Advertised Extra / Live-Action TV

• In season 5 of 24, Carlos Bernard was promoted back to the main cast as Tony Almedia after spending the previous season as a recurring character and appeared heavily in promotional materials. Tony then spent most of the first half of the season off screen in a coma, then when it reached the halfway point he was seemingly killed off for the remainder of the season. He was in a quarter of that season's episodes in total, compared to the rest of the cast who all appeared in at least half of the season if not more. In season 6 Regina King joined the main cast as Sandra Palmer, even getting the And Starring credit for that year, yet she was only in a handful of episodes. In fact, she actually is notable for having the least amount of appearances total out of every actor or actress to ever be a main cast member on the show.
• In Babylon 5, Robert Rusler, who appears as Warren Keffer in 6 out of 22 episodes in Season 2 but is in the main credits for the entire season. A case of Executive Meddling, since the network wanted J. Michael Straczynski to introduce a "hotshot Top Gun kind of pilot." The commentaries reveal that JMS hates this kind of character, and as soon as the network stopped giving him notes, he offed the character as soon as he possibly could.
• Band of Brothers includes Simon Pegg in the opening credits of the first two episodes. He's in the background for a couple of scenes in the first episode and has just one line. He's killed off in the first five minutes of the second.
• In Better Call Saul, Michael Mando is credited in all ten episodes of the first season, but his character Nacho Varga only appears in four of these episodes, and often only for just a scene or two. His role is greatly expanded for season 2.
• The Bewitched season one DVD features Paul Lynde on the label for its third disc. While fans would recognize Lynde as Samantha's Uncle Arthur, the actor actually only appears in one episode from the first season — "Driving is the Only Way to Fly"—as an entirely different character.
• Billy the Exterminator: Mary left the company in S1 E13, yet remains in the Introductory Opening Credits through Season 5.
• The third season DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer heavily feature images of Spike as much as the other post-season one cases do, and he even appears on the label of one of the discs. He also appears in only one episode of the entire season.
• Despite being a regular, Robby spends the first few episodes of Cobra Kai not doing anything significant. It's not until about halfway through the first season when he starts training with Daniel that he does anything important.
• Control Z: Valeria and Regina are featured in the final credits alongside the other main characters, but serve more as extras rather than pivotal characters whatsoever.
• Due to having a large cast of characters, this is common on Degrassi: The Next Generation; in a given season, some characters will have lengthy story lines, while other become almost completely Out of Focus, sometimes appearing in just a few episodes. Characters this has happened to include Toby, who, though prominent in the first few seasons, quickly became The Artifact as the cast expanded, and Leia, who had two centric B-plots after she was introduced, then promptly disappeared.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Visitation": John Savident as the Squire was promoted as the story's main guest star. He's actually a Teaser-Only Character who gets murdered along with his family in the first scene, without even meeting any of the regular cast.
  • In general, The '80s producer John Nathan-Turner's controversial guest-star policy sometimes resulted in high-profile names cast in incidental roles. One intended case of this, ultimately averted, involved photographer Koo Stark (famous at the time for having had sex with Prince Andrew) playing of the matriarchal aliens in "Attack of the Cybermen", which JNT intended to milk for the notoriety value. Stark pulled out, however, and the role was played by an ex-children's television presenter instead.
    • After the character of Adric, played by Matthew Waterhouse, was memorably Killed Off for Real in "Earthshock", Turner brought Waterhouse back in the next story for a thankless fifteen second cameo as a hallucination solely for the purpose of including Waterhouse's name in the TV listing to trick viewers into thinking that the Doctor had somehow saved Adric so they would tune in for the next episode. Waterhouse's utter lack of enthusiasm for the part is plainly evident on screen.
    • Averted with "Revelation of the Daleks": Through a friend, Laurence Olivier had expressed an interest in playing a role in Doctor Who, provided it was on film. As JNT was abandoning film after this story owing to harrowing problems with the filmed portions of "The Two Doctors", what Olivier was offered was the last film role available, a minor alien extra in "Revelation". Olivier declined.
