Remember the New Guy?

What do you mean, "Larry wasn't always in the show?"

"A new character is brought in without warning, and everyone acts like we've always known him. It's actually quite perplexing. Valve has done a great job making us empathize with all the major NPCs so far, so being introduced to a new one at this late stage is like coming home from school to find a walrus sitting at the family dinner table and you're the only one who seems to notice."

—Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (on Half-Life 2), Zero Punctuation

A previously unmentioned character who suddenly appears without notice and who we are told was really there all along but just... off screen or something. It comes about because the writers want to introduce a new character, but don't want to come up with a complex introduction where everyone meets them and learns what they're like- it's just plain easier (and lazier) to pretend that everyone automatically knows them, and the relationship is ready-made. "Oh hey, that's my old rival!" "Oh, this is my brother/sister whom I've never told you about," etc.

In other words, this is a relative or a friend or even a rival whom we really should have met, or at least heard about before, since the other characters would have us believe they have been crewing the same starship, working on the same project or sitting on the other side of the same classroom for years.

This can work if the character (and the actor) proves compelling enough for the audience to suspend their disbelief, or that it's possible nobody mentioned them "on-camera" before (like if the show is set in a school, and the character is a casual acquaintance of the others but hasn't done anything significant to the plot until now). Among the most clumsy versions is the "Long-Lost Daughter/Son." This trope can be especially disruptive if the new addition doesn't fit the tone of the series.

A subversion of this trope can come into play when a newly-introduced character actually wasn't there before, but the characters believe they were due to Fake Memories or a Cosmic Retcon.

Related to (no pun intended) Long-Lost Uncle Aesop, but while Long-Lost Uncle Aesop is usually a one-shot character to deliver an Aesop, Remember the New Guy? is basically a new main character retconned out of thin air. (In fact, the term "Retroactive Continuity" was originally coined to describe this trope).

If the character is going to be killed off straight away, this trope can be used to turn him into a Mauve Shirt beforehand.

Compare Cain and Abel and Seth, Cousin Oliver and New Neighbours as the Plot Demands. Can often occur in combination with Suspiciously Similar Substitute, when an actor is no longer available and a new character is quickly brought in with minimal introduction to fill the role. Contrast Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, in which a character disappears with no explanation. When an adaptation takes steps to avert this, it's an Early-Bird Cameo.

Examples of Remember the New Guy? include:

Anime and Manga

  • Ai Kaga of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei first appears in the last episode of the first series. She explains that she hid away from the camera, believing that if she appeared it would drive down the ratings.
  • Naruto: Naruto seems to know the members of Team 8 and 10 to some degree, and is later shown interacting with some of them in flashbacks for his time at the academy, even though they do not appear to be anywhere in the classroom in Chapter 1 or 3 of the manga, even in wider shots showing the entire classroom. Averted in the anime, where his classmates make brief cameos in the respective episodes.
    • Possibly a case of Fridge Brilliance; Naruto had failed the Graduation Exam twice already, so he might simply have been moved to another class that had not taken the exam yet. There are at least 10 teams of 3 nin so there should be at least 30 new Genin but we barely see half that number in any scene.
  • Orin the Pink Ninja in Akazukin Chacha is revealed later to have been in class the whole time, but clinging to the ceiling.
  • Played with in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Season 4, where the kids are shown instantly treating the previously unknown Fujiwara like he's one of the True Companions all along—because he's hypnotized them into thinking so. Too bad his magic doesn't work on Judai.
  • Rolo Lamperouge from Code Geass manages to insert himself into the main cast between the first and second seasons. In fact, he is supposedly the main character Lelouch's little brother (replacing the sister he had previously, Nunnally). Of course, he's really an assassin who has been appointed with the mission of keeping watch over Lelouch, after the Ashford students are given Fake Memories and an amnesiac Lelouch is sent there as well, to keep him out of the way of The Emperor's plans. It doesn't work.
  • In Lucky Star, when the cast starts their senior year, Kagami is approached by Misao and Ayano (two as of yet unseen characters), noting that they are glad to be in Kagami's class again. Kagami then walks off, Misao notes their position as background characters, and the two then become members of the regular cast.
    • Misao did make a brief appearance prior to this, and she even had a line... with a different voice actress than the one she had when she started showing up regularly. Also, both girls had always been in the opening credits.
    • In the manga, though, they two were at first unnamed and were only intended to be random classmates of Kagami's class. It was later when they were actually given names and personalities.
  • Shingo Aoi from Captain Tsubasa was introduced in the World Youth arc as a Tsubasa fanboy who went to say goodbye to him in the airport as he left to Brazil.
  • Yoki and May in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are this to viewers who haven't read the manga or watched the 2003 anime version. They cut the Youswell episode which serves as a proper introduction to Yoki, and May was also supposed to be introduced later in Youswell. To Brotherhood-only viewers, Yoki and May are just two random people who join Scar because they somehow know of the Elric brothers, and Yoki wants revenge for some reason.
    • Yoki's back story and desire for revenge are explained later in the show in a series of quick flashbacks. These flashbacks occur several episodes after Yoki is introduced however, leaving people who had never read the manga (or seen the 2003 anime) thoroughly confused for a while.
  • While most other members of Fairy Tail were either shown from quite early on or acknowledged as not normally interacting with regular guild members (the Raijinshu, Mystogan, Gildarts), when the S-rank evaluation were announced one of the nominees was Mest, a character who had never appeared before that moment despite others saying he took the last evaluation. Then subverted, as it turned out he really wasn't.
    • Gildarts gets this treatment in the anime. It was supposed to end before he was introduced, so the five or so mentions of his name before the Edolas arc are cut out.
  • Bleach: This is how Uryuu Ishida is introduced into the storyline. Apparently, he's been a classmate of Ichigo's from the very start and the top academic performer in the entire year group, but he's only officially introduced in Chapter 34. Orihime has to tell Ichigo who he is. This is lampshaded as Ichigo being useless with names and it is genuinely a Running Gag that Ichigo can forget the weirdest things, even when it's important for him to remember it. This trope is also subverted, as Uryuu is actually shown in the background in earlier chapters (including the Chapter 1 cover), watching Ichigo but never singled out (and only easy to spot with hindsight), meaning Kubo deliberately planned on evoking this trope.
    • Tsukishima has this as a power. He pretty much did a Remember the New Guy? on damn near everyone Ichigo knows, as part of a gambit to confuse Ichigo into basically handing over his life. By adding details, he can do things such as change the environment, learn about others, or make them collapse from the stress of conflicting info.
  • Aoi Kuineda's primary circle of Red Tails from Beelzebub consisted of Nene, Yuka, Ryouko, and Chikai. Then, a random, never before mentioned purple haired member was inserted into the group, and treated as if she's been there from the very start.

