Advertised Extra / Western Animation

• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
  • The Mad Thinker narrates the opening of this trailer, but only appears in episodes 5 and 6. The writers even relegated his demise into one of the short stories included in the tie-in comics.
  • Black Widow appears on the cover of the Australian Blu-Ray compiling the first season. In actuality, only six of those episodes feature her, though her subplot strongly ties into the main events.
  • The Australian Blu-Ray package for Season 2 has both her and Nick Fury on the cover, due pretty much only to their prominence in the movie. Wolverine and Spider-Man are shown as well, despite only appearing in three and two episodes respectively (one of which was a big Crisis Crossover with The Falcon, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, War Machine, the Fantastic Four, and pretty much every other hero that ever appeared on the show). They're only on the cover because they're two of Marvel's most popular characters.
• The DVD collection of the complete The Avengers: United They Stand has a cover showing stills from the series in a star. Front and centre are headshots of Marvel Cinematic Universe stars Captain America and Iron Man, with Cap also appearing in a group shot. The two characters appear in one episode each.
• Roberta Tubbs from The Cleveland Show was billed as a main character, but her screentime was much smaller compared to the rest of her family. While Meg and Hayley both got Demoted to Extra over time, they at least started out as prominent characters on their respective shows; unlike the other two, Roberta was never prominent to begin with.
• The Dragon Prince: Runaan is hyped by the promos as one of the major characters of the show. He however, only has any relevance in 4 out of the 9 episodes of the first season, most of which he is rather secondary and contributes relatively little to the plot compared to other major characters.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum: Yum Yum is prominently featured in the show's opening sequence in spite of only making sporadic cameos after his debut episode.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Cheese and Berry frequently appeared in advertisements and merchandise for the series in the mid-to-late 2000s, the former especially. Cheese only had a major appearance in three episodes (and minor appearances in three more) while Berry only appeared in two.
• Freakazoid! has a villain named Kid Carrion, who resembled a zombie cowboy. His appearances in the show's opening suggests that he was intended to be a recurring villain, but his only appearance in the actual series is a silent cameo in "Relax-O-Vision". He doesn't even appear with the other villains in the show's Grand Finale in spite of one-shot villain Invisibo being among them.
• Futurama spoofs this trope: in the opening credits for the first film, "Bender's Big Score", the new character Zylex is announced with great fanfare... only to appear just for a couple of seconds, while begging for food!
• Garbage Pail Kids Cartoon: The opening sequence features appearances by Clint Hardwood, Flaky Paint and the Hole-in-the-Head Kids from the movie parody segment "Pie Fight at the Okee Dokee Corral", Idaho Spud from the movie parody segment "Idaho Spud and the Temple of Trash" and Green Dean from the episode "Green Dean Goes out of His Bean" even though none of them made appearances outside of their respective episodes within the actual series.
• Gravity Falls: An unnamed gnome that vomits rainbows is shown on several posters and has tie in merchandise. However, he only appears in "Tourist Trapped", the show’s first episode in a brief gag (and an extended version in The Stinger).
• Hey Arnold!: Nadine is the most prominently featured girl in the opening sequence aside from Helga, but in the series, she's either a background character or a Satellite Character to Rhonda.
• The Hollow: Death was in the show's trailer as much as the other characters, but he only appears as a major character in the third episode, with another brief appearance in the finale.
• Johnny Bravo:
  • Jungle Boy appears in the first season's opening sequence among the people who do The Monkey with Johnny Bravo, but within the series is only present in four episodes (one of which is a brief cameo) and a between-segments short that spoofs the Tootsie Pop commercial by having him ask Johnny how many licks it takes to get to the sugary center of a Sugar Sucker.
  • The opening sequence for the second and third seasons similarly features Master Hamma even though the total number of episodes he appeared in can be counted on one hand.
• In the Season 3 trailer for Kid Cosmic, the Kid Cos-mech, the Kid Cosmobile and the season's Rogues Gallery are heavily featured. All of them are of virtually no importance after "Kid Cosmic and the Secret of the Fourteenth Stone" reveals that they are the illusions of a Lotus-Eater Machine.
