then there were the endless jokes about casting Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. And then Sherlock Holmes, who had a bit of a thing for cocaine.
  • Maverick:
    • A Casting Gag played as Actor Allusion, the title character (played by Mel Gibson) is in a bank as it is held up by an unnamed bank robber played by Danny Glover, who starred alongside Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series of movies. Maverick acts as though he recognises the voice of the bank robber and pulls down his mask, leading the two of them to share a moment before shaking their heads and walking away. The unnamed bank robber also mentions that he's "getting too old for this" as he makes his getaway.
    • Further, the film features The Unseen father of Bret Maverick — who, just coincidentally, happens to be played by none other than James Garner, who originated the role of Maverick on TV.
  • Very possibly the casting of Robin Williams, TV's Mork From Ork in The '70s, as Popeye, searching for his long lost father, Poopdeck Pappy, played by Ray Walston, TV's loveable alien from The '60s on My Favorite Martian.
  • Larry Hagman in Oliver Stone's Nixon, playing a Texas billionaire.
  • Since the new resurgence of superhero films began, comic book legend Stan Lee has had a cameo in most of the film series of Marvel characters he helped to create, from Spider-Man Trilogy to the X-Men Film Series. Usually he's just being heroic, but he got to play a character he created, Willie Lumpkin, in the Fox Fantastic Four (2005) movie. He was a miss pageant judge in Iron Man 3. Truly a hero to the good old US of A. :)
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show creator Richard O'Brien was probably best-known in the UK during The '90s for hosting The Crystal Maze, a game show in which contestants had to win crystals (and ultimately prizes) by solving puzzles on a large, labyrinthine set. He was later cast in the Dungeons & Dragons film as the master of a large maze from which the heroes have to retrieve a gem.
  • In Kenneth Branagh's film Henry V, the actor Michael Williams, Judi Dench's husband, was cast as the character Michael Williams after she signed on to the film.
  • At the beginning of Love Actually, Liam Neeson's character is giving a eulogy for his wife, and he jokingly mentions that they had a lot of time to discuss things when she was ill, and one of her suggestions was that he bring Claudia Schiffer as his date to the funeral. This gets a callback later when he tells his stepson that he plans on never finding love again — unless he should run into Claudia Schiffer. At the end, he's at the stepson's school, trying to help him resolve his own unrequited love for a classmate... and he bumps into another parent he's never met before, who introduces herself as Carol Karen (he stammers a bit and calls her Carol, though). She's is played by Claudia Schiffer.
  • Thoroughly unintentional example (they initially refused to even let her audition): Paris Hilton in Repo! The Genetic Opera playing... a rich, slutty, fashion-obsessed heiress cultivating a singing career using her name and infamy rather than talent. Better than it sounds, not least because her face falls off.
  • In Bridget Jones' Diary, Colin Firth was cast to play Mark Darcy, a character inspired by Fitzwilliam Darcy (from Pride and Prejudice) which he played in a series of made for TV films. On top of that, in the original novel, Bridget and her friends are stated to lust after the actor and his famous wet shirt scene.
    • In the second novel, Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth for a newspaper article.
  • The Men Who Stare at Goats: The titular men call themselves "Jedi Knights". So who should be cast as the reporter writing a story on this covert group of psychic warriors, making such statements as, "I don't understand what a Jedi Knight is."? Ewan McGregor. According to McGregor, the director didn't even realize this, although McGregor himself played it up.
  • Is it just a coincidence that Nestor Carbonell, who played Mayor Anthony Garcia in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, also played Batmanuel in The Tick (2001)?
  • In David Mamet's adaptation of the play The Winslow Boy, Neil North plays the First Lord of the Admiralty. In the 1948 film of the same play, North had played the title character (a supporting role).
  • The same year Mark Williams was cast as the technology-loving wizard Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter movie series, he was also an enthusiastic presenter in Industrial Revelations, a documentary series about the history of technology.
    • In Half-Blood Prince, after Bill was attacked, he was said to bear a distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody. In Deathly Hallows, Bill was played by Domhnall Gleeson whose father, Brendan Gleeson, played Moody.
    • Also in Half-Blood Prince, Lord Voldemort's child self is played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, nephew to Ralph Fiennes who portrays the character's adult incarnation.
    • In the epilogue, Draco Malfoy's wife was played by Tom Felton's real life girlfriend.
  • Miranda Richardson has been in so many roles that involve beheading — Queen Elizabeth in Blackadder II, the Queen of Hearts in 1999's Alice in Wonderland TV miniseries, Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow — that it's hard to imagine her role as the chicken-killing Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run being anything other than an allusion to her past head-removing roles.
  • Sean Connery was cast as Indiana Jones' father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because Steven Spielberg and George Lucas thought that the only man who could play Indy's father was James Bond, and because in a meta sense, James Bond was the father of Indiana Jones. Raiders of the Lost Ark came about when Steven Spielberg told George Lucas that he wanted to make a Bond movie; Lucas pitched his "Indiana Smith" character as a rights-free alternative, and the rest is history.
  • In the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, M (played by Judi Dench) butts heads with an admiral played by Geoffrey Palmer. The two played a romantic couple on the British sitcom As Time Goes By.
  • John Hurt, who played the lead role of Winston Smith in British movie Nineteen Eighty-Four; was in 2006 cast as the dictator for the film V for Vendetta, which bore a similar setting. The dictator's face is seen displayed over several screens throughout the city, all in a very Big Brother-esque way.
  • Matt Damon as the hero and Greg Kinnear as the Big Bad in Green Zone. Both had previously starred as conjoined twins in the Farelly Brothers comedy Stuck on You.
  • In Enemy of the State, Gene Hackman plays a character who seems like a good-guy version of his "professional eavesdropper" character in The Conversation. This is referenced when a photograph of Hackman's character from that earlier film is used as a file photo in Enemy of the State.
  • In Piranha 3D, Richard Dreyfuss has a cameo at the beginning as a character who is practically Matt Hooper from Jaws.
  • Blades of Glory manages to make incest both funny and pretty much a foregone conclusion by casting (then) real-life husband and wife Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as fraternal twins Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg.
