"Steven Seagal. The king of being the main person on the movie cover but, like, the fifth most important character in the film."
— Mista GG, "Steven Seagal Can't Keep Getting Away With This
A Sub-Trope of Covers Always Lie and Never Trust a Trailer where a character who you'd think was a main character does not get developed nearly as much as their counterparts. They're on all the advertisements, they get a witty one-liner in the trailer, but when the release date comes, they almost fade into the background. Basically, they were Demoted to Extra before the story even came out.
This character is introduced at some pivotal point (usually the beginning) and then is generally ignored for the rest of the story. Maybe they're seen for all of five minutes in a three-hour movie, or maybe they just lurk in the background while their friends do all the important stuff. Whatever the case, to qualify for this trope, a character must have been introduced in a way that implied that they were going to be important, but ends up being left out of most of the story.
If the wasted character is in a series, the author may realize their mistake and give them some development in later episodes/books/etc. Alternatively, they can just put them on a bus or kill them off for real to avoid having to deal with another character.
Also may occur if an actor is in the opening credits but is seen in very little of the movie. Also could appear only in the cold opening and by the time their name appears in the opening credits they are not seen in the rest of the movie. This tends to be used with big named actors, and often in DVD re-releases of movies they appeared in before the big breakout role that made them stars. Might overlap with One-Scene Wonder. Also could be known as an Opening Credits Cameo. It's not uncommon for advertised extras to be featured on B-Roll footage.
May be a victim of the Spotlight-Stealing Squad, and expect him to become an Ensemble Dark Horse. Another possibility is that the extra is a Decoy Protagonist. Some creators will even use this trope intentionally to make a Decoy Protagonist twist more shocking. Many cases of Dead Star Walking end up as this.
Compare The Artifact, who starts out prominent and then fades. An advertised extra is advertised as prominent, but never actually achieves that status. Also compare Fake Guest Star, where an actor is credited as a guest star but appears to be part of the main cast. See Stunt Casting when famous actors are cast in usually bit parts in hopes on cashing in on their popularity. Contrast Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer, where a prominent character appears in little to no advertising. Billing Displacement occurs after a work is released when the creator wants to capitalize on the Retroactive Recognition of a character, regardless of how short that role may be.
Example subpages
- Anime & Manga
- Films — Animation
- Films — Live-Action
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Video Games
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Arts
- Icarus in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus◊ is almost hidden. You can only see his leg sticking out of the water in the bottom right corner of the image. None of the other people in the painting seem to notice Icarus falling into the water; in fact, the shepherd seems to be actively focused on something else.
- See also W. H. Auden's 1938 poem about the Bruegel painting, "Musée des Beaux Arts", which addresses this issue directly.
- See also W. H. Auden's 1938 poem about the Bruegel painting, "Musée des Beaux Arts"
Comic Books
- Marvel Comics has been doing this ever since the beginning of the Silver Age. The Incredible Hulk is one of the founding members of the The Avengers and he sticks around for a grand total of TWO issues before quitting the team. His presence in the early stories feel more like Early-Installment Weirdness. Ironically, in the movies, the Hulk does become a long-time member.
- The revamped X-Men in the 1970s, the most popular version of the team, actually had TWO Advertised Extras. Sunfire, who quits in the second issue, and Thunderbird who dies in the third issue.
- Many of the examples on the Wolverine Publicity page fit, that is if the advertised character even appears at all.
- At the height of the popularity of Batman (Grant Morrison), DC Comics announced that Damian Wayne would be joining the cast of Teen Titans (2003). His arrival was heavily promoted and multiple variant covers were created for the issue where he joins, but he was only with the team for a grand total of four issues before being Put on a Bus.
- Doctor Light sometimes appears in pin-ups or other pieces of official art promoting Justice League International, despite the fact that she quit the team at the end of the very first story arc.
- Marvel Comics usually puts major characters on the corner box of their comic covers. For the limited series Marvel: The Lost Generation, every issue since the first (which had the words "EXPLOSIVE FIRST ISSUE!" instead) featured Mako the Atlantean, whose prominence was limited to a few pages of the first issue, as well as a cameo in the tenth issue as a fetus in a jar. A more fitting character would have been Effigy, or the Black Fox, or even Dr. Cassandra Locke.
