Demoted To Extra / Western Animation

• Pongo and Perdita, the main characters of the 101 Dalmatians movie, are secondary characters in 101 Dalmatians: The Series. The episode "The Making Of..." lampshades this by having them remark that they were told that Disney "decided to go for a younger look". "But we're not bitter," Perdita remarks, immediately before tearing a rip on a promotional poster.
• 12 oz. Mouse: Skillet, being the secondary protagonist of the show, makes appearances in almost every episode of Season 1 and 2. However, he is absent in several episodes of Season 3 and doesn't play a significant role throughout the season.
• Cousin Itt only showed up in three episodes of The Addams Family (1973) cartoon albeit appearing in the opening, after appearing more frequently in the 1964 series.
• Nick was a somewhat relevant character in the movie, even with just an Informed Ability. In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, he hardly gets any screen time and wasn't featured in any of The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour crossovers aside from a brief cameo in the third.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Many characters that were originally supposed to be prominent but weren’t in the show are Jamie, Anton, Ocho, William, Juke, Molly, Hector, and Sussie. Tina Rex was also prominent in the first season and then stopped being prominent in the second. Rob initially fell victim to this but then became the main villain in Season 3 (as revealed in "The Void" and expanded upon in "The Nobody", he was banished to the Void because the universe thought he was a mistake). This has gotten to the point where in Season 6, several of these characters have not said a word all season, like Anton, Molly, and Juke (who can't speak normally).
• American Dad!:
  • When the show began to phase out its political angle around the end of the fourth season/beginning of the fifth, Hayley Smith suffered from this pretty badly. This was due to the show becoming more plot/character driven and her personality initially wasn't developed much beyond strawman liberal. It got to the point where starting in the sixth season there'd be at least one episode per season where she was completely absent. This has been subverted as of the TBS seasons where the show seems to be putting more of an emphasis on her presence; the first TBS season having her play some sort of important role in seven of its fifteen episodes, and her spotlight episodes exploded after that.
  • Most, if not all of the supporting characters have fallen victim to this at some point:
    • Fellow neighbors Linda Memari and Chuck White were quickly phased out resulting in said characters not having any relevance or speaking parts since 2009. It could be argued that this was probably for the best as these characters weren't developed all that well beyond having one or two identifiable traits (Linda having a crush on Francine and Chuck being Stan's arch rival with an annoying habit of ending all of his sentences with a "Ha, ha!" no matter what mood he's in).
    • Greg Corbin and Terry Bates were probably the only recurring characters from the show's early days to still keep appearing regularly after the show's political angle was all but removed. But even they eventually found themselves falling victim to this, which was after the show moved from FOX to TBS when Mike Barker (voice of Terry, co-creator and former showrunner) left the series allegedly due to creative differences. Because of this, Terry was eventually Put on a Bus (but not before temporarily becoming The Voiceless) while Greg's appearances have severely diminished and are often very brief.
    • Principal Brian Lewis is an odd example. For the first five seasons, he was more of an incidental character. But starting in Season 6, he became an Ascended Extra to the point where two back to back episodes of Season 7 had him as the driving force for the main plot. However, it didn't take long for people to grow tired of him especially since he also underwent Flanderization by further emphasizing his complete recklessness and over time seemed to slowly become less of a character and more of an excuse to get his voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson to say the most asinine crap the writers could think of. So by the time of the show's final FOX season (where he only appeared twice in contrast to the previous three seasons which had him appearing a minimum of five times), Lewis went back to being the incidental character he started off as while retaining his post-Flanderization "personality".
    • Almost any supporting character from any point in the show's FOX run, whether from the early seasons or later ones when the political edge was phased out, mostly stopped appearing once the show moved to TBS. Some of them were never really important at all, but at least made small appearances frequently during the aforementioned era; in later seasons, characters like Debbie Hyman and Hiko Yoshida (Toshi's mom) are lucky to even get so much as a background cameo.
    • The only supporting characters to still appear semi-regularly once the show moved to TBS are Steve's friends, Stan's co-workers at the CIA, Al Tuttle, and Principal Lewis (as well as some new characters like Billy, Dr. Kalgary, and Rogu), but even then their appearances are scaled back when compared to the show's run on FOX.
