Wolverine Publicity

Although too small to see here, there's a line under the Mature Content label that reads "Wolverine does not appear in this issue."
"I stopped reading X-Men about the same time they started putting Wolverine on the cover of comics in which he didn't actually, technically, appear."
—Lore Sjoberg, The Book of Ratings, "Marvel Supervillains (Part I)"

Certain popular characters within a fictional universe get used in gratuitous and/or inappropriate ways to enhance marketing.

Superhero teams in comic books constantly change. Characters join and leave so often that any given superhero team is often unrecognizable within a year. Other superhero teams have a Heroes Unlimited setup, where there are Loads and Loads of Characters and no two issues will have the same group. As a result, there are a lot more fans of particular comic-book characters than there are fans of particular comic-book teams or comic-book titles. Fans will like a new team book not if it has a name they recognize, but if it has characters they recognize. A new title will often sell based on whether it has already-popular characters in it, and existing characters will often be made more or less powerful based on how popular they are with readers.

This leads to one of the most overused tricks in comic-book marketing. When a character is very popular, they will often get Wolverine Publicity: appearing in every comic book title and format possible until the fans get sick of them. The character will often have a flood of mini-series which desperately search for something new to do with them ("in this issue, Wolverine visits Turkmenistan!").

The next step of Wolverine Publicity is random cameos to drive other titles. The promoted character will appear in the first issue of every new title, and appear in old titles with flagging sales, regardless of whether the promoted character makes any sense there. Particularly shameless marketers will just slap the promoted character on the cover and have them appear for one panel in the issue. They will often suffer from The Worf Effect; a new character hasn't "made it" unless they can thrash the most important character in the universe. Even if the story is actually a team-up, this pairing might suffer from being a Story-Breaker Team-Up since the promoted character may not fit in with the title's story or tone at all.

If a team has multiple titles, with different members in each one, the promoted character will somehow manage to appear in both titles—even if the two stories are supposed to be happening at the same time.

Compare Spotlight-Stealing Title, Billing Displacement, Overused Copycat Character, Red Skies Crossover, Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Game. When an iconic villain shows up in an installment supposedly featuring someone else as the Big Bad, this becomes Hijacked by Ganon.

Not to be confused with the idea that Wolverine is becoming the focus of the Marvel Universe (although that certainly has spawned many examples of this trope).

Examples of Wolverine Publicity include:

Wolverine

The Marvel Comics character Wolverine (who is of course the Trope Namer) is the worst offender, hands down. So he gets his own section. He's been so over-used that his more recent appearances are prone to parody and Lampshade Hanging. By the end of the 1990s, Wolverine had been paired up with practically every other Marvel hero in existence, all the way down to five-year-old Katie Power of Power Pack. Twice. Why? Well, beyond his general popularity, he has a number of traits that make him the perfect storm for this:

  1. His long life-span means he can appear in all flash-back stories with his modern personality. He can appear in flash-forward stories for the same reason.
  2. He has connections world-wide meaning he can easily drop into any setting: America? Japan? Canada? Germany? France? Russia? Hong Kong? Space? Yep.
  3. He's both a Rated "M" for Manly Badass and a Woobie, depending on the story you want to tell.
  4. It's almost impossible to write him out of character: Is he in helpful teammate good-guy mode? Or berserker evil loner animal mode? A blow to the head can make the difference.
  5. He seems to know every hot babe in the Marvel Universe, making for an easy cover design.

A few examples:

  • The image at the top of this page is from a month when Marvel published every single one of their comics with a Wolverine variant cover (it was the 30th anniversary of his first appearance so they did something special for him), even if they didn't actually take place in the Marvel Universe. This includes their adaptation of the Anita Blake Urban Fantasy books. For extra humor value, if you look closely, there's a note at the top-left corner of the page reading "Wolverine does not appear in this issue."
  • One of the earliest examples of Wolverine Publicity is Alpha Flight #13, released in 1984. On the cover of this issue we see a badass-looking Wolverine pointing his claws at some unseen menace, defending Heather Hudson from it, and saying: "Okay, sucker, the only way to get to the lady is through me!". Something like this does happen in the comic, but then we learn it was all just a nightmare by Heather (and even in the nightmare Wolverine only appears in a handful of panels), and the real Wolverine is not in this issue at all.
  • Marvel had already recognized how absurd it was getting by the late 1980s. Their humor/parody comic What The?! showed Wolverine just trying to have a quiet day of fishing and going insane because of all the other characters popping up to get him to guest-star.
  • A cover of the first "What The?!" featured Wolverine saying he had to appear on first cover was in his contract.
    • And Wolverine was appalled when he discovered how the editors were going to squeeze even more out of him when he's introduced to Wolverina. Then came X-23...
  • In another What The?! story, various characters tried to increase their popularity by wearing eyepatches... which Wolverine sported at the time. Said story ends with Wolvie "cutting" their plans short.
  • In an issue of New X-Men, a character mentions that Wolverine is the only mutant who finds time to be on all three X-Men teams at once.
  • Lampshaded in New Avengers. After discovering that Elektra had at some point been replaced by a Skrull, they discuss who else might have been substituted. Wolverine himself pointed out that his ability to be on so many teams at once seemed ridiculous... unless he was trying to infiltrate as many as possible.
  • Lampshaded again on this She Hulk cover.

Wolverine: I'm an X-man and on TWO Avengers teams. Multitasking is my mutant power (Don't tell anyone).

  • Wolverine even shows up in the Ultimate Spider-Man video game, as one of the boss battles for Venom.
  • And from Runaways:

Iron Man: "How novel. A Wolverine appearance. Seriously, this is the third time I've run into you this week..."

