History Main / GhostExtras

* In ''Series/{{Frasier}}'', the main characters frequently sit in the same coffee house ("Café Nervosa"), and Frasier and Niles especially seem to be visiting it almost daily for years, yet they never seem to be familiar with any of the other customers. Whenever a minor character is introduced by having a main character meet him/her at Nervosa, it's always someone they've never seen before. Apparently Frasier, Niles, Martin, Roz, and Daphne are the only regular customers Nervosa has. This is especially odd considering that Martin's regular pub, "[=McGinty=]'s", is depicted as a place [[IncrediblyLamePun where everybody knows your name]]. Admittedly there's a difference between a pub and a coffee house, but still.

* ''Comicbook/TheBeano'': The earliest "When The Bell Rings" strips from the fifties have a dozen of "generic" kids in blazers and a couple of distinctive ones like Danny and Toots. As more of the kids developed recognisable personalities and appearances, the generics became background characters. (By the time the strip was renamed "The Bash Street Kids" they'd disappeared completely, and Class 3B consisted entirely of the core cast.)

* Spirit Riding Free has 3 students in the schoolhouse and only Frank is named. He's an introvert but the other boy and girl has not said anything to any of the other students. Plus they are constantly reused for background scenes just appearing without context and even disappearing from the scene, plus having 2 different looks interchangeably wearing white shirts.

* This happens a lot on ''Series/WillAndGrace''. One of the character will do or say something really outlandish in front of (or to!) a bystander. Since the bystander is an extra, with no dialogue, they will just mutely react. Sometimes, they won't even react.

Sometimes a Ghost Extra will get promoted and become a proper character. This is a nice trick for the writers, because they don't have to explain where the new character came from; [[RememberTheNewGuy they can just say she was "there all along" but nobody previously talked to her on camera.]]

* Spirit Riding Free has 3 students in the schoolhouse and only Frank is named. He's an introvert but the other boy and girl has not said anything to any of the other students. Plus they are constantly reused for background scenes just appearing without context and even disappearing for! the scene, plus having 2 different looks wearing white shirts.

Sometimes a Ghost Extra will get promoted and become a proper character. This is a nice trick for the writers, because they don't have to explain where the new character came from; they can just say she was "there all along" but nobody previously talked to her on camera.

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* In ''ComicBook/NewXMen Vol. 2'', ''Academy X'' and ''New X-Men'', there are a number of 'extra' students seen walking in the halls that never speak with the cast or take any notice of any of the things going on in the school. They don't even appear on the squads every student was theoretically part of.

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* This happens throughout the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series, mainly in regards to how many students there are in Hogwarts. While there are plenty of them who are secondary characters, there are still plenty of mentions of random students milling around in the dormitories or Great Hall, who never interact with Harry.
** This would be TruthInTelevision for a typical GoodOldBritishComp of the sort that JK Rowling attended, where a student body of fifteen hundred isn't unusual and class sizes tend to be in the region of twenty-five to thirty; you couldn't possibly interact with more than a fraction of your own yeargroup, much less the whole school. It makes rather less sense when you consider that the population of the Wizarding World is supposed to be quite small; estimates vary, but most people estimate the Hogwarts student body at a couple of hundred at most. The fandom has wept blood trying to make sense of it all, and it's probably best to apply the MST3KMantra.

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* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' has an episode where Sheppard is told, loudly and over the radio so that everyone can hear it, that something important and dramatic has happened in the control room. He immediately jumps up and runs out of the room while all the extras just stand there.
* ''Series/{{Dexter}}'' features a large police station, but every case ends up being investigated by members of the regular cast - Doakes gets magically paired off with Batista when La Guerta isn't there to be his partner, even though there are presumably many more police officers available.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'' definitely has a good few of these. However, they also subvert/avert it, by making sure to give the extras more to do, and having at least one extra OptOut at the LineInTheSand. Generally, the extras also do at least react to stuff, including the rather nice scene where Lyta demonstrates her psychic powers.
** Joshua Cox, as Lt. Corwin, started as an extra, then got lines, then became a character. His Slavic C and C colleague was not so lucky.

-->'''Mr. Feeny:''' I regard all my students equally.
-->'''Shawn:''' You know we're your favorites.
-->'''Cory:''' Come on Feeny, you haven't even talked to another student for seven years.
** SequelSeries ''Series/GirlMeetsWorld'' continues this tradition in its first season (where it's much more noticeable because the four main students ''constantly'' speak up in class, often derailing Cory's lectures in the process), but surprisingly averts it in the second - in "Girl Meets the Secret of Life", a minor character named Yogi (an extra who appeared throughout the first season, but didn't have a single line) speaks up to make a point that [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality even though he isn't Cory's daughter, the events in his life have significance to him and aren't meaningless]]. Surprisingly, this isn't just a one-off gag - Yogi has had lines in subsequent episodes.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' has an awful lot of soldiers wandering around Stargate Command but never really interacting with the cast. Interestingly, most of these extras were in fact ''actual soldiers'': the US Air Force [[BackedByThePentagon approved quite strongly]] of the ''Stargate'' series and would frequently lend personnel to the show.

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