• Animaniacs: Because Pinky and the Brain received a spin-off series, they starred in a grand total of three segments after Season 1 (five if one counts "Pinky and the Ralph" and "Pitter Patter of Little Feet," the former of which Brain doesn't appear at all, and the latter of which Pinky only makes a cameo near the end), supplemented with occasional cameos.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Dr. Weird and his assistant Steve weren't that prominent, but the Cold Opens of the first two seasons showed Dr. Weird often being the catalyst of the episode's problem through his inventions escaping his lab. In season 3, they were replaced by "Spacecataz" (cold opens focusing on the antics of the Plutonians and the Mooninites), and by season 4, cold opens were omitted entirely. While Dr. Weird does return to prominence in the movie, the cold open to the season 8 premiere and a cameo in the final season's intro sequence are the only appearances he made after that.
• Archer: Lana loses focus in several seasons, despite starting as only second to Archer himself in focus. In season 5, she is pregnant, and stays benched for the most part, not having much impact on the plot or acting much to help their new cartel operations. In the "Dream Seasons", Dreamland and Danger Island, the plot changes almost completely and in both, she has minimal interactions with Archer and plot relevance; in the former, she is a singer, which is a cover for acting for the Treasury while in the latter she is the island's princess, but is too busy plotting things with Dream!Cyril that she again interacts very little with Archer or changes the plot's direction. In all of these, the Action Girl role, as well as Archer's action companion, is played by Dream!Pam, Poovey/Pam.
• Avatar:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Ty Lee spends Book 2 as one of Azula's Co-Dragons alongside Mai, appearing in numerous episodes and getting plenty of screen time. In Book 3, meanwhile, her role is greatly reduced. She only appears in three episodes of the season, and only gets a very small amount of lines in two of them. While her actions in "The Boiling Rock, Part 2" do end up planting the seeds for Azula's Villainous Breakdown, she still retains nowhere near as much focus or importance to the plot as either Azula or Mai continue to do.
    • Quite a few major characters get hit with this in the Ember Island Player's in-universe retelling of the show's events. By far the most notable end up being Mai, Ty Lee, and Suki. While the former two serve as the Co-Dragons to Azula, and the latter is a major supporting character and the 11th-Hour Ranger of Team Avatar, all three of them only appear in a single scene in the show.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Sokka gets hit this among the previous show's main cast. Whereas the rest of the main characters all play a relatively major supporting role in the show, Sokka is established as dead in the first episode and only appears in a single flashback sequence.
    • General Iroh serves as the 11th-Hour Ranger of Book 1 and plays a major role in the season's climax. After that, his role in the show takes a nosedive, barely appearing throughout Books 2 and 4 and not appearing at all in Book 3.
    • This happened to a lot of the supporting characters in Book 4. The season shifted away from Korra's friends and family as she worked on her own personal journey to get better after she got mercury poisoned. Big Bad Kuvira (who hadn’t been a major character before) became the season's Deuteragonist which was Tenzin's role beforehand, so his role decreased as a result. They also got an episode cut out of the budget at the last minute, causing the creative team to scrape together a clip show to not have to lay off people early, so this trope ended up happening in-universe, too, with several characters' roles from the previous seasons' exploits being downplayed in Varrick's retelling of them in the clip show.
• The 2006 revival of Biker Mice from Mars did this to the original series' main villains Lawrence Limburger, Dr. Karbunkle, and Greasepit, since the main antagonists were now a race of Cat-like aliens called Catatonians as well as a Corrupt Corporate Executive named Ronaldo Rump. While Limburger, Karbunkle, and Greasepit do appear in some episodes, their attempts at upstaging the Catatonians and re-establishing themselves as the greatest threat to the Biker Mice always fail miserably in the end.
• Bob the Builder: Roley and Dizzy, two of the main characters in the 1998 series, are supporting characters in the 2015 reboot, with their positions in the theme song taken by Two-Tonne and Leo, respectively.
