How Bob Odenkirk ended up making a cameo in Halloween Kills

David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills is now playing in theatres and streaming on Peacock and has been doing pretty damn well from the looks of things. Those of you have watched Halloween Kills might have been surprised to have seen Bob Odenkirk’s name in the credits, particularly as it didn’t seem like the actor was in the film at all… but he was, sort of.

Thankfully, CinemaBlend was able to get to the bottom of the mystery. In John Carpenter’s original Halloween movie, one of Michael Myers’ victims was Bob Simms, a teenager who was memorably pinned to a door by Myers with a butcher knife. David Gordon Green wanted to pay tribute to all of Myers’ victims in Halloween Kills, but wasn’t able to track down the original actor in order to get the image rights… and that’s where Bob Odenkirk came in.

In the original Carpenter film, the Bob character, I wanted to have acknowledgement of all the deaths from the previous film, but we couldn’t track [the actor] down or get the rights. Somehow we couldn’t clear an image of Bob for our television news broadcast. And so I was frustrated by that because I wanted to acknowledge Bob’s death, but we couldn’t get footage of Bob. So I Googled ‘Bob 1970s High School,’ and a photo of Bob Odenkirk popped up that looked just like Bob! So I thought, ‘He’s probably easier to find; let’s go get him!’

After contacting Bob Odenkirk and getting the okay, the actor can now count himself as part of the Halloween franchise, albeit in the form of a yearbook photo from decades ago. Bob Simms was originally played by John Michael Graham, but beyond an uncredited appearance as a backup dancer in Grease, Halloween is his only role, so it’s not hard to see why the production had difficulty tracking him down.

You can check out a review of Halloween Kills from our own JimmyO right here, and be sure to let us know what you thought of the film as well!