Biggest cameos and Easter eggs

This article contains spoilers for Happy Gilmore 2.

After almost 30 years, Happy Gilmore is back on the fairway.

This time around, a now-retired Happy (Adam Sandler) — who has fallen on some really tough times — returns to golf to pay for his daughter Vienna’s ballet school. In the process, he might just save the future of the sport. In addition to Sandler, returning stars from the original 1996 film include Julie Bowen as Virginia Venit and Christopher McDonald as Shooter McGavin.

Along the way, Happy encounters an array of famous faces, including sports stars, pro golfers, major Hollywood players, and even Sandler’s real-life family.

“When someone’s doing a cameo, they’re coming by, giving their time, and you want them to have a fun time and make it worth their while,” Sandler tells Entertainment Weekly. “Nobody didn’t bring the full-tilt A-game. We wrote stuff. They came up with stuff. There’s a million athletes in the movie from every sport. Every golfer I love is in it. Of course, Travis [Kelce] is incredibly talented. Bad Bunny never stops being funny.”

He continues, “No matter what, no matter who was in the movie, it was an exciting day. It was just whatever scene we were shooting, we were like, ‘Holy cow, we’re going to be hanging out with John Daly today.’ Holy cow. There’s just so many people that made it exciting.”

Happy Gilmore 2, which is now playing on Netflix, is also chock-full of Easter eggs to the first film and Sandler’s lengthy comedy career as a whole. In case you missed any of it, EW is breaking down all of the film’s biggest cameos and connections.

A family affair

What could be better than one Sandler in a film? All the Sandlers, of course! Happy Gilmore 2 delivers on that front — the comedian’s wife, Jackie, and two daughters, Sunny and Sadie, all appear in the film.

Sunny plays Happy’s beloved only daughter, Vienna, and Jackie plays her dance instructor, who encourages her to attend the Paris dance program. Sadie, meanwhile, plays a fellow member of Happy’s “Alkies for Life” program who is later revealed to be an FBI plant. At the end of the film, the two share a tongue-in-cheek moment when Sadie’s character tells Happy, “You remind me of my dad.”

But the fun doesn’t end there: Sandler’s brother-in-law, Christopher Titone, plays a repo man; his mother-in-law, Lila Titone, plays Lila; his cousin, Jana Sandler, plays one of the Jeopardy contestants; and Sandler’s mother, Judy, plays Drago Larson’s mother (see below for more on Drago).

Happy’s time on SNL

At the beginning of the film, we see a few short clips of Happy going on Saturday Night Live at the height of his golf fame. In real life, of course, Sandler was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series from 1990 to 1995. He also received an Emmy nomination when he returned as host in 2019.

Ben Stiller

In the first film, Stiller played the villainous Hal L., a retirement home orderly who terrorizes Happy’s grandma and the other elderly residents. In Happy Gilmore 2, he reprises the role, but this time around Hal has left the nursing home and now runs a support group called “Alkies for Life.” He’s still a grifter, though, and thanks to the character played by Sadie, finally gets his just desserts at the end of the film.

Honoring the dead

Happy Gilmore 2 is not subtle in its attempts to honor the stars of the first film who have sadly passed away. In one particularly on-the-nose scene, Shooter and Happy battle it out, literally, over the graves of Bob Barker (who died in 2023), Chubbs (played by Carl Weathers, who died in 2024), Grandma (played by Frances Bay, who died in 2011), and more.

New faces

Although most of the famous faces on this list have some connection to the first film, there are still a staggering number of new people to mention. Principal new players include filmmaker and actor Benny Safdie as Maxi Golf creator and the film’s main antagonist, Frank Manatee, and Bad Bunny as Happy’s new caddie. Haley Joel Osment plays a rival golfer. Margaret Qualley, Eric André, and SNL‘s Martin Herlihy (son of Tim, who co-wrote the film with Sandler) play amateur golfers who are forced to play with a newly unretired Happy at the beginning of the film.