- Scare Tactics (DC Comics): Queen Amethyst is the focus of the cover of "Weird Load", the Convergence crossover story. She is depicted commanding her soldiers as they are locked in combat with Scare Tactics. Her actual role in the story lasts for three panels on a single page, only one panel actually depicts her and the angle doesn't show her face, and her portrayal resembles a low-level criminal more than it does a reality-travelling queen.
- Shari Flenniken's Trots and Bonnie comic strips are about a girl named Bonnie and her talking dog Trots...or so the title would have you believe. The real deuteragonist is Bonnie's troublemaking friend Pepsi, with Trots not doing much besides tagging along and delivering a punchline at the end.
Fan Works
- Tagging systems on sites like Archive of Our Own can lead to this. Some authors will create a tag for every character that appears in the story, nor matter how minor, so someone searching through the tag will find stories that don't involve the character they're looking for at all.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The ancient Bone Singer from Chapter 5 is on the Chapter 9 cover art of this Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) fanfiction, even though the Bone Singer only appears in the one chapter.
- In the Vocaloid visual novel Future song and linked eyes, other Vocaloids beside Miku are shown in the characters list on the game's page of the developer's blog, yet their roles are rather minor. Len, Kaito, and Meiko have it worse as they don't even have any direct interaction with Miku, unlike Rin and Luka.
Literature
- The Cat In The Hat Beginner Book Dictionary: Despite being the namesake of this dictionary, The Cat in the Hat does not appear at all.
- Most The Chronicles of Narnia books are named after either the protagonist or some majorly plot-relevant idea. The Silver Chair... not so much; the titular chair, which appears on most covers, is essentially just a minor MacGuffin that appears in only a handful of chapters and gets destroyed about two-thirds of the way in.
- Several of the titles of the Harry Potter books exhibit this trope to varying degrees. Out of all of them, The Half-Blood Prince is likely the biggest example. Though the Prince is later revealed to be Snape, through the majority of the book he is just the original owner of Harry's secondhand (and heavily annotated) potions textbook. While it does make for an interesting sideplot for Harry to unknowingly see another side of his foe and even connect with him a little bit through learning his techniques and his self-made spells, it ultimately doesn't have much of an effect on the broader plot and isn't mentioned again after Snape leaves the school as a supposed Death Eater.
- Hive Mind (2016): Adversary Aura is the title character of the fifth book, Adversary, and appears on the cover. She plays a fairly minor role in the book; while she's mentioned early on, she doesn't appear until the final 15% of the book, which is mostly about Keith's attacks on Amber's unit.
- Impossible Creatures (2023): The red-winged dragon is featured prominently on all the covers, but she only appears twice and has minimal impact on the plot.
- The Moving Finger is a detective story in the Miss Marple series, but Miss Marple herself only appears in a handful of scenes.
- The cover blurb for Carnosaur— the original book, not the Roger Corman movie— name-drops Deinonychus, Tyrannosaurus rex, and Brachiosaurus. Out of those, only Deinonychus plays a sizable role in the story— the other two appear in only a single scene each.
- The cover of Shaman Blues displays the hero, the villain, and a ghost that in the story proper appears only in three very brief scenes, one of which doesn't even identify it.
Professional Wrestling
- Happened a lot when Raw had the weekly celebrity guest hosts. Some would be routinely involved throughout the show. Others would only arrive, plug their project or whatever and barely be seen. Trish Stratus had an opening introduction, one backstage segment and a short match for example. This was about fifteen minutes of screen time in a two hour show.
- Can happen when a PPV advertises a title match that turns out to be a Squash Match. Most egregiously was WrestleMania 25 where the Intercontinental Championship between Rey Mysterio and JBL was hyped up. It was over in twenty one seconds. This will often happen when a wrestler is injured in the months between promotion material printing and the actual event. The wrestler can't perform a full match, so they do a squash or have him "attacked" back stage.
- Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley's parody commercials were done in protest to their lack of TNA bookings, despite the reported importance of The Motor City Machine Guns to the X and Tag Team divisions.
- When Ring Warriors joined the National Wrestling Alliance in 2011, the NWA decided to use it to reestablish an NWA presence in the Caribbean. Several Puerto Ricans were brought in with help from Carlos Colon, Bahamian Bad Boy Bo Bo Brazell was contacted and Kahagas mouth piece, Haitain wrestler Tyree Pride, was brought out of retirement. Aside from Pride however, none of these wrestlers were used when Ring Warriors first started doing shows in the region in 2012, and it was Played for Drama when La Rosa Negra crashed a Nassau Bahamas show to protest not being booked.