  • Hot Fuzz casts Edward Woodward as the equivalent of his antagonists from The Wicker Man (1973)
  • In Airplane!, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who's cast as pilot Roger Murdock, is pointed out by a boy on the plane as being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The boy continues to ask Murdock why he doesn't put more effort into his basketball, to which Murdock heavily implies he's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hiding as a pilot. Finally, when Murdock has to be taken off the co-pilot seat after suffering food poisoning, he is revealed to be wearing his basketball shorts and shoes.
    • Also, there's one scene in a mental hospital for soldiers with PTSD. One of the soldiers thinks he's Ethel Merman, and he's played by none other than Ethel Merman herself.
  • In The Flintstones movie, Fred has a secretary named Sharon Stone (a reference to both the actress and the non-stop "rock" puns common in the TV series). The producers wanted Sharon Stone to be played by... Sharon Stone, who had to turn down the role as she was working on another movie (the part was taken by Halle Berry). Stone has since expressed her regret for not appearing in the Flintstones.
  • David Rasche plays a senator in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers. Rasche is most famous for spoofing Eastwood's Dirty Harry character as the trigger-happy, fascist Cowboy Cop Sledge Hammer!.
  • In A Fish Called Wanda, George Thomason is played by Tom Georgeson.
  • In Unknown (2011), Aidan Quinn plays the sinister impostor "Martin B", who steals the identity of Martin Harris (Liam Neeson). They had both played best friends in Michael Collins, and Neeson suggested that he be cast opposite him as the villain.
  • Maybe: In Atlas Shrugged Part 1, one of Dagny's enemies is played the actor who was both Quark, an alien whose "Hat" is greed and business prowess and Andrew Ryan, extreme business-liberal and parody of Atlas author Ayn Rand.
  • In the original version of The Parent Trap, the father's evil girlfriend is named Vicky. In the remake, the evil girlfriend Meredith's mother says, "You may call me Aunt Vicky." She was played by the same actress who played Vicky in the original.
  • In Battle Beyond the Stars Robert Vaughn plays the Recycled In Space version of his character from The Magnificent Seven.
  • In Lord of the Rings, Gimli nudges Legolas's bow so that the intended warning shot would nail one of Sauron's pirate reinforcements right in the chest. the pirates were all played by the production staff and the pirate that gets killed? Peter Jackson, the director.
    • Ian Holm plays Bilbo, but was Frodo, Bilbo's nephew in the 1981 radio drama.
  • Tim Burton has a brief cameo in Singles, playing a disheveled, artistic amateur film director.
    • Also in Burton's Dark Shadows, Chloe Moretz, who previous played a vampire in Let Me In, plays...a werewolf.
  • In North, Kelly McGillis has a cameo as an Amish woman and Alexander Gudunov as her husband- they famously played Amish people in Witness.
  • Porn stars cast as porn stars (movie edition):
    • In Boogie Nights, several porn stars (most notably Nina Hartley) had bit parts in the movie.
    • In The Big Lebowski, Asia Carrera had a cameo as one of the actresses in the fictional porn film Logjammin'.
    • In Striptease, Pandora Peaks played Demi Moore's stripper friend Urbanna Sprawl.
    • In Zack and Miri Make a Porno, porn stars Katie Morgan and Traci Lords play porn stars.
    • In Orgazmo, Ron Jeremy plays a porn star who may or may not have been intended to be himself.
    • This was supposed to be the case in Drive, where the director originally wanted a porn star to play Blanche, who was implied to be one (or a stripper, at least), but was unable to find one who he considered a good enough actor for the role. Actual porn stars Andy San Dimas and Bobbi Starr show up as strippers in another scene, however.
  • In Photographing Fairies, Edward Hardwicke plays Arthur Conan Doyle. At the time, Hardwicke was best known as the second Dr. Watson in Granada's Sherlock Holmes.
  • In Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Brendan Fraser plays the part of Brendan Fraser's stunt double. Later on, he punches "Brendan Fraser" in the face.
    DJ: Did you see those Mummy movies? Yeah, I'm in them more than Bren Fraser is.
  • Les Misérables (2012), the most recent film version of the musical, features several of the original stage actors in cameos, most notably Colm Wilkinson (the original Jean Valjean) as the Bishop of Digne, who gives Valjean the candlesticks, Frances Ruffelle (the original Eponine) as "The Most Fabulous Whore" in "Lovely Ladies".
  • Superman has, in some cuts, a minor scene showing a young Lois Lane riding on a train with her parents. Said parents: Kirk Allen and Noel Neil, who played Superman and Lois Lane in the 1940's serials.
  • In the 1951 film Sons of the Musketeers, Porthos Jr is played by Alan Hale Jr. Alan Hale Sr played Porthos in the 1939 film of The Man in the Iron Mask. (Hale Jr would also go on to play Porthos in another film based on the "Man in the Iron Mask" section of The Vicomte de Bragelonne, 1979's The Fifth Musketeer.)
  • The Japanese dub of Pacific Rim has Megumi Hayashibara as the dub voice of Mako Mori, a Japanese mecha pilot with short, blue-tinted hair. Three good guesses as to why she was cast in that role...
  • Peter Capaldi as a World Health Organization (W.H.O) Doctor in World War Z. Prior to the worldwide announcement on 4 August 2013, it was mostly unknown that he would play the role of the Twelfth Doctor (only known to a select few, including some of the show's production staff).
  • From The Hunger Games: Josh Hutcherson (Peeta) and Alexander Ludwig (Cato) fight it out after both appearing in movies where they had close relationships with AnnaSophia Robb. Hutcherson as her best friend in Bridge to Terabithia and Ludwig as her brother in Race to Witch Mountain.
  • Sharlto Copley as an Ax-Crazy mercenary hunting the hero in Elysium, a reversal from his role in District 9. Invoked, as Copley wasn't interested in playing essentially the same character again.
  • Saving Mr. Banks: It can't be a coincidence that Emma Thompson plays P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, after having previously played a Poppins-eque Magical Nanny in Nanny McPhee.
  • Wedding Crashers: US Treasury Secretary William Cleary and his wife Katherine are played by Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour, who had respectively played Max Zorin in A View to a Kill and Solitaire in Live and Let Die, which were Roger Moore's last and first James Bond films, respectively.
  • Sir Kenneth Branagh has spent his entire career being compared to and shadowing sir Laurence Olivier. So there came as no suprise when he was cast as Laurence Olivier himself in My Week With Marilyn.