• In the third and final season of Captain N: The Game Master, everyone other than Kevin was used less often. At the time, NBC had made budget cuts to the show, which not only affected its animation quality, but also how often each character could appear. In the case of Mother Brain, it had become too expensive to have Levi Stubbs continue to regularly voice her, and in the cases of Simon Belmont and Mega Man, it was due to Konami and Capcom owning the rights to their respective characters and being entitled to royalties should they happen to appear.
• Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot promptly stripped Tenderheart Bear off his status as the leader of the Care Bears and gave it to Cheer Bear. Tenderheart even received the least toys during that era of the franchise. Understandably this was one of the contributing factors to the broken base of the show. Another character that was demoted to extra was Good Luck Bear, who appeared only in background in the show, which somehow led some fans to hate Oopsy Bear because they somehow believed that Oopsy replaced Good Luck.
• Classic Disney Shorts: Minnie Mouse started out as Mickey's co-star for most of the black and white shorts, but she started to appear less and less once Donald began appearing in Mickey shorts and he, Goofy, and Pluto got more screentime. Once Donald, Goofy, and Pluto each got their own series of shorts, even Mickey himself became the victim of this.
• The Burnout Girl from Daria was one of the first characters to be designed and had a speaking role in the pilot, suggesting that she was originally intended to have a bigger role. In the series proper, she is a Living Prop and the closest thing she ever has to dialogue is in one scene in "The New Kid", where she lets out a high-pitched scream after falling off of the trampoline.
• In the Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS series, this happened to Professor Owl due to the fact that he only had three appearances (the first two being both entries of the Adventures in Music Duology and the third being an episode of Walt Disney Presents) during Walt Disney's lifetime with footage from his three appearances being reused for the VHS series, unlike Jiminy Cricket and Professor Ludwig Von Drake as they had more material to draw from respectively, with Professor Owl making his last on-screen hosting appearances on Fun with Music (called 101 Notes of Fun internationally) and Disneyland Fun (but only before the first song). While this was temporary averted with the "All-Time Favorites" miniseries where he was promoted back to main narrator (but heard off-screen), he was again reduced in Honor to Us All, with only his voice heard introducing the first song.
• DuckTales (1987): Donald Duck is not only the Breakout Character in the Classic Disney Shorts, but also the heart and center of the Disney Ducks Comic Universe by Carl Barks at which the series is loosly based. However, the creators decided that Donald was too big as a character and would probably overshadow Scrooge and Huey, Dewey and Louie thanks to his popularity, so Donald only appears in the five-part pilot and a few other episodes as guest star, while the triplets are moving in with Scrooge. Inverted in the reboot, where Donald now is included as part of the main part.
• Scrooge, Mrs. Beakley, and Launchpad all get hit with this in DuckTales (2017), as the show has been changed to focus more on the adventures of Webby and the boys.
• In the original series of Fireman Sam, Trevor Evans the bus driver was a regular, prolific character who sometimes helped Sam by acting as a part time firefighter. In the newer series he's lucky if he gets a short appearance with a single line of dialogue.
• Arlene, despite being present in the intro sequence of The Garfield Show, shows up only in a handful of first-season episodes and is thus far absent in the second season. She has made some more appearances since then, having larger roles in some of the specials but it still doesn't help that other recurring characters have made more appearances than her.
• Goof Troop (and other Goofy productions):
  • Goofy's son, Max appears to be focused more on than Goofy in most of Goofy's later appearances, particularly in the 90s. While Goofy and Max get equal attention in Goof Troop, both "Goofy" movies and both Christmas movies, Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, appear to be all about Max.
  • Pete was one of the main characters on Goof Troop, then was demoted to running a major subplot that took up about a third or fourth of A Goofy Movie, only to get two scenes and one brief flashback to an earlier scene of screentime in the sequel and be rendered irrelevant by the end.
• In Hey Arnold!'s movie, Phoebe Heyerdahl only gets one line, and the only memorable thing she does in it is run into some newsguy's camera, despite having been a fairly prominent supporting character in the tv series.