• Although she gets a lot of screen time, Minka in Littlest Pet Shop (2012) has not had an episode focused on her as of late 2013 and is the only major character with this distinction. She has received a B-plot in two episodes, however, but in both cases, Minka is incessantly doing one single thing for most of the B-plot, meaning the story makes very little progression. For most of the rest of the series, she just hangs out with the other main characters doing whatever they're doing.
• Pieces of merchandise for The Mr. Men Show feature Little Miss Fun from the original books despite her never actually appearing in the series. She was most likely there to replace Little Miss Calamity, who was removed in the second season, as director Mark Risley said Little Miss Fun wasn't meant to be a character.
• Bunsen and Beaker have their own line in the Expository Theme Tune of Muppet Babies, but they only make occasional appearances on the show itself.
• Various advertisements and the Expository Theme Tune for Pet Alien bill Scruffy as one of the six main characters, but his presence within the show itself is extremely minimal. Most of his appearances have him in the background, he's outright absent from numerous episodes, and several of the secondary cast like Melba, Granville and Cap'n Spangley get more focus than he does.
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • In the TV special "Dance Pantsed" heavily promoted special guest star Ringo Starr. He has about three minutes of screen time and he doesn't even sing. And while a song & music video for "I Want To Be A Powerpuff Girl" was shown during the special's breaks, it wasn't part of the actual story.
  • Despite appearing in the promotional material, posters, animated bumpers, video covers, and even the intro amongst the villain roster, Roach Coach had only one starring episode and, after he is revealed as a cockroach operating a human-like robot body, he never returned even for in-episode cameos.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • The title sequence of Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! featured silhouettes of Fred, Daphne, and Velma in spite of the series having them out of the spotlight for the majority of the series in favor of focusing on Shaggy and Scooby. The only episodes to have the entire Scooby Gang together and with every member having a speaking role are the series premiere "Shags to Riches" and "Almost Ghosts", with the episode "Inside Job" only featuring Fred and Daphne as silent cameos.
  • The featured guest of the second episode of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? is claimed to be Abraham Lincoln, but the real featured guests are the cast from The Funky Phantom, while Lincoln only appears in the show for about five minutes, before being revealed as Mudsy in disguise.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • Frosta is one of the Elemental Princesses and shows up in the opening and promotional material as a major character and in equal importance to characters like Mermista and Perfuma, but she appears very little compared to them, not helped by her late introduction in the first season. She leaves right after that and doesn't show up again until the Season 1 Finale as an 11th-Hour Ranger to join the Rebellion. Averted in later seasons, though, where Frosta remains a recurring part of the ensemble cast with a full focus episode in season two, and some cute interactions with Scorpia in season four.
  • Netossa and Spinnerella were portrayed as secondary characters that would be a source of help to the main characters, but they show up in the background only and only even speak or act in the Season 1 Finale. Even in the fourth season, where they got a focus episode, we don't learn much about them, and as much of the episode's focus is on Glimmer becoming more ruthless and willing to make morally dubious decisions to win as anything related to Netossa and Spinnerella.
  • Downplayed with Rogelio, the Lizard Folk cadet in Adora and Catra's squad. He was supposed to be a secondary character as much as Kyle and Lonnie, but he has much less characterization and screen time than either of them and doesn't even speak through all the first season. Most aspects of his personality can only be inferred and his name was only revealed by the crew's Twitter. Lampshaded when he is finally named in the series during season two, and Scorpia has no idea who Lonnie is talking about until she spells it out.
• The Simpsons is rife with this:
  • Maggie Simpson in general. Marketing treats her as one of the show's core characters, but she in reality has far less screentime than many of the non-Simpson-family characters. Since she is a baby, she is usually little more than a Living Prop.
  • Sideshow Bob. Despite his enormous popularity and being added to the HD version of the opening introduced in Season 20, he's to date only made significant appearances in 16 of the show's more than 750 episodes (two of them being Treehouse of Horror episodes), with a handful of brief cameos elsewhere. Justified, due to him being technically voiced by a recurring guest star.
  • Bart's superhero alter ego, Bartman, was featured extensively in early merchandise, despite appearing in exactly one episode, Season 2's "Three Men and a Comic Book". Even then, Bartman is irrelevant to the plot and appears for only a couple of minutes.