Comic Books

  • Marvel Comics character Jessica Jones was created in 2001, but has been retconned into various parts of Marvel history, most notably hanging out with Peter Parker the day he was fatefully bitten by an irradiated spider. She later gained powers of her own and was mind-controlled into picking a fight with The Avengers, leading directly to a severe beating and coma. She recovered with the help of Jean Grey of the X-Men. All of the preceding "happened" before she even debuted in comics. What's more, her origin involved witnessing Daredevil's origin; she's been inserted into the fiction that far back.
    • One Spider-Man comic goes to the point of using a panel from the '60s Amazing Spider-Man comic and pointing that she was one of the background characters featured in the panel.
  • Similarly, Sally Floyd was created for the miniseries Generation M, after the events of House of M, with the reader being informed that she had multiple interviews with famous mutants and even dated Angel. She was apparently a friend and confidante of X-Men such as Jubilee, Beak and Dani Moonstar, but was simply never seen or mentioned until now.
  • This is by now many years old, but the introduction of Cable happened this way too; right when he was introduced everyone was treating him as if he had always been around. Which, considering his backstory, is either Fridge Brilliance or Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • DC's Moon Maiden and Triumph, and Marvel's Sentry. All three are modern characters retconned as heroes from the Silver Age who happened to save the world in a way that erases everyone's memories of them. Leading up to the series that introduced the Sentry, Marvel tried to enforce this by paying comic news sources to run stories claiming that he really was a Silver Age hero whose sole appearance is extremely rare and obscure.
  • Astro City does this for essentially all of the super-powered characters. Because the series is written as if there is a longstanding continuity (which there isn't), most people are introduced in one issue and will have their origins explained many issues later, if at all.
  • X-Men does this over and over and over again. Siblings like Sunfire's sister Sunpyre and Xavier's twin Cassandra Nova were always there. The "original" new team of all-new-all-different X-Men consisted of Vulcan, Petra, Sway and Darwin, who mostly died (two of them got better). Sage has always been Xavier's personal spy since she was the first mutant he met, but never did anything (nothing mutantly, anyway, she was an established if extreeeemely minor character for decades) during the regular stories. Elias Bogan has always been a long-lived influential figure of the Hellfire Club.
    • Cassandra Nova was deliberately hiding her presence, and since she has Psychic Powers stronger than Charles' it's not inconceivable that she could. Sage was at least present in the comics for years, despite her mutant and spy status being a textbook example of Retcon (though it was teased at off-and-on during one of Claremont's random plot threads, and just never capitalized on until then).
  • For a long time, it was assumed that Hawkeye was a former Circus Brat who learned archery under the tutelage of an Evil Mentor, a weapons master and fellow performer called the Swordsman. Eventually, however, someone realized, "What? How could a swordsman teach someone archery??" and decided to Retcon Hawkeye's backstory by claiming Swordsman has a business partner named Trick Shot, Hawkeye's true Evil Mentor. In many ways, Trick Shot seemed the same as Swordsman as far as motivation and backstory went, and since Swordsman had always been billed as a "weapons master" (suggesting he might have been a Jack of All Trades but Master of None) Trick Shot hardly seemed necessary.
  • DC Comics' Black Lightning has recently acquired two never-before-mentioned teenage daughters. It's worse: one daughter was introduced in a semi-believable way, and at the time you could see him being a real father to her because he was retired at the time. But years later another daughter surfaces out of nowhere.
  • Skyrocket of The Power Company was introduced as a heroine from what would've been about the Silver Age that you simply hadn't heard about. Josiah Power hired her into the Power Company for "credibility"—Meaning that her being around brought the respect of guys like the Green Lantern.
  • In DC's second Hawk and Dove series, Dawn Granger (the second Dove) was stated to be an only child. Flash forward to 2005: After Dawn was retconned to have actually been alive after her supposed death in Armageddon 2001 (a long story), she showed up in the pages of Teen Titans with a bratty younger sister named Holly Granger, who was apparently away living in England all this time. What made it stranger is that they tried to rectify this by explaining Dawn's parents were divorced to provide a Parent Trap-like story, when in the Hawk and Dove series they were shown to be happily married with no issues in their relationship. To make things even MORE confusing: Holly's personality, appearance, speech patterns (does she speak British slang or not?), and even her age wound up being cases of Depending on the Writer and Depending on the Artist. It's no wonder they eventually killed her off. Shame they never gave her a solid backstory.
    • To be completely fair, DC did have several Crisis Crossovers since Dawn's "death" which rebooted history, including one her erstwhile partner, Hawk/Monarch/Extant was a major player in.
  • When the Iron Man series was rebooted following Avengers Disassembled with Warren Ellis at the helm, suddenly Tony had a old mentor in Sal Kennedy and an old love interest (one important enough in Tony's life that he actually remembered her when she called) in Maya Hansen. Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan were nowhere to be found.
  • This seemed to happen with Moonraker's sudden appearance in Force Works. Everybody knew him and he even was in an ongoing relationship with Spider Woman. However, Rachel (Spiderwoman's daughter) notices she had never seen him before. Some issues later, Moonraker reveals he was really implanted into the team's history via time travel to warn them and the Avengers about an upcoming attack by Kang.
  • The original Baron Zemo was introduced this way.
  • Union Jack was another Marvel character from the Silver Age that was retconned into the Golden Age. In fact, an actual Golden Age Marvel hero was retconned into being the first Union Jack but in a disguise.
  • The Spider-Man limited series 'The Thousand' introduced another of Peter Parker's classmates who was there during the spider-bite incident. Unfortunately this was was a super-smart sadistic bully, noted for making young Parker eat 'dog sick'. The nutbar figured things out and ate the now dead power-granting spider. Said bully became a body-hopping crazed killer. It got worse from there.
  • Baron von Blitzschlag is a minor example, created as a former Nazi supervillain now working as a research scientist for The Initiative. He was supposed to have fought several World War II era superheroes, but he was never a particularly notable villain.
  • Originally in Marvel's Transformers comic, Sparkplug Witwicky's teenage son was named Buster, and he was clearly supposed to be basically the same character as Spike Witwicky on the TV series. Four years later, Hasbro released the toy Fortress Maximus, who came with a figure named Spike Witwicky. So, in the comics, Buster was suddenly revealed to have an older brother named Spike who had been away from home all this time.
  • Carlie Cooper of Spider-Man imfamy was supposedly good friends with Gwen Stacy (yes, that Gwen Stacy) and Gwen's dad Captain Stacy supposedly worked with Carlie's dad as well. This completely endeared her fandom and stopped the phrase "Mary Sue" from being associated with her.

Fan Works

Yugi: Those bullies are being mean to Gary Stu!
Joey: Who the hell is Gary Stu?
Yugi: I don't know, but apparently, he's my best friend.

