What's the best cameo ever? Is it David Bowie in Zoolander? Bob Barker beating the crap out of Happy Gilmore? Charlton Heston in Wayne's World 2? Maybe Bill Murray in Zombieland? The answer arguably lays within Hot Shots: Part Deux at exactly 43 minutes 39 seconds.

Hot Shots! is a series of spoof action movies from the 1990s starring Charlie Sheen as "Topper Harley." The first movie would spoof the prominence of Tom Cruise and Top Gun, and the sequel would turn its cross-hairs to the likes of Stallone and his Rambo series. To give you an idea of how serious Hot Shots took itself, the poster for the sequel to Hot Shots: Part Deux shows a mulleted Charlie Sheen, holding a bow in one hand and readying himself to fire a chicken with the other.

Updated July 2022: We update our content frequently at MovieWeb just to ensure that everything remains as high-quality and consistent as possible, so if you're interested in one of the funniest and most mind-blowing cameos in movie history, we've polished up this already excellent article for you.

Hot Shots Part Deux poster with Sheen and a chicken
20th Century Studios

Hot Shots: They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used Deux

On directing and writing duties for Hot Shots: Part Deux is Jim Abrahams, one-third of the famed Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker of the Airplane! and Naked Gun series of movies. Continuing on from their chaotic ideals and comically anarchic style, the Hot Shots! series was just as silly, selling sight gags and extremely stupid lines to the masses. The Hot Shots! movies are not as important as Airplane! or Naked Gun in the history of the best parody movies, but its footing is nevertheless just as ridiculous, and keeps the joke rate up with a scary regularity.

Related: Charlie Sheen Collaborates with Entourage Creator on New Series Ramble On

Abrahams and Co. could do the whole spectrum of silly, from the immediate and most natural of slapstick to the highly elaborate. With their previous outings, they had already established their place in 'Comedy Classic History,' and had more than enough experience with the whole spectrum of comedy, fourth wall breaks and all. Airplane! could feature a small boy directly referencing the fact that one of the pilots was (then current) pro baller Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Naked Gun's sequel would have a waiter shake his head directly down the camera lens when requested to bring out a "Black Russian."

Hot Shots: Part Deux follows Topper as he is recruited by the CIA to rescue some kidnaped soldiers, but the plot of the film is really just an excuse to dish out as many goofs and spoofs as possible. In a movie with seemingly constant jokes, lines, visual puns, and silly background bits that you have to watch the movie twice to actually spot, what sets one single joke apart from the pack? What gives us the right to talk about it almost 30 years on, and pen a whole article about its inclusion? Well, the joke happens to concern one of the greatest cameos in film history, a multi-layered meta mind-f*ck that's as hilarious today as it was 30 years ago.

Setting Up the Hot Shots Cameo

As Topper (Sheen) heads down the river, he writes his deepest and most intimate thoughts in a journal, presented to us in voiceover. His words are unique from the surrounding film, and appropriately pensive for a soldier heading to a place he doesn't know, uncertain he'll even return.

Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots Part Deux
20th Century Studios

Breaking traditional film "rules," our protagonist's viewpoint is interrupted by another, similar voice over. A fellow boat on the river approaches from the opposite direction, with a mirrored fellow trooper (played by another Sheen) on his own top secret mission having his own internal monologue. As the boats come closer, each voiceover merges with the other. Quickly recognizing one another, the two men ignore the boats and the wartime setups and simultaneously both tell one another: "I loved you in Wall Street!" The 'Wall Street gag' is really four jokes in one here:

A) Sheen's inner monologue is interrupted...

B) ...by a contrasting monologue. It's Sheen's biological father, Martin Sheen, no less.

C) Hang on, they're also spoofing Apocalypse Now!

D) Wait, they're giving each other accolades for their parts in Wall Street (where they played father and son), too?

Then, once you realize that Charlie Sheen's voiceover is reciting the exact same monologue from his role in one of the best Vietnam War movies, Platoon, it becomes even funnier. But that's not even the end of the joke, because Martin Sheen is reciting his monologue from Apocalypse Now (another certified classic Vietnam War masterpiece). It's not only ridiculously charming to see the willingness of the Sheens to send themselves up for the sake of a seven-second gag, but it's the fact that this seven-second gag is so mind-blowingly layered that makes this arguably the best movie cameo of all time.