  • "Let's Kill Hitler": Hitler. Despite being the title character and featured in the trailers, he has about five minutes of screen time before he is punched out by Rory and stuffed in the cupboard, where he is forgotten for the rest of the episode.
  • "Mummy on the Orient Express": Pop singer Foxes was promoted as one of the episode's main guest stars along with Frank Skinner. She appears briefly as a torch singer on the train doing a version of "Don't Stop Me Now", and was probably a computer program in-universe anyway.
  • "Spyfall": Stephen Fry as "C" was promoted as one of the main guest characters. He is assassinated not more than 15 minutes into Part 1 after only a few scenes. Given that the actual most important guest star in the story, who was not announced at all, is playing a Walking Spoiler of gargantuan proportions...
• Tom Wopat and John Schneider famously held out during the fifth season of The Dukes of Hazzard and were replaced by Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer playing their heretofore unmentioned cousins Coy and Vance Duke. After Wopat, Schneider and the studio agreed to terms, Bo and Luke returned. Even though Coy and Vance left 15 minutes into Bo and Luke's first episode back and were never seen nor referred to again, Cherry and Mayer were still shown in the opening credits the rest of the season.
• In the early seasons of Frasier, Dan Butler, who played Bulldog Briscoe. The character was very cut off from the "real" main cast of Frasier, Niles, Daphne, Roz and Martin, was a fairly two-dimensional coworker at KACL who only ever appeared as comic relief or a foil for Frasier or Roz, and had neither any specific importance to the show that would justify billing him along with the main cast, nor any deep connection to the rest of the billed characters. He was eventually dropped from the opening titles, appearing as a guest star in the end credits in the episodes he appeared instead. It's pretty jarring to see the character squeezed into promotional images and covers along with the five "real" leads, when Eddie the dog was more of a main character than he was. This was due to the original premise being that the series would focus on both sides of Frasier's life - work and home. They wanted characters from both sides to feature, and that's why Bulldog was in there along with Roz (because originally Roz wasn't supposed to become such close friends with Frasier). Obviously the dynamic changed and that's when they left him out of the photos.
• Grey Damon as Hastings Ruckle in Season 5 of Friday Night Lights. Although billed as a main cast member, he gets fewer scenes than, for example, Dallas Tinker, who is listed as a guest star.
• The rules governing who will and who will not receive billing in the opening credits for Game of Thrones seem increasingly arbitrary. Episode count and even amount of face time you receive per episode is apparently not a factor in whether or not you are billed in the opening credits as a regular or in the closing credits as a guest star. It is not uncommon for regular-billed actors to receive less screen time or appear in fewer episodes than non-regulars. Several of the actors billed as regulars are little more than semi-frequent guest stars, to wit:
  • In the first season, Conleth Hill appears in 6 episodes as Varys, but is billed as a guest star. He gets opening credits billing in every subsequent season, despite his appearances becoming less frequent. For that matter, Aiden Gillan's appearances have decreased each season, but he was credited as a regular from his first appearance onward.
  • Rory McCann's main role in seasons 1 and 2 is to stand around looking threatening, while uttering maybe one or two lines per episode. He is billed as a regular for both. He gets more screen time and character development beginning in the third season, though, and his development really took off in the fourth.
  • James Cosmo appears in five episodes in the first season, three in the second and four in the third. Guess which season only credits him as a guest star?
  • Nearly all the Dragonstone crew, actors Stephen Dillane, Liam Cunningham and Carice van Houten, seem to appear very infrequently compared to nearly all the others. Ms. van Houten appeared only four times in the second season, while Cunningham appeared in 6. While van Houten's appearances increased in the third season's, Cunningham's decreased. They hardly appeared at all in the fourth season. They have all been billed as regulars from their first appearance.