- In 1990, WCW held a PPV called Capital Combat: The Return of RoboCop to help promote the release of RoboCop 2. His involvement amounted to some backstage segments, has a Big Damn Heroes moment saving Sting from the Four Horsemen by ripping some flimsy bars off a shark cage...and that's basically it.
Radio
- Trillian in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) radio series doesn't have much character development, supposedly because the actress' performance didn't give Douglas Adams much to work with, and because her purpose was to have someone who Arthur could talk to about Earth, but Ford served that purpose just as well. Her character is much more developed in the later books (and in the movie).
- The Navy Lark:
- Every Radio Times advertisement for The TV Lark had Michael Bates as Michael Bates and Janet Brown as Janet Brown. Despite this, Bates only played Batesy in "Z Ambulances", while Janet was hardly used in comparison to Brown's other secretary character, Vera.
- The two characters are also listed for the listings for Series 5... despite Bates and Brown not playing them in a single episode!
Theatre
- The revival of Hair featured actress Allison Case prominently in its advertising. She was on every poster, every TV appearance and most likely to be the one to speak for the cast. Case played Crissy, and while she's in the whole show (like everyone in Hair), her character had one song and maybe two scenes with her as the center.
- The titular coat in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat only appears briefly in the beginning before it's destroyed by the brothers. It only reappears at the very end when Jacob returns it to Joseph, now repaired.
- Estelle Parsons in Nice Work If You Can Get It. She showed up at the very end of the show and that was it.
- In Swan Lake, for all the press Odile gets as the Black Swan and Evil Counterpart to Princess Odette, she only appears in one single scene at the ball and nowhere else because her role in the plot (Rothbart's evil daughter who tricks Siegfried into proposing to her instead of Odette) requires for her to be played by the same ballerina as Odette.
Theme Parks
- Disney Theme Parks:
- Let's say basically every time an attraction has a memorable original character that only shows up a few times, expect to see them in almost all the ride promos, and on tons of the merchandise. A good example would be the Hitchhiking Ghosts from The Haunted Mansion. They only show up at the end, but their scene is so recognizable that they appear on all of that ride's merchandise.
- There are some Disney properties that only have a show or a meet and greet, but they still get tons of attention in advertising. For example, Phineas and Ferb only had a meet and greet and some merch throughout the parks, but got tons of promotion in the early 2010s at the height of their show's popularity.
- In Star Tours, C-3PO is quite prominent on the attraction poster, but only appears in the queue as an animatronic with R2-D2. However, this was averted when Disney updated the ride, because now C-3PO has accidentally become pilot of the Starspeeder 1000.
- With a show called Mickey's PhilharMagic, you'd expect Mickey Mouse to be the main character. In reality, although his presence is still there throughout the attraction, he only shows up twice at the beginning and the ending. The real star happens to be Donald Duck.
- Universal Studios:
- In the American parks, SpongeBob SquarePants easily falls under this trope. He gets tons of promotion at the Orlando park, despite his franchise only being featured on a parade float, a meet and greet, and merchandising. However, he can be justified, as he's about as recognizable to the public as Mickey Mouse is at Disney World.
- Speaking of Nickelodeon shows, for Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, the characters from Hey Arnold! were shown a lot in earlier advertisements of the attraction, but they only showed up in the ride for like 5 seconds.
- The T. rex in Jurassic Park River Adventure is always seen in commercials for the park, but only appears at the very end of the ride.
- The Simpsons Ride is set at Krusty the Clown's theme park, yet he doesn't even appear in the main ride portion of the attraction. To be fair though, he is very prominently featured in the pre-ride videos, and is the last character to talk to you before the ride ends, so there's still no shortage of Krusty to go around.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Missile, the adorable Shiba Inu from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is often seen in posters and other such advertisements and is even with Phoenix and Maya in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, however, he has only one appearance during the original trilogy and the scene he appears in is optional. He does, however, appear briefly in both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and its sequel.
- Shi-Long Lang, Edgeworth's primary investigative rival in the first Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth game, only actually appears in two of the five cases, and has a brief cameo in the fourth case.