    • In the original, Yugi never claimed to know Shougo (the character Gary Stu is based on) very well. They were just neighbors.
  • More than one Mary Sue is introduced this way in fanfiction.
    • In My Immortal, most of the Harry Potter characters appear to have met Ebony sometime prior to the story. Word Of Satan even tries to explain why Draco is Out of Character by saying that he already knew Ebony. Oddly, averted with Harry himself, creating one of many continuity problems (apparently, Harry was in Ebony's "goff" band before they first met).
  • Ash Ketchum's younger sister Chibi and twin brother Dash in the Pokémon fic Guardians of Pokémon. Lampshaded as far back as the first chapter.
  • Done In-Universe in The Vampire Diaries story Return To Mystic Falls by Elena who is really Katherine. She had a witch make people think she had been there all along to fool people, especially Stefan.

Films -- Animation

  • Toy Story 2. Wheezy.
    • Ironically, averted in 3 (unless Barbie counts), where the ten-year gap would have made it a lot more justified.
    • Oddly enough, Woody and Buzz do mention being friends with Wheezy prior to Toy Story 2—in an "out of character" interview with the characters about the "filming" of the first movie.
      • Wheezy could've been bought by Andy in between both movies.
  • So, where exactly was Scar's pride during the first installment of The Lion King, and why did he never spare a single thought for them? It isn't covered by Scar just being a Jerkass; he makes it pretty clear that he'd rather be living with anyone other than his brother and company. According to Zira, Kovu was "hand-chosen by [Scar] to follow in his pawprints and become King." When, exactly? And if so, shouldn't they have been with him in the Pridelands? And just how did Zira react to Scar choosing Nala as his mate, as shown in the musical?
    • They were probably around Scar during the scenes where Simba meets Timon and Pumbaa, and during the final battle, Scar might've sent them hunting.

Films -- Live-Action

  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan meets Chekov and says he knows him because "I never forget a face." Which means that Chekov was on ship during "Space Seed," a first-season episode, despite the character not appearing on screen until the second season. Numerous explanations have been thrown about (he was on the ship, just not as bridge crew; Chekov was the officer in charge of delivering the supplies and food to Ceti Alpha V; an obvious joke about Chekov occupying a latrine Khan wanted to use), but ultimately it comes down to this trope.
    • The MAD Magazine version: "I never forget a face. How are you, George!" "My name is Chekov." "Faces I never forget. Names, on the other hand..."
    • Another example from Wrath of Khan is Doctor Carol Marcus, Kirk's old flame. They even a had a son together. McCoy's aware of her too (presumably from back in the day). And yet we're only hearing about her now, after all these years.
    • Similarly, in Star Trek Generations Kirk's ultimate fantasy world in the Nexus involves the one true love of his life... who we've naturally never heard of before despite Yeoman Rand, Carol Marcus, or even Edith Keeler now being quite viable options for that role. In fairness, the original series made it plain that Kirk had plenty of old girlfriends, and he made quite a few new ones along the way (this is Kirk, after all). The real surprise is that David Marcus was his only child.
    • Captain Picard remembers the Borg Queen when she's first introduced in Star Trek: First Contact. Could be justified by the fact he was a borg for a while, but that doesn't explain why he doesn't mention this vital piece of information about a dangerous enemy.
  • Frank Pentangelli in The Godfather Part II is supposed to be a high level member of the Corleone family since the beginning even though he doesn't appear at all in the first movie. The reason he was created was because Clemenza who was in the Part I and was supposed to be in Part II couldn't be used because the actor playing him did not return.
  • Lampshaded and parodied in Last Action Hero. The Show Within a Show film franchise, Jack Slater, shows Arnold's character rushing to save his daughter from a previous marriage. The main character, a "real" young boy who has been sucked into the movie, points out that Slater has never mentioned his daughter before and is annoyed that the filmmakers were introducing a new character into the franchise in this manner.
    • Lampshaded again, in a different way, when we meet F. Murray Abraham, who in the Slater verse is introduced as one of Slater's old cop buddies. Danny correctly pegs him as a traitorous bad guy because he's played by F. Murray Abraham, though presumably also because he's never heard of his character either.

Literature

  • Peter David's Star Trek: New Frontier series had Commander Kat Mueller appear suddenly several novels in. She's introduced as the Executive Officer of the Excalibur and a former lover of Calhoun's, with her earlier on-scene absence described as being due to her taking the night shift.
    • One could say this was justified, as she was actually introduced as the Executive Officer of the Grissom in Calhoun's Captain's Table story, along with Romeo Takahashi, Mick Gold, and Doc Villers, the former two of which worked night shift on the Excalibur before it blew up, and all four work under Shelby (and eventually under Mueller) on the Trident after.
  • The Harry Potter series has Remus Lupin, who's introduced in the third book and revealed to have been best friends/enemies with various important characters, and probably would have had something to do with the premise if he'd been introduced earlier.
    • In Half Blood Prince, Cormac McLaggen is introduced and tries out for Keeper against Ron. McLaggen provides an explanation for his absence from the Quidditch trials in the previous book: He was sick in the hospital wing at the time after eating doxy eggs on a bet, also providing his an Establishing Character Moment.
    • There are some movie-only examples of this. For example, Lavender Brown isn't in the first five films (well, sort of), but she suddenly materializes in the sixth film as a major supporting character.
      • Though one notable exception is Bill Weasley, who doesn't appear until the seventh film, where he and Harry act like they've never met before.
    • Some new characters avoid this being unknown to Harry, but known to other major characters. Both Neville and Ginny knew Luna.
  • Brisingr introduces Nasuada and Ajihad's culture. Not only had they never been previously mentioned (and none of Nasuada's point-of-view segments from the previous book so much as alluded to her culture), but the book tries to act as though they are well known throughout Algaesia and have been part of the Varden. Despite this contradicting what the first book said about nobody knowing where Ajihad came from.
  • Played with in the Discworld book Interesting Times, which reintroduced Twoflower and introduced Twoflower's daughters, Pretty Butterfly and Lotus Blossom. Rincewind insists that Twoflower hasn't mentioned having children and that the whole thing just came out of left field, but Twoflower keeps trying to play the whole thing off, insisting that he "must have mentioned it."
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe plays with this in Legacy of the Force with Brisha Syo. We know she's Lumiya. We really do. Despite this, Mara assumes she's Luke and Lumiya's daughter. Of course, since Mara and Luke have each other's memories from their Force bond, Lumiya barely kissed Luke, and that TIE crash would most likely have led to a miscarriage, why Mara would even think that only raises even more questions.
    • We don't know exactly what happened between Lumiya and Luke in the books' continuity. Word of God is that even if they use a character from the comics, they are free to accept or reject anything that took place in said comics.
    • By contrast, it's played straight and lampshaded in Invincible. Tenel Ka has cousins? Okay, so Ta'a Chume secretly had more than one son, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt and accept that she managed to hide her pregnancy. And... Tenel Ka has cousins? But the fact that nobody knows about them is what makes them so useful. And, wait, Tenel Ka has cousins?
  • The Torchwood novel Border Princes by Dan Abnett (published between series 1 and 2) has pretty much exactly the same plot as the episode "Adam" (below), except it's a Reality Warper, rather than a memory-alterer, and he isn't doing it intentionally.
  • "Grinny", in the book of the same name by Nicholas Fisk, has this as an explicit power: by saying "You remember me", she can make adults (but not children) think they've known her all their lives.
  • In the Twilight series, we hear briefly about the Volturi, mainly that they and Carlisle are on friendly terms, but that he left because he did not agree with their diet of humans. Edward speaks pretty well of them, when he tells Bella about them. In the next book and all books after, it's revealed that the Volturi are a highly corrupt organization, and the Cullens are all highly suspicious of them. This also leads to a case of Remember Those New Rules, since it's not until then that it's mentioned that there are any sort of laws or governing of vampires.
    • In New Moon, we find out that the teenagers of La Push had been turning into werewolves ever since the Cullens first settled down in Forks. This is not present in Twilight (when nothing is done to stop James, Victoria, and Laurent from killing people in Forks) or Midnight Sun (when nothing is done to stop Peter and Charlotte from killing people in Forks).
  • Halt's twin brother, introduced in book 8 of Ranger's Apprentice. Justified in that the brother lived in another country and Halt actively avoided telling people about his childhood, as shown in book 11.

