Famous Characters You Didn't Notice In Sequels

Part of the fun of sequels is seeing familiar characters in new settings. It's always fun to find out what happened to everyone after the credits rolled in the earlier movies. Usually, films make it pretty obvious when a character returns for the sequel. In fact, it seems like the most obvious thing they would do, right? Well, occasionally, a movie will sneak in a real quick appearance by an old character. Usually, it's a character who isn't involved in the story anymore, so the filmmakers just throw in a quick appearance in the background to let the audience know how they're doing.

The villain of the first Toy Story movie was Sid, Andy's neighbor who tortures toys. Well, that's not fair. He doesn't know that they're alive, so in his mind, he's not hurting anybody. When he gets his hands on Buzz, Woody makes it his mission to save the spaceman, even though they don't necessarily get along. To do this, Woody has all of Sid's "victims" play dead in the yard, and then wait for the right moment to reveal to Sid that his toys are, in fact, alive. This obviously freaks Sid out, and that's the last we see of him. Presumably, he spent the next years of his life in therapy, or maybe even worse, considering that going around telling people how toys are alive and trying to kill you sounds just a little bit crazy. Sid doesn't appear in the sequel, but he makes a super brief cameo in Toy Story 3, working as a garbage man. We're just happy that he grew up to become a functional member of society, and not a crazy man trying to burn down toy stores across the country.

The second movie in Marvel's cinematic universe, The Incredible Hulk was the first movie to feature a character cross over from another Marvel franchise. Tony Stark famously shows up the end of the movie and alludes to the creation of a superhero team, which would eventually become The Avengers. Stark isn't the only Marvel character to appear, however. During the opening credits, there's a montage that shows the Hulk's origin and story so far. It details the project that Bruce Banner was working that led to him dousing himself in gamma radiation and becoming a green rage monster. During this montage, paperwork and documents are shown bearing the SHIELD logo. They're also signed by the director of SHIELD, Nick Fury. Samuel L. Jackson never makes an appearance, but Nick Fury does play a significant part in the creation of the main character. It helped set up the concept that Fury was a guy controlling things from behind the scenes. Bruce Banner also got mentioned in Thor, because Marvel is all about the name dropping.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens features a ton of cameos and appearances from original trilogy characters. Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie return, but there are a bunch of cool little cameos throughout the movie. The sneakiest, however, was getting Obi-Wan Kenobi into the movie. When Rey discovers Luke's old lightsaber, she has a vision detailing both her own history and that of Luke and Kylo Ren. We catch glimpses of Rey being left behind on Jakku as a child, along with Luke's Jedi training school falling to Kylo Ren. If you listen closely, you can also hear Obi-Wan Kenobi talking. Ewan McGregor actually recorded new lines of dialogue, which was mixed with audio of Alec Guinness from the first Star Wars movie. It's super sneaky, because not only is the dialogue hard to hear in the mix, it also sounds like they just played a clip from one of the previous movies. Obi-Wan does, however, communicate directly with Rey, calling out her name and earning him an actual appearance in the movie.

George Romero's zombie movies are classics, and with good reason. He defined the genre, and elevated them from just being gore fests by including social commentary, albeit social commentary that's covered in gore. His best zombie film is arguably Dawn of the Dead, which tells the story of some survivors who barricade themselves inside of a shopping mall. Obviously, zombies are a constant threat, but the real danger comes when a biker gang discovers the mall. Unwilling to share, the gang invades, planning on taking the place for themselves. Chaos ensues, and pretty much every character in the movie dies during the attack. The biker gang is led by a man named Blades, played by the film's makeup and effects supervisor, Tom Savini. Blades is seemingly killed during the fight, and was assumed to be devoured by the zombies. Decades later, Blades reappeared in Land of the Dead, the fourth film in Romero's Dead series. He briefly shows up as a zombie, although he seems to be a little more functional than the other zombies. He's grabbing people and throwing them around, which is way more active than the other corpses, who just shuffle towards people with outstretched arms. He's either a special zombie, or maybe he's just pretending to be one to avoid being eaten...

Disney always likes to throw funny little visual gags into their cartoons, even if they aren't prominently displayed. For example, Mickey Mouse ears appear in most of the studio's movies at some point. Also, there's a scene in The Lion King where Simba kicks up some dust, and it briefly spells out the name of the film's SFX company before floating away. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Belle from Beauty and the Beast actually makes a brief appearance. Sure, it isn't technically a sequel, but it's from the same family of films. Also, for all we know, the two movies could take place in the same universe. Yeah, the films take place between in different time periods, but they also take place in a world where cups and stone gargoyles can come to life, so is time travel really all that crazy? Anyway, Belle appears on the street while the hunchback watches from above. Also, there's a carpet that looks like the magic carpet from Aladdin, but since it never flies, we can't confirm that this is the same carpet. Sure, there could be magic carpets in this world, but there's also just regular carpets too.