- Klavier Gavin often appears in promotional art for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies despite only playing a minor role in the third case.
- Despite the advertising for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice hyping up Maya Fey's return, she doesn't appear at all in three of the game's five cases, plays a comparatively minor part in another, and the one case that she does play a central part in confines her to prison during the investigation segments. The only case where she has the same sort of role that she had during the original trilogy is the optional DLC case.
- Advertising for The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve promoted Scotland Yard coroner Courtney Sithe as one of its major characters. In the game itself, she isn't much more than a "villain of the week", being the culprit of the one case she appears in and only mentioned in passing afterwards.
- Yukine Miyazawa from CLANNAD is featured on some box cover art for the game alongside the other main characters, since she was originally intended to be one of the romanceable heroines. However, that idea was scrapped during the game's development, and in the story itself she's ultimately a minor character.
- Higurashi: When They Cry's Rena Ryuuguu is featured in all promotional art, crossovers, side-games and is practically synonymous with the entire When They Cry franchise. She's only really, truly important for two arcs out of eight.
- The true route of Maji De Watashi Ni Koishinasai S is often referred to as the Koyuki route. However, while it does give her a happier backstory and saner personality she appears very little after the opening, getting only a brief fight and then an optional sex scene at the end. The trouble is that, as noted in the original VN, she has quite a bit of overlap with Miyako and what does set her apart are traits that are rather incompatible with being a love interest and that she doesn't have if you've altered her backstory. So there isn't much to do with her that you couldn't do with a more important or popular character.
- Spirit Hunter series:
- The Hanayome spirit features predominantly in promotional material for Spirit Hunter: Death Mark, and is even the only spirit to receive an acrylic charm design. In the game proper, she is the Arc Villain of the shortest chapter, the fight against her is the easiest (she is fought in a Live Or Die Choice rather than the usual RPG-like format), and she has no ties to the overarching plot besides being created by the Big Bad, as opposed to the later spirits Miss Zoo and the Kannon Soldier.
- As with Hanayome before her, The Urashima Woman from Spirit Hunter: NG is the spirit that was featured the most in promotional artwork, and even received a novella that expanded on her character. In the game proper, she has no connection to the protagonists or the story as a whole, as opposed to all the spirits that come after her.
Web Animation
- In The Grossery Gang webseries, Fungus Fries was set up to be a major character, appearing in the sizzle reel, a good chunk of the promotion artwork, and getting one of the longer bios the webseries characters get. In the end, he ended up relegated to just the toyline. He would eventually make his debut in the webseries for Series 4, three seasons after his official release.
- Happy Tree Friends has Flippy, who, as a result of his popularity, is almost as advertised as Cuddles. In the show itself, Flippy is among the rarest appearing characters, with only Splendid (who has the least apppearances out of the original 20), and Lammy & Mr. Pickels (the newest characters) having less appearances. He technically appears less than Cro-Marmot, who is a literal Living Prop at best.
- My Little Pony in a Nutshell, to make fun of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) for this, had Songbird Serenade appear exactly once, bluntly introduce herself as Sia, and have zero affect whatsoever on the plot.
"Sia": Hi I'm Sia.
Everyone: Hi Sia. - Senpai Club often shows Rock-and-Roll Senpai with the main cast during the opening, implying he's at least prominent to some degree. In-show, however, the most he's been seen was the club introduction and a couple of Continuity Cameos.
- Sonic × Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings: Emerl was one of the first characters revealed for the series, receiving a prominent spot on the promotional poster. In the series, Emerl only appears for a brief fight scene in the first episode, exclusively in a flashback nightmare. His only purpose for being in the series seems to be establishing that Sonic Battle is still canon, and implying that Shadow subdued the out-of-control Gizoid fifty years ago.
- The trailer for Wolf Song: The Movie does put a fair amount of hype into Cerberus. Come the film proper, and he is completely absent from everything after the opening scene, except one passing mention. That being said, despite his lack of screen time (which amounts to about 30 seconds), he does play a significant background role in the film
Webcomics
- Nocturne: The cover of the comic and some promotional materials once featured a mosly faceless woman with an eye for a mouth. Said lady has not appeared in any of the stories so far. However, she was used as an Author Avatar for some announcements.