War is Hell, Hot Shots is Funny

Martin Sheen in Vietnam
American Zoetrope

Going one further and recognizing that this movie is directly spoofing Sylvester Stallone's Rambo (a series that delights in its own war zones), then we realize Abrahams has managed to mock the entirety of the action and war movie genres as a whole; it's magic. Going one more further still (are we now breaking the fifth wall?), this cameo is a joke that slyly loves cinema.

Related: Airplane! and Naked Gun Director Takes a Shot at Cancel Culture

The fact that neither Platoon nor Apocalypse Now (both movies being the Sheen's biggest respective critical hits) are even mentioned effectively makes them null and void to the Hot Shots universe, a universe that instead chooses to recognize the much dryer number-crunching of Wall Street. For cinephiles, it's a joke that not only gives a nice tip of the cap to its actors, but also a big middle finger to the fully erect action genre of the time that refused to have fun with itself, and just wanted to stare at its own biceps in the mirror.

The Sheens and Michael Douglas in Wall Street
20th Century Studios

Having previously acted alongside each other in Wall Street in 1987, for the Sheens as a family of actors (including Emilio Estevez), the crossing boats in the Hot Shots cameo also works as a surprisingly poignant passing-of-the-torch moment; in what should really be just a dumb joke, the audience actually witnesses a father giving his blessing to his son and passing on the family career. Martin Sheen, a certified acting legend, had so many hits by the time of Hot Shots: Part Deux that he can both dip back into his repertoire and joke about the very same back catalog in a single move. It's a testament to how strong and elaborate this one joke really is, that it can have so, so many strands to it.

When Action Met Comedy

Charlie Sheen is buff in Hot Shots Part Deux
20th Century Studios

Meanwhile, the action stars of the 1980s whose macho movies and on-screen bravado had made the existence of Hot Shots: Part Deux a reality were, by the early '90s, all trying their hands at cloying comedies to try and broaden their own images. Arnold Schwarzenegger would educate children in Kindergarten Cop, Bruce Willis would wholly inhabit a child in Look Who's Talking Too (both from 1990), and the aforementioned Stallone would headline Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot in 1992 (just over a year before Hot Shots: Part Deux was released). Audiences wanted to see their action heroes soften up, so Schwarzenegger went from fighting in Predator to Christmas shopping in Jingle All the Way.

The original Hot Shots movie helped spur this on and this sequel perfected it, capitalizing on the moment by showing how inherently ridiculous many action flicks were. For a movie that will be 30 years old next year, watching Hot Shots: Part Deux now reveals a feature that is still so sharp and prepared to spoof a genre that took itself so seriously. (Turning a blind eye to political correctness), Hot Shots 2 hasn't aged a second.

Nepotism and the Hot Shots Cameo

Hot Shots Part Deux with Charlie Sheen
20th Century Studios

Perhaps another layer of this father-son cameo meta-joke in the film is the fact that waves of Twitter users and audiences members are only now realizing that Hollywood is made up of wall-to-wall nepotism. The passing-of-the-torch moment in Hot Shots: Part Deux can now be a funny reference to the fact that so many celebrities are children of famous actors (crudely dubbed "Nepo Babies," the likes of Nicolas Cage, Josh Brolin, Zoë Kravitz, and more have all recently been noticed for their silver spoon roots).

If the nepotism train is going to continue further down the tracks, perhaps it's high time one of Charlie Sheen's five children (or really anyone else) take the torch from him. The actor has recently been accused of stalking and threatening to kill his former fiancée, has been a staunch anti-vaxxer, has been accused of sexual assault (and allegedly raping Corey Haim) multiple times, and is perhaps most well-known these days for his embarrassing, drug-fueled public meltdown after Two and a Half Men. As such, it can possibly be uncomfortable to watch Sheen in anything, but the 30-year-old Hot Shots sequel is brilliant comedy that's bigger than him, and deserves to be seen again, if only for its amazing cameo.

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in that diner in Heat. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally flirting with Sylvester Stallone in The Expendables. The very title and plot of Alien Vs Predator. Not only should the 'Wall Street gag' of Hot Shots: Part Deux be included in this list as an epic on-screen meet up between two fantastic personalities, but also as perhaps the greatest cameo ever committed to film even more so when it was all for the craft of creating the perfect seven-second joke.