Fans of absurdist, relentless comedy, rejoice! Comedy with a capital C has returned to the big screen with The Naked Gun. Directed by Akiva Schaffer and written by Schaffer, Doug Mand, and Dan Gregor, the film is a reboot of the original 1988 Naked Gun: Files From the Police Squad! That film was based on the Police Squad! TV series, which also starred Leslie Nielsen as Lt Frank Drebin. Thankfully, none of that knowledge is necessary to enjoy the new The Naked Gun, which stands entirely on its own and stars Liam Neeson as the new Frank Drebin.
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What the 2025 The Naked Gun does have, just like its 1988 predecessor, is wall-to-wall jokes. Both films value making you laugh far above plot and a storyline that makes sense. It’s overflowing with visual gags, double entendres, and comic set-pieces galore. And plenty of them, perhaps unsurprisingly, refer to the 1988 original. Below, we’ve broken down the key references and callbacks the 2025 Naked Gun makes to the original film.
It’s all in the family
Lt Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is the son of…you guessed it, Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen in the original Naked Gun films. But that’s not all. As revealed in a hysterical gag, the entire police force, including Paul Walter Hauser’s Capt Ed Hocken Jr, is the son or daughter of someone from the original cast.
Yes, even O.J. Simpson
In that same scene, each officer is crying over their dead father, talking about how much they miss them and want to make them proud. But when it gets to the child of Nordberg (Moses Jones)—notoriously played by O.J. Simpson—he doesn’t say he misses his dad, instead turning to the camera with a knowing shake of the head.
Weird Al Yankovic
At the beginning of the ‘88 Naked Gun, Derbin steps off a plane and speaks at a press conference. He naturally assumes it’s for him, but it’s actually for singer/songwriter Weird Al Yankovic, who was on the same plane. In the new film, Weird Al has been hired to perform in the bunkers of the ultra-rich once the PLOT (Primordial Law of Toughness) device gets activated.
Bathroom troubles
Both Drebins have a lot in common. One unique thing that bonds them is their unfortunate mishaps involving bathrooms. In the 2025 film, Drebin finds himself in desperate need of a toilet after eating a convenience store hot dog. It gets bad enough that he commandeers the bathroom of a coffee shop, shooting his gun in the air to get the line of people waiting to disperse. Nielsen’s Drebin accidentally leaves his microphone on when he goes to the bathroom, leading everyone attending a press conference to be confronted by the sounds of his urinating and ridiculous singing.
Good driving is overrated
Another thing that links the Drebins is a complete inability to drive safely. Neither of them can park a car to save their lives. In both films, they crash into things, run people over, and cause wanton chaos all around the city. Someone revoke their licenses!
Police station problems
Man, Drebin really shouldn’t be trusted around a vehicle. Neeson’s Drebin receives an electric vehicle as a gift from rich villain Richard Caine (Danny Huston), complete with a charging unit at the police station. Drebin doesn’t realize the car is still plugged in and drives off, leading to abject chaos as a prison wall crumbles down and criminals flee. That’s not the first time Naked Gun has brought chaos straight to the police station. In the original, Drebin leaves his car on drive, causing it to careen unmanned down a slope outside the station, as he shoots at it and incites panic.
Femme fatales
The femme fatale played an essential role in the noir genre of the 1940s, and they’ve been a key fixture in cinema ever since. Femme fatales play a key role in both Naked Gun movies, Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley) in the original, and Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson). Both films give them a deeply comic bent and the 2025 film considerably ups the silliness factor, bringing real laughs to a traditionally hard-edged archetype.
Read more: Pamela Anderson Is Quietly Revolutionary in The Naked Gun
Running into walls
Speaking of femme fatales, Pamela Anderson isn’t the first woman to enchant a Drebin to walk headfirst into a wall. Priscilla Presley also does it during her attempted seduction of Drebin Sr.
Inner monologues
When Drebin meets Jane, his inner monologue takes over, waxing rhapsodically about how beautiful she is. Drebin Jr also has an equally ludicrous inner monologue, which states that Beth has “a bottom that would make any toilet beg for the brown.” The 2025 movie gives the inner monologues a clever twist: every police officer has an inner monologue, and they all overlap one another in a funny gag.
A “romantic” montage
When romance heats up for Drebin and Davenport, we’re treated to an eye-wateringly funny montage of their budding love, set to Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” It’s an amped up version of the montage to the Drebin/Spencer montage set to “I’m Into Something Good” by Herman’s Hermits—though the original doesn’t have a magical snowman that wreaks havoc on the new lovers.
Revealing clothes
What’s better than a quick change? Neeson’s Drebin rips off his police uniform to reveal a cozy cardigan in an attempt to woo Davenport. In the original, the quick change is considerably racier, which makes the new reveal even funnier. When things are about to get hot and heavy, Nielsen’s Drebin pulls tears off his suit to reveal…his birthday suit.
Who needs a windshield?
A pitch-perfect visual gag occurs in The Naked Gun when Drebin is in a car chase and his vehicle collides with various street objects, shattering his windshield, and flooding his car with bees. But then Drebin drives into two men carrying a windshield, which perfectly fits into his car, effectively fixing his windshield woes. It’s a hilarious scene, and an easy-to-miss callback to the ‘88 film, where Drebin finds himself in a vehicle driven by a learner, and the car windshield shatters, leaving everyone covered in glass.
Police lights
The montage that opens the 1988 Naked Gun, a fixed view of a cop car driving through outrageous places, like a high school locker room and a family home, is brought back to life in the end credits of the new film, a lovely final nod to the outrageousness of the OG.
Stay for the credits
Even the credits of these movies are funny. While The Naked Gun has a hilarious credits scene, we’re actually referring to the credit scroll itself. It’s got plenty of gag credits throughout, including “Netflix Password.” It’s a riff on the original, which has plenty of joke credits, including crediting various actors by their single lines.