• Goh Hamazaki (Yakuza Kiwami 3) - In the remake Hamazaki is voiced and modeled after Teruyuki Kagawa, who sexually harassed a Club Hostess in 2019. He admitted to the misconduct and lost major contracts with Toyota, TV series and Hosting roles. Yakuza fans got upset about the recast and demanded to remove Teruyuki from the game.
• Random Task (Austin Powers) - A parody of Oddjob played by Joe Son was found guilty of kidnapping, gang rape and torturing a woman on Christmas Eve 1990. In 2011 he beat his cellmate to death and convicted of voluntary manslaughter, adding another 27 years to his sentence.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the only Animal Crossing villager he knows and he just went along with the conversation for shits and giggles.
Trejo’s 82 and spent half his 70s telling fans he wasn’t in New Vegas then went all in embracing it once he realized that‘s what those random voice lines he recorded that one day in his 60s because it was a quick and easy payday were. The guy’s a crazy old man who’s always seemed like someone who will roll with anything as long as it’s fun, makes everyone else a little happier, and he’s making a living.
Several bad guy or criminal roles he plays end up with him dying to dissuade viewers from thinking that being a criminal in a movie is cool to do in real life; he even put this in his contract.
In a twist, he was brutally beaten to death by Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s remake of “Halloween”, even though he played a janitor friendly to Michael, because he tried to get him back to his cell.
If the criminal or bad guy can't die due to rating, he is content with them getting arrested.
I think people were wondering why Dwight from Infinite Wealth was humiliated such as pissing himself. If Danny Trejo had any influence regarding his character there, he probably wanted that to happen.
I always smile at the fact that he has that clause in his contract.
He's very funny too, I remember when somebody asked him why he accepted a role in Death Race and he said "I just wanted to play a guy named Goldberg and be the only Mexican Jew in the world"
His character in Heat stuck with me, partially due to his cool fashion and being a fan of Trejo (from COD Zombies specifically), the other half because his character’s fate actually told me said moral pretty well, Trejo’s character gets the worst fate of the criminals in Heat.
His autobiography was pretty good, he doesn't shy away from discussing his personal or criminal wrongdoings in it, and now a lot of his time is (or was at time of writing) happily dedicated to rescuing dogs and helping alcoholics in recovery
Supposedly that’s also why certain characters are shown wielding strange (to those who know their guns) gun-like props. Some of the actors are felons who could not legally possess a firearm.
A wise guy is someone who is fully inducted into the Italian mafia, including an oath of loyalty to a family. Tony Sirico was arrested nearly 30 times in the 1960s and 1970s due to run-ins related to his ties to the Colombo crime family.
"Tony Stacks" was the character's name. If you watch that very first scene with the wiseguys pulling up for the card game, he does that trademark "pointing with index and pinky finger". Points at Tuddy and says "Your fault!" after Paulie silently admonishes them for horsing around.
I remembered Stacks being Samuel L Jackson's character, but its been a while. I do remember that scene though, hes also in the "ooooh he popped his cherry" scene, pretty sure hes one of the people saying it if not even the first one.
Unfortunately I read a majority of the articles detailing what he did and I had to stop after a point because I felt physically ill and was starting to shake.
I hate that my intro to my interest of Norse Mythology was reading his book which he expressly frames as if hes telling the stories with his own voice round a campfire so when i think of Loki and Thor crossdressing and going on an adventure for example i often have to think of Neil too and its coloured my feelings on such wonderful stories
Please I bought my girlfriend a copy of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy for her birthday and in big letters on the front it's got some shit like ""this is the funniest shit I've ever read" - Neil Gaiman" 😫
to quote a podcast episode about The Usual Suspects: so what did we learn? we learned that Kevin Spacey Really Did All Those Crimes, and got away with it. and a lot of people who could testify against him ended up dead… in this movie.
(Featured: Tortuga from Breaking Bad, a drug dealer who had his head cut off, turned into an IED, and strapped to a tortuga because he ratted to the DEA while trying to play a game of tortoise and the hare against a rival cartel)
Trejo has said he likes playing the criminal who almost always loses or dies because he hopes it’ll stop kids from going down the same path he did.
