Anime can be wacky, we all know that. And sometimes there is no greater joy than all the random things that can happen. When it comes to cameos in anime, some of them are cute, some of them are clever and some are downright bizarre. Let’s dig into the cutest and weirdest. Be sure to mention your favorite anime cameos that didn’t make it in the list in the comments!
Barack Obama Cameos
You could honestly fill up this entire list with just anime cameos of Barack Obama. Anime loves featuring this guy. It may stem from the fact he actually thanked Japan for giving us anime once. Maybe this is anime’s way of saying “you’re welcome”.
Sometimes the cameos get downright weird too.
Youkai Watch had a cameo that was fairly benign as far as they go. Someone tried to assassinate Obama by putting a bomb in his ice cream and a friendly little monster saved him. You can see them celebrating above. My favorite part has to be the fact there’s a huge amount of gay pride flags in the audience.
Osomatsu-san has a cameo is a little more bizarre, as expected from a comedy. Not only does Obama inexplicably have a mustache and a purple streak in his hair (maybe it’s a stylistic thing?) but he calls this random character and demands help with an economic crisis. As soon as the character comes up with the nuanced solution “American hot dogs”, Obama declares “FANTASTIC! GENIUS!” and hangs up.
You can see the whole little interaction in the clip below. It’s worth it just for the strangled scream of “OBAMA????” that happens when he shows up.
Gintama did a very weird thing where they had Will Smith appear, but had him say Obama’s “Yes We Can” catchphrase. The only reason I can think of for them being conflated is they're both black Americans? Okay, Gintama.
Then there’s Obama’s appearance in Yatterman. A child version of him appears alongside an equally kiddish Hillary Clinton, who scolds him for being reckless. And they, uh, become a couple. Despite the fact in real life they’re both married to other people. It’s like someone’s real person shipping fic in the form of adorable anime twelve-year olds.
Meanwhile, a recent season of Digimon not only featured an appearance by Obama, but Marilyn Monroe, Bruce Lee, John Wayne and so on. They were all having their essence sucked out to be turned into trophies.
Obama’s pretty popular in manga too, though he tends to referred to the lawsuit-avoiding title of “Omaha” there. His strangest appearance is probably in Air Gear, where he actually ended up being a recurring character. He started appearing when he was still a candidate and there was a storyline where he switched bodies with a teenage girl. I guess the Air Gear mangaka would get along with Fox News because this version of Obama was born in Kenya.
George Bush Cameos
From The Legend of Koizumi
Obama’s not the only president to appear in anime. There have been lots of different presidents that have shown up. George Bush is obviously the most recent before Obama. Bush’s appearances often make make even Obama's weird adventures in a teenage girl’s body look good.
In Read or Die, the American president is trigger happy with nukes, but also a cowardly man who repeatedly wets his pants. The creator has apparently gone on record saying this was not meant to be a jab at America, but at a specific president. Considering who the president at the time was, it’s easy to see him as a satire of Bush. The dub even gave him a southern accent. There was a reference to him having an affair however, so there may have been shades of Clinton in there too.
He also shows up to play a role in the manga The Legend of Koizumi alongside many other historical figures to play Mahjong. His appearance is notable among the rest because the title of the chapter he’s in is “TEXAS SHOCK” and he has to meet his father, who depicted as super intimidating and called “PAPA BUSH”. Dubya himself is portrayed as a pretty nervous daddy’s boy.
Cute Sailor Moon Cameos
A fun fact about the creator of Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter: He married the creator of Sailor Moon, Naoko Takeuchi. Which makes it super adorable that he constantly includes cameos of Sailor Moon stuff in his work.
He had Kurama from the Yu Yu Hakusho manga throw a rose before a fight and say “Just call me Tuxedo Mask”.
Another character, Koenma, cosplayed Tuxedo Mask later in the series.
Then finally, in Hunter x Hunter, Alluka can be seen playing with Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask dolls in a flashback.
Squidward Cameo
Blink and you miss it, but Squidward has transmigrated from Spongebob Squarepants to a show about robots fighting stuff. You can see him inside a submarine-type thing in one episode of Gurren Lagann. And this ship later gets blown up, meaning poor Squidward is blown up with it. Poor guy can’t catch a break, even outside Bikini Bottom. You can see a video of a fan reacting to this here:
Colonel Sanders Cameos
From Hayate no Gotoku
Colonel Sanders shows up in anime an inexplicably huge number of times. At least, it seems inexplicable, until you learn there’s a legitimate Japanese urban legend based around the Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder and mascot.
