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1->''"Apparently, Ross was hoping to expand his inner circle. You know, probably scouting for friends to include in the background of party scenes. I mean, how else are you gonna explain, uh, them being able to invite all these people to parties and other events at the house? These people don't spend any other social time outside of each other, yet they still always have an invite list. I don't, I don't understand it."''
2-->-- '''Vee Infuso''', "[[https://youtu.be/lay6XrfDG1A?si=K24XcCL2HxgfSsNN All Friends Crossovers]]", on ''Series/{{Friends}}'''s crossover with ''Series/TheSingleGuy''
3
4When TV characters hold a birthday party or baby shower or a similar event, the party will be attended by [[LimitedSocialCircle four or five familiar characters]], as well as about twenty people who have never been seen before and will never be seen again. Since we see pretty much every aspect of the characters' lives, we can't help but wonder who these people are and [[NoodleIncident when the characters had time to meet them]], [[PlugNPlayFriends let alone befriend them]].
5
6Strangely, by the time of the relevant character's next birthday, they've completely changed around their extraneous circle of friends. Also, rarely will the main characters ever interact with these people at the party, unless it's just for a quick throwaway joke, so one must wonder why all these extras are even ''at'' this party to begin with.
7
8This is especially common in sitcoms. It is slightly more plausible in [[KidCom school sitcoms]], since said party people would usually be from the school the characters attend (though it doesn't explain the change-around when the next birthday comes...)
9
10Not to be confused with the movie ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople'', a {{biopic}} of Factory Records and the [[UsefulNotes/FootballPopMusicAndFlatCaps Manchester]] music scene in the 1980s/1990s, though both the trope and that movie are named after the Music/HappyMondays song.
11
12See also NewNeighboursAsThePlotDemands and SocialCircleFiller.
13
14----
15!!Examples:
16
17[[foldercontrol]]
18
19[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
20* In the infamous "So bad it's good film" ''Film/TheRoom2003'', the climax takes place at a birthday party Lisa throws for Johnny. The party is full of people that the audience has never seen before but the kicker is the character of [[RememberTheNewGuy Steven, who has never been introduced up until that point and somehow is involved enough in the plot to give counsel to the main characters.]] (The character was actually supposed to be Peter the therapist, who was introduced previously, but that actor had another gig. Wiseau, despite knowing this, did not finish filming the actor's scenes, and so had to go with another actor, hoping no one would notice.)
21* This is the case with Reed Richards's bachelor party, in ''Film/FantasticFourRiseOfTheSilverSurfer''. Justified since Johnny arranged everything.
22-->'''Reed:''' Johnny, I don't know who these people are!\
23'''Johnny:''' Oh yeah, I was going to invite your friends, but you don't have any.
24* Mostly played straight during the party in ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron''. While there's the usual group of unknowns, Dr Helen Cho, James Rhodes, Maria Hill, Sam Wilson, and a group of elderly World War II veterans are also present.
25[[/folder]]
26
27[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
28* ''Series/{{Friends}}'' is particularly guilty of this. We saw a ''lot'' of the six main cast members, and they pretty much exclusively hung out with each other and possibly whoever they were dating at the time. Virtually every party they held was attended by a very large cast of unknowns.
29** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when Rachel and Phoebe throw an engagement shower for Monica and invite everyone in her address book who could make it on 24 hours notice. During the party Phoebe looks around the room and realises she doesn't know who any of the guests are.
30--->'''Phoebe:''' Hey Rach, who the hell are all these people?\
31'''Rachel:''' I don't know. I called all the people in Monica's phone book and these are the only ones who could show up on 24 hours notice.\
32'''Phoebe:''' Y'know there's a word for people like that: ''Losers''.
33** Gunther usually was at their parties as well. Lampshaded when one of them is planning a party and says they have to invite Gunther since they've been talking about it loudly in the coffee shop.
34** Averted in "The One with the Fake Party", where Gunther is the ''only'' guest apart from the six friends and the two guests of honor.
35** In one episode Chandler invites Ross to his cousin's StagParty. When Ross asks why he's being invited to a party for a man he's never met Chandler explains that the cousin doesn't have any friends of his own.
36* Used by Reese in ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'' episode "Lois's Sister." Other episodes explain that Reese just invites random people to any party since he has no friends, being a {{Jerkass}}.
37* ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'':
38** Happens when Ted's 30th birthday party on the rooftop has dozens of guests. Also [[PlayedForLaughs hilariously]] [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in the first season when Ted throws a 3-day party just for the sake of hooking up with Robin again. Barney explains that, at any sufficiently large party, there will be someone there who you don't know and who doesn't know anybody you do know. To wit:
39--->'''Barney:''' Hi, have you met Ted?\
40'''Random Girl:''' No.\
41'''Barney:''' Do you know Marshall? Lily?\
42'''Random Girl:''' No.\
43'''Barney:''' Hmm. Do you know anyone at this party?\
44'''Random Girl:''' I work with Carlos.\
45'''Barney:''' Excuse me.\
46''[to Ted, Marshall and Lily]''\
47'''Barney:''' Anybody know a Carlos?\
48''[they shake their heads]''
49** And [[LampshadeHanging the lampshading]] and the hilarity continues when they meet at the following party:
50--->'''Random Girl:''' ''[behind Barney]'' Hello, Barney.\
51'''Barney:''' Of course...\
52'''Random Girl:''' You look well. Isn't it weird they invited both of us?\
53'''Barney:''' Who? Who invited you, no-one even knows who you are!\
54'''Random Girl:''' I understand, you're hurt, but... you don't have to be cruel. Carlos was right about you.\
55'''Barney:''' Who Is Carlos!?
56** [[BrickJoke They actually do end up meeting Carlos.]]
57** Also subverted for Lily's bridal shower. Robin is invited and expects to spend the evening with all of Lily's friends, only to find that she's the only friend there -- the rest are family.
58** Subverted again in a later episode where Robin repeatedly guilts Lily for forgetting to send the invitations to her bridal shower, finally Lily gets annoyed and reveals that she didn't forget to send the invitations, Robin simply doesn't have any friends.
59* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''Series/QueerAsFolkUS'''s first season, when Michael has a birthday party attended, apart from his close friends, by dozens of strangers. Brian explains that in order to have any kind of crowd he had to open up the invite list to his own past sex partners.
60* This happens a number of times in ''Series/{{House}}'', although in this case, it's more or less justified; it's a hospital drama, and therefore the show is 90% set in a work environment.
61** In one episode, Cuddy has a naming ceremony (Zeved habat) for her adopted baby, and Cameron, Chase and Wilson show up. Along with about 20 randoms no-one has seen before.
62** Chase's bachelor party was also attended by people nobody had seen before and never saw again.
63* [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] on ''Series/{{Roseanne}}''. When the family throws a party celebrating having won the lottery, it gets increasingly bigger to the point that Dan has no idea who he was just talking to. Obviously, the partygoers were strangers trying to be friendly to get a piece of the money.
64* ''Almost'' sent up in ''Series/PeepShow'', where Mark calls out three party crashers to, erm, a bunch of TwentyFourHourPartyPeople. So near, and yet so far. To be fair, there are a whole bunch of episodes where Mark and Jez mention friends they have who have never been shown on screen before -- the opening of the episode where Jeremy meets The Orgazoid at the pub is a particularly good example. One assumes that a large portion of the people here are those occasionally-mentioned characters making an appearance. Indeed, many of the characters that appear in the background of the parties are the same at each party, if one were to watch carefully.
65** Played straighter in the final episode for Jeremy's 40th birthday - outside of Super Hans, Joe, Megan and April the crowd at the party is entirely new. Mark points out that Jeremy has alienated almost everybody he's ever met up to that point and lost touch with the rest so it was hard finding anybody willing to come.
66* Occurs on ''Series/{{Amen}}''. Thelma is having her wedding shower at her house. The Hettabrink sisters and Inga are there, but then there are about 15 other women, supposedly Thelma's friends and fellow church members, that we have never seen before and never will again.
67* Happens in ''Series/{{Monk}}'' whenever the whole police department is gathered, remarkably at Monk's surprise birthday party.
68* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' had a bunch of random people on Leonard's birthday. Of course, we only see the party from ''a phone recording,'' as Penny was the one who organized it inviting a bunch of her friends and he missed his own surprise party (Howard's afternoon distracted ended up going to the ER). Penny has also thrown a few parties at her place, but the main characters actually usually don't attend because they have no interest in football. This also makes some sense because it wasn't until the third season that Penny really became OneOfTheGuys, beforehand she was more of a DropInCharacter with [[HardDrinkingPartyGirl a life of partying separate]] from them. But most of the time when they do have a party it is filled with a number of recurring characters like Barry Kripke, Leslie Winkle and Creator/WilWheaton.
69* ''Series/WillAndGrace'' also does this during Jack's birthday.
70* Invoked in the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "Dead Man's Party." The point of the episode was to have a big party, with a bunch of people at it that Buffy didn't know, in order to play up how uncomfortable it is for her to be back in Sunnydale after running away from home and coming back after several weeks. The original intent was to have a welcome back dinner with her friends and mother, which would have averted this trope entirely, but [[RuleOfDrama where's the drama in that]]? The same thing happens again in "Older and Far Away", only in the more traditional sense (and with Dawn as the focus).