  • The deal they made out of U2 appearing on the 200th episode and they only had a scene and a bit. Before that was "Lisa's First Word", the episode "starring" Elizabeth Taylor... wherein she spoke one word! (But it was Maggie's first word, so it was pretty important.)
  • Denis Leary in "Lost Verizon". He gets five minutes of screen time. And is portrayed as an utter psychopath.
  • Another that was heavily advertised was Alyson Hannigan; her character has very limited screen time and only has three lines of dialogue.
  • Sky's (and FOX's) promotion of "Elementary School Musical" was pretty bad too, emphasising the guest voices of Glee regulars Lea Michele, Amber Riley and Cory Monteith while completely ignoring the presence of Flight of the Conchords, even though Messrs. Clement and McKenzie's characters had far more screen time, were essential to the plot, and writing original songs for the episode!
  • Parodied in "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" with Dolly Parton, who appears in the Super Bowl halftime show, only she's wearing a Snoopy costume. This is commented on at the end of the episode.
  • "Bart Star" was advertised as a Crossover with King of the Hill even though Hank Hill is on screen for only a few seconds. It probably set a record for shortest Crossover ever made. Additionally, Word of God says these shows don't exist in the same Universe, making it even weirder.
  • In "Today I Am a Clown" Lisa mentions having an imaginary Jewish friend named Rachel who she created to make up for having no real friends when she was younger. Rachel finally makes an appearance in the 600th episode. Except that 600th episode is "Treehouse of Horror XXVII", and Rachel is a murderous spirit who kills all of Lisa's friends out of revenge for Lisa forgetting her.
  • Kevin Smith's appearance in "Highway To Well" was hyped up. He only has one line of dialogue and five seconds of screen time.
  • There's promo art of baseball player Randy Johnson's appearance in "Bart Has Two Mommies". He has no plot relevance to the episode, appearing in a 30-second Cutaway Gag in the first act where he threatens Ned Flanders into buying his merchandise at a convention.
  • Rapper 50 Cent was promoted as appearing in "Pranksta Rap". He does, but only in a short scene where he drives by Bart and offers him encouragement. 50 Cent doesn't appear for the rest of the episode.
  • "Husbands and Knives" features five guest stars, although none of them appear after the episode's first act and only have a few lines.
  • Exaggerated with Tony Blair. Even features as a sticker on the boxset for Simpsons going abroad, his cameo is 30 seconds at best, doesn't contain any jokes despite his time in power being extremely controversial and isn't even relevant to the episode.
• Skull Island (2023): A Skullcrawler, creatures which featured prominently in the parent movie, is on the series' promotional materials including a trailer and a poster. In the series proper, the Skullcrawler has less than three minutes of screen-time and is in only one episode, where it plays a minor role.
• The Snorks: The Great Snork Nork is the only other villain besides Bigweed and Lil Seaweed to appear in the series Theme Song, suggesting he’s part of the regular cast of villains. But he only appears twice in the entire series, while other more prominent reoccurring villains such as Dr. Strangesnork and The Snorkeaters aren’t in the intro at all.
• Although Knuckles the Echidna only appeared in four out of the 40 episodes of Sonic Underground ^note "Friend or Foe?", "Flying Fortress", "No Hedgehog is an Island", and "New Echidna in Town", a good chunk of the series' merchandise was centered around him. He had a puzzle and a plush from Denny's, and he was one of the characters featured on the sticker sheet.
• South Park:
  • Parodied in the early episode "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". George Clooney was advertised as a guest star on the show. Yet, in the episode itself, he is just Stan's gay dog, Sparky. All he does is bark. Similarly, another episode features Jay Leno providing the meowing sounds of Cartman's cat.
  • Played straight, however, with Isaac Hayes as Chef. The end credits for the first 9 seasons featured the credit "Featuring the voice of Isaac Hayes as "Chef"" right after listing the voice cast, even if Chef had no lines in an episode or didn't appear in the episode at all.
  • Downplayed with Kenny. In the early seasons, Kenny would die in nearly every episode, usually not appearing again until the next episode. After season 7, Kenny started to star in more episodes, though still noticeably less often than the other three main characters.
