Looking Back on the Legacy of 'The Naked Gun'—and O.J. Simpson's Involvement

WhenThe Naked Gun film franchise debuted in 1988 with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, audiences were introduced to a new kind of cinematic chaos, a relentless barrage of slapstick, puns, sight gags and deadpan absurdity. At the heart of the madness was Frank Drebin, the accident-prone but noble detective played with perfect comic timing by Leslie Nielsen. The film, a spin-off of the short-lived TV series Police Squad!, became an instant cult classic and eventually launched two sequels: The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994).

Among the ensemble cast was O.J. Simpson as Detective Fred Nordberg, whose misfortunes became one of the franchise’s running gags. Simpson’s portrayal of Nordberg, battered, bandaged and unlucky, played against his real-life image as a celebrated athlete. In the late '80s and early '90s, Simpson was a household name, known more for Hertz commercials and NFL highlights than controversy. 

Shortly after the release of the third film, Simpson was at the center of one of the most sensational crimes in American history. The ensuing double murder case—and the media storm that followed—irrevocably changed how his career, including his role in The Naked Gun, would be perceived. Once a source of harmless laughs, his appearances in the franchise became tangled with darker associations, complicating the films’ legacy for decades.

Directed by David Zucker and co-written with Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, the first Naked Gun film carried over the DNA of its short-lived 1982 TV predecessor: rapid-fire gags, background jokes that reward rewatching and Nielsen’s pitch-perfect commitment to absurdity. The plot, involving an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II during a baseball game, proved little more than a framework for nonstop comedy.

Up until that point, Simpson’s fledgling acting career largely consisted of small dramatic roles. In Naked Gun, however, his character, Fred Nordberg, has one of the film’s most memorable moments: a bungled drug bust that results in him being shot, scalded, crushed and nearly drowned, all in the span of minutes. It’s a performance that relied more on physical comedy than dialogue, showcasing Simpson’s surprising gift for timing and self-deprecation. At the time, the casting felt novel: a former football star poking fun at himself, with none of the stiffness often associated with athletes turned actors. 

Audiences embraced him. Nordberg’s presence offered a foil to Drebin’s bumbling investigations. Simpson’s likability and charm translated well on-screen, and producers leaned into his role for the sequels.

The franchise’s second and third entries doubled down on everything that made the original work: more elaborate gags, higher-stakes absurdity and even more celebrity cameos. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear turned its attention to an environmental plot involving alternative energy, while 33⅓: The Final Insult set its climax at the Academy Awards, a perfect playground for Hollywood parody.

In both films, Simpson returned as Nordberg, whose physical misfortunes escalated to ridiculous new heights. In The Smell of Fear, he’s dragged behind a truck and involved in an explosive hospital mishap. In The Final Insult, Nordberg features in a now-classic sequence (inspired by the mob film The Untochables), where he catches a series of babies as if they were footballs. By 1994, Simpson was a staple of the franchise, and his comedic reputation seemed solidified.

On June 12, 1994, just three months after the release of the third film, Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, were found murdered outside Brown’s home in Los Angeles. Within days, Simpson was the prime suspect, with an investigation culminating in the now-infamous low-speed Bronco chase and his arrest. The subsequent trial captivated the nation, blurring the lines between entertainment and real-life tragedy. It was one of the first major events of the 24-hour news cycle, complete with televised court proceedings, tabloid speculation and endless media coverage.

While The Naked Gun trilogy remained a cult favorite, its connection to Simpson made it more complicated to revisit, particularly in the years immediately following Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the murder trial, and his later conviction on kidnapping and armed robbery in 2008, stemming from an incident at a Las Vegas hotel. 

In the decades after the Simpson trial, The Naked Gun remained in pop culture’s peripheral vision. Yet any talk of reviving the franchise was inevitably haunted by Simpson’s shadow. Plans for reimaginings surfaced intermittently in the 2010s and 2020s, including rumors of various stars taking over the roles once played by Simpson (who died in 2024) and Nielsen, who died in 2010.

Finally, more than three decades after the third film premiered, a reboot starring Liam Neeson arrived in theaters in 2025. Neeson played Frank Drebin’s son alongside Moses Jones as the son of Detective Nordberg. The film doesn’t shy away from Simpson’s legacy, but neither does it dwell on it. 

As director Akiva Schaffer put it to The Hollywood Reporter: “That’s the elephant in the room that has to be addressed.” His solution? A single scene in which Drebin and Nordberg’s sons look at their father’s portraits on display in a police station “Hall of Legends.” While Drebin’s son looks on in admiration of his father, Nordberg’s son shakes his head and looks away with bemused disgust at his father’s portrait. As Schaffer noted, “We never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that.’”

The original Naked Gun trilogy endures as a landmark of '80s and '90s comedy, the films’ rapid-fire gags and the sheer density of jokes per minute make the series endlessly rewatchable. But the franchise’s legacy also includes the complicated presence of an actor whose real-life downfall added unexpected weight to a character once defined by pratfalls and banana peels. His arc within the franchise is now tragic, and indicative of how pop culture can’t escape the gravity of real events.