Those Actors Who Show Up Everywhere
So, I've been watching Agents of SHIELD almost since it first started airing. If you're not familiar with the show, it's basically about the behind-the-scenes secret agents who work for SHIELD, the American MI6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show was great when it started and, like many long-running television shows, has begun to get somewhat . . . distracted later in its life (the last storyline I watched involved time travelling into the future after the world has been mostly destroyed and humanity has been enslaved by aliens--not quite the "these aren't the superheroes" original theme of the show.)
But I digress. This isn't about Agents of SHIELD, it's about Patrick Warburton (and also other actors), who totally took me by surprise when he got a hilarious cameo in Agents of Shield (Patrick Warburton did. Not the other actors.) It's also about other actors who did almost exactly the same thing elsewhere, but I'll get to that. I was just casually watching this fairly serious show about time travel and such things, and suddenly a projection of a 1970's general named "Rick Stoner" showed up looking and sounding suspiciously like Patrick Warburton in a mustache. You might remember Patrick Warburton from The Emperor's New Groove, where he lent his memorable voice to the equally memorable character Kronk.
This isn't the first time he's shown up unexpectedly, and that brings us to my main point. Most recently it was Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which he played the sarcastic, wordy Lemony Snicket (the narrator, because of course he's the narrator.) Before that, it was a video game I play called Poker Night 2, where he reprises his role as Brock from The Venture Bros (a funny but rather violent cartoon I'd never heard of prior to this game.) There are loads of others (Hoodwinked, Skylanders, etc.) but I don't want to bore you, if I haven't already.
I mentioned this to my roommate, and she brought up J.K. Simmons. If you've never heard of him, well, first, I'm so sorry for your loss, and second, he's the guy who played J. Jonah Jameson in Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, along with an unknown number of Spider-man cartoons. He was the voice of Cave Johnson in Portal 2. He was also the voice of Mayor Lionheart in Zootopia. He was also the voice of Tenzin in Legend of Korra. He also played Ford in Gravity Falls. He was also apparently "Bill" in La La Land, which I actually didn't know/forgot prior to looking at IMDB just now.
You see what I mean.
I would also like to give an honorable mention to Alan Tudyk, one of my favourite actors, (Firefly, Rogue One, Frozen, Zootopia, Dollhouse, Wreck-It Ralph, Powerless, Moana, Encanto, etc.) who did this exact same thing yet again (see prior list). I would like to specifically point out Frozen and Zootopia specifically, because in the first, he played a character called the Duke of Weselton (no, it's not pronounced weasel-ton. Remember that guy?). Then, in Zootopia, because he's amazing and the writers are amazing, they gave him the character Duke Weaselton. He also played Heihei, the chicken, in Moana.
I'm sure I'm not the only one this has happened to. Don't get me wrong, I love it when this happens--these guys (and sometimes girls) are some of my favourite actors. It's just an incredibly bizarre experience for me to be watching something, and for a random familiar face to show up, completely unexpected, in a show or movie that I wouldn't usually associate with them. Any similar weird experiences or actors that I missed? Let me know. I'm always up for a good conversation.