Live-Action TV

  • Taylor Townsend of The OC is perhaps the most successful example. Taylor first appeared at the start of the third season (in the aptly-named "The Shape of Things to Come") as an enemy of Marissa, yet, according to the other characters, had apparently been around for years and had even attended the same elementary school as Summer and Marissa, according to a flashback the following season. The character (and actress Autumn Reeser) proved so popular that fans were willing to overlook her origins, and the show even indulged in a little Lampshade Hanging when Summer referenced a scene that had happened long before Taylor's creation:

Taylor: You didn't see me but I was there, and I remember that geek was totally in love with you.

  • If you accept that Good Morning Miss Bliss is part of the same continuity as Saved by the Bell then Jesse Spano and Kelly Kapowski. The former lives next door to Zack and has been friends with him since childhood, while he has been trying to go out with the latter for as long as she can remember. That said, most people don't accept the two as the same continuity, since the entirety of the school magically moves from Indiana to California.
  • Kelly Crabtree in Coronation Street — the first time we ever see her, she's just left her supposedly long time job at the factory that half the other characters work at.
  • Tony B. in The Sopranos, which did this nearly once a season. Ritchie Aprile and Ralphie are two other notable examples. In each instance, the justification was that they were in prison and the guys didn't want to talk about them.
  • Security Chief Tony Verdeschi in Space: 1999. His inclusion as a regular character and member of Commander Koenig's senior staff at the beginning of the second season is taken in stride by all the other characters despite no explanation of how he got there, especially in light of the contemporaneous disappearance of several characters from the first season.
  • Beverly Hills 90210 and its spin-off series: Valerie Malone was supposed to be the daughter of the Walshes' best friends. Given the way they used to invite everybody to their famous parties (Christmas, weddings, etc.), it's a bit odd that the Malones were never mentioned in the first four seasons. Same for Harry Wilson: Kelly's next-door neighbor and friend for years, but never mentioned again. For a lesser extent, Teddy Montgomery qualifies, although Adrianna's past dating record saves the trope from being far-fetched in that case.
  • CSI: NY did this with Don Flack-he did not appear in the series pilot, CSI: Miami "MIA-NYC Nonstop" but the character was added for the main series, and given they work with Flack pretty much every case, it's strange they weren't in that ep. There's no real introduction of him in the series pilot, either.
  • Pretty much all the celebrity guest stars on Friends easily fall under this trope. For instance, Reese Witherspoon was apparently the sister that Rachel never talked about, or Brad Pitt's character, who was supposedly a close friend of Ross and Monica, but was never mentioned before or since, wasn't in attendance at their wedding, etc.
  • In Party of Five, Sarah Reeves pops up in second season, working a summer job at Salingers, yet she goes to the same school as Bailey and Julia, and is in many of Julia's classes, somehow without getting a previous mention.
  • Played with on Scrubs. Kim Briggs had been at Sacred Heart for years, it's just that J.D. couldn't see her because all women wearing wedding rings are flat-out invisible to him. The kicker is when all married women within earshot are asked to take off their rings for a moment. Suddenly J.D. is surrounded by dozens of women, including Gift Shop Girl from earlier in the series. We're even treated to fake flashbacks of important events in the series' past where Kim was photoshopped in a la Forrest Gump to make it look like she'd been there all along.
  • This is true of several characters on Lost, including Ethan and Arzt, but Nikki and Paulo are easily the best example. Introduced out of nowhere at the beginning of season three, the dynamic duo were apparently survivors of the crash. While random Red Shirt characters regularly pop in and out, Nikki and Paulo began chumming with the main characters, going on adventures, and in general trying to fit in when they had obviously never been there before. They quickly became the most hated characters on the show, and showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse admit that they were a big mistake (but still regularly joke about them). The pair's story climaxes halfway through the season, when a flashback episode retcons them into various scenes, interacting with old characters, and making discoveries. The episode ends when Nikki paralyzes Paulo with a spider that paralyzes him with its venom (don't ask) and Nikki herself is then bitten by another spider (Word of God says it was the smoke monster in disguise). Both are then buried alive because they looked dead.
    • Lost plays with this trope a bit. Sawyer often refuses to accept the existence of new cast members, asking them "who the hell are you?" Arzt and Frogurt were vocally annoyed that the main characters didn't think about them. And Ethan was a spy for the Others who was meant to act like a normal 815 survivor, so the odds are that if he was, he probably would've got a little bit of face time anyway.
    • Lost justifies this in that there are about 40-odd survivors of the crash, most of them extras, so they can easily get away with this. Ethan is only introduced in one of the early episodes anyway- the cast don't remember him, but ignore that because they have all only just met.
    • Neil "Frogurt" is a aversion, however; though he does step in out of nowhere, he had already been mentioned a few times in season two and the mobisodes, so he was already known among both the fans and the characters.
    • Part of the reasoning behind Nikki and Paulo's existence was that the show had declared forty-something survivors from the plane crash in the pilot episode. Since they were nearly always seen as background extras with no lines (with the exception of Rose, and nominally Scott and Steve), a frequent fan question was "What do these other people do?" Nikki and Paulo appeared to be a (perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek) attempt by the writers to respond to that curiosity. That said, they are used to clear up a number of dangling plot threads, like the case with the gun that the other characters found in the first season.
  • Arguably the case with Gretchen Witter in Dawson's Creek. We first see her in season four, which is somewhat fair since she has been away at college for years; what edges her close to this is that we have never even heard about her before, despite being Pacey's sister and (especially) Dawson's childhood crush. Given the nature of the show and characters, it is a bit of a stretch that no one mentioned her.
  • Justified in the case of Buffy's little sister Dawn, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whom everyone treated as always being around despite only debuting in the fifth season. It's soon revealed that she actually didn't exist before her first appearance; she's really a cosmic key between dimensions, transformed into a human being in order to hide her from a demon goddess. The monks who transformed her also created memories of her in everyone's minds to shoehorn her into Buffy's life and ensure that she has the Slayer to protect her. It helps a bit that there were a few prophetic references to Dawn before her debut.
    • The trope goes far enough that Dawn is referenced on the spin-off show she never appeared on.
    • And she appears in comics set before the fifth season, on the grounds that the characters would have remembered her being there even though she wasn't there before.
    • When a Buffy animated series, set during their high school years, was in development, Dawn was planned as a main character.
    • Spoofed with Andrew in Season 6. Unlike the other two members of the Trio his character hadn't appeared in the series before, so an incident involving flying demon monkeys attacking the prom was written into his backstory—however none of the Scoobies can recall the incident, only that he's Tucker Well's brother (who did appear in the series).
  • Helen's sister Casey was added to the cast in the sixth season of Wings despite having never been mentioned before. Helen had mentioned a sister in a previous episode, but that sister was named Lorraine and was clearly a different person from Casey (who is implied to be her only sister), making this a Retcon as well.
  • Sondra, the oldest Huxtable daughter, was added late in the first season of The Cosby Show as being busy attending Princeton, even though dialogue in early episodes indicates that the Huxtables have only four kids. In real life, Sondra was created because Bill Cosby wanted the show to express the accomplishment of successfully raising a child (e.g., a college graduate).
  • When writing the film Serenity, a follow up to the quickly canceled Firefly intended to show a condensed version of his plans through roughly the show's first two seasons, Joss Whedon created the previously unmentioned jack-of-all-trades Mr. Universe to facilitate plot developments that he didn't have the time to develop more naturally anymore.
    • It was mentioned somewhere that Mr. Universe was a friend of Wash's, possibly explaining his lack of an existence away as Mal never having had any reason to talk to the guy, only being peripherally aware of him.
