Minor Major Character

A character who, though holding an important position within the world of the story, holds, at best, a minor role and more usually a few lines of dialogue in a single scene. May turn out to be Chekhov's Gunman or become an Ascended Extra in other works. Bigger Bads usually qualify, as do most members of the Omniscient Council of Vagueness and some occurrences of the Special Guest. Even the Big Bad and Big Good can qualify in some works.

To an extent, this is Truth in Television. How many of us personally know any world leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, power brokers or other members of the top echelons of business, government and military?

Unluckily, if one happens to be one of these characters, one may be the target of being Board to Death. You may also lose out on Nominal Importance.

Examples of Minor Major Character include:

Anime and Manga

  • The SEELE Committee from Neon Genesis Evangelion. They seem to basically run the world, but we only see a few of their faces, and only one even has a name.
  • The three Admirals of the Time-Space Administration Bureau in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Very important in the setting, but not important enough to even have names or more than one line of dialogue.
  • In Naruto you could count the tailed beasts and their hosts besides the one, eight, and nine tails. They're a major part of the series setting and the goals of the major antagonist organization Akatsuki, yet the 2-tailed beast and its host are killed in just a couple chapters, the 3-tailed beasts was beaten off-screen and it's host was already dead by then, (though he turned out to be semi-relevant Posthumous Character), the 4-tailed hosts was shown once after being beaten entirely off-screen with the beast never shown, while the hosts and beasts 5, 6, and 7 were never shown in the series proper at all (the hosts were shown on a cover, while their names were provided and the beasts were shown only in an art book) except the 6-tails host in a short anime Filler arc.
  • Bleach provides an especially strange example. While the shinigami squad captains (the Soul Society's military) are characterized with enormous detail, the actual government they serve is given only a single scene in which all of them are shown to have been secretly murdered by The Mole, and nothing has been seen or spoken of it since (except some flashbacks of Urahara's backstory and some of the second Non-Serial Movie).
  • Parodied in the Excel Saga anime, where ACROSS is secretly run by: That Man, That Man Over There, That Man Over Here, This Man, This Man Over Here, and This Man Over There.
    • And other than That Man, they all appear once, for less than a minute, before getting killed by Nabeshin.
  • The Gorosei in One Piece are a council of five men who sit at the very top of the government. They appear whenever there is a huge change in the world, such as Luffy defeating Crocodile and the death of Whitebeard, but they aren't shown physically doing much or even been named and yet they decide almost anything related to the Marines, the World Government and the Shichibukai.

Comic Books

  • Pretty much the entire membership of the Marvel Comics group named They Who Sit Above In Shadow.

Film

Literature

  • Some of the members of Scorpia in Alex Rider, namely Mikato and Levi Kroll.
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the unnamed Prime Minister of England gets one scene to himself, but no mention afterwards. Also, after the end of the series, Kinglsey Shacklebolt, a minor but positive character, becomes Minister of Magic.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events gives us Count Olaf's superiors in the arsonists' side of VFD, identified only as The Man With A Beard But No Hair and The Woman With Hair But No Beard. They do get a bit of development later on, when it's revealed that they're the other two judges on the kindly Justice Strauss's High Court but shortly after this revelation they themselves are left to die in a burning building, leaving Olaf as the sole Big Bad in the finale.
  • Naturally this happens a lot in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The New Republic's Chief Of State, almost always Leia Organa Solo, will be known, and Borsk Fey'lya and Admiral Ackbar might show up, and if the author is savvier than most Mon Mothma could come into play, but that's almost inevitably it, and the New Republic is always luckier in that regard than the Empire is. Unless the writer is Timothy Zahn, of course. Stackpole's X Wing Series, having Council meetings as part of the narrative, also subverts this to a small extent. And in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, the ranking members of Luke's strike team get an unusual level of attention. Those are the exceptions.
    • Sort of lampshaded in Wraith Squadron. A pilot would like to be at least somewhat known. Who remembers the name of the head gunner on Ackbar's flagship, Home One? Wedge Antilles says he does. And lampshaded even before that in Rogue Squadron, when a freighter captain complains to Wedge about how everyone works but all the fame and glory stays on a few figures - from who gets remembered, you'd think that the Clone Wars were won by a handful of Jedi and a dozen pilots.
  • From Animorphs there's The One. As the leader of the Yeerk remnants and the new Big Bad, he ought to be important, but he shows up for a grand total of four pages and feels tacked on to the story as an afterthought.
  • Another K. A. Applegate example is Ka Anor of Everworld. Every other god in Everworld fears him, his Hetwan minions are everywhere, but ol' Ka himself only shows up in one book, and then, only for one chapter.

