Shane Black’s 2016 neo-noir buddy comedy “The Nice Guys” has become something of a cult classic, despite being less than a decade old. The film follows troubled private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and hirable enforcer Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) as they search for the missing teen Amelia (Margaret Qualley), who Healy was supposed to protect. It allowed both actors to really show their comedic chops and chemistry, and it’s as close to a perfect buddy comedy as you can get. It’s funny, it’s action-packed, and it’s occasionally a little scary in a fun way, like any of the several times when March essentially throws himself into an extended, painful tumble and somehow manages to survive every time. 

Even though March becomes convinced that he cannot die (when in reality, he’s probably just been drunk enough to ragdoll and not injure himself more severely), things get especially scary when he ends up at the bottom of a hill, right next to a bloody corpse. March gets upset, as we all probably would, and the terrifying moment becomes sort of hilarious as he wheezes and tries desperately to get away. But audiences who looked closely might have noticed something unusual about the dearly departed dead guy: he’s played by none other than Robert Downey Jr. 

The body is missing about half of its face, and since the scene is at night, it makes him a little tougher to identify. But eagle-eyed viewers could catch that it was Downey doused in blood and gore in an uncredited cameo. He’s playing the body of porn producer Sid Shattuck, the financier of an experimental porno film that hid a vital message about a government conspiracy within its hardcore sex scenes. His wounds are gruesome and upsetting, but the somewhat hardened Healy is able to identify him as Shattuck using the contents of his wallet before the two chuck him over a fence in an attempt to distance themselves from the crime scene. (They also upchuck a bit in response to the nastiness of the corpse, but thankfully the film is set in the 1970s and DNA testing wouldn’t really be around for another few decades.) 

Unfortunately, they pick the wrong fence and end up dropping poor old dead Sid onto a table at the center of what looks like a wedding or very fancy birthday party, leading to a lot of screaming, prompting the nice guys to run away as fast as they possibly can. 

Dark, surreal humor is a Shane Black trademark, and it’s great that Downey was able to be a part of one of the darkest and funniest scenes in “The Nice Guys,” even if it’s just an uncredited, easy-to-miss cameo. It might seem like Downey is too big of a star to tackle a non-role like that, especially since his turn as Tony Stark in the “Iron Man” and “Avengers” movies had already rocketed him to super-stardom by 2015, but Downey and Black had their own buddy history.

In 2005, Downey starred in Black’s directorial debut, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Black had become known for his work as a screenwriter, penning big action scripts like “Last Action Hero” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” along with creating the “Lethal Weapon” film series, but he saw “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” as his “anti-action movie” and went in a very different direction. There’s still plenty of great buddy comedy banter, but “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is a dialogue-heavy neo-noir black comedy that wasn’t really what anyone expected, and it unfortunately bombed at the time, just barely making back its modest production budget. 

The movie has since become a cult classic (much like “The Nice Guys”) and is pretty beloved, and it’s also responsible for Downey making it into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau thought Downey’s performance was perfect in the movie and used it to win over execs, which led to Downey bringing Shane Black aboard as writer and director on “Iron Man 3.” 

Downey was probably busy filming “Avengers: Age of Ultron” or “Captain America: Civil War” during the time “The Nice Guys” was being filmed, but it’s great that he still had a bit of time to make an unceremonious cameo in his friend’s movie.