  • How I Met Your Mother makes this trope part of its regular routine, as the show is framed as the recollections of an Unreliable Narrator; Ted is regularly shown to remember things that are out of order or skips over events and people that he deems unimportant to that particular story. A lot of events and characters are only mentioned when they actually become relevant.
    • Possibly to be done intentionally with the mother, as the character has apparently been cast since the first season, and has been filmed in the backgrounds of the events of the show.
  • Similarly parodied on Community when it was explained that Jack Black's character was a background student who had always been there. And, of course, after that episode he fades right back into the background never to be seen again.
  • Home and Away's latest school principal Martin Bartlett first appeared in 2008, but when Kirsty Phillips, who attended the school during her original 2000-2005 stint, returned a few months later she mentioned that Martin had been one of her teachers.
  • Every school kid who ends up in the plot for iCarly except Wendy, Gibby and Rebecca Berkowitz. Some of the teachers, too. For some reason, most of the guys (who are usually a love interest) are introduced as seniors, which kinda makes it creepy in the couple seasons when they hit on Carly and Sam who haven't even reached the 'growth' stage of puberty yet. Then they give Chuck Cunningham Syndrome to them all anyway. It's averted once, where Brad is looked over as a new intern to drive the plot of iHire An Idiot then gets re-introduced in iOMG in a way that makes it obvious he's a New Transfer Student.
    • The most famous example is Sam's identical twin Melanie who Carly and Spencer seemed to know that was at boarding school. Freddie thought she was just Sam but her existence was confirmed.
  • Torchwood deconstructs this trope. Gwen enters the hub one-day to find a New Guy working like he's been there all along. She's never seen him bef- Oh, wait, of course she has. She was just kidding! The New Guy is actually an alien that implanted himself into everyone's memories because he has to be remembered to exist. Children of Earth plays it straight, though, with Jack's never-seen-or-mentioned-before daughter and grandson. It is stated that she asked him to stay away due to his condition.
    • However, this wasn't entirely out of left field. Jack reveals he's be in relationships numerous times before (and we even get to meet some of these people), and he mentions how painful he finds it that he can't age while they will, so the CoE reveals did come with some hefty foreshadowing.
  • A similar plot was used earlier by Stargate SG-1 in "The Fifth Man". In this case the new team member had "joined recently", which made it less obvious to the audience, whereas on Torchwood, Adam had supposedly joined before Gwen.
    • Also, Cameron Mitchell. He's never mentioned before Season 9, and since the Season 8 finale was screwing with time, you have to wonder where he came from... According to Word of God, he was supposed to be introduced during the big Antarctica battle in Season 7 instead of just being retconned into it later.
  • Inverted in Doctor Who with River Song, who in "Silence in the Library" walks up to the Doctor and begins chatting with him as if they're old friends. The Doctor, however, has never met her before — turns out that, thanks to the Timey-Wimey Ball, he's meeting her out of sequence.
    • In "Let's Kill Hitler", Amy and Rory's never before mentioned best friend shows up for the first part. The Doctor is as confused as the audience, asking why he's never heard of her and where she was at their wedding. Then "Mels" is killed and turns out to be a prior regeneration of River Song/Melody Pond.
  • Star Trek: Voyager had an episode where Ahni Jetal, a crewmen who had been lost to the Hirogen some seasons ago, appear in flashbacks. Said episode was actually her first appearance. Later, Lyndsay Ballard, a crew member who had died and been resurrected by aliens, returns but no longer fits in; she, too, had never been seen or mentioned before. This despite it being a Star Trek series, the Trope Namer and Trope Maker of the disposable one-shot crew member phenomenon. It's not like there's any lack of established dead or missing crew members to bring back. (In fact, Jetal bears enough similarity to Ballard that it's likely that they couldn't get Jetal's actress back or something. Shoulda made 'em the same character anyway; if there can be three Tora Ziyals and nobody cares...).
  • Subverted in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation; the entire crew is hit with amnesia and forget their ranks. The executive officer is someone the audience has never before met. Turns out he is an alien intruder, trying to trick the Enterprise into attacking the enemies of his species.
    • The Cardassians' introduction episode plays this straight, though. Also involves a Great Offscreen War.
  • My Name Is Earl: When Earl encounters his friend, Frank Stump, in prison, the episode (basically one long flashback) explains that Frank and another new character, Paco, were the original occupants of Earl's trailer, and that they and the Hickey brothers used to live all four together. Plus, Earl's El Camino is revealed to actually be Frank's. The same time frame was seen in many other flashbacks, and Frank wasn't in any of them.
  • Iola Boylan on Mama's Family.
  • Somewhat subverted on Grey's Anatomy with Jim Nelson, aka "Shadow Shepherd", the hospital's other neurosurgeon, who isn't mentioned or shown until Season 5 despite having worked there all along. It's only when Derek Sheperd temporarily decides to quit operating that Nelson, due to him supposedly not being as good a surgeon Sheperd. Also a possible lampshading of how self-involved the main characters are.
  • In That's So Raven, even though dialogue indicates that Alana and Raven have been rivals since elementary school, Alana isn't introduced or even mentioned until Season 2.
  • Chachi is introduced this way in Happy Days with The Fonz delivering the line, "You all know my cousin Chachi," and everyone else replying in the affirmative even though he's never been seen or mentioned before.
  • Jessica and Taylah were randomly introduced as the school bullies in Neighbours, and everybody on the show treated them as though they has always been there, bullying other students and harassing the main teen characters, despite the fact that, story-wise, they clearly hadn't been.
  • The Dingle family were introduced into Emmerdale as an infamous bunch of rowdies known to the entire village, despite never being mentioned in two decades of the soap's previous history.
  • Subverted on Farscape. In the Season 3 finale, "Dog With Two Bones", Noranti appears for the first time. It's stated that in-between episodes, the crew rescued some refugees and Noranti apparently decided to stay. Anyway, whenever Noranti begins to talk about the crew's current problems, everyone else remarks with a "Who is that?" response. Viewers didn't even learn her name until the end of the third Season 4 episode.
  • On Angel, the guardian of the Deeper Well turns out to be Drogyn, an immortal, truthspeaking warrior who has never been mentioned before, but Angel has already met him. This wouldn't be so odd, since Angel is 250+ years old, except that since Drogyn trusts him and considers him a friend, Drogyn must have met Angel when he had a soul, a period where Angel wasn't doing much besides moping. You'd think that whatever Angel did to earn the friendship of someone like Drogyn would be significant enough for the show to mention earlier. None of the other characters has ever heard of him except Wesley.
  • Inverted in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Someone comes into town and knows absolutely everyone and everything in the town... but no one else knows who he is. This terrifies the whole town (save Andy) until they start trying to run him out of Mayberry. Turns out he's actually a drifter who met a Mayberry resident while in the army, read about the whole town through his newspapers, and tried to integrate himself into the town far too quickly.
  • Happens in Degrassi sometimes, in the most recent seasons with Dave and Imogen. Partly justified since it is a school setting, so presumably the person was a student at Degrassi but never was friends with the main cast.
    • Used to decent effect in the case of Imogen, where she explains to Eli that she saw all the things he'd been going through over the last year, but Eli never saw her and instantly freaks out, accusing her of being a stalker.
  • The writers of Merlin take advantage of a year's Time Skip between series three and four to introduce Arthur's uncle Agravaine as though he's been present in the kingdom all along. Even though he's never been mentioned before, there are lines like: "I promised your mother I'd always be there for you," and "I've known him since I was a child," though there's no indication where he's been all this time.
    • A similar thing happened with Guinevere's brother Elyan and Morgana's half-sister Morgause, even though these examples were partially justified in that the former siblings were estranged for years, and the latter were deliberately kept apart.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan: The Movie plays with this, by having Marvelous (Gokai Red) reveal that he has met Retsu Ichijouji a.k.a. Space Sheriff Gavan when Marvelous was still young; the flashback also implies that the Space Police are also dealing against the Zangyack invasion around that time. Of course, this wasn't the first time that Super Sentai and the Metal Heroes are teased to take place in the same universe.