  • Hannah Murray (Gilly) was added to the opening credits in Season Four, despite appearing in only three episodes; only half the amount of appearances she had in Season Three.
  • Harry Lloyd appeared in five episodes. Credited as a regular for all of them.
  • The series mostly copes with this problem by changing its opening titles for each episode, depending on who's actually in the episode. Most prominently, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau appears in only a few episodes during the second season, but when he does, he's always the third billed behind Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey. This was already the case, though less noticeable, in the first season, since all the regulars from the first season, barring Mark Addy and Harry Lloyd, appear in at least eight of the ten episodes.
  • Played about as straight as possible in "First of His Name". Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) doesn't appear, so Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gets top billing, despite his only role in the episode being standing silently watching Tommen's coronation.
• From Glee:
  • Tina, much of the time, is usually lucky to get two lines an episode. In the whole first season she had exactly one song to herself. In-universe, this is explained by her crippling anxiety that she initially masks with a fake stutter.
  • Jessalyn Gilsig is credited as a regular for the first 2 seasons but Terri stops appearing regularly after the first 13 episodes only having a few scattered appearances afterwards. In season 2 she only appeared in roughly 6 episodes.
• The Mother herself from How I Met Your Mother. She's in the fricking title and finally appears for real in the eighth season finale and her story is finally told throughout the final season. Her actress, Cristin Milioti, is billed as a regular cast member, but only appears in only half the episodes. This is apparently due to a rule by the showrunners that she is to only appear in episodes they personally wrote.
• iCarly:
  • The advertisements for the episode "iFind Spencer Friends" hyped up Emma Stone as a guest star. When the actual episode aired however, we find out that she only appeared near the end of the episode, has about 30 seconds of screentime, and plays absolutely no role to the main plot.
  • The crossover with Victorious, "iParty with Victorious", heavily bills the entire cast from both shows meeting each other; out of all the members, Ariana Grande (Cat) doesn't really speak that much throughout the whole special, having only three spoken lines total before the Big Finale Crowd Song, and most of her dialogue comes from the speaker headband she wears throughout, due to suffering a vocal chord injection in-story.
• One of Jim Carrey's first roles was in the 1981 television special Introducing... Janet, where he gets second billing and his character doesn't appear until after at least 15 minutes. That special was released on video in 1995, shortly after he'd become a big star, and the packaging makes it look like he is the star of the special, being the main focus of all video covers, the only actor whose name appears on the cover (despite getting second billing), the video description talks about him more than the main character Janet, and when released on video the special was retitled Rubberface.
• Kamen Rider Gaim: With the press that Gridon got in the beginning, being the unofficial fifth member of the show's cast and his identity kept a secret until his debut, most people were convinced that Gridon would be a major player. As it turns out, he only appeared in a third of the episodes and only became a main character during the last quarter of the show. This is because the Gridon suit was one of the first suits to be finished before filming began.
• Lois & Clark: Tracy Scoggins as Kat Grant, a society page reporter in the first season. Given little to do, dropped after the first season.
• LazyTown: Downplayed. Sportacus is usually shown in the front and center of any promotional material, but Stephanie is the main focus with many episodes putting Sportacus Out of Focus only having him show up in the end to save everybody.
• Characters on Lost are invariably either some of the most dynamic and developed characters on TV, or completely wasted. Daniel Faraday, an important character in season 4, disappears for most of season 5, and dies immediately upon re-appearing. Caesar was hinted as being mysteriously integral to the plot before Season 5 but he dies less then halfway through the season. Then he gets replaced by the equally mysterious "Bram" in a sense, who dies in the first episode of Season 6.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Daredevil (2015): Claire Temple during the first two seasons. She only appears in five out of 13 episodes in the first season, and she doesn't have any big impact on the plot after Matt saves her from the Russians. In the second season, she only has three episodes: an early episode where Foggy approaches her seeking help scouring the hospitals for Matt after he's captured by Frank, and later being asked by Matt and Brett to shelter kids they've rescued from the Hand (and later quitting when the Hand attack, and the hospital covers up the event). In between the two Daredevil seasons, she also got an extended cameo in the season 1 finale of Jessica Jones (2015). It wouldn't be until Luke Cage (2016) that Claire finally began to take on a more prominent role, functioning as Luke's sidekick for the second half of season 1.