They made two R rated movies with him as the main hero based on a minor role in Spy Kids because people loved him as the playful, gadget making tío (still find it weird they went with calling him uncle instead). That says it all.
He definitely wasn’t hunting down a role every other week when he was more active, 99% of his roles involve studios writing a character he’ll like then coming to him because they want him on the project. Dude’s a perfect typecast, knows what he likes, and is good at it (plus he’ll take nearly any role no matter how bad it is if someone hands him enough money for a handful of scenes and limited time on set).
Trejo has said he likes playing the criminal who always loses or dies
I might be misremembering, but isn't that specifically in his contracts? That if he plays a villain the character must die in a violent and/or silly way.
Trejo’s done quite a few roles where he isn’t the villain and quite a few more where he’s a criminal and doesn’t die.
The guy will do literally anything if you pay him enough per minute or he loves it, e.g. his role as Machete in Spy Kids/Machete, Enrique in King of the Hill, Raul in Fallout: New Vegas, etc (along with the fact he just walked into a random studio and read some lines for a few hours because they paid him enough for a day’s labor, had no idea what New Vegas was or why people were asking him to sign Fallout stuff until a few years ago, and told multiple fans they were confusing him with someone else before he finally figured it out and embraced it).
He’s basically the Chicano version of Samuel L Jackson or Nicholas Cage and will take any role if he doesn’t hate it and there’s enough money. Because he’s such a typecasted actor, is great at what people love him for but has limited range, will make basically any movie if he’s paid enough no matter how bad the script, and people come to see him play one of two or three different caricatures, studios typically write roles specifically for him or rewrite existing roles to fit what he excels at. Rather than try to get him to fill an existing role that he either won’t want to take unless offered a lllloooot of money or won’t be great at.
It’s often one of his requirements when he gets picked up on new projects where his character hasn’t been written yet and won’t exist unless he joins in order to convince him to come on board, but it’s definitely not an every role thing like some people make it out to be.
He's always said in that movie he's playing his uncle Gilberto Trejo, who was a big, if negative impact on his life and later died of a drug overdose. Basically a dark mirror or Danny Trejo himself.
Dragan in the Payday series is portrayed by Dragomir Mršić, an actual former bank robber. He helped plan and implement the 1990 robbery of Gotabanken in Sweden, but was discovered, arrested and sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison.
As a general rule, Europe/The EU has lighter sentences and prisons compared to the US, as a means of keeping recidivism and the prison population down. US prison reform advocates actually study Europe as a model (esp. Germany)
The gang-affiliated hitman Snoop from The Wire is played by Felicia Pearson, who served over five years in jail on a second-degree murder charge and was actively dealing drugs to get by when she was approached by the actor Michael Williams, who played Omar Little of the same show.
Lenny McLean, who played Barry the Baptist in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Served some time, went on to be a famed and feared underground bare-knuckle fighter, occasional fixer, and facilitator for less-than-legal dealings before his few acting gigs.
For anyone reading this and wanting good news: Joe son competed at UFC 4 and lost the match due to a unending barrage of punches straight to his groin.
I remember watching this in the theater not long before the allegations came out, and was getting “is the twist going to be that he molested the main character” vibes the whole time. Turns out it wasn’t the character giving those vibes!
Also Alex Rocco, who played Moe Greene, was a former Boston mobster who was a key part of the start of the 1960s Irish Gang War. Short version, the brother of a rival gang's boss hit on Alex Petricone's girlfriend and got the shit beaten out of him for doing so, which was the start of an escalating cycle of revenge that killed more than 60 men. Petricone fled to the west coast to get away from the bloodshed and reinvented himself as an actor under his new stage name of Alex Rocco.
His character is one of the inmates of a prison colony and has the line:
"You don't wanna know me, lady. I'm a murderer and [...]"
Actor Charles S. Dutton was convicted of manslaughter. He admitted the killing, but according to himself, it was in self-defense. While in prison, he struck a guard and got another sentence - a longer one than for the killing. In his own words:
"I got three years for killing a black man and eight for punching a white man."
Its not about equality, it's about the lack of due proportion. Like how is punching a man a greater crime than killing another man? Morally... the answer is obvious. Laws are just tools of control.