  • Promotional trailers for "The Vaccination Special", heavily featured Wendy, Bebe and Red, and Stephen Stotch. In the actual episode Red is a background character, Bebe has a brief speaking role, Wendy doesn't even have a role, and Stephen is only used for a few quick gags.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Despite frequently being billed as one of the seven "main" characters (alongside SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, Sandy, Mr. Krabs and Plankton), Gary the Snail's role in the show mostly boils down to background appearances and gags, with actual Gary-centric episodes being very rare.
  • A ton of celebrities were advertised to appear in the 10th Anniversary special, "Truth or Square" but almost all of them only made cameos and most of them don't even appear in the trimmed-down rerun version. None of them appear in the animated segments and instead appeared in the live-action Patchy segments. This trope is however, averted with P!nk's appearance as she got to sing "We've Got Scurvy".
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In-universe in "Crisis Point", where Winger Bingston Jr. is the last name in the opening credits of Crisis Point: The Rise of Vindicta, but he's only in one scene before getting smooshed by Vindicta's boarding pod
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7: Obi-Wan Kenobi is featured very prominently in the poster for the season, standing alongside Ahsoka and Anakin and towering over the other characters featured in the poster. He pops up in four episodes and is only around for short periods of time in each one. Conversely, the Bad Batch and the Martez sisters are far more prominent, despite being smaller in stature on the poster.
• Superfriends: El Dorado is prominently featured in the title sequence to the second and third seasons of the 1980 series that went with a Three Shorts format, but only appears in two segments of each.
• Most of the regular cast from Taz-Mania is acknowledged in the opening, including characters whose appearances were very few and far-between (including Wendell T. Wolf, Buddy Boar, The Kiwi, and The Bushrats). In fact, some of those characters who ended up appearing in many episodes (such as Digeri Dingo and Francis X. Bushlad) weren't in many episodes during the first season.
• Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse: Despite getting top-billing, the characters from Teen Titans Go! serve purely as a framing device plus a minor cameo just before the climax. In fact, not only is the movie primarily a DC Super Hero Girls 2019 adventure, but it also serves as that show's Grand Finale, wrapping up storylines and plot points from the second season. This is lampshaded by the fourth-wall aware Titans, who point out that this is definitely a case of Wolverine Publicity considering their shows' respective ratings.
• Thomas & Friends: Despite having only one major appearance in the TV series (Season 4's "Special Attraction"), Bulstrode the Barge is frequently featured in merchandise related to Brendam Docks, and is usually shown alongside Cranky the Crane, who is a much more prominent character in the TV series.
• "Mouse in Manhattan" is billed as a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but it only has Tom at the start sleeping and at the end when Jerry wakes him. It's Jerry's feature as it details his misadventures in New York City.
• Both Ironhide and Arcee were actually given this treatment in the Japanese opening for Transformers: Animated. Ironically, according to the AllSpark Almanac, Ironhide was intended to become a main character in the fourth season before the show was canceled at three.
• Cliffjumper was one of the main advertising faces of the Transformers: Prime promos, got a preview comic devoted to him and even a handful of figures when the toyline was released, and generally seemed to be the future main-character of the show. He dies within the first couple of minutes of the pilot, then becomes a zombie and is killed again, and only gets a Flashback episode halfway through the series. After that, he received several other toys depicting him as a Terrorcon zombie.
• All of the major celebrity players on Ultra City Smiths are credited for every episode, even the ones they don't appear in. Most notable is Kurtwood Smith's character Carpenter W. Smith, who only appears in the first episode before being killed off, setting the main events of the show into motion.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Much of the marketing for Season 7 played up the importance of Adam, Shiro's ex-boyfriend. This even included images of Adam and Shiro being used as official headers for the show's Netflix page. In reality, Adam only appears in two flashback scenes, and dies at the end of the second.
• X-Men: The Animated Series:
  • Despite being one of the main team members in the intro, Beast is arrested halfway through the second episode and spends the rest of the season in jail, only appearing briefly a few times for the rest of the season. The following seasons would make up for this, making him a full-time member of the team again.
  • Nightcrawler is depicted on the cover for Volume 2 of the DVD series, despite only making a brief cameo in one episode on the disc, and a non-speaking one to boot. His starring episode wasn't included until a later DVD.

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