Music

  • Queen: Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) didn't give interviews too frequently, but he did grant at least ten per year since he became famous in '74. Very often, he was asked about his favorite singer(s) and answers used to include Robert Plant and, depending on the era and occasion, people like Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Montserrat Caballe, etc. His band mates, his former girlfriends and boyfriends, biographers (official and unofficial), people who worked with him (producers, engineers, guest musicians) were also asked about Freddie's favorite singers and more and more names came including Prince, David Bowie, etc. Paul Rodgers had never been mentioned as one of his influences until late 2004 when Brian May and Roger Taylor decided to go on tour with him as "Queen + Paul Rodgers." Then, he'd suddenly become "Freddie's favorite singer" and had apparently been all along. When the partnership ended, Freddie's alleged admiration for Mr. Rodgers was never mentioned again.
  • Brave Saint Saturn's first album was a Rock Opera about fictionalized versions of the band's three members as astronauts. Their second album was a sequel, but a new member (Andy Verdecchio) had joined the band by then, so the liner notes wrote about him as a crew member as if he had been on the mission from the beginning. For the third album in the series, Andy was just as abruptly written out of the crew — this time, he was a cosmonaut on a completely different spacecraft.
  • "But do you recall/The most famous reindeer of all?" Back when the song was written, this trope was in full effect, as Rudolph was, of course, created by the songwriter. Several Rankin Bass specials and light-up lawn decorations later, it could be argued that Rudolph is, in fact, the most famous reindeer of all... or at least the most distinctive, since All of the Other Reindeer have no real character traits.

Radio

  • Adventures in Odyssey introduced the eccentric mailman Wooton Bassett this way in "Welcoming Wooton," and to a certain extent, the entire Washington family (most notably Ed) in "The Toy Man." The latter was a little jarring, given that Ed Washington went from not being a character to the conveniently dilemma-solving manager of the new Whit's End in a single episode.

Tabletop Games

  • Let's be honest here, who among us hasn't had to shoehorn a new PC into a party in some similar manner? "Oh, this is my 60-year-old dead wizard's twin brother, a 24-year-old barbarian. Yes indeed."
  • Warhammer 40,000 has a rather extreme example with the Necrons and their C'Tan masters, who when introduced were not only major parts of the galaxy's backstory and indirectly responsible for some pretty significant things (namely the transformation of the Warp and its denizens from pure Chaotic Neutral to malicious Chaotic Evil, and the creation of the Orks and the Eldar), but had managed to hide on numerous planets undetected and undiscovered for approximately sixty million years. They are also apparently ancient enemies of the Eldar, despite no Eldar ever mentioning them before.

Theater

  • In Macbeth, Macbeth hires two murderers to kill Banquo and Fleance, but three show up to do the deed. Since the Third Murderer is of no real consequence, this is probably a case of textual corruption.