• Betty Ross, who had major focus in the first season of The Incredible Hulk (1996), only appeared in certain episodes in season 2. Also, Doc Samson and Rick Jones were demoted even more after season 2's premiere.
• Johnny Bravo:
  • Bobo, the head chef at Pops' diner, started out as an occasionally appearing character before only appearing in one episode of the third season and not appearing at all in the fourth and final season.
  • Season 4 saw the return of Van Partible as showrunner. As a result, Carl and Pops' (who were added to the show after Partible left in Season 2) roles were reduced. Aside from occasional brief appearances, Carl got only one major role, while Pops only got a brief non-speaking cameo in "Johnny Makeover".
• When Josie and the Pussycats wound up launched into outer space, Sebastian the cat was removed from the spotlight after the band adopted Bleep, a little fuzzy alien creature.
• Spryte. In later episodes of The Legend of Zelda, she is sometimes completely absent, with no explanation at all. One of the episodes that don't feature her explains her absence by saying that she's on vacation.
• The Loud House:
  • Downplayed with Lincoln, who hasn't been hit by this trope as hard as the other examples on this page. While hew's always been marketed as the protagonist of the show, he used to be the protagonist of every episode early on. Beginning with Season 2, he occasionally appears in a cameo role, with his sisters and parents starring in their own plotlines. By Season 3, a significant number of episodes featured him in a support role, a cameo, or even completely absent with the plot focusing solely on his sisters or parents.
  • The Time Skip in Season 5 demotes several characters to a lesser role:
    • While still downplayed, Lori used to be the sister with the most focus, having her own unique storylines as a result of almost being an adult and being the eldest of her siblings. By Season 5, she moves out of the house and starts attending college at Fairway University, established to be 3 hours away from Royal Woods. As such, she does not appear as much as she used to.
    • With Lincoln graduating from Royal Woods Elementary School, his respective former fifth-grade teacher and principal, Mrs. Johnson and Principal Huggins, do not have as much of a role as they used to, and are simply relegated to cameos. Principal Huggins, however, gets it slightly better, as he does get caught up in Lucy, Lana, Lola, and Lisa's stories.
    • Kindergarten teacher Ms. Shrinivas, who used to be Lisa's teacher in Seasons 1-4, doesn't show up anymore after Season 5, in which Lisa starts attending first grade. (Her new first-grade teacher, Miss Allegra, used to be Lana and Lola's teacher from Seasons 1-4, so she isn't affected.)
• Looney Tunes works:
  • The original shorts:
    • The short-lived character Beans the Cat was demoted around 1936 when the spotlight shifted to his stuttering sidekick Porky Pig, and Beans and the rest of his co-stars soon faded into oblivion.
    • Porky Pig himself started to slowly drift from the spotlight. By the fifties his solo series was ended, with him working near solely as a sidekick for more abrasive characters such as Daffy, and by the sixties he disappeared with the exception of a couple of shorts (discounting recycled footage in "Muchos Locos", his final appearance was in 1965's "Corn on the Cop"). He appears more frequently in modern projects, if still mostly as a supporting character only.
    • Sylvester still appeared from time to time in the post-1964 cartoons, but wasn't anywhere near as prominent because Tweety had disappeared; his other nemesis Speedy was still as prominent as ever, but the vast majority of his filmography at that point pitted him against Daffy. By 1966, he succumbed to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
    • Elmer Fudd began to drift away from the spotlight after the death of his voice actor, Arthur Q. Bryan, in 1959. After that, he only appeared in four more cartoons (while Bryan managed to record his lines for one of them before dying, he was voiced by Hal Smith in two of them, and he was silent in another one).
  • The Looney Tunes Show: Too many characters to count sans Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Lola, Tina, Speedy, Granny, Yosemite Sam, Gossamer, and Hazel, but we do have a few examples:
    • Elmer Fudd was one of the first Looney Tunes characters ever created and established as the original Arch-Enemy of Bugs Bunny. In this show, you could count the episodes he is in on one hand (and he plays a major role in none of them).
    • Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner get to do less in the Looney Tunes segments. They do have their own shorts, however, which were unfortunately phased out in the second season.
