After showcasing the well-timed TV spot for The Incredible Hulk, which reveals the film’s Tony Stark/Iron Man cameo, I was hoping to find something for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening that could similarly turn my (and likely your) low expectations upside down. And I found it: a trailer that reveals the film’s cameos from Raj, Rerun, Dwayne and Shirley, all from TV’s What’s Happening!!. OK, so unfortunately it isn’t real, and it’s not even put together all that well (what’s with the strobe effect?), but it’s still probably more enjoyable than the actual movie (especially if that twist spoiler is legit).
With the popularity of trailer mash-ups, the ease of YouTube distribution and the internet’s ability to expose the synchronous one-mind of a pop-culture-reared generation, it’s not surprising to find that the above video was not the only combination of The Happening and What’s Happening!!. There’s also this one, which only features the What’s Happening!! theme music and no footage from the show (also it boldly makes light of the more graphic footage from the film’s red-band trailer), and there’s this one, which does the opposite by including the audio from the Happening trailer over footage from the TV show. I’ll let you decide which of the three is the best/worst.
Hopefully YouTubers will do better when mashing up What’s Happening!! with Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened? (obvious title: What’s Just Happening!!).