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Free Guy, the new movie about a sentient NPC named Guy (Ryan Reynolds), features a lot of Easter eggs and cameos. However, there's one in particular that comes to mind as being pretty major – if you've seen the movie, you'll know which one we mean.
GamesRadar+ spoke to director Shawn Levy, who told us exactly how the cameo came about. However, before we dive into our chat, here's your obligatory spoiler warning. Scroll on at your own risk.
Free Guy's climactic scene sees Guy face off against Dude – he's just like Guy, but a lot bigger (and without a fully formed brain). The developers of Free City have sent Dude in to stop Guy from exposing the fact that the game contains plagiarised code, and Guy is left to face him alone. If that wasn't enough pressure, Guy's whole ordeal is being streamed, and the whole world is watching.
Luckily, Guy has a whole arsenal of iconic weapons at his disposal, from a lightsaber to the Rainbow Smash pickaxe from Fortnite – and, for a moment, Captain America's shield. And who should watch this moment? Only Captain America himself, Chris Evans.
"I guess I'll say that we always knew that the third act was going to be Guy leveling up to a point where he could access any tools, any weapons. And, phenomenally, we got permission to use a few iconic weapons in Free Guy, and those are some of the best surprises in store for audiences," Levy explains.
"Once we got a certain weapon from a certain franchise, we realized that, 'Wait a second, the actor associated with that weapon happens to be working on another project in the same city that we were filming in.' So it was literally a matter of Ryan calling that actor and saying, 'Hey, we're making this movie Free Guy. If we can get you in and out in 10 minutes, can you come by to do the cameo?' And he said yes. And that's how he ended up in Free Guy."
He added: "One of the great thrills of my career is, there's about 25 seconds in the third act of Free Guy that gets a reaction the likes of which I've never seen, where it's not just laughter, it's actual applause and cheering that is so visceral that it's every director's dream."
Free Guy also stars Taika Waititi, Joe Keery, Jodie Comer, and Lil Rel Howery and it arrives in theaters on August 13. If you've already got plans to see it, check out our list of all the other upcoming video games movies on the cards.
