Deadpool briefly had Ryan Reynolds playing with an action figure of the version of Deadpool he previously played in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and I think there was a reference to his having played Green Lantern as well.
Ocean’s Twelve had everyone suddenly acknowledge that Tess looks just like America’s Sweetheart: the Pretty Woman herself, Julia Roberts. Like, if you ever need to create a diversion, she can get a whole crowd to think she’s that Oscar-winning movie star who can tell them stories about Hugh Grant and Bruce Willis.
In the midcredits sequence of Deadpool 2 -Deadpool uses the time machine to go back in time and kill kills both the X-Men Origins: Wolverine version of Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds after he finishes reading the screenplay for Green Lantern.
Edit: It really does NOT make sense but I guess THAT"S THE JOKE!!
I mean… the joke literally came in the context of reintroducing the villain of the film to the MCU, so apparently they figures some people would make the connection? They also re-created one of the scenes from the movie for one of the animated What if…? segments, so it’s not like they’re trying to bury the movie, or anything. I guess it is the most obscure entry in this billion dollar international film franchise, but I’m not sure that’s a super meaningful metric, or how it relates to the joke in She-Hulk.
Roger Moore sends up his own James Bond performances in The Canonball Run, doesn’t fit the OP’s question but thought it worth mentioning.
Sarah Palin was a Terminator? I guess I can see that.
On Mad Men, the characters are regularly seen attending (or just name-dropping) the hit Broadway shows of the era: Fiorello!, Bye Bye Birdie, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Notably absent: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, starring a young Robert Morse, who would go on to play Bert Cooper on Mad Men.
I’ve been working my way through Star Trek TOS on Netflix and have reached the double episode The Menagerie. In it, Spock presents a sort of flashback/recording taken from scenes from the original The Cage pilot (the one with Captain Pike, not Kirk), and in these scenes is Majel Barrett, who usually played Nurse Chappel in TOS (along with Lwaxana Troi in TNG and DS9). However in these scenes she is playing a completely different character. I know a lot of shows routinely reuse the same actors to play different parts but these twnd to be one off characters and wouldn’t include a regular character. Not exactly what the OP was about but struck me as being not entirely tangential to the scenario either.
Come to think of it, she also played the voice of the computer and even had conversations with herself as Lwaxana in TNG (and possibly DS9)!
I didn’t watch any of the reboots of the Planet of the Apes movies. But I did see a clip from the end of one of them. Caesar is talking to an orangutan, and calls him Maurice.
In the very first Apes movies, the character Dr. Zaius, an orangutan, was played by the actor Maurice Evans.
Cause he speaks of the Pompatus of Love
The 1978 film “Magic” starring Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist having mental issues was based upon the novel by William Goldman. In the story, Corky (Hopkins) is just about to sign to do a television show but panics because he is afraid he will fail the mental health exam required by the network. He escapes to the Catskills and runs into his childhood crush Peggy Ann Snow, played by Ann-Margret. In the original novel, Peggy is described as looking just like Ann-Margret. William Goldman actually had her in mind when he wrote the character and Richard Attenborough ended up casting her.
I’ve got one that’s more or less the opposite of this. In 1962 Ursula Andress co starred in the first Bond film Dr No. Ian Fleming was suitably impressed such that he included her, briefly, in his novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (sadly he didn’t live to see that on the big screen).
In the original novel Moonraker, Ian Fleming compared Hugo Drax to Michael Lonsdale. Decades later, Lonsdale played the role onscreen.
I don’t think it was the same Lonsdale. Funny coincidence though!
For the win!
Takes a bow.
On last week’s SNL, Amy Poehler made a guest appearance on “Weekend Update” as her Parks and Recreation character Leslie Knope, where she reminisced about the days when “Seth Meyers hosted ‘Weekend Update’ all by himself.’”