11 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Connected

11. Jaws / Piranha 3D

Since the original Piranha was a tongue in cheek riff on Jaws, it made sense for the remake to doff its cap to Spielberg’s masterpiece too. Piranha 3D appeared to go above and beyond the call of duty by roping in Richard Dreyfess for a cameo, and dressing him in suspiciously similar garb to Matt Hooper from Jaws.

While the character is dubbed Matt Boyd in the credits, both Dreyfuss and director Alexander Aja have made no secret the character is reallty Hooper. He even sings “Show Me The Way To Go Home”, and there’s the obvious meta gag of him surviving the shark but getting eaten by the piranha. Dreyfuss also made no secret of the fact it was the rather large cheque he was offered that convinced him to return to the character.

Aja also planned for Joe Dante and James Cameron – the directors of Piranha and Piranha 2 respectively – to appear during the massacre scene as fishermen pulling people out of the water, but their schedules didn’t work out.