    • If we speak of in-series, Marvin the Martian. In the first season he's one of Daffy's friends and provides to the plot in a few episodes. In season 2 he doesn't speak at all and is lucky if he even makes an appearance. Pete Puma (another of Daffy's friends) suffered a similar fate.
  • Despite being a very prominent character in the Looney Tunes franchise, to the point of being the Series Mascot at some point, Porky Pig is hit with this in Baby Looney Tunes, to the point that you can count how many times he shows up with one hand (he also only shows up in songs, and as a result, he never speaks on the show at all). Curiously enough however, his Distaff Counterpart and Love Interest, Petunia Pig, becomes a main character later in the show's run.
• It seems like Gogo Dodo was originally intended to be a principal character in Tiny Toon Adventures; he gets a fair bit of attention in the Series Bible, he's one of the characters to be mentioned in the theme song, and he plays fairly large roles in the Origins Episode and several episodes early in Season One ("Her Wacky Highness", "Sawdust and Toonsil", etc.). In later episodes he's a very minor character.
• Molly of Denali: Tooey's dad, Kenji, was a major recurring character in the first season, often showing up to help his son and Molly, or interacting with his sled dogs. In the second and third seasons, he vanished. However, he did have supporting roles in "Sticker Shock" and "Puppy Sitting." The rumor is that the producers kicked him off the show because they were weirded out by his fangirls.
• Scooter, Skeeter, and Rowlf were three of the main characters in Muppet Babies (1984). In the 2018 reboot, they have been relegated to minor supporting characters. In particular, Skeeter's position as the secondary female character has been taken by Summer Penguin.
• GIL-9000 and robot players in general in the Mutant League cartoon. Despite robots being one of the three races in both Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey, they appear about once, as training dummies at that. GIL-9000 in particular gets the worst of this; he's the only "star player" (with a portrait and unique quotes) from Mutant League Hockey to not appear on the show.
• Applejack suffers from this in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Originally an important member of the Mane Six, she has slowly been getting shoved to the sides by the other ponies, even Starlight Glimmer. This hijacking has gotten to the point where there are later episodes starring everypony except her. Applejack is nowhere to be found, not even in the official merchandise.
  • Diamond Tiara and her sidekick, Silver Spoon, were the bullies at Ponyville's schoolhouse for the first five seasons and featured prominently as antagonist in episodes focusing on the Cutie Mark Crusaders. But following Diamond Tiara's Heel–Face Turn in season five (and by extension, Silver Spoon, who finally had enough of her and turned earlier in the same episode.), they almost completely disappear. With Diamond Tiara only getting a minor, non-speaking appearance in the following season.
• In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh series and holiday specials throughout the 80s and 90s, Kanga and Roo made only sporadic appearances, with Owl and Gopher more liable to play supporting characters. The Disneytoon Studios Pooh films and featurettes of the 2000s reversed this, with Owl and Gopher sparsely appearing and Kanga and Roo promoted to main characters. Both of them completely disappeared in My Friends Tigger & Pooh, however the 2011 movie found a balance for the most of them, though Gopher is still absent. However, he does appear in the video game Kingdom Hearts III in 2019.
• The Patrick Star Show:
  • Besides Patrick, many of the main characters from the main series only show up a few times a season. In the first season, Mrs. Puff only has three speaking roles, Plankton and Sandy get two, and Gary gets one.
  • While it was mostly minor roles, Patrick's pet Ouchie appeared in around half of the show's episodes until "House Hunting", and he even got A Day in the Limelight in "Uncredible Journey". After "House Hunting", his only appearances are very brief cameos in "The Patrick Show Sells Out" and "10 & 1 Toilets".
• In The New Pink Panther Show, after the episode A Nut at the Opera, the panther did not appear for a full four episodes, excluding Driving Mr. Pink.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Django was originally set up like he would be a part of the boys' main group, but after one Day in the Limelight episode he was relegated to background shots.
