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SYFY WIRE Free Guy

What is 'Dude'? Alex Trebek joins Free Guy universe alongside Ryan Reynolds' yoked alter ego

By Vanessa Armstrong

In the upcoming movie, Free Guy, Ryan Reynolds plays a cheery bank teller who finds out he’s a background character in a video game that’s a skewed version of our reality. His pixelated world is upended, however, when a not-so-nice game exec named Antwan (Taika Waititi) wants to bring that virtual world down.

The bank teller version of Reynolds, an NPC (non-playable character) known as Guy, wants to save his world. But Antwan is willing to throw everything at Guy to stop him, even a buffed out version of Guy (or perhaps Reynolds) cleverly called “Dude.”

To get us amped up for the movie’s upcoming release, 20th Century Studios has put out two clips highlighting Dude. The first one introduces us to this buffalicious character, and also includes a cameo from the beloved Jeopardy! host, Alex Trebek, who passed away last year.

Check it out here:

Trebek’s small moment in the clip has him saying that Guy is turning heads being the good guy. Reynolds mentioned Trebek’s cameo on Twitter last year after the game show host’s passing, but it was heartening to see Trebek once again on the screen.

“Alex Trebek was kind enough to film a cameo for our film Free Guy last year despite his battle," Reynolds, a fellow Canadian, wrote. "He was gracious and funny. In addition to being curious, stalwart, generous, reassuring and of course, Canadian. We love you, Alex. And always will.”

The clip’s touching nod to Trebek also introduced us to another character in Free Guy. The not-so-nice and probably not-so-smart Dude, a character that has Reynolds’ head grafted onto the body of a body builder.

Reynolds released a “behind-the-scenes” clip on his own YouTube page about his experience playing Dude. In it, he pretends that the character isn’t his head CGI-ed onto a weightlifter’s body and claims he got his own bod into such beefed-up shape. “I start every day with a protein bomb,” Reynolds explains in the clip. “It’s made exclusively of human muscle. It’s completely organic and illegal.”

Check out the rest of Reynolds’ “fitness routine” in the video below:

Reynolds as the buff Dude sadly doesn’t fit in the Deadpool suit anymore, but he says in the video that that’s just life, and “life is about growth…hormones.”

You can see Trebek’s cameo as well as Reynolds playing at least these two characters when Free Guy opens exclusively in theaters on Friday, Aug. 13.