  • In the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, Waylon Jennings is played by Jennings' real-life son, Shooter Jennings.
  • The film version of A Streetcar Named Desire somewhat famously cast Vivien Leigh—who was still best known for playing Scarlett O'Hara at the time—as the mentally damaged Southern belle Blanche Dubois, whose tragic inability to cope with the loss of her family's ancestral plantation ultimately costs her her sanity. The casting choice helps make Tennessee Williams' deconstruction of American class and gender roles all the more obvious, and it draws attention to Blanche's attachment to her rosy, idealized image of the antebellum South.
  • In Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the Big Bad Dr. Totenkopf never actually appears in the flesh until the final act of the movie, but he's "played" by the late Sir Laurence Olivier in pictures and video clips, with several old film clips of Olivier edited together to fit the film's plot. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Totenkopf turns out to have been Dead All Along (just like his actor) when the heroes finally breach his lair.
  • A Shot At Glory features former Rangers footballer Ally McCoist as former Celtic footballer Jackie McQuillan - the clubs in question are two of the fiercest rivals in world football.
  • In a What Could Have Been example, Marvel Studios originally wanted Mads Mikkelsen for the role of Malekith the Accursed in Thor: The Dark World, which also starred Anthony Hopkins as Odin. If Mikkelsen had actually been cast in the role, the movie would have featured two Hannibal Lecters squaring off against each other in a war over Asgard.
  • In Back to the Future Part III, Mary Steenburgen stars as Clara Clayton, a 19th century woman who falls in love with a time-traveller from the 20th century, the opposite of her role in Time After Time, where she played a 20th century woman who falls in love with a time-traveller from the 19th century. What's better is her film debut had been in Goin' South, a western-comedy where she was also wooed by Christopher Lloyd.
  • X-Men Film Series
    • X-Men: The Last Stand has former soccer player Vinnie Jones as the Juggernaut, whose American football design is deliberately played up with his "unstoppable" mutant power.
    • X-Men: Apocalypse:
      • Possibly unintentional, but in the comics, Psylocke is famous for being a white women who became Asian (It Makes Sense in Context). In the film, she's played by Olivia Munn, who is half-white and half-Asian.
      • Accidental example. Angel is played by Ben Hardy in this film. He was previously played by another Ben—Ben Foster—in The Last Stand.
      • Ally Sheedy, who starred as a '80s-era high school student stuck in detention in The Breakfast Club, is Scott Summers' (a.k.a. Cyclops) teacher in 1983, and she sends him to the principal's office.
    • The New Mutants:
      • Maisie Williams, most famous for playing the younger daughter of direwolf-themed House Stark on Game of Thrones, has been cast as mutant lycanthrope Wolfsbane.
  • Man of Steel:
  • Star Wars:
  • For the 2014 film adaptation of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Alexander is played by Australia-based child actor Ed Oxenbould. In the original book, Alexander, fed up with how terible his day has been so far, insists on moving to Australia.
  • Birdman, the story of a washed-up actor who can't escape the shadow of a past high-profile superhero role, cast Batman himself, Michael Keaton (Batman, Batman Returns) as the main character. Keeping with the superhero theme, Emma Stone (The Amazing Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider Man 2) was cast as Keaton's daughter, while Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk) was cast as an obnoxious actor.
    • Norton's casting was an example of this trope as well, since he's an actor well known for being extremely difficult to work with, much like his character in the film.
  • Full Moon film Ooga Booga is about a young black man whose soul inhabits an impossibly racist "tribesman" doll after he is wrongfully killed by police. The main character's landlord - and one of his victims - is played by Karen Black. Karen Black is best known for being menaced by a Zuni fetish doll in Trilogy of Terror. Her casting is possibly the only clever idea in the film.
  • In The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, all of the Shadowhunters have British accents. Clary who is the daughter of one is played by Lily Collins who is also the daughter a Brit.
  • Matthew McConaughey's role in Interstellar seems to be a nod to his previous role as Jodie Foster's love interest in Contact, a very similar film that was based on the writings of Carl Sagan (a very close friend and colleague of Kip Thorne, whose work Interstellar was based on).
  • In Camp Takota, Hannah Hart plays Alison, the camp chef, a nod to the fact that she's best known for her youtube series My Drunk Kitchen. Cooking turns out to be more central to her character when it turns out Alison was accepted to a prestigious culinary school, but kept working at the camp because she was nervous about how she'd do there. At one point, her character also makes a bad food pun (holding up a vegetable peeler and mentioning that working in the kitchen can be "una-peeling"), which is also a frequent My Drunk Kitchen occurrence.
  • Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort play a couple in The Fault in Our Stars and siblings in Divergent. These two books/films also have a very large rivalry, alongside The Hunger Games.
  • In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Brock Peters was cast to play the racist Admiral Cartwright. While the character had been seen in the earlier film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, director Nicolas Meyer confirmed that he was brought back as an allusion to Peters' roll as Tom Robinson. Peters was, understandably, very uncomfortable playing the part.
  • In the movie Life Partners, Adam Brody plays the boyfriend of his wife Leighton Meester's best friend.
  • In the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo movie and its sequel, Daphne is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar—better known as Buffy Summers, the leader of the Scooby Gang.
  • In May 1941 Esmond Knight was an officer aboard the battleship Prince of Wales when she engaged the Bismarck off Iceland, and was almost completely blinded by flying debris when his ship was hit. In 1960 he played the Captain of the Prince of Wales in Sink the Bismarck!.
  • Mila Kunis, a Ukrainian woman, as a Russian immigrant in Jupiter Ascending, which is doubly darkly hilarious due to the quasi-war between the two states.
  • J-Lo as Tip's mom in Home, as a reference to Oh's name in The True Meaning of Smekday — the novel the film was based on.
  • In Ant-Man, actor Garrett Morris plays the driver in the car that Scott Lang lands on during his trial run with the suit. When Morris was a cast member on Saturday Night Live, he played Ant-Man in a famous skit where several Marvel and DC superheroes have a party. Because of Ant-Man's relative obscurity, Morris was actually the first actor ever to portray the character in live-action — and he remained the only actor ever to do so until Paul Rudd took the role in this film.