  • Iron Fist (2017):
    • Ramon Rodriguez gets main credits billing, yet Bakuto has fewer episodes across Iron Fist and The Defenders than Madame Gao, who is considered a Fake Guest Star.
    • Sacha Dhawan, who plays Davos, gets main credits billing even though he's only in the last five episodes of the season. Justified, since he returned to be the main antagonist of the second season.
  • The Defenders (2017): Due to the time constraints of eight episodes, juggling four leads AND a very large supporting cast, the supporting cast kinda get pushed to the wayside and save for Claire, Misty, and Colleen, have about maybe 12 to 15 minutes screentime max. Additionally, regardless of how much screentime they get, the supporting cast in question all get title credits billing depending on if they were billed in the title credits of whatever solo show or shows they originated in.
  • The Punisher (2017): Karen Page's appearances in the first season falls into the same trap that Rosario Dawson fell into during Daredevil season 1: Deborah Ann Woll was pushed front and center during the promotional work, when in the finished show, her role is that of a special guest star and only appears in 4 of the 13 episodes, and doesn't contribute much to the main plot beyond helping Frank find Micro's family, and later being part of the resolution to the B-plot when he has to save her life from Lewis Wilson. Meanwhile, Amber Rose Revah (Dinah Madani), the actual female lead of the show, was practically ignored. The marketing team for The Punisher team was widely suspect by many to be trying to draw in "Kastle" shippers and viewers from Daredevil, where Frank had originated, and Karen was the character who had the most screentime with him. In fact, Karen's inclusion wasn't a part of Steve Lightfoot's story plan at all to start, until he decided to find a place for her after watching her scenes with Frank in Daredevil season 2, which would explain why her scenes feel disconnected from the rest of the narrative.
  • Loki: President Loki was prominently featured in many marketing materials for the series, often in a way which implied that he is the same character as the Loki which serves as the show's protagonist. In the final show, he appears for about two minutes in a single episode.
• In Merlin Katie McGrath who plays Morgana has been in the main credits since day one, but numerous episodes (especially early on) feature Morgana doing very little beyond looking beautiful in the background. Sometimes this even extends to periods of the show when her character is playing a vitally important role (such as early Series 4) but still often results in very limited screentime.
• King Sphinx in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Despite only being in one episode of the entire series, he was nevertheless all over the merchandise for the first season of the show, from the action figures to the trading cards to the coloring books. He easily eclipsed Finster and Scorpina (who were main villains) in terms of exposure, and if one weren't super familiar with the show, it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to assume he was one of the main cast.
• Gregory Itzin was a series regular on the short-lived Mob City, but only appeared in four of the show's six episodes, and only had a speaking part in three of them.
• Various promotional images for Muppets Tonight prominently feature Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal, as if they are main characters, but due to Frank Oz's directing career, their presence on the show (especially Fozzie's) wasn't as big as it was on The Muppet Show. Various promotional images for The Jim Henson Hour prominently feature Zondra and Ubu, who only appeared in two episodes.
• The Office (US): Ryan has been part of the opening credits since the first season despite being an ultimately minor character with shifts in role and personality to justify his place there. His inclusion in the opening credits was sometimes questioned in later seasons, as he's now considered to be even less significant than other characters whose actors are not mentioned in the opening credit. He has been removed from the opening in season 9, but only because his actor BJ Novak has left the show rather than acknowledging that Ryan's role had diminished.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Michael Raymond-James' character Neal Cassidy aka Baelfire was written out of the series midway through season 3, but was still credited as a regular for the rest of it, even though he only made a few brief appearances in flashbacks for the remainder of the season.
