If there’s one thing you can love about action movies from the 80s and 90s era, it's that they were never accused of taking themselves too seriously. I mean, with outlandish premises, over-the-top action, and not the deepest roster of classically trained actors, they weren’t a very serious time at all—except when it came to the action.

So it’s no surprise that many movies, especially by the '90s, were quick to poke fun at themselves, their stars, and even actors who aren’t in the movies themselves. One of the best examples of this comes from a throwaway gag in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero, which gives us a good chuckle and also offers an interesting look into an alternate ultimate action movie universe we’d like to explore a bit.

Arnold’s 'Last Action Hero'

Released perhaps at the absolute peak of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stardom, Last Action Hero is a satirical but still sincere action film that’s very self-aware of its own genre and the many cliches associated with the beat-by-beat story and action sequences.

And while there are a ton of great throwaways, asides, and other various gags that feature several cameos from past action movie stars and characters like Robert Patrick reprising his role as the T-1000 and Sharon Stone homaging her own performance in Basic Instinct, the movie does have a heart and something to say—even if audiences didn’t care too much to hear it at the time.

Yet, the merits of Last Action Hero aside, the film is notable to many for its one throwaway gag that showcases an alternate ultimate action movie reality that is quite intriguing to say the least.

What if Sylvester Stallone Was The Terminator?

In a scene that takes place in a Blockbuster Video Store (remember those?), Schwarzenegger, who plays a quasi-fictional version of himself as the action hero character Jack Slater who exists in the film-within-a-film that a young boy is magically transported into (it’s a lot, we know), sees a movie poster that gives him pause… for good reason.

Schwarzenegger sees a Terminator 2 movie poster showcasing what the film would have looked like and how it would have been advertised, with Sylvester Stallone playing the Terminator. And, believe it or not, it obviously kind of works.

Without rehashing too much of the history of The Terminator and Schwarzenegger’s involvement in the original (which likely would have been OJ Simpson if not Arnie, oddly, if anything), it’s an interesting look in what can only be described as an alternate action movie universe that has inspired more fun action movie conversations, debates, and even AI spinoffs.

The Lessons of a Good Meta Joke

Ultimately, this gag is just that. A one-off gag in a film that has an endless string of them. Yes, we have gotten early AI deepfake videos of Stallone starring as the Terminator, and we’ll likely continue getting them for the rest of time.

But the lesson here, if any, is that a good joke, a solid gag, or whatever you want to call it, is one that has legs and can really prompt the audience to pause and consider things. It’s a joke that goes fast but lives on long after.

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