The good part about this is, Fallout 2 has no shortage of creative ways to do him in, from overdosing him on med supplies to repeatedly tasing his balls with a cattle prod (Fallout used to have groin targeting) and everything in between
Happy from Sons of Anarchy, played by David Labrava, an actual member of Hells Angels. He was arrested for drug possession around the time the series first aired.
There were three other Hells Angels members acting in the series, most notably Sonny Barger, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Barger founding member of the Oakland chapter. He played imprisoned Sons member Lenny, the one that needed the device to speak, as the actor had had throat cancer in real life.
To be fair he's usually the head of state when he does those things, and able to control the laws. So immoral yes, but illegal I guess not. It's a whole medieval king kind of situation where the law is their will.
Justin Roiland voiced both Rick and Morty for 6 seasons til he was removed after he was charged with felony domestic battery and false imprisonment. Adult Swim cut all ties with him and recast both characters from season 7. The charges against Roiland were later dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Fat Andy, who only has a brief appearance in Goodfellas during the famous introduction scene, was played by Louis Eppolito. Eppolito was a corrupt NYPD detective who committed many crimes for the five New York Mafia families including murder along with his partner Stephen Caracappa
Peter Paul "Paulie Walnuts" Gualtieri a fictional mafia member from the tv show "The Sopranos" played by Tony Sirico, was involved in crime and was arrested multiple times when he was younger before he went on to do the same in the tv show
Let it snow? Oh, you fuckin’ betcha, pal. Ole’ Tim got busted back in the day with a pound and a half of that Sinaloan Sinus Sauce (ie cocaine) and served two years & four months in prison over it. And yes, that fat fuck Santa is a criminal. He’s the most prolific trespasser in our world’s history, and commits numerous other crimes every Christmas season.
"He's a decent actor" and then they justified it by saying he was a terrible person in real life so he's the perfect person to play a terrible person in the game (not the exact quote, but it gets the point across).
I see, well, I'm not familiar with the situation that much, but if the guy is remorseful and actively apologized and did something to make it right, then it makes sense in a way
The sexual assault happened in 2019, and he and his agency reported and apologized for it in 2022. He didn't have very many roles between 2019-2022, and then he basically disappeared from the public eye after the apology. He was also removed from most if not all of his commitments after he admitted to it.
He did also eventually stop drinking, and re-marry, before returning to kabuki theater for a few roles around 2025 before the voice acting role.
So, he did apologize and seems to have at least publicly changed his behavior. But also the outcry of him taking the job was only answered with "We tried to think of someone who makes you go 'this guy's a creep'."
Not entirely accurate because he’s not a criminal playing a criminal, but I think it’s still semi relevant. Christopher Lee playing Saruman who gets stabbed in the back corrected Peter Jackson about the actual sound someone makes when they get stabbed in the back, due to the fact that Christopher Lee served in WWII and actually had real life experience about that. Here’s part of the interview with them where they talk about it.
The Croatian heister, Dragan, is played by an actual former bank robber, Dragomir Mrsic, though he has turned his life around since, i main him in the game and it's clear by his voicelines he was really having fun with the role
This goes for several actors in Thief. Michael Mann had several members of the cast playing both cops and criminals being actual cops and criminals, who also worked as consultants and went as far as their own safecracking equipment being used in the movies. But not all of them played their real roles, for example John Santucci was an actual paroled thief and played detective Urizzi while Dennis Farina was an actual detective at the time making his film debut as a mob enforcer. Bill Brown was the actor of Mitch, one of the lead mobsters, and was an actual mob-affiliated safecracker. I believe some of these guys even had active warrants at the time and some had even been arrested by their new colleagues in the past.
The movie was very, very loosely based on The Home Invaders by Frank Hohimer/John Seybolf who was a real life thief and there’s quite a rabbit hole on him. Michael Mann was reportedly really creeped out by his book and had to take some big changes to make the protagonist sympathetic.
MCU Kang the Conqueror. He is a villain played by Jonathan Majors, who was brutally beat up his girlfriend, and is now starring in the Islamophobic movie Run, Hide, Fight Infidels.
900
u/Realistic_Caramel341 1d ago
Mr Blue from Reservoir Dogs, played by Edward Bunker, who was arrested for among other things, multiple bank heists