The Anthony Bourdain Far Cry Cameo You Probably Didn't Know About

Typically, when a person appears in a cameo in a film or television program, we often assume the famous person has agreed to appear in this project. Think Anthony Bourdain's appearance in "The Big Short," which you can watch on YouTube. In it, Bourdain is explicitly introduced as himself to explain the concept of collateralized debt obligation via the metaphor of unsold halibuts. The same also is true for his appearance on "Yo Gabba Gabba," "Sanjay and Craig," and "The Simpsons." 

However, in 2005, Bourdain appeared in Uwe Boll's "Far Cry" film in a role IMDb lists as an uncredited scientist and the omniscient Wikipedia glosses over. In the sequence, Bourdain plays a scientist who gets shot and killed. The shooting (in both senses) and behind-the-scenes material form a segment exploring Vancouver's film industry in an episode of "No Reservations." You can watch the segment here, including Bourdain's questionable choice of calling Boll an "auteur," when many believe that Boll is a notoriously inept director. In the movie, the sequence only lasts for a few second, making the viewer wonder whether they really saw Bourdain shot in a video game movie or if their imagination was playing tricks on them.

The story behind Bourdain's apparently random role in "Far Cry" is that he and Boll were long-term friends. ScreenRant writes that they met in 1999 when, during a scout for locations in New York, Boll stopped by the restaurant for which Bourdain was an executive chef. So, when Bourdain and Boll both happened to be filming in Vancouver, Bourdain could not resist. This is in keeping with the man who seized the opportunity to use his show as a venue to meet Iggy Pop, of whom the punk rock loving Bourdain was in awe.

After Bourdain's death, Boll described filming with him in Vancouver to the Toronto Star: "He is a person [who] makes everybody feel good. ... He brought that on set in Vancouver, too. Everybody was around him, everybody talked about him. But he was never disturbing the work." Rather, he respected the insanities of movie scheduling and the catering of movie sets with the same attitude he brought to the foods he covered. Of course, "Far Cry" has been panned, with IMDb giving it 3.1 stars out of 10. However, a fun piece of trivia emerged from it.