  • Also all of the other kids who rode on the boys' rollercoaster in the first episode. Did you even know they have canon names? This is lampshaded in "Rollercoaster: The Musical"—they take Phineas and Ferb's poster like in the first episode, only for Buford to snatch it away, calling them "lousy extras." He, Baljeet and the Fireside Girls take their place on the rollercoaster.
  • In-Universe in "Wizard of Odd:" Candace winds up ignoring the rusted Tin Man, a major character in the original movie, and the talking tree, "played" by Jeremy, joins their group instead.
  • Even the titular duo are not safe from this trope. As the years went on, the show became more and more focused on the Perry and Doofenshmirtz plot than the Phineas and the Gang plot.
• Pocoyo: Loula the dog still a main character but 3 recurring characters have more appearances than her. Most noticeable in season 4 with Nina replacing Loula in the opening and her getting very few appearances in that season.
• When the Winx Club Spin-Off Pop Pixie was announced, one of the major concerns about the series was the apparent disappearance of Digit (Tecna's pixie). She didn't appear in any official art at all, and the first that anyone saw of her... was when she appeared in the opening titles. (The other bonded pixies? All present and accounted for.) When Digit did show up, she was revealed to be male in this continuity.
• After being a regular character in the first series of The Rabbit with the Checkered Ears, Menyus appears in just one episode of the second series.
• In the little seen Rayman: The Animated Series Razorbeard, the Big Bad of Rayman 2: The Great Escape, appears in a single episode as a lackey of that series' Big Bad, Rigatoni.
• Ready Jet Go!: Face 9000. Back in the day, he appeared in practically every episode alongside the rest of the Core Eight: Jet, Sunspot, Sean, Sydney, Mindy, Carrot and Celery. Ever since "Sunday Drive", he has been making less and less appearances. Nowadays, the kids usually get answers to their science questions from Celery, the DSA scientists, or by figuring it out themselves.
• Recess:
  • Many major characters from the TV series appear in the movie Recess: School's Out...but most of them appear very briefly, with absolutely no lines. Notably, TJ's arch-rival Lawson shows up for two seconds and gives a mere thumbs up with no dialogue, but he's listed as a speaking role in the credits.
  • In early season 1, Mitch (the African American kid in the gray shorts and yellow t-shirt) was a somewhat prominent character who interacted with the main gang occasionally (such as appearing in "The Experiment"). However, he quickly became a very minor character after the first few season 1 episodes.
  • In Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade, Miss Grotke, a fairly significant character from the series, only has two lines in the entire movie. Justified, as the main kids were in the fifth grade and weren't in her class anymore.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Fred, Daphne, and Velma were phased out of the franchise starting with The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show. While Daphne returned to being a regular cast member in The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show, Fred and Velma didn't return until they made occasional guest appearances on The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries. It wasn't until A Pup Named Scooby-Doo that the gang would be back together and with every member having equal spotlight.
  • What's New, Scooby-Doo? would have Scooby-Doo himself and occasionally Shaggy phased out of the spotlight and not contributing as much in several episodes. Typically the show would shift focus onto Fred, Daphne and Velma, but one major exception was the episode '"Camp Comeoniniwannascareya", which did not feature Fred, Velma or Daphne at all; it just featured Shaggy and Scooby-Doo as the main characters.
  • To date, the only Scooby-Doo show to shift focus on Shaggy and Scooby and leave out Fred, Daphne, and Velma since The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show was Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue!, where Fred, Daphne, and Velma only had speaking roles in the series premiere "Shags to Riches" as well as "Almost Ghosts" (in addition to Fred and Daphne having silent cameos in the episode "Inside Job").
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM):
  • While Tails was pretty prominent in Sonic 2 and Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, he was reduced to minor status here. However, he did gradually get some more screen-time and the odd episode that gave him focus, particularly towards the end, but for the most part, several of the invented characters for the show were more in the "supporting cast" category than Tails was. Word of God is that, had the series gotten a third season, Tails would've gotten more focus and his role would've gotten closer to that of the games.
  • In an example of a character from SatAM appearing in a special pertaining to a different series, major character Princess Sally makes an appearance in the Christmas Special Sonic Christmas Blast. However, she gets absolutely no speaking lines, and plays very little role in the plot. Also, her "voice" (read: gasps and groans) is provided by Tabitha St. Germain instead of Kath Soucie (she was busy with Space Jam at the time).