  • When Paul Bettany portrayed Dr. Stephen Maturin in the film adaptation of Master and Commander in 2003, many viewers noted that his take on the character was practically a fictional counterpart to Charles Darwin: a learned man of science who goes to sea as a ship's doctor in the 19th century, serves as a companion to the ship's captain, spends his time researching animal specimens in the Galapagos Islands, and even bears a rather striking resemblance to Darwin◊. Fittingly, Bettany actually got a chance to play Darwin for real in the biopic Creation in 2009, six years later.
  • Cinderella (2015):
    • Lily James plays the servant to Sophie McShera, the reverse of their roles on Downton Abbey.
    • Likewise, Richard Madden plays a royalty who falls in love with a girl considered below his social status, just like his role on Game of Thrones, except this time it has a Happy Ending. Interestingly, his character's name is Kit, just like the actor who plays his on-screen half-brother (actually cousin) in the same show.
  • In The Book of Life, Skeleton Jorge was played by famous spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo and in the film who states that instead of bullfighting he wanted to sing at Operas.
  • In The Incredibles, Holly Hunter plays Elastigirl, a superhero forced into mandatory retirement when politicians pass a Super Registration Act. In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, she plays Senator Finch, a politician trying to pass a Super Registration Act herself.
  • Donald Glover, who campaigned to play Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man (and served as the partial inspiration for Miles Morales) appears in Spider-Man: Homecoming as Aaron, Miles' uncle.
  • Inside Llewyn Davis revolves around the titular character, a struggling folk singer in the 1960s, dealing with the pain of languishing in obscurity while his former partner Jim Berkey strikes it big as a solo artist. Berkey is played by Justin Timberlake, who was—rather famously—the only member of *NSYNC who managed to strike it big as a solo artist after the band's breakup.
  • Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later has a great example. It has Janet Leigh, most famous for her role in Psycho, in a small role as a school secretary. She is working for the head of the school played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Leigh is Curtis' real-life mother. Leigh turns to Curtis and says, "If I may be maternal for a moment..." as the camera pulls back to reveal Leigh's car. The car is the same one she drove in Psycho.
  • It (2017), a period horror film set in The '80s based on a Stephen King novel, prominently features teenage actor Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier. Wolfhard is best known for his role as Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things, a period horror series set in The '80s and inspired by (among other things) the works of Stephen King. Season 1, in particular, seems to have been heavily inspired by It, another story about a band of misfit friends confronting a malevolent monster in small-town America.
  • In Aquaman, Black Manta's father is played by Michael Beach, who previously voiced Devil Ray, Black Manta's Expy/Suspiciously Similar Substitute, in Justice League Unlimited.
  • Titus, the 1999 film adaptation of Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus, cast Anthony Hopkins as the title character, who gets revenge on his arch-enemy by murdering her sons, baking them into a pie and making her eat them.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Big Bang Theory:
    • had Sara Gilbert play Leonard's love interest; Johnny Galecki and Gilbert played a couple on Roseanne.
    • Laurie Metcalf, most famous as Jackie on the previously stated show, plays Sheldon's mother.
    • Katey Sagal, who played Kaley Cuoco's mother on 8 Simple Rules shows up as her mom again in Season 10.
  • Doctor Who:
    • A blend of this trope and Real-Life Relative turns up in the episode "The Doctor's Daughter", where the titular character is played by Georgia Moffett, real-life daughter of the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison.
    • Derek Jacobi appeared on the show as Professor Yana, who, unknown to everyone (including himself), was actually The Doctor's old nemesis The Master. Jacobi had previously played The Master in an animated Doctor Who story.
      • The Doctor in that animated story, the Ninth, had been played by Richard E Grant, famous for playing Withnail, the best friend of "I", played by Paul McGann - who was also the Eighth Doctor.
    • The Doctor and James Bond are often cited as the two quintessential heroes of modern British popular culture, and they're both well-known for having been played by a succession of very different actors over the course of their long histories. Therefore, the producers probably had this trope in mind when they cast Timothy Dalton as the elder Time Lord Rassilon, the Big Bad of "The End of Time".
    • In the An Adventure in Space and Time docudrama, the original voice actor for the Daleks and Cybermen (Peter Hawkins) is played by Nicholas Briggs, the current voice of the Daleks and Cybermen.
    • "Closing Time" features a Yaoi Fangirl Shipper on Deck who is played by Lynda Baron, the actress who played Captain Wrack in the famously Camp Ho Yay-ridden serial "Enlightenment".
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Since A Song of Ice and Fire is often considered a Spiritual Antithesis to The Lord of the Rings it's quite apropos that Ned Stark be played by The Lord of the Rings alumni Sean Bean.
    • Natalie Dormer as Margaery, a role quite similar to her turn as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors. Both are beautiful and ambitious young noblewomen of dubious virginity who seek to become queen and have a close bond with their gay brother. Coincidentally, the Tyrell's golden rose sigil is a palette swap of the red-and-white Tudor rose.
    • The series' regular audiobook narrator Roy Dotrice was going to play Pycelle, but health concerns forced him into a cameo as Pyromancer Hallyne.
    • Before being cast as Stannis Baratheon's Good Angel, Bad Angel advisors, Liam Cunningham (Davos) and Carice Van Houten (Melisandre) played lovers in the 2011 Dutch film Black Butterflies.
    • Tyrion Lannister is generally agreed to have been inspired (at least in part) by the Historical-Domain Character King Richard III, with whom he has quite a few similarities. note  It may or may not be a coincidence that Peter Dinklage previously played Richard in a notable off-Broadway production of Shakespeare's Richard III in 2003.
  • Smallville: The presence of any actor from a previous Superman series, Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain, etc. There was also Tom Wopat turbing up as an Actor Allusion to John Schneider but the one that takes the biscuit is the (possible unintentional) casting of Annette O'Toole, Lana Lang in Superman III, as Martha Kent (though the crew didn't actually know about her former role when she was cast).
    • Also especially shocking is the Voice of Jor-El in Smallville is Terrance Stamp, previously General Zod in both the first and second Superman Movies with Christopher Reeves, whose whole goal was to destroy Jor-El and the "Son of Jor-El"
  • Supergirl continues the trend of anything Superman-related needing to have a Casting Gag:
  • In the Friends eighth season episode, "The One With The Rumour", Brad Pitt appeared as one of Ross's old high school friends, who hated Rachel to the point that he was president of an Anti-Rachel club in high school. At the time, it was a comic variant of this trope since Brad Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston in real life. The joke became a lot less funny after Aniston and Pitt's very, very public divorce.