In the 1985, a baseball team called the Hanshin Tigers won the Japan Series. Fans were ecstatic and celebrated by having fans who resembled a member of the baseball team jump into the river. However, there was nobody who resembled the sole American member of the team, Randy Bass. So they decided to throw a statue of Colonel Sanders from a nearby KFC off the bridge to represent him, since he’s an American icon and also had a beard like Bass.
After this night, the Tigers went on an 18-year losing strength. Many grew to believe that this was the doing of the vengeful spirit of Colonel Sanders, who had died just five years previously. It was dubbed “The Curse of the Colonel”. They apologized to the store manager and several divers scoured the river for the statue.
In 2003, the Tigers recovered a bit and had a strong season, though they still didn’t win the Series. The fans celebrated hard regardless after winning the Central Cup and many KFCs in the area hid or even bolted down their Colonel statues to protect them from the fans and prevent a repeat tragedy. However, a much worse tragedy happened instead- all the fans jumped into the canal this time and one fan, Masaya Shitababa, ended up drowning.
From Dragonball Z
The statue was found in the river in 2009, though its glasses and left hand were missing, causing many fans to say the curse will not truly be broken until they are found, but the statue was given a new hand and glasses and returned to KFC Japan anyway.
Basically what this all results in is an inordinate amount of gags about a Colonel statue in anime as well as the Colonel himself being featured in a creepy, horrific or villainous role many times.
In Project A-ko, the main characters watch horror movie where the protagonist is being chased by the horrifying spectre of Colonel Sanders. In Higurashi: When They Cry the first indication that a happy little town will turn into a cursed hellscape is a statue of the Colonel.
A villain in the first season of Slayers dresses up as the Colonel, complete with fried chicken.
He also appears in Super Milk Chan as a repugnant man who tries to have pigs that escaped from his meat factory assassinated, because of reasons.
A chapter of the baseball manga Eyeshield 21 has a character recover the statue and use it as a stand-in for a missing player.
In Silver Spoon, our protagonist stumbles upon the statue while cleaning up garbage on his school’s ridiculously huge property and yells “THE COLONEL??” in horror.
Nostalgia Critic and Angry Video Game Nerd Cameo
Weirdly enough, the internet critics the Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd from Channel Awesome are popular among a certain Japanese viewership. Their videos were subbed in Japanese on NicoNico Douga, a Japanese streaming channel and gained enough of a following that they ended up making a cameo in an anime. They can be seen in the Zettai Karen Children spinoff The Unlimited: Hyobu Kyousuke. This was quickly noticed by a fan and bought to the attention of Doug Walker, The Nostalgia Critic, who responded “this is because I reviewed Ponyo, isn’t it?” on Facebook.
He and James Rolf, The Angry Video Game Nerd, even took a picture where they posed like their anime counterparts.
Jack Bauer Cameo
Yatterman seems to be a good anime for weird cameos. One episode had Jack Bauer from the TV Series 24 show up, though he was called “Chuck Pauer” instead. He was voiced by his Japanese dub actor, Rikiya Koyama and referred to being afflicted with diahrea as having “terrorists” in his stomach.
Steven Universe and Gravity Falls Cameos
You can see Mabel and Dipper from the cartoon Gravity Falls, as well as Connie from Steven Universe, in a crowd shot of Studio Trigger’s movie Little Witch Academia 2.
Not only that, but Rebecca Sugar, the creator of Steven Universe, and her fellow creator Ian Jones-Quartey also show up.
Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, actually met up with some of the creators behind Studio Trigger and commented on the cameo on Facebook.
Stan Lee cameo
Believe it or not, Stan Lee wrote an anime once. The manga Heroman launched in 2009 and it was animated by Studio Bones in 2010. Stan Lee came up with the basic plot and collaborated with Tamon Ohta and the studio for the rest of it.
As a result, Stan Lee cameos are not limited to Marvel movies. He’s a recurring background character in the anime as a patron of the main character’s restaurant who constantly wants more coffee.