71* Averted by ''Series/SavedByTheBell''. Pep rallies, parties, dances, and classes were populated by extras, but they [[RecurringExtra were usually the same extras]].
72* Happened at Scully's baby shower on ''Series/TheXFiles'', though since Scully has no female friends other than one seen in season one and she looks visibly awkward, it's plausible that they're a mix of co-workers and women her mother knows.
73* Played with on an episode of ''Series/GeneralHospital''. Carly's mother organizes a bridal shower for her. Although the women present are known to the viewers, they are virtual strangers to the bride-to-be, who has no friends thanks to her nasty personality. Adding insult to injury, they've brought gifts not for her, but for her infant son.
74* ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' may have been just as guilty of this as Friends. Anytime the girls hosted a birthday party, baby shower, wedding etc.; most of their guests were a bunch of random characters that were never seen before and would never be seen again for the rest of the series. Keep in mind that when these girls went out to parties, only the four of them attended together about 90% of the time. Their dates were there for the following 10%. Just how good ''were'' these friends they kept inviting?
75* Done a few times on ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}''. First with Piper's baby shower and later would be done for every birthday party Piper's children had. You could probably also count Prue's funeral and [[spoiler: the funeral Piper, Phoebe, and Paige had when they faked their deaths]].
76* Played with in an episode of ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir''. Will's friend Jazz is getting married with Phil performing the ceremony. Will comments on the number of guests who showed up and Phil says "Are you kidding? I hired these people. Jazz ain't got no friends!"
77* {{Justified|Trope}} in an episode of ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'': Drew plans to invite a few people from work over to his house to drink up the last of his homebrew beer. [[ArchNemesis Mimi]] pranks him by putting his flyer in the weekly Winfred-Louder newspaper stuffer, so he ends up with practically all of UsefulNotes/{{Cleveland}} in his house - including SpecialGuest Stars [[Music/{{Eagles}} Joe Walsh]], Music/LittleRichard, and Cleveland's then-mayor. [[note]]Also seen in the background is Grant Shaud, who would later play a character who dates Kate and claims he's the devil. Presumably it's the same character even though he never does anything in the party episode. Conversely, Walsh later plays a guitarist in Drew's band who is most definitely ''not'' Joe Walsh.[[/note]]
78* Lightly averted on ''Series/FreaksAndGeeks''. In the "Beers And Weirs" episode's house party, most of the people attending aren't directly friends with Lindsey, but we can assume enough word got around about it that several non-Freak/geek classmates decided to attend (anything for some free beer!). Also, there are quite a few side characters at the party (such as Mark, who would later be revealed as Nick's pot dealer).
79* A glaring example occurred in the second season of ''Series/{{Angel}}''. Three main characters are happy about some money coming in to Angel Investigations. Two of them have recently been exiled from their respective social circles and the other has little to no social life due to her CursedWithAwesome visions, yet somehow they throw a party at the office where TwentyFourHourPartyPeople are seen dancing and then never seen again.
80** A couple off the party-goers do show on at least one other occasion as Cordelia's friends and it was implied that she had a more active social life at the beginning of the series.
81* Played straight in ''Series/{{Casualty}}'', and it's also 24 Hour Nursing Staff -- except for Kath, Tasha, Hannah and Staff Nurse Waters, who do keep appearing.
82* In ''Series/BreakingBad'', Jesse once threw a ''massive'' party. He didn't care how much money he spent, who was there, what happened at it, how bad his house was trashed, so long as it never ended. As a result, we [[JustifiedTrope justifiably]] don't know many of the guests.
83* ''Series/{{Frasier}}'': Every time Frasier or Niles hold a party, plenty of people show up who the audience has never seen before, seemingly just to fill party space. These people often leave offended; one wonders how they keep meeting these folks! On the other hand, their social circle is frequently described as being composed of interchangeable, shallow, insincere socialites who will turn up to whatever gathering will make them look good.
84* ''Series/SchittsCreek'' does this on a few occasions:
85** Mutt's party at the barn is filled with people we've never seen before, and that's where David meets Jake. Stevie, however, seems to have met Jake before.
86** Patrick's housewarming party has a lot of people mulling about that we've never seen before.
87** Patrick's birthday party also has quite a few guests we've never seen before.
