A Western Flop Features Cameos From Both Jamie Foxx And Christopher Lloyd

There was a point in time where Seth MacFarlane was on top of the animation world. "Family Guy," which MacFarlane created, wrote, and starred in, joined the ranks of "South Park" and "King of the Hill" as one of the most popular adult animated shows on television. Fox canceled the show twice in its first few years, only for it to come back bigger than ever. "Family Guy" still airs new episodes today and, much like "The Simpsons," it will go on long after we're all dead. Out of the show's wake came "American Dad" and "The Cleveland Show," but it was becoming clear that MacFarlane had the drive to expand into feature films. The man was born to direct a musical, but alas, maybe one day.

MacFarlane's feature directorial debut, "Ted," ended up being a massive critical and financial success. For every joke that's aged like milk, the 2012 comedy featuring Mark Wahlberg as a man being best buds with his pot-smoking anthropomorphic teddy bear still manages to win me over. I promise it's not because they shot outside of one of the best movie theaters in Massachusetts. MacFarlane would set his sights on a Western comedy with "A Million Ways to Die in the West" for his next feature, and there was reason to be excited. Liam Neeson had the potential to pull a Leslie Nielsen-style turn in his career (which is hilarious considering he's in the new "Naked Gun" reboot) as the central antagonist, with a promising ensemble of comedic talent alongside him.

Needless to say, the admiration for "Ted" did not carry over into "A Million Ways to Die in the West," an interminable slog marred by an improvisational cadence that almost always killed a decent joke in its tracks. It was no "Blazing Saddles." Even worse was a miscast MacFarlane as the wimpy leading man, whose smug demeanor made his evasion of the Wild West death traps frustrating more than anything else. Unlike "Ted," the film wasn't nearly the same kind of runaway hit at the box office, barely rustling in $87.1 million on a $40 million budget.

The only aspect of "A Million Ways to Die in the West" most folks were even talking about were the cameos by actors reprising their roles from much better movies.

"A Million Ways to Die in the West" features a boatload of cameos from everyone from Ryan Reynolds to Ewan McGregor. Even Gilbert Gottfried shows up as a drunk guy posing as Abraham Lincoln. But the cameo that got everyone talking, mostly because Universal couldn't help but put it in the second trailer, was Christopher Lloyd reprising his role as Doc Emmett Brown from the "Back to the Future" trilogy.

24 years prior, Lloyd brought Doc's story to a close in "Back to the Future – Part III," which some consider the best of the trilogy. In the closing moments of "Part II," Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) learns that his mentor is not only still alive after disappearing in the DeLorean, but has been transported back to 1885. Audiences are already familiar with seeing the character in the Old West, so it's not surprising a pop culture connoisseur like MacFarlane would want to play on that.

The bit involves MacFarlane's Albert wandering into a barn after noticing some strange lights and noises. As it would happen, there's Lloyd as Doc Brown working on the DeLorean, claiming it's nothing more than a weather machine. Albert seems to buy it and leaves, followed by Lloyd saying his signature catchphrase: "Great Scott!"

As easy as it would be to try and canonically tie both films together, it's a futile effort considering they not only take place in separate years, but completely different Western towns. The idea to have this cameo in the film wasn't planned, so much as a last minute idea that came up during production (via CinemaBlend):

"We did stay away from a lot of that stuff, and then while we were filming, we thought, 'Well, you know, you could kind of explain this away because it is a time machine,' and you know... why not? It was just something that turned out to be such a crowd-pleaser in this that I'm very glad we put it in."

Lloyd's cameo is pretty amusing, even if that gag's last bit is easy bait. The rights of "A Million Ways to Die in the West" and "Back to the Future" are both owned by Universal, so Doc Brown's appearance seemed viable. MacFarlane, however, pulled a fast one with Jamie Foxx showing up before the credits as one of his most famous characters.

Early on in "A Million Ways to Die in the West," the town fair features all sorts of folks biting the bullet in shocking ways. Albert, meanwhile, tests his luck at a tasteless shooting gallery game called Runaway Slave, in which participants are encouraged to fire at racist cardboard caricatures. The last scene of the film features the vendor being confronted by none other than Django Freeman (Jamie Foxx), who shoots him dead.

Just a few years prior, Foxx made waves as the titular slave turned bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," dispensing a wave of explosive bloody justice to wherever he was needed. Seeing Django show up to put an end to that nonsense, albeit in a different cowboy outfit than we're used to seeing him in, offered some catharsis for one of the film's meanest jokes. That's the whole reason why MacFarlane wanted to have Foxx pop in real quick to begin with (via CinemaBlend):

"The Jamie Foxx bit, that was something that we just thought would be cool to have him in the movie, and also it was sort of a way to kind of buy back what is probably the edgiest gag in the movie, the shooting gallery. That shooting gallery is yet another example of the terribleness that was the 1880's and I think that's why in our test screenings, people were kind of giving us that one. They're not really that offended because they recognize the context, and Albert points out that this is horrific. But it was something that helped to buy it back at the end of the day."

Around the release of "Django Unchained," it appeared Tarantino wanted to make Foxx's iteration of the character a legendary character who went on to have further adventures in the film's violent aftermath. As of now, Django has only made appearances in a comic book crossover entitled "Django/Zorro" from Dynamite Entertainment and this film.