  • The show really hyped up Frances O'Connor being cast as Belle's mother for Season 4. She appears in one episode and only in the first five minutes.
  • Alexandra Metz's casting as Rapunzel got a surprising amount of attention - for the Race Lift they gave the classic blonde, and the popularity of Tangled. She appears in a supporting role in just one episode.
  • Season 5 heavily advertised that Lancelot, Ruby and Mulan were returning. Lancelot returns, has one episode in which he plays a decent role, and is Demoted to Extra with his story unresolved. Ruby and Mulan have just one episode.
  • Subverted with the 100th episode. Cruella was advertised as returning, and only the outside of her car is shown in the episode itself. However she appears in subsequent episodes as part of a story arc.
• Police Squad! had this as a Credits Gag. The opening prominently credits "Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln!" who never appears in the show itself. And then the episodes introduce a "Special Guest Star" who is promptly killed off in the credits and never appears in the show or is even part of the plot.
• In Power Rangers Samurai, one of the selling points was the return of Bulk, now training Spike, the son of his former sidekick Skull. Unlike the early days of the franchise, Bulk and Spike only very rarely interact with the Rangers, almost never have any significance to the plot, and there are quite a few episodes that don't even include them at all. One scene where they do sort of interact with the Rangers outside an ice cream shot, they are shot entirely from behind, which only highlights how the majority of their scenes were shot completely separate from the main show.
• Riverdale has Josie McCoy and Kevin Keller listed as main cast members, and they appear in its buffer promos for The CW. But by the second season both of them appeared with decreasing frequency and in the third they are both little more than extras and either do not appear in episodes at all or, if they do, may not actually be part of the plot or even have any lines.
• After not being included in the first two seasons of the show, the appearance of Tuck in the BBC's Robin Hood was loudly heralded amongst the advertisers for season three, and interviews with actor David Harewood mentioned a "dark back-story" for the character. Tuck gets one character-centric episode (which is just pointless filler), and is then a tag-along member of the gang from then on.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • Tim Meadows had one of the longest tenures but rarely was onstage. It even became a Running Gag in the backstage sketches. "Are you still on the show?"
  • Starting with Dennis Miller in The '80s it's been traditional for a Weekend Update anchor to only appear in other sketches sparingly despite being credited as a full cast member. Norm Macdonald, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler and Cecily Strong did appear prominently in sketches, as did Michael Che once Jay Pharaoh left the show, but with the exception of MacDonald, all of them were co-anchors. Their anchoring partners (Tina Fey, Seth Meyers and Colin Jost) rarely if ever appeared in sketches. Seth Meyers did appear in sketches prior to taking the anchor job.
• Scream Queens (2015) heavily hyped up Ariana Grande appearing as Chanel #2. She's killed off in the pilot. In this case, she was meant to be in around nine episodes - but due to scheduling conflicts with her tour, she had to have her role cut down. To a similar extent, Charisma Carpenter (who played Grande's mother) was advertised as appearing on the show. She has just two brief scenes in one episode. Nick Jonas likewise was hyped up as being as prominent at Glenn Powell's Chad and Diego Boneta's Pete. He doesn't even appear in half as many episodes as they do.
• In the late 80s and early 90s, a series of Sesame Street videos based on the Israeli co-production Rechov Sumsum called Shalom Sesame, focusing on being a travelogue for Israel. Many of the video boxes for the individual shows released in the 90s show American Sesame Muppets front and center despite the fact that the Muppet on the box only appears in one partially dubbed segment in the show. An example is the Chanukah episode; the video box shows The Count and Elmo - they only appear near the very end during a dubbed "Do De Rubber Duck," where Elmo doesn't even have a line.
