No Celebrities Were Harmed / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Don't worry for Freddie Prinze Jr., The Ultimates will save him!

Comic Books

Comic Books

• Marvel loved this trope in its earlier years. One of Nick Fury's Howling Commandoes was Dino Manelli, an Italian-American film star who was clearly not Dean Martin. And when Marvel briefly had the rights to Godzilla, SHIELD got a new special agent responsible for fixing the Helicarrier whose name was "Hugh Howards" (though nowadays it's usually Iron Man's father who plays the part of the Howard Hughes stand-in).
• Doug Moench slipped Rufus T. Hackstabber and Quigley J. Warmflash into Master of Kung Fu; you may know them better as Groucho Marx and W.C. Fields.
• Secretary of State Dondi Reese appears in Black Panther Volume 4.
• Doctor Strange: Strange is Vincent Price. There's really no other way to say it. He only usually looks like Price (Strange began with a slight resemblance to Ming the Merciless, and his face is sometimes modeled on other actors), but his combination of portentous hamminess, erudition, and good humour is dead on for Price's persona.
• Matt Fraction has said in interviews that Darla Deering/Miss Thing from FF is supposed to be Katy Perry if she were a superhero.
• Talk show host Iprah appears in Howard the Duck Volume 3.
• Daredevil: Supervillain Tribune (Buck Ralston) greatly resembles John Wayne, whose anti-communist, pro-war stance was making the news at the time.
• Hawkeye: Without the makeup, Clown (Kazimierz Kazimierczak) looks like a young Michael Caine, even wearing Harry Palmer's signature NHS glasses in a meeting with corporate bigwigs.
• Iron Man:
  • Warren Ellis's first issue has Tony interviewed by left-wing documentary-maker John Pillinger, who bears more than a passing resemblance to left-wing documentary maker John Pilger.
  • In Iron Man 2012, Kieron Gillen introduces another left-wing journalist; an internet activist named Abigail Beryl Burns (with the online identity Red Peril) who is a Composite Character of Abigail Brady and Laurie Penny/Penny Red.
• The Warriors Three from The Mighty Thor are Errol Flynn, Charles Bronson, and, uh, Falstaff, except reimagined as Norse gods.
• In The Punisher MAX's spin-off miniseries about The Barracuda, mobster 'Big Chris' Angelone has both the appearance and speech patterns of Christopher Walken.
• In the fourth-wall-averse series The Sensational She-Hulk, Issue #12 revolves around a movie being made of She-Hulk's life:
  • Jen learns of the movie when she is ambushed by an Entertainment Tonight film crew led by Mary Hart.
    She-Hulk: Shouldn't we be giving you a parody name or something? Like Mary Spleen?
    Mary Hart: Get real. Like we care if we're in a comic book.
  • Later in the same issue, it's revealed that Jen is going to be played in the biopic by the petite starlet "P. Isadora". Jen immediately lampshades the fact that her name got changed.
• Spider-Man/Deadpool #6 is set during the making of a Deadpool movie starring a "Hollywood pretty-boy" named "Donald Dryans". Subverted when the story ends with Spidey declaring Deadpool should be played by a real actor, like Ryan Reynolds.
• Ultimate Marvel
  • Ultimate Spider-Man initially reimagined Kraven the Hunter as a parody of the late Steve Irwin, complete with Kraven being Australian instead of Russian.
• West Coast Avengers had Arnold Schwarzburger, a brainless body builder-turned-actor who worked on a movie with Wonder Man. Three guesses as to who he was supposed to be.
• Many members of the Hellfire Club from X-Men visibly resemble and are named after celebrities who were famous at the time of their creation (which is rather fitting, given that historical hellfire clubs were supposedly where the influential and powerful went to debauch themselves). Just to use the obvious examples, Emma Frost is Diana Rigg, Sebastian Shaw is Robert Shaw, and recurring villain Mastermind became Peter Wyngarde just in time to join up.
• X-Statix
  • Phat was Eminem with superpowers, a secret upper class upbringing, and gay.
  • Henrietta Hunter was Princess Diana rewritten to be completely not Princess Diana because Marvel got cold feet. Perhaps intentionally, the story she appears in works a lot better knowing this than it does if you read it the way it was written.

Films

Films

• Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • Iron Man 3: Trevor Slattery / "The Mandarin" (Usurper)
    • A Middle Eastern anti-American terrorist who was formerly under the US's employ, leads an extremist rebel band, sends video broadcasts, and views himself as a cleanser of evil. In-universe, in fact; Trevor's Mandarin is supposedly Killian's attempt to directly draw on his influence.
    • Trevor Slattery himself seems an awful lot like an older Russell Brand.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home: J. Jonah Jameson and his show are clearly modeled after small-time hard-right talk show hosts, complete with a specific presentation style similar to Info Wars, right down to peddling pharmaceutical nutrients of dubious quality.
    • In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Jameson has upgraded his operation significantly resembling outlets such as Newsmax or The Blaze.
• Colossus' voice in X2: X-Men United was dubbed, apparently to add to his Arnold Schwarzenegger resemblance.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Daredevil: Benjamin Poindexter backstory (working at a suicide hotline and shadowing Julie) gives him shades of serial killer Ted Bundy.
• Luke Cage: Cornell Bertram "Cottonmouth" Stokes 's character may be partially based on Willie "Flukie" Stokes, a Chicago pool hall owner, self-named gambler, and also a notorious gangster and drug dealer who simultaneously terrorized and befriended the South Side of Chicago, and adored by the public even though he was the primary source of much of their misery.