  • In Deadpool, Wolverine's appearance in issue #27 was declared "his most gratuitous guest appearance ever!" right on the cover.
  • Also lampshaded in the Weapon X: First Class mini-series Deadpool gives a laundry list of Wolverine's powers ending with "the ability to appear in twenty books every month".

Cyclops: Since when are you in the Avengers anyway, Wolverine?
Wolverine: I was getting bored only being on three teams while having my own solo adventures. A guy's got to live a little.

    • Also from the same flash artist, Cyclops assigning teams to deal with the latest return of the Dark Phoenix. Team A is sent, with Wolverine, to track down Phoenix. Team B, with Wolverine, ( "Uh..." ) is sent to defend from an inevitable attack by the Brotherhood of Evil, and Team C, with Wolverine, to have adventures in Europe, or something.

Wolverine: Now wait just a--!

      • Even funnier because it happened. In one issue, Cyclops had pretty much the whole team in his face complaining about their assignments. Wolverine was among them, saying "Look, I appreciate the confidence, but I can't be on every team!" In the end, Cyclops told them nobody was having their assignments changed.
      • He wasn't even on all three teams at once beyond the first story arcs. Once things settled, he pretty much only appeared in Astonishing, basically proving that he was only thrown on the other two teams to boost sales.
  • One X-Force cover actually has Wolverine baring his claws for the camera and say "I'm only doin' this to increase sales." Amazingly, this was revealed to be the first panel of the story, in which he legitimately was appearing in the issue.
  • Wolverine and Power Pack is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. One episode had the Power Pack (and Franklin Richards) accidentally travel back in time to the early 20th century and save a boy named James Howlett from kidnapping. A cynical reader might think they've been bilked out of their money, until The Reveal; James Howlett is Wolvie as a kid.
  • The Wolverine: First Class title is this taken to its logical extreme: The book is really about Kitty Pryde as a young X-Man, but because Logan is her mentor, he gets the title.
  • Wolverine #73 (July 2009) has a short story that covers a month or so in Wolverine's life that parodies/riffs on the idea of his many appearances in various Marvel titles.
  • Exiles is a comic where the members are drawn from different alternate universes. For one arc, the main characters are suddenly fired and a new team created, made up of Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine and... well, you get the idea. Why? Because an evil alternate Wolverine is causing trouble and everyone knows the only way to beat Wolverine is with two or more Wolverines. What's more, we discover there have been several teams of Wolverines before that, and the main villain is a Wolverine. You end up with two entire issues with every version of Wolverine imaginable; the main team is the Days of Future Past Wolverine, young James Howlett, Marvel Zombies Wolvie, Albert (a robot made in Wolvie's image) and Elsie Dee, and a fresh from Department H Wolvie.
  • And extending into animated adaptations, we have Wolverine and the X-Men.
    • In fairness, this show was originally going to be simply a Wolverine solo series. The rest of the X-men were added later.
    • And now there is going to be a comic called "Wolverine and The X-Men".
  • Wolverine even manages to pull this off in non-Marvel publications. Twisted Toyfare Theater in particular enjoys pointing this out - one comic followed Wolverine through a day of his many crossovers. This included Wolvie plowing through a magazine stand, forcing his head through a copy of Wizard magazine, and a kid asking his mom to get the copy of Wizard with Wolverine on/through the cover.
    • If you can't figure out for yourself, Wolverine has appeared on the cover of Wizard (the leading comics mag) more than any other character. In 2004, Wizard even released a supplement that was entirely about Wolverine, and proudly copped to the trend by displaying their favorite Wolvie covers - listing all of them would just take all day.
  • The Ultimate X-Men collection books have special covers depicting, in order, Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine, Wolverine, Captain America, Wolverine...
  • Even his son Daken is following in his footsteps; he'll be a member of the Dark X-Men while still keeping his role as a Dark Avenger. That's only two teams, so he has some catching up to do.
  • Wolverine's popularity was parodied when he appeared in X-Force (with the team that would later become X-Statix). He does a TV spot saying he doesn't know what to think about the new X-Force but it's just a favor to his old pal Doop. However, when a super-donnybrook breaks out the villains deride Wolvie as "the housewife's choice", a mass-market approved badass not to be taken any more seriously than Mr. Clean or Toucan Sam.
  • He's on the cover of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (except for the Nintendo DS version; Nightcrawler is the only mutant to be found there). You fight him, he gives you all of two missions, he (involuntarily) becomes Venom-Wolverine much later so you fight him again and then he disappears from the game. Luke Cage does more in the game than he does.
    • Yeah, well, if you take the evil path Mr. Luke Cage doesn't (voluntarily) get a Venom symbiote and comes after Spider-Man as freaking Venom-Wolverine in the epilogue now, does he?
    • Oh, and said cover was voted by fans out of a choice of two. The other cover didn't feature Wolverine. Go figure.
  • New Avengers #35 is the perfect example of how Covers Always Lie.
    • Well, not really; he may not have appeared in this issue, but the next one features a Venomised Wolverine quite prominently. For no reason at all, I might add.
  • And now Wolverine even appears in anime form!
    • As a tie in to that, he also saves Tony Stark twice in the Iron Man anime.
    • He's also in the Blade anime. And, for obvious reasons, the X-Men one. That's a year of constant Woverine anime-ness!
  • Lampshaded in a recent issue of the New Avengers, when Mockingbird ask him how he can be on the X-Men and two Avengers(regular Avengers and New Avengers) teams at the same time. He jokes that multitasking is his mutant power.
  • And don't forget the Marvel vs. Capcom series, where Wolverine is the only character to be in every single one of Capcom's games. He's even in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 twice (one with the adamantium claws and one with bone, since the metal had been removed from his skeleton at that time)
  • Due to his own prequel movie, he once used to hog every single ad spot in Quake Live during early May 2009.
    • Also he is one of the only two characters (the other being Professor X) to be in all the five X-Men live action movies.
  • The Hulk Vs double feature was released in Scandinavia under the much catchier title, "Wolverine".
  • The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes might have retconned Wolverine into a member of the Howling Commandos. He fought alongside them in the episode "Meet Captain America (comics)", and later appeared with them before Cap during his stay in Niflheim. However, no one refers to Wolverine by his codename in either of those episodes, instead using his original surname, Howlett.
  • Spoofed in one cover of Great Comics That Never Happened, in which Wolverine converts to get his contractually-obligated spot on a Jewish superhero teamup.
  • There is a backup story that shows a few weeks in the life of Wolverine. Every day is a different team-up. Except for Saturday. Saturday, Logan Drinks.

