h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just thinking that you can't really call an appearance a 'surprise guest appearance', if it happened before they were 'star' enough to be a guest.

And we should really separate the guest role appearance (ie. William Shatner's role as the BIG HEAD on Third Rock From the Sun) from the guest cameo appearance where they play either themselves or reprise one of their famous roles. (ie. Lou Ferigno, on King of Queens; or Jerry Springer, in The Spy Who Shagged Me; or Ernest Borgnine in the recent McHale's Navy movie.)

On the Pop thing, let's not mistake Courtney Cox's appearance in a Boss video as a guest appearance when it was the first thing she'd ever done. That was the bit that propelled her to acting jobs.

Sorry for soapboxing. I'll leave now.



Now HERE is my idea of a suprise guest appearance. My apologies for having to submit this excerpt from an online article.

After several amusing but forgettable early films, Mr. Hope crossed into onscreen deconstruction in "My Favorite Blonde" (1942). Playing an out-of-work vaudevillian named Ronnie Jackson, he turns on a radio to make a racket and out comes, "How do you do, this is Bob Hope, the Pepsodent kid, and I'm here to tell ya . . . CLICK!" Mr. Hope's character switches it off saying, "I can't stand that guy."

Bing Crosby, who could never get away with such out-of-the-box business in his own pictures, also appears in a brief cameo, which draws a double take from Mr. Hope, a glance at the audience, and a perplexed, "Couldn't be." The pair had already bonded in two "Road" pictures (there would be five more by 1962) and teamed as whimsical off-screen rivals on radio and the golf course. In the self-referential grammar of the postmodern model, that cameo and a procession of other little absurdities suddenly reached outside the frame of the story and drew on viewers' larger media savvy as fed through other channels. It still seems terrible hip.

THAT was surprising!

Richard Nixon saying "Sock it to me" on Laugh In ranks as that strangest of suprise appearances for me, especially when you consider what a tight a** he was.

My favourite of recent years has to be Bob Carolgees & Spit the Dog having their own 'Jerry Springer' style show (Phoenix Nights 2nd series). Come to think of it there were plenty in Phoenix nights: Roy Walker as himself (apparently he wanted to play himself as Joe Pesci in 'Goodfellas'...)

Now, THESE are more like it!

Nixon's appearance WAS particularly bizarre! Did Winston Churchill every do anything like this?

Steven King always makes an apperance in any of his books on films with the exception of those written under one of his pseudonyms such as Bachman and the film 'The Running Man'