Thread by @DannyDutch

Al Bundy as a Miami Vice Coke Dealer (1984)

Bruce Willis playing arms dealer extraordinaire Tony Amato in Miami Vice’s first season.
Four months later, he was trading barbs with Cybill Shepherd as P.I. David Addison in Moonlighting

Season 4 is when Julia Roberts made an appearance as Polly Wheeler, an art gallery manager/drug dealer’s assistant with a penchant for bad boys. And Sonny is just her type.

Season 4, Chris Rock plays an eager young records clerk who the squad tasks with researching UFOs and aliens, as you do....

Here we have Ben Stiller playing a small-time con named Fast Eddie Felcher in season 4 episode 2.
Miami Vice was his third acting gig.

In season 3 Steve Buscemi was the middleman for a Bolivian drug lord who sort of got his ass kicked by Willie Nelson. (Yes that Willie Nelson)

Nelson plays a semi-bad guy who takes the law into his own hands before biting the dust at the end of the show.

Phil Collins even turned up in Miami Vice to play game show host/con man Phil “The Shill” Mayhew, who moved to Miami from London and quickly set about depleting the bank accounts of the city’s richest residents with a shady drug deal.

Benicio del Toro at around 20 had a bit part on Miami Vice in 1987 as Pito, an ex-con-turned-thespian with a local theater group, Mi Vida Loca.

In season 3 Viggo Mortensen partnered up with Lou Diamond Phillips to play two junior detectives working a case with Crockett and Tubbs. But when a deal goes bad and Viggo is killed, his partner becomes convinced that Tubbs is dirty.

In its 3rd season, “When Irish Eyes Are Crying,” Detective Gina Calabrese (Saundra Santiago) falls for an Irish philanthropist—played by Liam Neeson—who turns out to be a former IRA member and current terrorist.

For the Seinfeld fans Michael (Cosmo Kramer) Richards turns up in season 2 playing a sleazy bookie. #GiddyUp

Stanley Tucci with hair (ish) appeared in season 3 of Miami Vice as crime lord Frank Mosca.
He’d appeared previously on the show as the adoptive father of a smuggled baby and that went so well they asked him back to be a bad guy.

In season 3 Sonny Crockett is in love. And with a lovely young ER doctor named Theresa Lyons, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
There’s just one problem: she also happens to be a heroin addict, which causes a bit of friction in the relationship

Back when he was still going by Larry, Laurence Fishburne played a prison guard sizing up Tubbs, who was sent to the clink undercover in order to bust up an in-house drug operation.

Turns out that Larry is one of the guys behind it!! 😱

While the men are out busting up drug deals, the ladies of Miami Vice can usually be found in hooker attire, working undercover as prostitutes. So it’s only befitting that the show would feature a few pimps in its time, John Turturro among them.
1980’s tv was insane.

If there’s one thing an undercover cop should never do, it’s fall in love with a prostitute. Which is exactly what Bill Paxton, as Vic Romano, does. Much to the dismay of a pimp named Silk, played by Wesley Snipes

Season one had Michael Madsen playing tougher-than-his-name-makes-him-sound drug dealer Sally Alvarado, with Terry O’Quinn (a.k.a. John Locke from Lost) as his lawyer

Miami Vice wasn't above using the same actor twice in different roles (see Stanley Tucci further up the thread)

This worked out to the benefit of Ving Rhames who plays a hapless man held hostage, and then went on to play a hardened criminal with a BRILLIANT flat-top.

Ron Pearlman pops up as the commissioner of prisons on the Miami Vice episode "Walk-Alone." In his position, he asks the Vice team to get a man inside the prison for an undercover sting.

In 1987 Ian McShane appeared Season 3's "Knock, Knock... Who's There?" with an amazing Latino accent.
He later played a General/dictator who plans on leaving his country, betraying the drug dealers who funded his rise to power.
Crockett & Tubbs are tasked to keep him alive!

Season 2, Episode 4 (“Out Where the Buses Don’t Run”) gives us Little Richard as Reverend Marvelle Quinn preaching an anti-drug sentiment and sending his disciples out to spread the word on the streets of South Beach.

This is where it starts to get REALLY surreal.
Leonard Cohen appears Season 2, (“French Twist”)
Initially the plan was for Cohen to portray the main villain but his role was cut to two phone conversations totalling a minute and a half.

Cohen as a villain? Yes please!

Combine the hardest working man in showbiz with a government conspiracy and a touch of the paranormal and you’ll get probably the show’s strangest guest appearance, you'll also get James Brown in Season 4, Episode 7 (“Missing Hours”)

In this 1986 episode, Miles Davis played brothel owner “Ivory Jones” who cooperated with Crockett and Tubbs to help corner their man. Gun fights ensued.

Frank Zappa was known for many things but acting wasn’t really one of them. That’s why it was such a surprise to see him on Miami Vice. Here he plays an intimidatingly persistent character hell-bent on recovering a large sum of money.

This thread is currently paused, it was taking up waaay too much of my day.

Unpause!

In 1986 Miami Vice fan Gene Simmons appears as Newton Windsor Blade, a drug dealer, known as the "Sears and Roebuck" of controlled substances. Crockett tried to bust Blade for three years but never was able to catch Blade and the drugs in the same place at the same time

Pam Grier had a reoccurring role (rightfully so) as Valerie Gordon, a NYPD Detective and on-again, off-again love interest for Tubbs in the episodes " Rites of Passage", " The Prodigal Son ", and " Too Much, Too Late ".
She also kicked ass a lot.

Episode 2 from season 3 featured a blurry eyed John Taylor from @duranduran.
Weapons were being supplied to unnamed fighters in an unnamed Central American country, the squad have to go and sort it out.
(This episode is definitely NOT about the Contras)

In season 4 @theharryshearer makes an appearance. The squad is on the trail of a stolen canister containing priceless semen of a prized bull called Gargantua. A dangerous Cuban spy is also after the canister, but why?....

And then there’s @pennjillette playing Jimmy Borges, an electronics distributor. He was also a drug distributor in heavy volume located in New York City, a friend of Miami drug dealer Newton Blade (played by @genesimmons)

In season 2 @TedNugent appears as gun wielding lunatic (which must’ve been a stretch) Charlie Basset. Charlie is a thug who uses his stunning wife, Callie to lure rich men to their doom.
Tubbs watches his friend "Burnett" try not to succumb to Callie's charms.

ICON @GeorgeTakei plays money launderer Kenneth Togaru in the episode "By Hooker by Crook" (yes that's Melanie Griffith)

In the episode “Smuggler’s Blues,” which aired in 1985, Glenn Frey of Eagles fame played Jimmy Cole, a Vietnam vet who agrees to fly Crockett and Tubbs on an off-book DEA mission to Colombia.
And I reckon he had loads of fun doing so.

Also @The_Real_IMAN turns up playing a serial killer, murdering men she meets in a video dating service in particularly vicious ways and nearly kills Crockett in the episode "Love at First Sight".
He lives to fight another day though.

What I’m saying is, if you were an actor in the 1980’s and you DIDN’T appear in Miami Vice, what the hell were you doing?!

One last thing though, none of these people would’ve appeared if it hadn’t been for the casting decisions made by Bonnie Timmermann.
This is a outrageously impressive list 👇🏼

m.imdb.com/name/nm0863659…