16. Team America: World Police
Paramount PicturesWith the amount of hate and derision that Michael Bay gets as a filmmaker, it's not too surprising that he gets pretty defensive about his work, most famously proclaiming, "I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime." Still, one subtle nod in Age of Extinction proved that he has at least a little self-awareness and sense of humour about himself, and it appears to be in reference to Matt Stone and Trey Parker's hilarious Team America: World Police. Of course, who can forget the movie's song "End of an Act", which included lyrics such as "I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor" and "Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?". Bay certainly seems to have remembered the immensely catchy tune, because when Kelsey Grammer's CIA goon Attinger is meeting with some other stuffed shirts, we can see a poster on the wall which reads "Freedom isn't free", which is an obvious reference to the Team America song of the same name. Of course, it's such a generic "America, f*** yeah!" saying that we could almost believe just such a poster hangs in the offices of the CIA, though for Bay's sake, we hope he knew what he was doing and delivered an intentional nod to Stone and Parker's brilliant send-up.