Playing off: HBO crime drama series The Wire (2002-2008).
Stars involved: Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr.
Quote: “I’m straight up gangster, and I always keep one in the chamber.”

As any Guardian-reading telly snob will happily tell you, The Wire is “The Greatest TV Show Ever”, which makes it compulsory viewing for anyone who appreciates good drama, donchaknow. Anyway, just in case you haven’t watched it all yet, in The Wire there’s a character called Clayton 'Clay' Davis, a corrupt State Senator played by Isiah Whitlock Jr., best known for saying the word “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit” every other scene.

There’s also another character called Omar, a morally ambiguous stick-up man who spends most of his working day robbing people and being pretty goddamn scary.

We mention this because in Cedar Rapids, there’s a scene where Isiah Whitlock Jr. does an impersonation of Omar to intimidate the men beating up his friend, Tim Lippe (Ed Helms). It works, and afterwards he tells the group: “I do a pretty convincing Omar from the HBO programme, The Wire.” That, ladies and gentlemen, was meta. If he’d dropped in a “Shiiiiiiiiiit” we might have passed out in the cinema, to be honest.