I walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell. A loud gong sounded as it swung inward. A young Asian man was hanging from the inside of the door. He was extremely intoxicated. It took me a second to realize I knew him—it was Long Duk Dong, Gedde Watanabe’s infamous character from Sixteen Candles.
“What’s a-happening, hot stuff?” he said, speaking with a thick accent. When I failed to answer, the Donger motioned for me to come on inside. I thanked him and continued on into the house. It was packed with rich drunk white kids in full-on party mode. I bumped into a young Joan Cusack—dressed as the girl in the neck brace we’d seen earlier on the bus. She was trying to drink a beer by leaning her whole body backward, but then she leaned too far and fell on the floor.
Then I went to do a sweep of the living room, but was nearly crushed by a set of exercise weights that came crashing down through the ceiling. They continued to crash on through the floor, opening up an enormous hole into the wine cellar and smashing dozens of the bottles stored there.
I continued to make a complete circuit of the house but didn’t see Ian or Max anywhere.
I had just made my way back to the living room when I received a text from Art3mis on my HUD, telling me to meet her at Stubby’s house next door, in the backyard.
I sprinted outside and across the perfectly manicured lawn, to the rear of the adjacent house, which was also in the process of being trashed by reckless, drunken teenagers. In Stubby’s backyard, I found Art3mis holding two extremely handsome teenage boys at gunpoint—Ian and Max from Weird Science. Max was played by the actor Robert Rusler, whom I also knew from his role as Ron Grady in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. And Ian was played by an impossibly young Robert Downey Jr.
“Holy shit,” I said. “The OG Iron Man! I forgot he was in a John Hughes movie…”
“Just one,” Art3mis said. “A supporting role in Weird Science. But—little-known fact—Robert Downey Jr. almost played the lead in another Hughes film. That’s why we need him.”
Art3mis pointed at Max. “Him, we can let go,” she said. She lowered her assault rifle, so that it was no longer pointed at Max’s head. Max stood there frozen for a second, then he turned tail and took off running across the expansive green lawn, in the direction of Jake Ryan’s house. He never looked back.
Art3mis turned her attention back to Ian. She removed the bag of weed she’d taken from Bender’s locker and dangled it in front of him. The expression on his face suddenly went blank, as if he’d been hypnotized.
“Would you like some of this?” Art3mis asked.
“Why yes, madam!” Ian replied. “I certainly would.”
He reached for the bag, but she yanked it back out of his reach.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Art3mis said. “I’ll give you this whole bag of doobage if you just perform two simple tasks for me.”
“Sure,” Ian said, batting his eyelashes at her. “Anything you say, doll.”
“I figured out this little trick by playing through all the official Weird Science quests,” Art3mis said. “The NPC recreations of Max and Ian are both total hedonists, and they’ll perform nearly any task in exchange for sex or drugs.” She turned to smile at him. “Isn’t that right, Ian?”
RDJ batted his eyelashes at her again and nodded. Art3mis opened her inventory and took out the wingtip shoes and bolo tie she’d looted from Duckie back at the high school, then held them out to Ian.
“First, I need you to put these on,” she said. “Then I need you to go dance with Andie Walsh at the senior prom tonight. Deal?”
“Deal,” Ian said. He took the shoes from her and put them on. Then he put the bolo tie around his neck. As soon as he did, his wardrobe and hairstyle changed. He no longer looked like Robert Downey Jr. as Ian in Weird Science. Now he looked like Robert Downey Jr. in Back to School, in the role of Derek Lutz. But he was dressed in the same vintage suit that Jon Cryer wore in the original ending of Pretty in Pink.
When his transformation completed, it triggered another music cue. At first I thought I was hearing the song “I Want a New Drug” by Huey Lewis and the News, but as soon as the lyrics kicked in, I realized it was actually Weird Al Yankovic’s parody—“I Want a New Duck.”
The song only played for five or six seconds, while the newly anointed Robert Duckey Jr. did a little dance to show off his new attire. Then the song cut out and he struck a pose and said, “I remain now, and will always be, a Duck Man.”