  • Cameo Version: In an episode of Roseanne, Roseanne and Jackie are getting makeovers at a health spa. The makeup artist talks about "less is more" and letting their faces tell their own story. When she turns around, we see for the first time it was Tammy Faye Bakker. note 
  • Former Power Rangers cast members have come back just to voice a Monster of the Week. The most extreme example is in Power Rangers Samurai, where the Red Ranger's Worthy Opponent is played by Rick Medina, who was himself Red Ranger Cole Evans in Power Rangers Wild Force.
    • Not to mention the irony: The Wild Force Rangers had Zen-Aku, a monster who was sometimes a human due to a curse that made him want to fight the Rangers, but he'd really rather not have. So Medina goes on to play Deker, who's got the same thing going: he's now Samurai's Zen-Aku. (Not that Deker's a total ZA Expy. ZA's a guy bonded with a Duke Org and his memory's not all there; Deker's an immortal Blood Knight who must defeat his Worthy Opponent (or die at his hands) to be freed from it. However, as Deker is a sometimes-human-faced villain who's not all bad, there's more poetry there than if he'd played, say, the voice of Xandred.)
    • Wild Force Milestone Celebration episode "Forever Red" is a big example of this as three of the Machine Empire Generals were voiced by Walter Jones (Zack), Catherine Sutherland (Katherine) and Archie Kao (Kai).
    • Though Nic Sampson, Chip from Power Rangers Mystic Force, gets MOTW duty once, he also voices Power Rangers Operation Overdrive's Sentinel Knight. Chip had once said he hoped to be a knight (which in MF parlance is sort of the rank above Ranger) someday, so he sorta gets to be.
    • Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger had the Master of Disguise Shurikenger, who never demorphed (he sacrificed his human form to get his powers and is only seen unsuited as a silhouette in a flashback to that day) but is always at first in disguise as some random civilian. Every single one is another sentai actor. When changing to Shurikenger, most used the pre-changing poses from their show — and even when that was impossible in one case, due to a lack of a pose, Kenji Ohba (he's both Shiro/Battle Kenya and Daigoro/Denji Blue, but the poses you expect these days didn't exist that early on) did the Space Sheriff Gavan pose instead.
    • In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Engine Machalcon joins the crew to assist in using the Engine Sentai Go-onger ultimate power. As a Japanese Pirate crew, the Gokaigers are often compared to the Straw Hats, so who else should voice Machalcon but Hiroaki Hirata aka Sanji!
    • Tetsu Inada is one of the series' go-to voice actors, and he played Doggie Kruger, the chief of SPD's Earth branch, in Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger. Taking out a Monster of the Week was referred to as "deleting" them that year. So when he played an MOTW in Juken Sentai Gekiranger, he says to the other monster, "Let's delete them!" while doing the SPD salute.
    • Related, but the moon-themed villain Ariake no Kata from Shuriken Sentai Ninninger is voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi, who is best known for voicing the title character in Sailor Moon.
  • Casting Dean Stockwell to play against Scott Bakula in Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • There is an episode of Dragnet where they meet a priest who explains that they are looking for a plaster doll of the baby Jesus that was taken from the church. So they question the altar boy, and an old man who runs a pawn shop. Maybe ten years later, they do a remake of the show. They get the actor who played the altar boy to play the priest, and they get the same man to play the part of the pawnbroker.
  • In Mission: Impossible, Barney Collier's son Grant is played by Greg Morris's son Phil.
  • In the new Battlestar Galactica, casting Richard Hatch (who played Captain Apollo in the original series) being cast as terrorist-cum-politician-cum-dictator Tom Zarek. In the episode he first appears on, both Zarek and Apollo turn their heads when someone calls out "Hey, Apollo!"
    • For bonus points, he spends most of his first episode giving breaking speeches to Lee "Apollo" Adama.
      • For bonus-bonus points, the armour-piercing lecture was about what it meant to be the Great Captain Adama's son.
    • This also works well with the setup that the events of BSG happen over and over again with everyone being reincarnated into a different role every time.
      • In that case James Callis as Baltar was just a Dirk Benedict stand-in...
  • And Dirk Benedict, Starbuck in the original series, does a great double-take as Faceman in The A-Team, when a cylon centurion passes him at the Universal Studios. The moment is preserved in the credit sequence, of course.
  • In the Stargate SG-1 episode 200, Vala Mal Doran (played by Claudia Black), when challenged to come up with a more obscure property to rip-off for her movie pitch, launches into a full-blown parody of Farscape which basically consists of the SG-1 cast as the Farscape crew repeating every single one of Farscape's alien curse words in the shortest span possible.
    • There's also a slight subversion in that Ben Browder doesn't play Crichton in the parody—Michael Shanks does. Browder plays Stark.
      • When Vala and Mitchell first meet, Mitchell asks her if they've met before. When Vala sees Mitchell and Daniel together later, she comments about the "interesting but somewhat limited gene pool" Earth appears to have.
  • A rare non-comic example: Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High would often pick which plots happened to who based on the actors' real lives. For instance, 13-year-old-Joey takes a car out for a joyride... after Pat Mastroiani, who played him, really did take the set crew's van out for a joyride. When the writers wanted to do a storyline about a kid losing his parents, they made it happen to Wheels... whose actor, Neil Hope, had lost his father years before. Kathleen was beaten by her abusive boyfriend... and the actress who played her had been date-raped at age 14. (The writers have not said whether they knew that last bit at the time they wrote the abuse story.)
  • Tim Curry once guest-starred in an episode of Will & Grace in which he plays a character with a feminine aspect to him (in this case, it's the character's name, Marion) flirts with several characters, makes a reference to Cross Dressing, and even tries to trick one character's fiance into climbing into bed with him. Sounds pretty similar to a certain Sweet Transvestite, doesn't it?
    • An episode of the short-lived 1997 series Over The Top has Tim Curry dressing in drag. Now, why does that sound so familiar?
    • This is apparently his thing. He and Meatloaf also show up as a pair of conservative straw-men trying to stop Glee's Rocky Horror production.