Video Games

  • In Halo 2 the Prophets were treated this way.
    • As were the Engineers in Halo 3: ODST - while they were mentioned in Expanded Universe material from nearly the beginning (and were even planned to be in the first game), this was their first actual game appearance.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Sora is subject to Castle Oblivion's memory-altering shenanigans, and as he slowly loses some memories, others that he had forgotten come back to him. Through this, he's reminded of his one-time friend Namine, and as time goes on, he speaks of Namine more and more, even though she did not appear in his hometown in the first Kingdom Hearts and was never mentioned previously. Eventually, he manages to completely forget about his actual childhood friend Kairi, whom Namine seems to have supplanted in his memories... and there's actually good excuse for all this! He didn't really know Namine when he was younger, and the Castle's supposed powers were a ruse; Namine was being coerced by Organization XIII into using her unique ability to tamper with Sora's memories in order to serve their own interests.
    • Also justified in that Namine practically is Kairi.
    • DiZ's true identity as The Original Ansem, on the other hand, comes out of somewhere outside of left field. No real explanation is given for this one; up until KH2, everyone refers to the Billy Zane guy as Ansem, including Mickey, who has no excuse for having forgotten about blond!Ansem. DiZ is not a bad character, as such, but would that he'd been foreshadowed a little!
  • Dr. Arne Magnusson from Half-Life 2: Episode Two is is apparently a vital and high-ranking member of La Résistance - and had a similar role back in Black Mesa - who just happened to have never been mentioned at all previously.
  • In Baldur's Gate II, it's actually the main character's own choice if they recognize people they might actually have met in the first game or not. Interestingly, among the dialogue options there is usually also "Shouldn't you be dead?"
  • Anthony Higgs from Metroid: Other M. "Remembah me?" He later goes on to make absolutely sure that you do.
  • Mega Man 7 introduces Auto, an Otaku Gadgeteer Genius who has apparently been working for Dr. Light long before the start of the game.
  • In Sharin no Kuni Chapter 5, the first-person narrator reveals that the person he's been narrating to is not the reader, but his sister, Ririko, who actually was behind him all along.
  • Toadsworth, who was first introduced in Super Mario Sunshine. He had apparently been serving the Mushroom Kingdom's royal family for years (which would imply that he had done so even during the events of the original Super Mario Bros). The introduction of the younger version of Toadsworth in the second Mario & Luigi game seems to confirm this.
    • Averted with Bowser Jr., who was introduced in the same game as Toadsworth, yet Mario and Peach clearly haven't seen him before. Peach even remarks, "So you're Bowser's son?" while he was explaining what he had been trying to do to Mario the whole game.
  • Lampshaded in Final Fantasy X-2: Buddy was apparantly there in Final Fantasy X, but Yuna doesn't remember him. Justified in that in Final Fantasy X the entire Al Bhed race was rescued from Home on the Airship, but Yuna wasn't there for that and only got on the ship herself near the end of the story. A throwaway comment from Rikku implies that she, Buddy, Brother and Gippal were all old friends. (Well, her knowing Brother at least is expected, seeing as he's her actual brother)
  • Billy vs. SNAKEMAN has Sue. Allegedly, she's in your party from the start, but she doesn't appear on your ally list until you've beaten her in a game of Mahjong.
  • In the the Japan only sequel to the Pokemon TCG Game Boy Color game there is an option to play as a female character. The story still treats them as having done the events in the first game, despite not existing.
  • Star FOX Command introduces Lucy, Peppy's daughter. She is not mentioned in any of the previous games. You would think Peppy would have mentioned her at least once.
  • In Warcraft, there was never a hint that Grom Hellscream had a son, until suddenly in The Burning Crusade, there he was. Particularly significant considering he's now the leader of the entire Horde.
    • When you speak to the time-traveling dragon Chromie in Dragonblight, she starts saying it's good to see you again before asking if it's the first time you've met. This is actually used to cover up her appearance in an earlier questline in another zone the that the player may or may not have completed.
  • Blizzard again. Tychus Findlay was never even mentioned in the orginal StarCraft, but in the sequel he's been Raynor's old partner in crime, and probably his best terran friend. Of course though, being Blizzard, they made sure to carefully insert him in continuity through an Expanded Universe novel that takes place before the original game and came out shortly before the sequel. As a bonus, that novel also invented an outlaw past for Raynor, before his Confederate marshal days.
    • Tychus was in prison for years before the start of Starcraft; he'd never even seen a Zerg before Wings Of Liberty. Raynor's backstory itself is another story; there was never a hint that the lawman had once been a criminal.
  • Krauser from Resident Evil 4 sort of counts. He's a guy that protagonist Leon knows from the period of time between his two game appearances (2 and 4), but he's kind of presented in a way that suggests the player should know who he is. In particular, the first cutscene with him ended with a dramatic reveal of his face that may make you wonder, "Hey, is this someone I'm supposed to recognize?"
  • DLC character Skarlet from Mortal Kombat, who is present during the MK1-era events according to the story mode, but never interacts with any of the characters.
  • Sergius from Xenosaga Episode 2. Despite Margulus being very loyal to him, he is not at all mentioned in the first episode.
  • Pokémon is probably the most extreme example, considering that every legendary is from a legend from long ago, but was only recently introduced to the games' audience. Not to mention the other 498 (and counting) or so Pokémon introduced after Gen I.
    • This is particularly weird because it sometimes tends to Hand Wave it as the newly introduced Pokemon being newly discovered species... even though the residents of that region all know more than enough information about these new mons to train and use them for the same purposes as any other region. It just sort of implies that the regions don't interact with each other a whole lot.
    • The anime, on the other hand, has no such excuse, as during the Battle Frontier arc, which took place in Kanto (the setting of the first season), second- and third-generation Pokémon were portrayed as being indigenous to Kanto... even though no one seemed to know about them the first time around.
  • Sofia Lamb, the Big Bad of BioShock 2 is established in the latter game as having been a major opponent of Andrew Ryan during Rapture's early history, having her following/cult of ideals diametrically opposite to those of Ryan and even having public debates with the latter despite having never having been mentioned in the previous game (Sinclair and Alexander at least had their names mentioned once or twice). This is slightly justified by her having been kept in Ryan's secret prison during Fontaine's rise to power but you have to wonder why every other audiolog in the second game mentions her while none in the original game do despite you visiting older areas in the sequel. Did Ryan completely Unperson her?

