Star Trek beams into Walmart’s sci-fi Super Bowl commercial

Star Trek will be making an appearance at this Sunday’s Super Bowl LIV, but not how you might think.

Walmart has released their Super Bowl ad early, and features a bit of Star Trek love, as well as other science-fiction characters from a broad number of franchises. The ad is titled, “Famous Visitors” and promotes their “Walmart Pickup” curbside service, with the tagline, “Out-of-this-world convenience”.

The Star Trek: Discovery version of the Enterprise makes an early appearance in the ad, warping into orbit above Earth, and we see it again near the end, when two Walmart employees holding groceries appear to get beamed up to the ship, which you can see hovering in the sky.

Also in the ad are appearances from Flash Gordon, Bill S. Preston, Esq. from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the martians from Mars Attacks, Groot, characters from The LEGO Movie, Frank the Pug from Men in Black, C-3PO and R2-D2, Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story, and even the aliens - and their ship - from Arrival. Not since Who Framed Roger Rabbit has Hollywood seen such cooperation from competing franchises.

You can watch the ad - including the normal and extended cuts - on YouTube now. And of course, watch it for yourself during the Super Bowl on Sunday. Kickoff between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs is at 6:30pm Eastern/3:30pm Pacific on Fox.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said that the San Francisco Giants would be playing the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. While that would be an interesting match-up, it would be difficult, since the Giants are a baseball team and generally speaking, the Super Bowl is a football game.