Animated Films

Anime and Manga

  • For Ah! My Goddess this is the norm. with the main character Keiichi rarely making the cover page.
  • Most of the promotional art for A Certain Magical Index features Mikoto in a rather notable way, as if she formed a Power Trio with main characters Touma and Index. In reality, she only makes bit appearances on various episodes, the only notable ones being an Arc about her (Which she shares with one of her clones and Accelerator, with the clone having similar screentime and more Character Development) and A Day in the Limelight Ship Tease episode later on the season. Komoe and Kaori have as much importance than her if not more (At least in the anime first season), but they get very few appearances in the official art and tend to share them with Mikoto, despite never meeting in the anime (Stiyl, being a guy in a Fundamentally Female Cast, was never in the running, even if he's more relevant than any girl). This goes even more so for her roommate Kuroko, who is in most of the aforementioned art, but only gets 2-3 minor appearances with Mikoto and a Barack Obama gag, yet outdoes in appearances everyone else on the series but Mikoto and actual heroine Index.
    • Mikoto and Kuroko are also the focus of the artwork of the A Certain Scientific Railgun anime, their spin-off series', but at least there's it's justified: They're The Hero and The Lancer. Uiharu and Saten complete the Four-Girl Ensemble, but the artwork always makes them seem less important for some reason.
    • The second anime season took the same route as the first, with Mikoto (Kuroko too, but less so this time) being shoved in on nearly every official artwork, but she's only been a secondary character on Kuroko's arc, helped a little on the final arc and got another Ship Tease date, but she was never the main focus at any time. All her other appearances are Ship Tease cameos (Generally made up for the anime at that) with no relevance to the current arc. Oddly enough, official art is more likely to come out when she is around, so they have an excuse to stick her in pics every time, even if the arc has like 5-6 important girls. Meanwhile, more important or relevant characters get one or two pictures tops and barely any cameos (With one exception marked below). Remember, this is after Mikoto got her already mentioned Spin-Off with her on the lead and lots of artwork focused on her. At this point she may as well be the Index equivalent of Wolverine.
      • That one exception would be Itsuwa. She's had a grand total of three appearances, one in a mob with no lines, and two short ones where she gives the main guy a hot towel. Truly important things, which is why she appears the most in official art after Mikoto, Kuroko and Index. Nevermind the two arcs with Itsuwa had WAY more important girls (Mostly Agnese and Orsola), Itsuwa gets all the art. Subverted in that she becomes more important on later novels, but that's hardly a justification to have her appear so much now, when she hasn't done a single thing, while the girls who actually do stuff get ignored. Funnily, there's a picture of her with Mikoto. They've never met, and on most of Itsuwa's screentime she was on a different continent than Mikoto.
        • The preview for the second season also featured three of the four members of God's Right Seat, Vento, Terra and Aqua, which seems to imply that they had originally intended to go as far as volume 16, but apparently didn't get there. As a result, only Vento plays a role and Aqua puts on a brief appearance in the second-to-last episode, but otherwise...
    • Most openings and endings also emphasize Mikoto (Again, to Power Trio levels). The second season openings also highlights Accelerator (who has little screentime on the anime but is loved by the fans), as well as throwing in a Uiharu cameo, even though she's a very minor character on Index, but since she's a main on Railgun, there we go.
    • All in all, this is par per the course for J.C.Staff, which loves Pandering to the Base to Crippling Overspecialization and promotes the 1-2 most popular females while ignoring everyone else. Only that's usually the lead girl (Such as Shana or Louise), not a secondary character with little to no relevance on over half the arcs, making Mikoto's case stand out the most.
  • Nearly all of the promotional art for Ergo Proxy solely features supporting protagonist Re-l Mayer, indicating that she is the main character. And, to the marketing team's credit, the first few episodes certainly make it look this way. However, once the series kicks into high gear, it becomes obvious that the true protagonist is the comparatively unassuming Vincent Law.
  • When the Wild Swans movie was dubbed into Italian, the dubbers tried to cash in on the popularity of the Heidi anime by claiming that the princess was Heidi, even calling the movie, "Heidi Becomes a Princess."
  • This happens in the Gundam franchise, with none other than Char Aznable. The first opening credits sequence for Gundam ZZ features Char opposite the main character, and yet he never appears in the series.
    • Char's sister Sayla appears on the cover of the Laserdisc boxset for the second half of Zeta Gundam, but she only appears in one episode, with no speaking parts at that.
  • In the Lyrical Nanoha franchise, whenever official art comes out and it's not from the manga spinoffs Vivid or Force, there's a 95% chance it'll be from the third season Striker S, which came after a 10-year Time Skip that radically changed the appearance of Nanoha and Fate, the main girls, plus introduced a lot of new characters and got rid of several others. While this made sense back in 2007-2008, when Striker S had just aired and was the Cool New Thing, nowadays we've had a movie set on the first season and a manga of said movie, with a second movie announced covering A's, the second season (Both set before the big Time Skip), plus two Video Game adaptations set on A's (Though the second one has Vivid characters, but it's still mainly an A's game). Yet still all the art will depict Nanoha and Fate post-Time Skip (and often alongside their adopted daughter Vivio), or otherwise a character in their Striker S period, except a little bit to adveritse the movies, but that's the oddity and not the default.
    • Not to mention Nanoha and Fate still get a fair deal of art even on the pics of said spin-offs, where they aren't the main characters. Hell, they still have far more artwork than the rest of the metaseries' cast, which is pretty bad as it's formed by Loads and Loads of Characters.
    • This is mostly the magazine NyanType's fault though, as them running Force apparently justifies having 2-3 Nanoha pics every month, while the actually airing animes get one, tops.
  • Unusually, Nel's adult form from Bleach is featured heavily on manga covers and anime openings, despite only appearing in a few chapters and not really accomplishing anything important.
  • Fanwork example: Every Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai doujinshi features Sena in any shape or way. Every single one. While most do it because they're focused on her, it's rather jarring see a book about Yozora with her on the cover and all the plot being about her, yet the first three pages being Sena love just because. Or having her on the cover with Yozora yet not appear even once inside the thing. While she may be popular, this is a little annoying to non-fans of her, as other "Ensemble Darkhorse" characters, using the term loosely here, don't do this kind of stuff, it's just Sena.