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • Let's face it, most Merchandise-Driven kid's cartoons do this a fair bit, usually coinciding with the release of a new line of toys.
  • Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi has Julie, the former third member of the band, return for a reunion tour. The reason we never saw her before was handwaved by the explanation that Ami hated Julie, who treated her like crap, and didn't really want to talk about her ever again.
  • Lampshaded in Invader Zim, where Zim insists Minimoose has been with him the entire time. Word of God says that, time permitting, there would've been a little montage of scenes from previous episodes with Minimoose crudely taped onto the picture at that point. Of course, the real reason for this discrepancy is that the episode meant to introduce Minimoose properly was never produced.
    • Zim tried to invoke an inverted form of this trope when he pretended to know who Dib was after joining his class in the very first episode.
  • In Code Lyoko, Yumi's brother Hiroki is first seen in Season 2. He is never mentioned in Season 1, even though the Ishiyama family and home are often involved on-screen.
  • Both Transformers Generation 1 and G.I. Joe had this. They would introduce a new character for the episode, and explanation would ever be given as to why we've never seen this guy before, especially when they are characters who would have saved the day in earlier episodes.
    • The cast all but doubles in Transformers season two due to never-before-seen characters who are treated as having been there all along. In fact, one story depends on them having come to Earth at the same time as the others—everyone is affected by "cybertonium" deficiency due to having been away from Cybertron for so long, which rules out anything like only recently arriving on Earth.
    • A bit more believable with GI Joe, as it can be—and has been, in some cases—handwaved as them being new recruits. Alternatively, that they just weren't on duty during past episodes.
  • Dulcy the Dragon in Sonic the Hedgehog. She just suddenly appears in the second season premiere as if she was one of the Freedom Fighters the whole time. She was similarly fitted into the Archie Comic with nothing more then a small back-up story introduction which gave her backstory and essentially went "She's been part of the Freedom Fighters all this time! Honest!"
    • Dulcy was later phased out of the comic, only appearing in the backgrounds in the last couple years and not even those most recently. From "remember" to "forgotten"?
  • Sushi Pack has a tendency to do this for villains. Oleander, Sir Darkly, and Paradoxtor were all introduced as villains that appeared before (Sir Darkly even had a quick recap flashback), despite never having proper introductory episodes.
  • The writers of Pinky and The Brain (and Larry) parody this trope when a new character, Larry, is given the "Remember The New Guy" treatment by Pinky and the Brain. The network, for whatever reason, demanded that a third character be added to the main lineup, so the writers created Larry, a character who added absolutely nothing to the formula, for a single episode.
  • In the series finale of Drawn Together a character is "voted" off the show. After much suspense the character revealed to get the boot was Munchkin Mouse, a character never seen in any episode of the show. All the characters are shocked to see Munchkin Mouse go and a montage of "Munchkin Mouse's Greatest Moments" is played featuring the same image of Munchkin Mouse spliced in to memorable scenes from the show.
    • Similarly done in "A Tale of Two Cows." Even though Wooldoor Sockbat only met Live Action Cow at the beginning of the episode, there's a montage at the end of him remembering the good times he had with her, which is really shots from other episodes with Live Action Cow crudely inserted in. There were even scenes that Wooldoor didn't originally appear in, with him and Live Action Cow often replacing characters that were involved with the original scene.
    • In the second go-around of 'cast member gets kicked off', it's Excludie, the character everyone excluded from their activities.
  • The high hell was parodied out of this trope in an episode of Clone High. Not only is it established (and repeatedly lampshaded) that the hitherto unseen Ponce de Leon is one of the most popular students at the eponymous high school, but he's also best friends forever with main character JFK (who has a BFF tattoo on his left arm—seriously, it borders on sheer Ho Yay). And, oh yeah, Ponce dies in the same episode.

Julius Caesar: Oh Ponce, you are a regular character!

  • Parodied in South Park with Alex, a one-shot character who acts as though he's been part of the boys' class the entire time. The other kids aren't buying it, and he vanishes after that episode. He was the winner of a charity auction to be in the show, and even said so in the episode when Stan and Kyle asked who the hell he was. He waved goodbye to them and said hi to his watching parents and sister.
  • When Thundercats began, there were only three mutants: Ssslythe, Monkian, and Jackalman. However, later episodes randomly added a fourth mutant, Vultureman, who had never even been mentioned before.
  • Somewhat parodied in the episode of The Replacements that introduced Abby's younger sister Tiffany. Abby says something along the lines of: "As you all know, my little sister Tiffany has been to boarding school for the past few years." Only for the Daring family to reply: "We didn't know that."
  • Specky from ReBoot. Between the final scene of season two and the beginning of season three (both showing the same characters in the Principal Office control room), he's suddenly in the room with them as the main computer guy, and there seems to be an unspoken implication he was there all along.
  • Warner Bros. kind of likes to pretend these days that Lola Bunny was always a Looney Tunes character. Her baby incarnation even made it into Baby Looney Tunes, and she's in The Looney Tunes Show.
  • Of the original seven members of the Justice League, Shayera Hol (formerly Hawkgirl) was a blatant example of this. She'd never shown up anywhere onscreen in the DCAU continuity prior to her first appearance in the three-part premiere episode "Secret Origins," but the other main characters evidently already knew who she was.
    • John Stewart, the Green Lantern, also counts, though his example isn't as obvious because the Green Lantern Corps and their individual members had already been shown in the earlier Superman: The Animated Series episode "In Brightest Day" (where new recruit Kyle Rayner was the focus character).
  • Taken to an extreme in the second My Little Pony special, where only Megan and Spike were re-used. Slightly justified, as there are a lot of ponies.
  • And while we're on the subject, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic occasionally names ponies that have never appeared before, such as June Bug and Lickety Split. The odd thing about the former is that Twilight knows her name, despite Twilight still being rather shut-in and having enough trouble dealing with her best friends.
    • Miss Cheerilee's class is probably the most blatant example; new students, like Featherweight and that random fat colt, suddenly show up and are treated as if they've always been there by the others.[1]
    • The season 2 finale introduces both Twilight's brother and Princess Cadence. What makes this especially Egregious is that Twilight claims her brother was her only real friend before she moved to Ponyville (despite her earlier statements that she didn't have any friends before then), which makes it odd that we never hear about him for the first two seasons of the show.
    • The villain of the two-part season 2 premiere is Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony, whose savage rule of Equestria prompted Celestia and Luna to seal him in stone and become rulers themselves. Despite this, nopony at all knows anything about him before Celestia herself explains, even Twilight, who is so well-versed in history she was able to create an accurate costume of somepony who lived before Discord's reign. Naturally, this has led to Wild Mass Guessing that Celestia is an Orwellian Editor who alters the official versions of Equestrian history.
  • In Ben 10: Alien Force gives us Ken, Gwen's older brother who was never mentioned or even suggested she even had any siblings up to that only episode he has appeared in. And even after that he is never mentioned again. Suggesting he was created solely to give Max a reason to come out of hiding.
  • Beast Wars has this with Depth Charge in season 3. He's an old enemy of Rampage and a guy who tried to convinced the Maximal Elders to execute Rampage, which Optimus Primal argued against. He's never mentioned before his first episode. The massacre Rampage is supposed to have performed that made Depth Charge so revenge obsessed is not mentioned by Optimus in previous episodes when he mentions Rampage's origin. He's simply called "treacherous and insane". Apparently the fact he murdered an entire colony and an entire star base (and ate some of them) was not worth mentioning. Neither that a lone survivor from the aforementioned colony tracked him down and captured him.
    • In its defense though, since as far as they knew Depth Charge was a trillion miles away and centuries in the future, there really wasn't a lot of reason to mention him. Optimus definitely didn't seem inclined to do much mentioning of the details of Rampage, and most of the other Maximals didn't know anything about it. Also, since Optimus wasn't on Colony Omicron or Starbase Rugby the story of that may not mean as much to them. The fact that Rampage is violent and insane basically covers all his men needed to know.
  • Sheep in The Big City: When General Specific's cousin General Lee Outrageous made his first appearance, it started with Private Public telling General Specific about him calling and General Specific replied by asking if it was the same cousin with whom he had a rivalry he never mentioned before.
  • The Simpsons: Poochie joined Itchy And Scratchy as such in an episode where the Simpsons had a teenage son named Roy who never appeared before but wasn't treated as a newcomer. In the end, Roy was Put on a Bus and never heard from ever again.
  1. ↑ Since there are only nine seats or so in the room, it's possible that they simply rotate schedules.
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