    • When Ed Tudor-Pole was hired as the second presenter of The Crystal Maze after Richard O'Brien, it may have occured to the creators that three years earlier he had played Riff-Raff in the 1990 stage revival (and on the Rocky Horror Show: The Whole Gory Story soundtrack album). Or it might have been a coincidence.
  • Both versions of The Outer Limits did adaptations of Eando Binder's story "I, Robot", and Leonard Nimoy appeared in both, as a reporter in the original and the robot's lawyer in the remake. Similarly, when the new Outer Limits remade "A Feasibility Study" from the original series, they cast David McCallum, who had been in two episodes of the original (though not that one).
  • In an episode of Happy Endings, Brad, played by Damon Wayans Jr., is expecting a visit from his father. When he arrives, he is played by none other than Wayans' father, Damon Wayans, Sr. (In the episode, both Wayans also make reference to the 1990s Bulls. The senior Wayans is close friends with Michael Jordan.)
  • The British show Doctors once had a Patient of the Week who was an actor best known for his role as a mysterious time-traveller in a decades-old children's programme. Any plausible deniability that Doctor Who was meant was scotched when they cast Sylvester McCoy, a.k.a. the Seventh Doctor, in the role.
  • In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the head of MI-6 (one the suspects who may be the Russian mole) is played by Michael Aldridge. A few years later, one episode of Yes, Prime Minister had Michael Aldridge as the head of MI-5, bringing Hacker the news that his predecessor had been a Russian mole...
    • Although he wasn't in the former.
  • In the 2000 ITV telemovie of The Railway Children, Jenny Agutter played the mother. In the 1970 film, she had played the eldest daughter.
    • This leads to a truly ironic moment when Jemima Rooper, who plays Roberta, asks her mother "Didn't you use to play on railway lines when you were a kid?"
  • F Troop:
    • Sergeant O'Rourke is played by Forrest Tucker, who once portrayed an "O'Rourke" Cavalry Sergeant on Gunsmoke.
    • Trooper Duffy (Bob Steele) is an elderly cavalryman who claims to be the sole survivor of the Alamo. Steele was previously a 1930s and '40s western star, and had once been in a movie about meeting Davy Crockett at the Alamo.
  • In Arrested Development, after firing lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn (played by Henry Winkler), Bob Loblaw is hired and played by Scott Baio, who starred alongside Winkler on Happy Days. This is specifically mentioned by Loblaw. Gets even better when you remember Ron Howard is running the show.
    • In one episode Barry literally jumps over a shark.
    • In the episode where Tobias goes to prison to study a film role, he gets in because the warden is an appreciator of film...and played by James Lipton, who was mocked mercilessly at the end of David Cross' stand-up special The Pride is Back.
    • In an episode called "Family Ties", a woman who Michael believes to be his sister (but ultimately isn't) is played by Justine Bateman, Jason Bateman's actual sister. Also, her most famous role was in Family Ties.
  • In the 8 Simple Rules episode "Old Flame", an old boyfriend of Cate (Katey Sagal) shows up, played by Ed O'Neill (who played her husband on Married... with Children.)
  • George Takei played Rome London on The Suite Life on Deck in an episode that parodies Star Trek. He even played a direct descendant of London and acts very much like a young teenage girl.
    • In "My Best Friend's Wedding" — the Scrubs episode where Turk and Carla get married — Takei is cast as the priest at their wedding. At first this wouldn't seem to be a casting gag. But then, when Turk gets a call on his cell phone — during the ceremony! — he flips it open like an Original Series communicator. Casting Takei just so they could do that gag may be about the biggest stretch anybody has gone to for a casting gag.
      • Turk actually points out earlier in the episode that the priest looks like Sulu.
  • Community: French Stewart appeared on the show playing a professional impersonator of French Stewart.
  • Aaron Tveit is most famous for playing the role of Enjolras in Les Misérables (2012); in his first TV lead role, in Graceland, he's undercover in a tight-knit group in order to stop their leader, doing exactly what Javert does in Les Mis.
  • In Spin City Mike (played by Michael J. Fox) political mentor (played by Christopher Lloyd) comes to City Hall to help on the Millennium project in a episode called "Back To The Future 4" they even make fun of the "time travel" This is the first of many reunions of the main cast of the famous trilogy BackToTheFuture
    • Mike: This is like stepping back in time.
    • Owen: The past is prologue, Michael. Men like us have to keep looking to the future.
  • In TheMichaelJFoxShow (Unaired episode) Principal Mc Tavish (played by Christopher Lloyd) the eccentric principal at the high school where Annie (Betsy Brandt) teaches and will go toe-to-toe with Mike (played by Michael J. Fox) another reunion episode from the main cast of the famous trilogy BackToTheFuture
  • In My Name Is Earl Burt Reynolds plays the character Big Chubby. His son, Little Chubby, is played by Norm MacDonald: the actor who plays Burt Reynolds in the Saturday Night Live "Celebrity Jeopardy!" skits. In fact, Little Chubby pretty much is the Celebrity Jeopardy version of Burt Reynolds. He even has the same laugh.
  • Clive Mantel played Little John in Robin of Sherwood, and so there seems to be this involved in Game of Thrones, where he plays Jon Umber, generally known as The Greatjon.
    • Amusingly, in the books at least the Greatjon has a son even bigger than he is who is called Smalljon.
    • Casting Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell seems like an example of this. Dormer played Anne Boleyn in The Tudors- Anne is a beautiful young woman whose family is involved in court machinations, has a close bond with her gay brother, and ultimately finds herself tried for promiscuity before a Kangaroo Court. Margaery is a beautiful young woman whose family is involved in court machinations, has a close bond with her gay brother... (you get the point) This is likely a deliberate choice as Margaery and the Tyrells are a sort of heroic subversion of the type of scheming and debauched royals who get HBO series (i.e. The Boleyns and Margaery's rival Cersei/The Lannister family).
    • It's probably not an accident that Ned Stark is played by Sean Bean, one of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring. Many book critics have called A Song of Ice and Fire a Spiritual Antithesis of The Lord of the Rings, and Time Magazine famously called George R.R. Martin "The American Tolkien". When Ned's honor and idealism lead to his death at the end of Season 1—and the story keeps moving without a hitch—it's a sure sign to the audience that they're not in Middle Earth.
