Death(s) to Hussein

Dissecting the plot of the Hot Shots! movies seems like a poor choice of time management, which is a major part of what drew me to the idea.

Saddam Hussein had the honor of possibly dying three times in the Hot Shots! universe. Now, before we explore these three implied deaths, we should ask ourselves this: Why Saddam Hussein? A couple of years earlier, he wasn't on our collective conscious radar. We know this because of the very first scene of The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

In some smoky room in Beirut, all of the "enemies" of the U.S. were meeting, along with one of the movie's antagonists, to conspire against us. This includes Fidel Castro, Yassir Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ayatollah Khomeini, Idi Amin, Moammar Gadhafi and a few other generic types like "stereotypical East German looking guy" and "I think that guy is supposed to be in the IRA, or something." Hussein is absent.

In fact, we had given Hussein aid during the Iran-Iraq War. As shitty as Hot Shots! Part Deux was, I do have to hand it to them for one throwaway gag that I missed the first time around (granted, I was 14 at the time).

Hussein gets an oversized check for $10 million from some unidentified U.S. President.
So proud of this moment, Hussein had this picture framed and has it sitting on his desk.

What did he do between 1988 and 1991?

Short answer: He invaded a neighboring country, and somehow managed to be one of the most hated men in the U.S.

Part of how he became so hated so quickly could be because this all went down right after the Cold War ended, and we needed someone to hate.

Enter Hot Shots!, a silly spoof that you're not supposed to devote too much mental energy to (yet, here I am) that uses Hussein/Iraq as a "the enemy."
 
In the first movie, Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) dropped a bomb Hussein as he was sipping a drink beside the pool.

Nice catch

It's not explained how Topper knew where to find Hussein, or why they were even killing Hussein or fighting Iraqis in the first place, as combat in Operation Desert Storm had ended months earlier. That's besides the point. Topper dropped the bomb on Hussein, but it doesn't explode. However, we can assume that getting a heavy bomb dropped on you, even if it was a dud, could probably kill you.

Except, there he is in Hot Shots! Part Deux. For some reason, the U.S. is still fighting him. And for some reason, he has some annoying speech impediment.

After dueling with Topper, Tug Benson comes in and tells Topper to get lost so that he can settle his score with Hussein. Again, this isn't explained. Benson eventually resorts to dousing Hussein with a fire extinguisher, which leads to a Terminator 2: Judgement Day joke, only instead, Hussein gets pushed onto his dog and pushing him over onto his dog.

This should kill him, right?

Well, no. It didn't kill the T-1000, so why would it kill Hussein? Hussein's pieces melt by the heat of the fire place and reconstruct, along with pieces of Hussein's dog, resulting "hilarity."

Get this fucking movie over with, already.

Then, at the end of the movie, a piano is dropped off a helicopter onto Hussein. But, it's implied that that doesn't kill him either.

His toes curl and his legs disappear, like in The Wizard of Oz. Maybe so that he could appear in Hot Shots! Part Trois, which thankfully was never made.

If you haven't already, vote in this week's fight between Woodrow Wilson and Thomas "Tug" Benson.