Live Action Television

  • 24 provides two examples, both of The Omniscient Council of Vagueness variety;
    • In season 5, Graem Bauer's associates seem to be influencial personalities, powerful enough even to scare President Evil Charles Logan, yet never show up again.
    • In season 7, pretty much every single member of Alan Wilson's cabal save Wilson himself qualifies. Though, it's possible they may appear in more major roles in season 8.
  • Jesse in Supernatural. You mean he's The Anti Christ and super powerful? Wow, he's got to be important. Wait, what do you mean he's only in one episode that doesn't affect the rest of the series?
    • Justified: Jesse is actually a cambion, meaning he's an antichrist and not the Anti Christ. It's a fine but important distinction. Also, his great power doesn't necessarily mean he's important to the story.
  • Dracula in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All the vampires look up to him. Buffy readies herself for an epic confrontation...and after that episode, he's never seen or spoken of again.
  • The councils that head the Alliance of Twelve and Prophet Five on Alias. Between them, they're the Big Bads of half the series, but most are never named and the heroes' main foes are "middle management" like Arvin Sloane, who ends up taking out both groups anyway.

Theatre

  • Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe. The male chorus are all members of the peerage.
    • Other way around: the House of Peers is the male chorus. The joke is they know they're minor characters - in British government.

Video Games

  • The unnammed Glukkons in the Rupture Farms boardroom in the beginning and climax of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.
    • Also the unnamed Mudokons that go with you to save Necrum Mines(and you have to save afterwards from a Soulstorm Brew overdose) in Abe's Exoddus.
      • Not really unnamed, as one of them is Alf.
  • The Philosophers and the Wiseman's Committee in Metal Gear - neither are important as anything other than motivation for the more plot-important characters, and the last lot were dead for a hundred years (if they existed at all). Also, Parker and Gardner, or "Anonymous", from Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, who never actually appear in person but drive the events of the whole plot.
  • Arguably, Arpeggio of Sly 2: Band of Thieves. His initial appearance is a non-speaking role at the party in Rajan's "ancestral palace", his second consists of hearing his voice while Jean Bison talks to him over a speakerphone, while his third and final appearance is a scene near the end of the game, where he reveals his master plan to hypnotise Paris using hypnotic lights devised by the Contessa and powered by Jean Bison's Northern Lights battery to send a Paris addled by spice sold by Dimitri, delivered by Jean Bison and produced by Rajan into a hate frenzy, in order to make himself immortal and able to fly using the Clockwerk frame. However, he is betrayed by Neyla, and (apparently) dies soon afterwards.
  • Video game example: in Tron 2.0, fCon's CEO is never named (for some reason, he even signs his e-mails as "CEO"), is never shown (his underlings interact with him via a camera with a loudspeaker mounted on the ceiling), and only has two or three scenes despite being the person behind the whole evil plot. His three lackeys (Seth Crown, Esmond Baza and Eva Popoff) have much more screen time and can be considered the de facto antagonists of the game.
    • Note: while the CEO remains unnamed, one of his e-mails not too subtly hints that he is actually Ed Dillinger.
  • Despite being a powerful CO and the possible leader of Orange Star, Nell doesn't really do much in Advance Wars. She hasn't had a single on screen battle, and stays at home in Dual Strike. This maybe because her luck ability makes it hard to design missions around her.
  • The Council in Mass Effect. You report to them at the end of your mission, and that's it. The player can even invoke this by cutting them off.
    • Provided they survive the first game, they get a total of one scene in the sequel and even that is them basically telling Shepard to fuck off.

Western Animation

  • The Transformers' Physical God Primus, when he appears at all, is usually a minor character, despite being responsible for keeping the universe in balance and all of that jazz. He usually doesn't intervene directly, but through objects like the Matrix of Leadership. Unicron, his Evil Counterpart, generally takes a more active role by comparison.
  • Clone High has the Board of Shadowy Figures, the powerful group of men secretly in charge of the school's cloning program, and who constantly have to keep Principal Scudworth in line.

Web Comics

  • The Headmaster from Gunnerkrigg Court. He's shown up in one chapter, and his last name was only revealed (indirectly, at that) ten chapters later. We still don't know his first name.
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