    • James Faulkner appears in Season 6 as a stern, jerkish Lord, who disapproves of his son's girlfriend, because of her heritage - similar to his character in another major television series.
  • Sesame Street had a recurring sketch that parodied Miami Vice as Miami Mice. The American sketches in the German Sesamstrasse were dubbed by the same studio as Miami Vice, so the voice artists who already played Crocket and Tubbs played their rodent equivilents.
  • Porn stars cast as porn stars (live TV edition):
    • Savanna Samson has appeared as a porn star on two TV series where Tina Fey was head writer. In a 2006 episode of Saturday Night Live, she was in the gag commercial for a porno called "101 Fellations". Three years later in the 30 Rock episode titled "Into the Crevasse", she played "Porn Liz" in Tracy's Rule 34 porn video of the show.
  • In the Dutch soap opera Goede tijden, slechte tijden, one character, played by Ferry Doedens, is currently looking for tickets to go see Wicked. In real life, Ferry plays Fiyero part of the time.
  • All over the place on Chuck. Fedak and Schwartz made an effort to squeeze in appearances by as many geek culture icons as was humanly possible over the series's run, and you can expect that there will be an Actor Allusion along the way. Some notable ones:
  • Arrow
  • Cyndi Lauper played Avalon, a psychic in the Bones episode "Harbingers in the Fountain", as well as the show's 150th episode, "The Ghost In the Machine". In an earlier episode, "The Wannabe In the Weeds", Brennan sang a rousing chorus of Cyndi's biggest hit, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Cyndi Lauper also played a psychic medium in the movie Film/Vibes
  • Amber Benson, who played witch Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, later played a Vegetarian Vampire on Supernatural.
    • Mercedes McNab also played a vampire, after having played one on Buffy and Angel.
    • James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter from both shows played witches in Supernatural.
    • Harry Groener who played Mayor Wilkins in Buffy.
  • One episode of Scrubs featured four elderly doctors who had got sick at a medical convention ... played by the four leads from St. Elsewhere.
    • Speaking of, one episode of Grey's Anatomy featured a woman played by Sarah Chalke (Elliot from Scrubs) who brings in her son for treatment, and ends up correctly diagnosing his illness after the doctors couldn't find out what was wrong with him. Ironically, Scrubs previously made fun of the idea of patients self-diagnosing using information from the internet (Wikipedia specifically). Though, this story was actually Ripped from the Headlines.
  • Psych had "This Episode Sucks" an episode which paid Homage to vampire movies featured Kristy Swanson of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film and Corey Haim from The Lost Boys.
    • Steve Valentine from I'm in the Band also plays a rock star in "100 Clues".
    • "No Country for Two Old Men", the episode that takes place largely in Mexico, features Jeffrey Tambor, who plays George Senior in Arrested Development, which had going to Mexico as a plot point/Running Gag.
  • CSI's episode "A Space Oddity" was an extended riff on Star Trek fandom, and featured as a major plot point the reveal of the Darker and Edgier version of the classic sci-fi series, to an avalanche of hatred from fans. The very first person to call out "You suck!" was none other than Ron Moore.
  • CSI: NY had an episode where former tennis star John McEnroe was suspected of murder when it was actually a Celebrity Impersonator. McEnroe was absolutely bewildered anyone could mistake the impersonator for him. Said impersonator was played by McEnroe.
  • Glee's Anderson brothers. Gay Blaine is played by straight Darren Criss and straight Cooper is played by gay Matt Bomer
  • Frasier: Notorious chauvinist "Bulldog" Briscoe played by real-life openly gay activist Dan Butler.
    • Daphne's family and its multitude of inconsistent British Accents. Particularly on the part of the Australian playing Simon, who loves Mel Gibson and who Frasier once refers to as a "boomerang."
    • In one episode Frasier and Niles try to help a former Shakespearian actor Jackson Hedley revive his theatrical career by producing him in a one man version of Hamlet, but they realize to their horror that he's actually a terrible actor, who does a laughably overwrought performance of the play. The gag is that Hedley is played by Derek Jacobi, an acclaimed Shakespearian actor.
  • The Flash reboot has John Wesley Shipp, who portrayed The Flash in the short-lived '90s live-action show, cast as Barry Allen's incarcerated father. It also brings back Amanda Pays, who played Tina McGee, as an older version of the character.
  • In the Inside No. 9 episode "Last Gasp", one character mistakenly refers to a girl called Tamsin as "Tasmin". He is immediately reprimanded for the mistake by a character played by Tamsin Greig.
  • Gillian Anderson was cast in Hannibal as Hannibal Lecter's psychiatrist, when The X-Files had some influence from The Silence of the Lambs (including her character, Scully, a Naďve Newcomer like Clarice Starling).
    • It probably counts more for a Casting Gag when you take into account that Gillian Anderson was considered for the part of Clarice Starling when Jodie Foster declined to reprise the role in the 2001 movie Hannibal. She was not cast due to her X-Files contract, which prohibited her from playing another FBI agent.
    • Also, in a second-season episode, the actress playing a serial killer obsessed with bees and honey is played by Amanda Plummer, an actress best known for playing a character known as HoneyBunny.
  • In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Andre Braugher plays a very sober, serious and imposing police officer which, as any viewer of Homicide: Life on the Street knows, is not the first time he's played that kind of role. The joke is that while Detective Frank Pembleton (who he played in the latter show) operated in a grim and gritty environment of urban social realism and was appropriately down-to-earth and tormented, was an unconventional detective who frequently butted heads with rules-conscious superiors and was a heterosexual whose partner later came out as bi, Captain Ray Holt (who he plays in the latter) inverts almost all of these qualities. Holt lives in a comedic world populated by goofy eccentrics, is himself a pretty eccentric person, is the rule-conscious superior constantly butting heads with an unconventional detective under his command and is openly gay.
  • Forever cast David Krumholtz as the younger version of Abe in a flashback. Abe is played by Judd Hirsch, who previously played Krumholtz's father in NUMB3RS.
  • Sitcom That Girl, starred Marlo Thomas as Ann Marie, who in one episode meets a talented singer who turns out the be a nun. The Sister was played by Marlo's sister, Terre. For bonus points, in the last scene Ann accidentally bumps into a priest. The Father was played by Marlo's father, Danny Thomas.
