Guardians of the Galaxy’s Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

“Well, on my planet, we have a legend about people like you,” he told Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. “It’s called Footloose. And in it, a great hero, named Kevin Bacon, teaches an entire city full of people with sticks up their butts that, dancing, well, is the greatest thing there is.”

Later, Gamora referred to them as being “just like Kevin Bacon” when they charged into heroic action.

Of course, at least part of the inspiration for this is that Bacon appeared in Super, which was directed by Guardians director James Gunn.

Most comics fans could probably have rattled off any of that information. It may be somewhat less well-known among our readers that there’s actually a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

The idea is that, based on the principle of six degrees of separation (that is, that just about anybody can be connected to anybody else within six degrees), any actor in a major motion picture can be connected within six degrees to the prolific Bacon.

Actors can be assigned a “Bacon number,” which is the number of degrees of separation between themselves and Kevin Bacon. Bacon himself has zero, while anyone who has starred directly with him has a 1.

We thought it could be fun to see what numbers the Guardians of the Galaxy cast earned for themselves…!

A few things…James Gunn regular Gregg Henry appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy and so we won’t count him — it would artificially give everyone in the cast a Bacon number of two and make the whole exercise rather uninteresting. Same with Super and Guardians‘s Mikaela Hoover.

Also to keep it interesting, we’ll try and limit each film to one use unless it inflates somebody’s number. Movies like Sleepers and Diner have large casts…but of course that wouldn’t be any fun.

And…

Josh Brolin: 1

Brolin appeared with Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man.

Djimon Hounsou: 1

Hounsou appeared in Beauty Shop with Bacon.

John C. Reilly: 1

Reilly appeared in The River Wild with Bacon.

Pratt appeared in Movie 43 with Emma Stone, who appeared in Crazy, Stupid, Love with Bacon.

Zoe Saldana: 2

Saldana appeared in The Losers with Jason Patric, who appeared in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon.

Dave Bautista: 2

Bautista appeared in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? with Brad Dourif, who appeared in Murder in the First with Bacon.

Bradley Cooper: 2

Cooper appeared in American Hustle with Jennifer Lawrence, who appeared in X-Men: First Class with Bacon.

Vin Diesel: 2

Diesel appeared in Saving Private Ryan with Nathan Fillion, who appeared in Super with Bacon.

Glenn Close: 2

Close appeared in Mars Attacks with Joe Don Baker, who appeared in Criminal Law with Bacon.

Benicio del Toro: 2

Benicio del Toro appeared in Bread and Roses with Ron Perlman, who appeared in Balto with Bacon.

UPDATE: Somebody on Facebook complained that they didn’t think animated features counted. We had used the Oracle of Bacon to verify our work, and that site agreed with us, but for the sake of argument, there are a number of alternate routes between del Toro and Bacon that retain the Bacon number of 2. Here’s one:

Del Toro appeared in the film Basquiat with Sam Rockwell, who appeared in Frost/Nixon with Bacon.

Lee Pace: 2

Pace appeared in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 with Dakota Fanning, who appeared in Trapped with Kevin Bacon.

Peter Serafinowicz: 2

Serafinowicz appeared in Grindhouse with Tom Savini, who also appeared in Friday the 13th.