7 Movie Parodies That Somehow Happened For Real

5. Last Action Hero's Wife Trolling Is Played (Mostly) Straight In True Lies

Last Action Hero might be one of the most underrated movies of the last 25 years, an outrageously ahead-of-its-time skewering of overblown action films, shot through with deadpan delight by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Of the many, many memorable meta gags in the film, one of the funniest sees Arnie's action hero Jack Slater playing a recording of himself over the phone in order to trick his wife.

Her conversations are apparently predictable enough that Slater's recording, full of "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and "Uh huh," is enough to cover for his absence.

Amusingly, this joke was actually played relatively straight in Arnie's very next film, the terrific True Lies, which while a quasi-parody of action films itself, is also a damn great genre flick in its own right.

The scene in question sees bored wife-turned-spy Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) visiting a hotel room in order to seduce a target, unaware that the entire spy set-up was simply an attempt by her husband Harry (Schwarzenegger), a real spy, to spice up their marriage.

As a result, Harry sits in the shadows of the hotel room in order to disguise himself, while playing a tape of pre-recorded, exotic dialogue.

Just like Arnie's prior movie spouse, Helen is also unable to tell the difference between a human and a recording, though it's played without any of Last Action Hero's self-aware sneer.

That two Arnie movies featured the same gag within a 12-month period is pretty damn bizarre.