Films

  • The American DVD cover of Infernal Affairs shows Kelly Chen posing with a gun. At no point in the movie does she have a gun, or even an action scene. The two main characters get much less space on the cover. On the other hand, this might just be a case of Sex Sells. The Chinese DVDs rightly put Andy Lau and Tony Leung up front, but since fewer Americans know who any of them are, they decided to sex things up a bit.
  • At at least one video store, in the French film section, there is a sub-section called "Films in which Audrey Tautou has less screen time than the box art would suggest." There's also a "Non-Satanic Malevolent Children" section in Horror, but that's neither here nor there.
  • "Bruceploitation" refers to the wave of Bruce Lee imitators, and Lee-style martial arts movies, that followed the superstar's death. Actors adopted stage names like Bruce Li, Bruce Lei, and Dragon Lee in an attempt to cash in on Lee Mania. Jackie Chan recalled how his early movie posters would say "the next BRUCE LEE, Jackie Chan," with Lee's name much larger than his own.
  • The undisputed king of Wolverine Publicity in the Star Wars universe has to be Darth Vader - this trope could have well been called "Vader Publicity". Even when the main focus of Lucasfilm's marketing is a series that doesn't involve Vader as a Sith Lord, such as the first two prequels or Star Wars: The Clone Wars, one can be absolutely sure to see zillions of different products featuring Vader in the current merchandising line. Often, original trilogy characters are included in the line, or the line itself becomes partly original trilogy-focused, for the sake of including Vader merchandise. One can also expect a cameo or two from the Sith Lord in some form in the media itself (such as a vision to his former self Anakin in Star Wars: Clone Wars), or at least a new character that happens to be a blatant Expy (such as Darth Malak in Knights of the Old Republic).
  • The DVD release of Mazes and Monsters has on the cover a dragon, a castle and a maze. None of these things appear in the movie. The title refers to a roleplaying game (a reference to Dungeons and Dragons) played by the characters. Furthermore, while Tom Hanks is in the movie, the picture of him on the cover is from when he was much older and well established. Furthermore, despite how much the breakdown of his character drives the plot, he was actually a supporting character and given rather low billing compared to the other cast members (the movie seems to treat Jay Jay as the main character).
  • Dazed and Confused was promoted with posters prominently featuring Milla Jovovich simply because she was, at the time, the most famous person in the cast. She only has one line in the movie, is not a focus character in the ensemble action, and only pops up a handful of times. She's also on the cover of the DVD cases (excluding the Criterion Collection edition) since those reuse one of the movie's promotional posters.
  • Deep In The Valley has Kim Kardashian on the front cover. She appears in the actual movie for all of ten seconds and her character does nothing other than let the heroes into a night club.
  • The DVD cover for Frankenstein Island features only John Carradine's name at the top, and his face is on all of the different DVD covers. In the movie he plays the ghost of Dr. Frankenstein, and his screentime is less than five minutes combined.
  • The DVD cover for Showtime's 2005 musical parody Reefer Madness features Neve Campbell, both with her picture displayed in the foreground and her name at top-center- yet her character is in two scenes in the whole movie, once for the length of a musical number and the other for literally the three seconds it took to say her line, and like John Carradine above, has less than 5 minutes total screen time.
  • In Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, you could be forgiven for thinking that Angelina Jolie's character was the main character, being the focus of basically every commercial and having a spot on the cover. Turns out that her character gets around 10 minutes of screentime.
  • The Hungarian movie Sacra Corona featured Franco Nero on the cover. He appears in the role of Gerard Sagredo in the opening scene, where he's promptly killed. He makes a second appearance as a ghost towards the end of the film.
  • Although Steven Seagal is featured prominently in the promotional material for the film Executive Decision, his character meets an untimely death barely a quarter of the way through the movie.
  • The American DVD for The Twins Effect (retitled Vampire Effect) places Jackie Chan prominently on the cover. His appearance only amounts to a cameo.
  • The White Witch, Big Bad of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has made a cameo in both Prince Caspian when her three worshipers tries to force Caspian to ressurect her and Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a form taken by the Mist of Evil movies, despite being completely absent from the respective books.
  • Advertising for The Avengers puts the spotlight on Iron Man, whose movies became the highest grossing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at the time.