88[[/folder]]
89
90[[folder:Web Original]]
91* Parodied in ''WebComic/LeastICouldDo'' with Issa's bachelorette party. A bunch of random party women show up and greet her like old friends before it's revealed that [[http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20151118/ she has no clue who they are.]] Rayne just got them to turn up to get things moving until [[http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20151120/ her actual friends could get there.]]
92* Happens in the ''WebVideo/KateModern'' episodes "Charlie's Party" and "Raise the Roof."
93* {{Discussed}} in WebVideo/ObscurusLupa's review of ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'''s eighth season, when the sisters have [[FakingTheDead faked their deaths]] and Victor is hosting their wake:
94-->"Things start off swimmingly, [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing because the Charmed Ones are dead]], but it quickly goes downhill. First of all, who are all of these people mourning them? [[JerkSue Surely they had no friends]]? Must be all those 'Ask Phoebe' fans they keep trying to convince us exist."
95* ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' complained about "Party Strangers" in their "[[https://www.cracked.com/image-pictofact-9251-20-awful-sitcom-tropes-we-would-barely-forgive-in-seinfeld 20 Awful Sitcom Tropes We Would Barely Forgive In Seinfeld]]".
96[[/folder]]
97
98[[folder:Western Animation]]
99* A notable exception is ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', which has so many characters now that any gathering will consist entirely of people who were featured in at least one past episode (although it may be completely ludicrous for them to attend the gathering in question). In fact, ''The Simpsons'' has random extras instead of FacelessMasses. It's not that unusual for an animated show to have its party people to be the same at every party. After all, you only need to draw these characters, and they don't necessarily have to have any lines. In a regular, non-animated sitcom, you would either have to hire the same group of extras for every party, or only use crew members and friends of crew members as background talent. Parodied in the episode "How I Wet Your Mother", when Homer throws an apology party after angering all his coworkers. At the table with Lenny and Carl, a female extra notes this is the best apology party Homer has ever thrown. Lenny, still smiling, casually asks "Who the hell are you?"
100* LampshadeHanging occurs in the ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' episode "The Big Answer." Two random background characters show up as guests at Filburt's bachelor party. When Filburt asks who they are, Rocko realizes he doesn't know either.
101* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Beetlejuice}}'' cartoon, the Neitherworld literally sells these. In cans. Needless to say, when Beetlejuice buys some, it does not end well.
102** As well as stand-alone party animals.
103* The extras on ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' turn into this whenever a party happens, though most of those parties are organized by [[LifeOfTheParty Pinkie Pie]], who claims to know everyone in town and probably does. If anything, the birthday party she throws for her pet alligator stands out for having such a small guest list. Less justified is Diamond Tiara's cuteceaƱera, where we clearly see a few adults arriving not accompanied by a minor, including Twilight Sparkle, one of the show's main characters. (Then again, Pinkie Pie had been hired to organize the party, and [[CloudCuckoolander knowing her]], might have thought it okay to add to the guest list.)
104* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Care Bears|1980s}}'' episode "Care Bear Town Parade", everyone is in the parade, so who is in the audience? The parade-watchers are extra bears who exist only in this one episode. They all look like clones of Tenderheart [[PaletteSwap in different colors]], though this is not obvious unless one pauses the video.
105* It's used a few times in ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' when the title character throws parties, and it's justified in-universe by showing that he'll let pretty much anyone in (it's how he met his best friend Todd). In one episode where he'd alienated all of his friends it was explicitly stated that he didn't actually know anyone at his own party. It's averted when his frenemy Mr. Peanutbutter throws a party; the guests are usually all recurrers or minor characters we've seen before. When someone is new there's always an explanation as to how he knows them, and he keeps track of and will invite anyone he has ever met, up to and including some guy he met at a gas station.
106* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', in one episode the titular character is saying goodbye to his leaving party guests and he starts out listing a large number of the extended cast. He then simply says "Bye, the rest" and a large group of extras all run out at once.
107* ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow'': Parodied in the B-plot for "Bobcats on Three!", where Bugs becomes addicted to Porky's butter-filled catering. His actual friends become tired of all the parties ''and'' are concerned for their health, so Bugs begins paying random strangers to come just so he can continue eating the food.
108-->'''Porky:''' Uh, who are all these people?\
109'''Bugs:''' Oh, uh... these are just some of my dear friends. Uh...\
110'''Stranger:''' Don.\
111'''Bugs:''' Don, of course. Don and I go way back.\
112'''Porky:''' (to Don) How do you know each other?\
113'''Don:''' We don't. He paid me $5 to come here.\
114(Porky gets annoyed at Bugs)\
115'''Bugs:''' (laughs) Good one, Dan.\
116'''Don:''' It's ''Don.''
117[[/folder]]

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