Kelce pops up as a mean-spirited waiter who fires Bad Bunny’s character and later appears in his “happy place” dreams shirtless, tied to a post, covered in honey, and finally, attacked by a bear. Similarly hilarious is Steve Buscemi as Happy’s wild neighbor. Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi appears at the end as one of the FBI agents who takes down Stiller’s Hal.

Sportscasters Stephen A. Smith, Dan Patrick, and Verne Lundquist (who also popped up in Happy Gilmore), Jeopardy host Ken Jennings, and celebrity chef Guy Fieri play heightened or fictionalized versions of themselves. Professional wrestler and actor Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Philip Schneider, Ethan Cutkosky, Conor Sherry, Kym Whitley, John Farley, Austin Post (a.k.a. Post Malone), Marcello Hernandez, Oliver Hudson, Reggie Bush, Nikki Garcia, Becky Lynch, co-writer Tim Herlihy, rapper Cam’ron, Jon Lovitz, and Kevin Nealon (who played Potter in the first film) also round out the cast.

Another gentle giant

Who could forget Mr. Larson, Happy’s intimidating but friendly former boss, played by Richard Kiel? Standing at over 7 feet tall, Kiel, who played Jaws in the Bond films, is hard to forget. Sadly, he died in 2014, but he’s perfectly honored in Happy Gilmore 2 by former NBA player Boban Marjanović, who plays Larson’s son, Drago, who is even taller at a whopping 7-foot-4.

Eminem

In the first film, Joe Flaherty’s character famously heckles Happy by repeatedly calling him a jackass right before he’s set to putt. Flaherty died in 2024, but Eminem, donning a beard and sun hat, picks up the mantel in Happy Gilmore 2, calling him — you guessed it — a jackass. Unfortunately for him, the alligators are back in this film, too, and Happy gets the last laugh when the beasts kill Eminem’s heckler on the course.

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Meet Slim

Chubbs famously dies in the first film, but he still plays a large part in the second. We see his grave, and he’s mentioned several times, but his son, Slim (played by Lavell Crawford), also features in the movie. Like his father, he has a wooden hand (he lost his in a vending machine accident, not to an alligator), and he serves in a supportive role to Happy on his journey to be a successful golfer again.

The return of nipple-pinching Waterboy coach

Cue more nipple-pinching memes of actor Blake Clark, who played the pierced Farmer Fran in 1998’s The Waterboy, and appears in a similar state in Happy Gilmore 2. Clark is a regular in Adam’s flicks, also appearing in 50 First Dates, Grown Ups, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, and Mr. Deeds.

Un-fore-gettable cameos

What would a Happy Gilmore movie be without a bevy of professional golfers to bring it all to life? Like the first film, Happy Gilmore 2 features several real-life golfers, including: John Daly, Keegan Bradley, Bryson DeChambeau, Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Jack Nicklaus, Xander Schauffele, Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Will Zalatoris, Nelly Korda, Nancy Lopez, and Paige Spiranac.

Caddyshack

Speaking of the golf pros, Zalatoris has sort of a dual role — he’s technically playing himself, but he’s also revealed to be the grown-up version of Happy’s poor, oft-abused caddie in the first film. (Apparently, he changed his name.) In the original, that role was played by Jared Van Snellenberg, who retired from acting in 2003 and went on to become a neuroscientist and professor.

“You can do it!”

Towards the end of the film, Rob Schneider, pedaling away on a bike, tells Happy, “You can do it!”

This is a running gag between Adam and Schneider — Schneider has uttered the line in many of Adam’s films. Starting with The Waterboy, the bit has continued through Little Nicky, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard, and Bedtime Stories, as well as in a deleted scene from Click.

A very Happy ending

At the end of Happy Gilmore, Happy sees a ghostly vision of Abraham Lincoln, Chubbs, and the alligator who took his hand, waving to him from heaven. In the sequel, he sees the same thing, but Grandma, Mr. Larson, Bob Barker, the “jackass” hecklers from both films, and his late wife, Virginia, are also shown. Virginia even sweetly tells him, “Oh, you’re okay.”