Literature

  • Cthulhu, of all things. In the original works of Lovecraft, he appeared only once, in The Call of Cthulhu (not to be confused with the RPG based on his works), but has since come to be adopted as the symbol of Lovecraft, no doubt due to the work of Lovecraft's "protege", August Derleth, who did more than anyone else to help keep Lovecraft's writings in print after his death and also basically created the Cthulhu Mythos. Most of the core ideas that people today would describe as being part of the "Cthulhu Mythos" come not from Lovecraft at all, but Derleth's later imitative stories.
    • Same applies to all of the Old Ones, really. The only Lovecraftian god that actually plays a prominent role in more than a couple of stories is Nyarlahothep. Yog-Sothoth often has a fairly important role, but usually he's just invoked in spells, rather than making an actually appearance. Azathoth gets mentioned a lot too, but never actually appears in any of Lovecraft's stories.
      • Of course, since the world would END if Azathoth were to appear, there's a good reason to keep him from making a physical appearance in a story instead of verbal references.
    • Of course, none of this stopped Lovecraft from mentioning Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Azathoth and the Old Ones in general every chance he got, regardless of relevance to the story at hand. The moment someone mentions the Necronomicon, or starts muttering about other old books, or gives any sort of long expository speech, you have a fairly safe bet some of the big names will pop up.
  • Cross-promotion. Aside from the common example of "story in book by the author of popular book ", there's when older books get hijacked by adaptations into other media. One example this editor recalls was all of Arthur C. Clarke's books getting reissues whose covers depicted spaceships from the then-recent film 2001: A Space Odyssey... Including Tales From The White Hart, which didn't even HAVE spaceships.
  • Then there are things like "Tom Clancy's Op-Center," where Clancy's name is often the biggest thing on the cover even though he didn't actually write the series. He's credited as "creator," whatever that means.
    • This is a common publishing phenomenon wherein a bestselling author's name is placed prominently on the front cover in order to attract the sales that author normally generates, wherein his or her contribution may have been limited to an idea or an outline at most. Generally speaking, if a best-selling author's name appears on the cover in massive print followed by the name(s) of another author you've never even heard of in smaller letters, this trope's in play.
    • This is especially true for those suffering from Author Existence Failure; usually, whomever is finishing their work, or writing in the style of that person, gets their own name printed on the cover in a much smaller, less noticable typeface.
  • As noted below in Magazines, Rush Limbaugh is sometimes used for Wolverine Publicity, and Limbaugh claims it's no coincidence that Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations sold significantly more copies than Al Franken's other books.
  • Ever since Liquidon Ethereteel became a part of Stationery Voyagers (about two months in its initial inception after the series itself was first thought up back in 2000,) he has become the most-referenced Voyager in promotional materials for the series. Even the 2-minute "Crepuscular" animatic that was published to YouTube make an effort to throw him in at the last minute, whereas the other Voyagers don't get so much as one animated frame. In the series itself, he competes with Neone for the title of Spotlight-Stealing Squad also.
  • In the wake of Twilight, we're being inundated with reissued classic romances such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Romeo and Juliet—all featuring black covers with close-up pictures of something red (usually a rose) and a very familiar typeface. In the case of the relatively short Romeo and Juliet, the typeface has been blown up to a ridiculous point size to inflate the page count to more closely match the Twilight readin' experience. (Nothing wrong with the last one, though; no matter your reading level, it's always nice not to have to squint.)
    • Not to mention that there is a giant sticker on Wuthering Heights that says "EDWARD AND BELLA'S FAVORITE BOOK!"
  • Roger McBride Allen wrote three novels[1] that take place in the same Universe as Isaac Asimov's Robot series. Asimov's name is so large on the cover of these books that you could be forgiven for thinking he wrote them.