  • In The Ministry of Time, Jordi Hurtado, famous for being the host of veteran quiz show Saber y Ganar for 18 straight years and appearing to be The Ageless on Memetic Mutation levels, appears As Himself in Episode 8, and "revealing" he uses the Time Doors to be the same age on every broadcast of the show.
  • Alpha House has Janel Maloney playing a senator in the second season. In one episode, she chairs a panel with a senator played Bradley Whitford, who played her character's boss on The West Wing. During the discussion, she repeatedly tells him to shut up — undoubtedly vicarious revenge for the many shouts of "DONNA!" during those seven seasons.
  • Season 2 of The Hollow Crown puts Sherlock and Moriarty on opposite sides of the Wars of the Roses, with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the Yorkist powerhouse Richard, Duke of Gloucester (the future King Richard III) and Andrew Scott playing his family's shifty French ally King Louis XI, who attempts to betray them and support the Lancastrians after Richard's brother Edward refuses a political marriage to Louis' daughter. It definitely makes the crown jewels scene from Sherlock a bit Hilarious in Hindsight...
  • Speaking of The West Wing, casting noted liberal Alan Alda as Republican presidential candidate Arnold Vinick certainly qualifies as this.
  • On Galavant, Kylie Minogue was cast as the Queen of the Enchanted Forest, which turns out to be a gay pub and she's the owner of said pub. Minogue is famous for having one of the world's biggest LGBT Fanbases and was once voted the biggest gay icon of modern times.
  • Jam And Jerusalem: Joanna Lumley, an actress known for her posh elegance (she was a Bond Girl in the 60s and only stopped modelling in the 2010s) and her starring role in Jennifer Saunders's Absolutely Fabulous, here plays another character created by Saunders: an extremely old and senile woman whose role is so small it's practically The Cameo. (She's written out of the show completely after the first episode of Series 2.)
  • Liv and Maddie: The Disney Channel kidcom is noted for having its lead actress, Dove Cameron, play a dual role as the titular identical twin sisters with differing personalities. In the 2015 episode, "Grandma-A-Rooney", Patty Duke guest-stars (in what would be her final TV performance) as Liv and Maddie Rooney's Grandma Janice and Great Aunt Hillary, both of whom are identical twins with differing personalities. This is an allusion to Duke's dual role as identical cousins Patty & Cathy Lane in her 1960s sitcom, which Liv and Maddie continues in the tradition of in many ways.
  • Stranger Things is essentially an extended tribute to the cinema and pop culture of The '80s, with at least one Shout-Out per episode. The Shout Outs extend to the casting choices. It's definitely not an accident that two of the principal characters are played by Winona Ryder (best known for playing Veronica in Heathers and Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice) and Matthew Modine (best known for playing Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket). More subtly, several of the actors playing teenage characters seem to have been chosen—in part—for their resemblance to famous teen actors from the '80s; Shannon Purser (Barb) bears a very strong resemblance to a young Molly Ringwald, Joe Keery (Steve) strongly resembles a young Charlie Sheen, and Natalia Dyer (Nancy) looks a lot like a young Mia Sara.
  • In the classic Swedish TV version of Astrid Lindgren's Emil of Lönneberga from 1973, actor Allan Edwall played Emil's choleric, hard-working, teetotaler father. In the later TV version of the same author's Madicken he played the easy-going, lazy, alcoholic Mr. Nilsson.
  • In The Avengers episode "Too Many Christmas Trees", actor Mervyn Johns plays a man obsessed with the works of Charles Dickens. Both Johns and Avengers star Patrick Macnee appeared in the 1951 film adaptation of A Christmas Carol (Johns played Bob Cratchit, and Macnee played the young Jacob Marley).
  • Perhaps unintentional, but two actors from Game of Thrones appear together in Medici. Richard Madden, who played Robb Stark, is Cosimo De Medici and marries David Bradley's (Walder Frey) daughter.
  • Christopher Lloyd guest starred in an episode of 12 Monkeys.

     Music 

    Radio 

    Theater 
  • In 2009, Cate Blanchett played the title character in an Australian production of Richard II. Richard and Queen Elizabeth I (who Blanchett previously played in Elizabeth) have famously been compared—Elizabeth herself allegedly even said "I am Richard II; know ye not that?"
  • Anne Hathaway's role as the lead in the 2009 Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night might also qualify, though it's more of a casting pun.
    • They should make a movie about Shakespeare's life just so they can cast Anne Hathaway as Anne Hathaway.
  • In Hamlet Polonious has a line about having played Julius Caesar as a a student. This has led to speculation that the actor playing Polonious did indeed play Julius Caesar...and that the same actor played both Brutus and Hamlet, therefore killing Polonious twice.
  • Jesse L. Martin, the original Collins in RENT, was in the Rock Opera Bright Lights Big City as the protagonist's best friend, who expressed disdain for "yuppies" and enjoyed using certain, um, recreational substances.
  • Darren Criss, known for playing Harry in A Very Potter Musical, took over Daniel Radcliffe's role in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Casting gag or just unintentional? Whatever your opinion, it's still awesome.
  • Arsenic and Old Lace inverted this in the original stage version. The psychotic older brother berates his surgical henchman because someone said he looked like Boris Karloff. In the original Broadway cast, he was played by Boris Karloff. As the production was still making money at the time the film was set to be produced, the stage producers wouldn't allow Karloff out of his contract long enough to appear in the film version, and so the film producers had to make do with a heavily-made-up Raymond Massey. Karloff did get to reprise the role for a TV movie adaptation in 1962.
  • For the 1951 West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams personally cast Vivien Leigh—who was still best known for playing Scarlett O'Hara at the time—as the mentally damaged Southern Belle Blanch Dubois, whose inability to cope with the loss of her family's ancestral plantation tragically costs her her sanity. The casting choice carried over to the well-known film adaptation released the same year (see "Film" above).
  • The 2011 production of Company cast Neil Patrick Harris as a bachelor who strings women along and disdains marriage.
  • The original Broadway production of Shrek: The Musical cast John Tartaglia, a famous Broadway puppeteer and Muppet performer, as Pinocchio, a puppet.

    Video Games 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 

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