  • Many Sesame Street video covers prominently feature a character who is only in one segment (and often not in the linking footage) in the video. Even accounting for that, in some cases it is unusual. Grover is the only Muppet featured on the cover of I'm Glad I'm Me but is not the featured character in any segments, only appearing in two sketches (one where he's part of the ensemble and one where he makes a silent background appearance), and Cookie Monster is on the cover of Sing Yourself Sillier at the Movies but only briefly appears in one of the segments.
• Smallville:
  • Johnathan Schneider's character was killed off 12 episodes in the 5th season and only appeared in two episodes afterwards in that season but continued to be credited as a main cast member for the entire season. Another example is Erica Durance who played Lois Lane. In the first season she appeared in she was only ever billed as a Special Guest Star for the 13 episodes she appeared in. She is also the only character to appear on posters and the DVD box other than Clark himself. When she got a Promotion to Opening Titles the following season she still only appeared in 13 of the 22 episodes, and it wasn't until around the penultimate season that she finally appeared in the majority of a season.
  • Darkseid has the worst case. [[spoiler:In a poster of season nine he is the only character depicted other than Clark. He does not appear at all.
• Soap: All cast members are credited only in episodes where they actually appear. But since (a) the cast list in the closing credits is done alphabetically, (b) Jimmy Baio as Billy Tate rarely has anything to do even in episodes where he appears, and (c) Credits Pushback, he's sometimes the only cast member credited even if all he did was stand around in a family crowd scene or something. Even when the credits aren't truncated he's still always listed first in episodes he appears in.
• From the Star Trek franchise:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: Yeoman Janice Rand was featured heavily in early promotional material alongside Kirk. In fact, she received more focus in the marketing than Spock, and was intended to have a major role as Kirk's recurring love interest. Grace Lee Whitney also contributed to the development of the tricorder and the short skirt worn by female crew. However Rand ultimately only appeared in the first half of season 1 due to Whitney's dismissal.^note With explanations ranging from not wanting Kirk to have a serious girlfriend, Whitney spurning the advances of (or fending off an outright assault by) a Paramount exec, to substance abuse problems making her difficult to work with.
  • Travis Mayweather on Enterprise. He was the pilot (when Captain Archer was also a pilot, and perfectly able to take over for Travis when needed) and had previous extensive experience in space (which was less and less of an issue as the show progressed).
    • To a lesser extent, Hoshi Sato from Enterprise also qualifies. She was the linguist and communications officer. Most of her work is not particularly interesting, so while she does get some scenes doing her actual job, she's more often treated as an office intern doing whatever odd jobs need doing. Since the show suffers from severe The Main Characters Do Everything, this means she'll do things she is grossly unqualified for, such as manning the transporter (which 200 years later in Star Trek: The Next Generation was manned at all times by specialist staff).
  • Harry Kim on Voyager applies as well, as with the exception of a few episodes that were specifically about him, he usually gets the obligatory one line.
  • Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Despite being credited as a main character for the show's entire run, the Son of the Emissary appeared in less than half of the show's episodes. Not as strong a case as Mayweather and Kim, as Jake was a well-developed character who saw a lot of development during the series. That his actor was a teenager for much of the show provides a reason for his relatively small number of appearances, since he was simply unable to shoot as much as the adults.
    • Jake was also never intended to be a full cast member either: his purpose, when the show was created, was to provide fodder for Sisko, as the original idea for the show was "a father tries to raise his son on the frontier." (In fact, according to the original series bible, Jake was listed as a recurring character instead of a major one.)
    • Becomes more blatant in Season 7, since not only is Jake Out of Focus for much of the season, but the show's heavy usage of the same recurring characters means that several supposedly non-main characters (particularly Garak and Nog) significantly eclipse Jake in both screen time and plot relevance.
  • Jett Reno of Star Trek: Discovery was prominently featured in Season 2 trailers. She was a principal character in two episodes, but then disappeared for a large chunk of the season before showing up again in a couple of scenes for episode 12. (Tig Notaro has explained that she's not able to appear as much due to being a cancer survivor, with immune compromise making it risky to travel and work during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
  • Star Trek: Picard: Picard's pet dog, Number One, was prominently featured in pre-release publicity, but ended up only appearing in the first episode. Apparently the dog actor was difficult to work with.