Live Action TV

  • This actually happened to live-action sitcoms on ABC, with Steve Urkel, at the height of his popularity, being crossed over onto almost every show in the TGIF lineup at one point or another.
    • He even had cameo appearances in shows on completely different networks. "Hey, what's Urkel doing on All That? ... for the third time?"
    • Later syndication advertisements of earlier episodes often were ONLY about his small scene unrelated to the actual plot of the episode.
  • ABC also milked the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to death, turning it from a mega-hit to Deader Than Disco almost overnight. It's still on, though most people hardly know that.
  • Castiel is starting to get this in Supernatural's sixth season, with most of his appearances cameos at best, and Cas mostly showing up once per episode to explain why he's too busy offscreen to help out this week. On top of that, Misha Collins is now receiving credits for episodes in which he doesn't even appear.
    • He also gets his own solo TV bumper (Dean and Sam had to share one) and is one of the only three cast members to be included in the official publicity photos despite appearing only about thirty minutes total in the entire sixth season so far.
    • Possibly justified, now, considering his large role in the 19th episode, Day in The Limelight in the 20th, and massive part in the 21st and 22nd.
    • Extends to Misha Collins himself - ever since he started appearing in the fourth season he's been doing as many, if not more, interviews as Jared and Jensen and appearing at just about every convention going.
    • Even after supposedly getting killed off (death doesn't always stick in the Supernatural world) he's still getting as much attention from fans and reviewers alike as the two main characters.
  • Blunt: The Fourth Man was a British TV movie from the '80s. The video was released in the late '90s or the 21st century. Anthony Hopkins's face featured prominently on the cover. When I watched it, I saw that Ian Richardson played the eponymous Blunt (not a drug reference), the main character, while Hopkins played someone else. But then Richardson never played a cannibal (or at least not Lecter).
  • Kamen Rider has been doing this to a point with Momotaros from Kamen Rider Den-O. If it's a Kamen Rider production, and Den-O is in it, you WILL at least hear his voice, even if other Riders don't even have a line (That being said, it should be noted that his voice actor Toshihiko Seki, being a voice actor, is indeed the most readily available of all the lead actors in the entire franchise when it comes to role reprisal.). The Den-O series itself counts as well, having more crossovers with other Riders and more spinoff movies than any other in the franchise.
    • Both of the movies for Kamen Rider Decade extend this. There is no real need for Momotaros to be on-screen, but they put him in anyway just because of his Wolverine Publicity.
      • Decade is at least consistent with this; each Rider has a Final Form related to their abilities that Decade can activate but due to the Demonic Possession that Den-O is known for, his Final Form is Momotaros himself. Diend can also summon former Riders, including Momotaros in one episode. Not to mention that the first of Decade's movies was the epilogue to the Den-O arc in the show and the second was a Reunion Show featuring every single main Kamen Rider in history...
      • Lampshaded in said second movie. The final line before the credits roll is Momo telling Tsukasa to stop pestering him because he's "super busy" (the Super Den-O Trilogy of films soon follwed.) Busy doing some Wolverine Publicity, we presume... oh wait, not just Wolverine Publicity: he's also a Wolverine Publicist!... and he even advertised for McDonald's! Choke on that, Wolverine.
      • Hey! It's not just that! He's got movies with his own True Companions coming out—and do you think all that food and coffee in the DenLiner dining car is free?
    • The franchise's 40th anniversary movie stars the original Kamen Rider, then-current Rider OOO... and Den-O. And Momotaros will be part of OOO's movie-exclusive powerup mode. At least they have the grace to justify Den-O's involvement by making it a Time Travel plot.
  • "Hey guys I heard this rumor that Libby/The Smoke Monster/Walt/Christian/Desmond is going to be in this episode! Oh look there they..." * blink* Lost.
  • The Sky 1 adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather went to DVD with David Jason (who had probably minutes of screen time, total) front and centre, making him look like the most important character in the story. However, his character was barely necessary and most of his minutes were padded, timewasting scenes to show off the big name star. He was also used in all their advertising and his name dropped constantly in all promo material.
  • If you look online, you'd be excused for thinking iCarly was actually iSam or even iSeddie and that the star is Jennette McCurdy and not Miranda Cosgrove.
  • Nick-At-Nite does this with The George Lopez Show, and it's still getting progressively worse. At first, they would look for any excuse they could find to air a George Lopez marathon. ("Hey, it's St. Patrick's Day! How can we celebrate Irish culture? George Lopez is Mexican - close enough!") Then they dropped the pretenses altogether and now air George Lopez marathons without even giving an excuse.
  • Currently happening with advertisements for Merry Christmas Drake and Josh on Nick, wich focus much more on iCarly stars Miranda Cosgrove and Jerry Trainor, despite their characters relatively minor roles in this show. Heck it won't even say the stars' names until the end, and that's because they're the title characters(and they have to say what show they're advertising).
  • Since 1985, Elmo from Sesame Street has been given more prominence than older characters on the show such as Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, much to the chagrin of long time fans.
  • Almost every CBS episode promo for How I Met Your Mother heavily features Barney Stinson, so if you didn't actually watch the show, you could be forgiven for thinking he's the main character. In the actual show, he gets lots and lots of entertaining subplots, being a legitimate Breakout Character, but is actually the focus of the A-plot only around 1/4 of the time. So that promo you just saw that dedicated 15 out of its 20 seconds to Barney pulling some crazy stunt? Chances are, said stunt takes up only around three minutes of the episode.
  • The Stargate franchise has a particular case of this with Samantha Carter, every episode where she appears she is heavily advertised regardless of screentime. A particular notorious episode was early in the first season of Atlantis where she was identified as "guest starring" in the commercials. In the episode, she had ONE WORD and 10 seconds of screen time.

Magazines

  • In 1995, Time Magazine ran a cover photo of a cigar-chomping Rush Limbaugh with the blurb, "Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America?" The article inside only tangentially dealt with Limbaugh and mainly concerned the rise of "electronic populism" that would result from people having more TV and radio choices and from consumers getting more of their news from the Internet.
    • This trope tended to involve Limbaugh a lot; a controversial, polarizing figure with 20 million daily listeners can attract a lot of attention even if he doesn't have much to do with the real guts of the project. That is until he called a female law student a whore in 2012 for her testimony on contraceptive mandates. And then his rating gradually fell down.
  • Barack Obama was EVERYWHERE in his prime years (around 2008), even before he was President.
  • Ron Paul. He hasn't won a thing yet in the 2012 Presidential race (and he didn't fare well in the 2008 Presidential race either) but he seems to be often praised as the future of American politics.
  • Cosmopolitan often promises BRAND NEW SEX SECRETS, but really just tells the reader the same stuff everybody knows. The worst cover example was, "Orgasm Guaranteed," while inside the magazine, it says there's no such thing.

