10 Movie Characters They Couldn't Stop Recasting

Recasting generally goes down better in comedies than it does in serious dramatic fare, and in the case of the National Lampoon's Vacation series, it basically became an in-joke in its own right.

The Griswold children, Rusty and Audrey, have both appeared in each of the five Vacation movies produced between 1983 and 2015, and hilariously they've both been recast every single time.

Rusty has been played by Anthony Michael Hall, Jason Lively, Johnny Galecki, Ethan Embry, and finally Ed Helms as an adult, while Audrey has been portrayed by Dana Barron, Dana Hill, Juliette Lewis, Marisol Nichols, and then Leslie Mann.

The recasting is so prolific and nonsensical, with the characters changing in both age and physical appearance on a whim, that the series has even made fun of it, with their father Clark (Chevy Chase) knowingly telling them in 1997's Vegas Vacation, "I hardly recognise you anymore."

Recasting can totally ruin a movie, but the Vacation filmmakers were smart enough to run with it and turn it into a defining aspect of the series in its own way.