• Misha Collins is credited as a main cast member for all the season five and six episodes of Supernatural he appears in, including the ones where, in his own words, he "turns up, gives a piece of sage advice and disappears."
• The trailers for season 2 Titans featured Aqualad, with some of the marketing making it seem like he'd be joining the team as a major character. In reality, he turns out to be a Posthumous Character who'd already been killed off five years prior to the start of the show, and the only episode he actually appears in is a flashback detailing the events leading up to his death.
• Suzie in Torchwood, sort of. She was listed in the opening credits of the first episode, and released beside the rest of the cast as a major character. Suzie was a member of Torchwood at the start of the first episode, and quite important to the first episode. She's the villain of the episode, and ends up dying by the end of it.
• Total Divas Season 3 hyped up the new additions to the cast in Paige and Alicia Fox. Paige was prominently featured, but Alicia appeared entirely in a supporting role. She didn't get an episode in which she did anything of note until the fourth season.
• Kevin Conroy was a member of the main cast for the first season of Tour of Duty, but the writers could never figure out how to properly integrate him into the storylines, as his character was a commander who normally stayed on base. Stuck in Hawaii with nothing to do for most of the working week, he set up a small stand on the beach and sold sketch portraits to tourists out of boredom. His character was dramatically killed off before the end of the season.
• Jenna in the second season of The Vampire Diaries, really doesn't do anything of note despite being a main character. Also Tyler in the first season, who's sole purpose seemed to be getting in fights with people.
• In Veronica Mars, Teddy Dunn's character Duncan Kane was written out midway through the second season, but continued to get credited in the show's opening for that year. This notably did help hide his surprise return in the season finale where the paid an assassin to kill Aaron Echolls.
• Simon Reynolds as Daniel Dickinson in the first season of Warehouse 13. A particularly egregious case in that several of the "guest stars" appeared quite a lot more than he did in that span. A case can also be made for Leena (Genelle Williams) who was 'credits only' in four of the twelve first season episodes, and, generally, until her key role in the final story arc, merely puttering doing something intuitive, and not really essential to the 'A' or often even 'B' storyline. Of the thirty-eight episodes of the first three seasons, she was only in the credits for twelve, despite technically being main cast.
• The Wire didn't have much rhyme or reason to its opening credits. Early on they seemed pretty judicious about who got opening credits billing, even crediting people who had storylines centered around them as guest stars, but in the final season they moved a number of former guest stars into the opening credits, such as Neal Huff, Gbenga Akkinagbe, and Michael Kostroff, despite their characters not really doing anything more than they had in previous seasons. Also, Tristan Wilds and Jermaine Crawford received Promotion to Opening Titles despite having less to do than the previous season.
• Wonder Woman: This was common in the WWII era of the show. Lyle Waggoner was a known actor, but had been turned down for Batman in Batman (1966) and was best known as a supporting Good Looking Guy(TM) for Carol Burnett on The Carol Burnett Show. Lynda Carter was far more of an unknown, having appeared in a TV movie and an episode of the short lived Nakia (1974). They compensated for this by casting, among others, 1972 Oscar winner Cloris Leachman as Wonder Woman's mother - Queen Hippolyta. The part is so poorly fleshed out that Hippolyta is never even referred to by name.
• Sheena Easton, who plays Queen Anne, has a spot in the opening credits of Young Blades despite appearing for about a minute each in two of the first five episodes — and one of those is just to explain that she's gone on vacation and a Suspiciously Similar Substitute will take her place. She gets a larger role in the next few episodes, but still doesn't appear at all in 6 out of 13 of them.
• Dustin Brooks from Zoey 101. Through he is credited as a main character for all 65 episodes, he only appears in 25 episodes and rarely contributes to the plot in a major way.

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