Music

  • This is extremely common with hiphop artists, such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Akon, Lil Jon, and Lil Wayne, etc. It's even worse with producer-types like P. Diddy, Dr. Dre, and Timbaland, whose collaborations are better-known than their own songs. Likely because popular artists are used as crutches for newer artists, or older artists to help them sell to a very fickle hip-hop crowed with short attention spans. Interestingly enough this was somewhat rarer in The Nineties (Except maybe 2Pac), and The Eighties. This type of publicity causes A LOT of Hype Backlash and Internet Backdrafts.
    • To show how extreme this can get, in late 2007 T-Pain was in four top 10 singles at the same time.
  • The album "Wolverine Blues", by Death Metal band Entombed, actually featured Marvel's Wolverine on the cover of some early versions. This was done by the record company cutting a deal with Marvel without the knowledge of the band. Obviously, the album had nothing actual to do with Wolverine at all.
  • Slash.
  • Dave Grohl
  • Josh Homme
  • This review of a mediocre German recording of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, narrated by Loriot, notes that Loriot's name is "twice the size of Bernstein's name" on the cover and that he "is the only person whose picture is printed in this package. The same picture, six times."

Mythology

  • Medusa. Despite the fact that her only solid presence in the original myths is against Perseus, her woobieness in retrospect and being a stock Shout-Out means that if someone's doing anything remotely related to Greek Mythology, she's pretty much an obligatory presence even if claiming to be mythologically accurate yet making the setting during the time of The Argonauts as a reviewer noted in Rise Of The Argonauts that she's just there to be there. Granted she's not the only one in the myths, but she's a perennial favorite to use.
  • Hercules. Hercules, in some plays and stories, at some point, was in almost every major thing Greece ever did, including riding along with Jason and the Argonauts. He also apparently stopped off at every island and city-state he could find and had about 300 kids, all of whom are the ancestors of kings. He often makes cameos in stories where people go to the underworld, as well. Even accounts of the trojan war, which took place decades after Hercules' death, have one of his sons make a cameo appearance (and be killed by a son of Zeus despite his own divine heritage).

Professional Wrestling

  • John Morrison and the Miz most definitely. Not just because they appeared on all three WWE brands regularly, featured on most pay per views if only for a short segment and had their own internet talk show but also because the World tag team championships they wore were supposed to be exclusive to one show, Monday Night Raw. As ECW superstars they never should have gotten a title shot in the first place. Even worse, Smackdown's equivalent WWE tag team champions, Carlito and Primo, weren't even guaranteed to appear on their own show, then Miz and Morrison stole their girlfriends. It was nearly justified by ECW having kayfabe "talent sharing agreements" with both Smackdown and Raw, but it seemed that they were the only two wrestlers smart enough to take advantage of the agreement. And to be fair, fans really wanted to see them take a beating.
    • Carlito and Primo later defeated Miz and Morrison for the Unified Tag Team titles, belts that were supposed to crossover between different shows, and still weren't as overexposed as Miz and John Morrison were.
    • 1. The talent scene at the time was so pitifully dead compared to previous years that "rules" aren't going to get in the way of entertainment. 2. Miz and Morrison were heels, thus should be hated and 3. Carlito's growing issues with the company was counterproductive.
  • The Rock was originally billed as Rocky Maivia. He was publicized so much, that everyone got sick of him. Even Rocky Maivia hated Rocky Maivia.
  • Triple H, circa 2002-2005 (give or take). Led to Pat Patterson quitting after his suggesting using "less Triple H" to stop ratings from falling fell on deaf ears, and led to the Buh Buh Ray Dudley line "This is not the Triple H Show!"
    • Even in the time when he wasn't on the show, Spring 2010 to July 2011 (with the exception of the lead-up and actual PPV of Wrestlemania 27) he was still in the opening, toward the end, in one of the more prominent spots. When he was out with an injury in 2001, he was still mentioned pretty much constantly and they were running a sequence that showed his rehab pretty much every night.
  • John Cena from 2005 on has been in a main title bout at every Wrestlemania and has only lost twice.
    • Five years later, if you never watch wrestling, you would think John Cena is the only character because he is the only one in every promo commercial.
  • Even though WWE is currently divided into the Raw and Smackdown brands, pretty much the entire main event crew, including John Cena, Triple H, CM Punk, Randy Orton, Mark Henry, and others appear on both shows with alarming regularity.

Sports

  • Shaquille O'Neal anyone? Within his first four years in the NBA, Shaq released two rap albums, starred in two movies, had his own video game, and appeared in commercials endorsing Pepsi, Taco Bell and more. Years later, he would go on to do even more endorsements, get his own reality TV show, release a couple more albums, and make cameos in video games. Shaq has been everywhere, and this isn't even getting into his basketball career.
  • The Yankees and Red Sox at ESPN. Baseball Tonight should be renamed the Yankees and Red Sox show

Web Comics

  • For a while in the late 90s/early '00s, Max Blackrabbit's Zig Zag was like this in Furry Comics (especially those of a Fan Servicey bent); a member of the Sabrina Online cast from the strip's third year onward, she was also a supporting character in Badly Drawn Kitties (before the reboot) and had cameos and guest spots in at least a dozen other comics. Zig Zag isn't quite as popular in the fandom now as she was at the beginning of the '00s, so this sort of thing has been averted as of late.
  • Parodied by Schlock Mercenary in their transcript blurb—whenever the true transcript is not available, this message replaces it, trying to attract advertisers by using popular tags:

The transcript for today's comic has not yet been entered. Had it been entered, instead of seeing this message you would have seen the text of the strip, rendering this page searchable, and providing all kinds of yummy words for our advertisers to twig on, like "mercenary" and "iPod Warcraft xBox Playstation widescreen TV." And... Um... "Mercenary."

