This article contains a minor spoiler for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.It’s not at all unreasonable to say that actor and singer David Hasslehoff hasn’t had anything of a film career. After all, the large-chested American dominated television over the span of two decades in the ’80s and ’90s, following his popular seven-year stint on The Young and the Restless with Knight Rider and then Baywatch.

Hasselhoff cemented himself as a household name through a combined count of over 300 episodes, breaking the Guinness World Record for the most-watched man on television. Ironically, though, his same large, tanned frame has never quite fit on the big screen, rarely making a splash in movies.

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Who’s Hoff / Who’s Not: Why David Hasselhoff Is So Famous

     20th Television

In film, Hasselhoff is perhaps most well known (and even then, for all the wrong reasons) as a leading man in the dodgy 1978 Star Wars rip off, Starcrash, or as the first onscreen iteration of the comic world’s own eye-patched Avenger Assembler in Nick Fury: Agent of Shield from 1998, a made-for-TV movie somehow written by David Goyer (Blade, The Dark Knight).

Both cinematic examples are now only ever exhumed and dusted off for ‘Worst Of’ lists, or as showcases that are laughed at late night screenings by irony-mad fans. And yet, bless The Hoff, it hasn’t stopped him from picking his moments on screen since.

Hasselhoff has remained just barely relevant by way of cleverly utilizing the zeitgeist. Take, for example, the following: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Dodgeball, Keith Lemon: The Movie, Piranha 3DD, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. It’s a strange collection of words scrambled into one already oversaturated sentence, sure, but all with a common thread — they feature David Hasselhoff in minor cameos, and all playing himself.

     Dimension Films

But game respects game. Both SpongeBob and Piranha 3DD recognized the Hoff as this sort of wet legend of the seas, an orange-hued, craggy-faced Poseidon, if you will, with the actor becoming surprisingly important to the plot for the yellow square and helping save the day.

Dodgeball held the actor in the same tongue-in-cheek awe and respect, with the German-hailing rival side readying themselves before a match by praying to a framed picture of The Hoff — and then being given a dressing down (in fluent German, no less) by the performer when the team later loses to Vince Vaughn’s Average Joes side.

No Hassle, Hoff

And between obligatory callback cameos in the likes of 2017s Baywatch feature film, said cameos work twofold. For the production companies, it’s an easy injection of nostalgia for the movie and for any of the older viewers and fans of Hasselhoff’s TV outings. Also, it provides his immediate meme appeal to movies.

Simply adding a man with a funny name like “Hasselhoff” is instant points for any new works, as this silly older man can go on to splash about, throw in a few stupid zingers, and be on his way again, (most often) having not affected the plot in the slightest but having improved upon the singular scene that he does happen to be a part of. With that Grade-A American cheeseburger smile and consistently awesome hair, you can basically hear the ‘ka-ching!’ sparkle on the reflection of his teeth in the lens.

To use yet another (of many to come) water-based metaphor, with each new cameo, Hasselhoff is dipping his toe in the water to remind the sea, and us, that he is still here and still very funny at what he does. They are self-referential, even self-mocking (as his lifeguard in Piranha has to stop for air to exclaim, “Holy f*ck! I’m gettin’ old!”). However, they come dusted with a just enough kitschy charm to matter and to show that there is still juice left in the battery. Just take his addition to the parodic Kung Fury, which has a soundtrack featuring the Hoff.

Hasslehoff has adopted a new-found career from these cameos, shaking his own legacy’s hand, then flipping it the bird with the other.

In two of the above examples, he plays a lifeguard version of himself in ode to his Mitch Buchannon character in Baywatch. Guardians of the Galaxy (a movie about fatherhood or the lack of it) had Chris Pratt’s Starlord go as far as to say that he used to keep a picture of the Knight Rider star and tell his friends that the man himself was his estranged dad. In the film it is played as pathetic and lonely, but it’s definitely something that, without a doubt, many actual fans of the show would have wished as well.

     Marvel StudiosDisney

Through this almost substitute teacher approach to an acting career (popping in when needed, hitting the basics and never staying too long for you to get attached) the 70-year-old has adopted a new relationship with the world of performing. In between his stints in live panto, charity work, and general merch sales, the cameos have given Hasselhoff a new lease of life — and with it, a whole new generation of fans.

Comics director and now DCU head James Gunn would tease a music video featuring Hasselhoff for days in the lead up to the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Surely, a new demographic of superhero fans discovered the Hoff, the same way that kids did with SpongeBob SquarePants. Hasselhoff himself would note the joy he got out of his pec-torpedo themed cameo in SpongeBob. He said to UK gossip mag OK! (via Contact Music) in 2011:

     Paramount Pictures

Hasselhoff continued:

I got an offer to do a cameo in the SpongeBob movie and I turned to my girls, who were like 16 and 14, and I said, ‘Who’s SpongeBob?’ and they said, ‘Oh my God, Dad, it’s the number one cartoon in the world, you gotta do it.

Recently, the Hoff played himself in two episodes of The Goldbergs, in Young Sheldon, in Close Enough, and the movie Killing Hasselhoff. Now, with the possibility of a new Knight Rider mooted and Hasselhoff having starred in his own self-mocking German TV show, Ze Network, the perpetually bronzed TV star has happened upon an easy work rate that has delivered gold. Many doubted the Hoff’s relevance after the ’90s, but he’s proved himself to be culturally immortal. Or, if you’re the freak that bought that 14ft long Hoff replica for over $100 thousand, then that was probably never in doubt.

It was great fun and to this day around the world kids stop me and say, ‘Are you David Hasselhoff?’ because I was the only human in the picture. […] It’s amazing - so many of the kids were so young and didn’t see Baywatch and Knight Rider, so I got a whole new legion of fans.