Web Original

  • That Guy With The Glasses has been so rife with Dr. Insano and Spooning With Spoony crossovers that Noah Antwiler says they've frequently left him ragged and that he worries his fans will tire of them. Thankfully, there's a good supply of Expy Insanos willing to pop out of The Multiverse at any time.
  • Many YouTubers use this tactic in order to get views, by labeling things that have nothing to do with their video, or using a gratuitous image of a hot woman, and misnaming their video.
    • Raocow does this in reverse - he sticks random tags that make sense in context on his videos. The Related videos section typically gets some comments on the video in question.
    • The Vlog Brothers tend to get more views from guys on videos where the picture giraffe sex on the preview, even though the giraffe sex is not typically actually in the video.
  • Linkara has appeared in other peoples' reviews on That Guy With The Glasses several times. Admittedly, these reviews are usually comic-book related, but he also usually appears with less well-known reviewers of the site like Marz Gurl and Film Brain.

Western Animation

Wolverine: Just you and me, huh HERBIE? Okay, let's see... (Pulls out a huge list) Reptil, X-23, Dr. Doom, Firestar. Ah, here we go! HERBIE, Wolverine team up #640.
HERBIE: bzzt Wolverine and the Easter Bunny?
Wolverine: Yeah, that was a hairy one.

  • During the early seasons of The Simpsons, Bart Simpson constantly took front and center in publicity materials, even if the upcoming episode focused on someone else. Some of the more gratuitous examples include TV Guide's advertisements for "Old Money" and "Lisa's Substitute".
    • As a whole, The Simpsons franchise is this for Fox. They will be included wherever Fox is trying to promote themselves and gain an audience.
    • On the audio commentary for the episode "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", then showrunners Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstien discuss FOX's marketing for the episode, which featured a picture in TV Guide of Bart taking a peek under a doll's skirt.
  • Each episode of The Marvel Action Hour consists of one story featuring the Fantastic Four and one featuring Iron Man, but Netflix lists streaming episodes of the show under, Iron Man: The Complete Animated Series.
  • Disney XD's updated opening of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes showcases Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, Incredible Hulk, and Captain America (comics), but not the half of the team that consists of superheroes who don't have movies released before 2012. Also, Nick Fury narrates, even though he doesn't have direct ties to the Avengers in the first season.
    • Plus Fury doesn't even show up in any of the episodes he narrates.
    • Another Egregious example involves a DVD titled, "Iron Man Unleashed". In actuality, three of the included episodes showcase other Avengers' Character Development, and the other three feature the heroes working together[2] to save the world from Kang the Conqueror. (Iron Man seems to have become The Smart Guy for most of that arc, except for a few times when he blasts Kang with his repulsors.)
    • Australia got a season 1 Blu-Ray with a case depicting all eight Avengers. However, it also shows Nick Fury and Black Widow standing alongside them. Black Widow only appears in six episodes of the first season, though she is rather important.
  • Speaking of Iron Man, for a while, we had him in no less than four series at once: Iron Man: Armored Adventures, The Superhero Squad Show, Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes, and Marvel Anime: Iron Man. Ol' shellhead gets around these days.
  • Should Bloom from Winx Club count? She has tons and tons of merchandise, and most of the damn franchise revolves around her to the point where it gets insanely annoying and turns some fans off the show. Gee, if the Trix or some of the lady villains are more popular, why continue using Bloom?!
    • Maybe because she's the main character?
  • Firefly from My Little Pony was on everything in the first Generation. Her only appearance in the cartoons was the pilot where she was the Spotlight-Stealing Squad and protagonist, but she appeared on the most merchandise for sure.
    • Pinkie Pie seems to appear on most of the promotional material for My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. Even moreso then Twilight Sparkle. Mostly because of her bubbly personality. And she's pink.
      • She was also quite popular in G3. She went from a cute background pony with a lisp to being the leader of the generation within a few years, appearing on most merchandise and even being on toothpaste (her G4 counterpart has replaced her on the toothpaste now).
    • Rainbow Dash, an Expy of Firefly, seems to be inheriting this trope from her as well. She's on most of the official t-shirts and was the center of the hype leading up to "Cutie Mark Chronicles", a popular episode expanding on the main cast's backstories. However, she did turn out to be vital to all of them.
    • A slight example but Cheerilee in G4. She was popular in late G3, being a Core 7 member, so Hasbro forced her into G4. She has a few stock artworks and several toys, despite not even being named in-series or talking for most of the first season. She's since popped up several times in the second season and even had an episode revolving around her.
  • Duck Dodgers: A Movie Within a Show example, actually. Though Duck Dodgers had the lead role in a movie, Bugs Bunny was announced as the star. It was lampshaded when Cadet explained to Dodgers that it was to attract a larger audience.
  • Looney Tunes: During the intro sequence of Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, they've called more attention to Bugs' presence than Daffy's.
  • Brian and Stewie are starting to become this for Family Guy: if a story has a B plot with these two and the main plot with somebody else, the promos will focus on the Brian and Stewie (sometimes only Stewie) plot. "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" and "Stew-roids" were the most Egregious examples.
  1. ↑ Caliban, Inferno, and Utopia
  2. ↑ except for Black Panther, who had to aid his subjects in Wakanda
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