• In the early seasons of South Park, Officer Barbrady, Mr. Garrison, Pip, and Jimbo and Ned were major recurring characters. As the series went on they were gradually phased out. Barbrady and Pip were all but replaced by Harrison Yates and Butters (with Pip getting Killed Off for Real in "201"), respectively, Garrison became more of an "occasional A Day in the Limelight" player and Jimbo and Ned remained as Artifacts. Subverted, as Barbrady and Garrison became prominent once again in Season 19.
  • Chef appeared in every episode of Season 1, occasionally in Season 2 but had all but vanished by the time he was killed off.
  • Wendy also had a prominent role in almost every episode before getting demoted, but she does get some episodes centered around her every so often.
  • After being brought Back from the Dead at the end of Season 6 (He was meant to be Killed Off for Real at the end of Season 5), Kenny started to become less and less prominent as the series went on despite always being referred to as a main character alongside Stan, Kyle and Cartman. While there are some episodes where he is the main focus, there are also been episodes where he doesn't feel much different from the kids walking around the school in the background, and some in which he doesn't even show up at all. This is lampshaded by Mr. Mackey in the Halloween Episode of Season 22, "The Scoots", when he tells Kenny that they tend to forget about him sometimes. However, this is completely subverted in the superhero-themed episodes, where Kenny ends up being the most important character of them all.
  • Downplayed with the boys themselves. Stan, Kyle and Kenny started to become less relevant to the series in favour of Randy, who went from simply being Stan's father to an Ascended Extra with his own episodes once or twice per season. In certain later seasons, though, Randy is the central focus character, with Stan and Kyle not having as much impact as they used to, and Kenny being Demoted to Extra. The same doesn't go for Cartman however, as many of the episodes from these seasons focus on both him and Randy.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Alfonso and Ferguson were added by Executive Meddling, and Word of God admits to not liking them very much. By the second season they only appear in the background and never speak, which Star lampshades at one point. The comics having her explain that she stopped interacting with them because of their immaturity and tendency to break her privacy. Their roles were split between Sensei Brantley (Marco's other best friend) and Janna (the other Muggle involved in their adventure). Tellingly, they were both taken out of the opening credits in Season 2.
  • Brittney was another classmate of Star's that appeared regularly at the show's beginning and nearly disappeared in the second season, including from the credits; -she only had two brief appearances in the foreground, one of them non-speaking.
  • By season 3 the action moved to Mewni, so most of the Earth cast received this treatment.
• It is very noticeable when this happens in The Simpsons, in large part because the show tends to exclusively use “real” characters in crowd scenes, making it easy to notice who’s playing the extra role a lot these days.
  • Herman was introduced in Season 1 episode Bart the General, and was originally intended to be a regularly recurring character with constantly changing explanations for how he lost his arm. Instead, he made sporadic appearances through Season 9 without having a single role as big as the one in his debut episode. After appearing in Treehouse of Horror VIII, he disappeared for 15 years, spoke in two consecutive episodes in Season 24, only spoke again in "Do the Wrong Thing" from season 35.
  • Reporter Dave Shutton, who helps Bart and Lisa derail Mr. Burns' candidacy for governor in the season 2 episode "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish" seems like he is being positioned as a major journalist character in the show, but beyond a few small appearances in subsequent episodes, he is quickly sidelined as Kent Brockman becomes the major reporter in Springfield. Likewise, Scott Christian, a straight-laced newscaster, is quickly demoted in favor of Kent Brockman. Ironically, Brockman himself was originally intended to be The Ghost.
  • Early episodes feature far more recurring classmates and friends for Bart and Lisa, including Lewis, Janey, Richard, Sherri and Terri, Nelson's "weasels," and Wendell who never wind up doing much of note in subsequent seasons, instead mostly becoming filler characters for Springfield Elementary scenes. Lewis in particular can be seen hanging out with Bart and Milhouse in Season 1 episodes and has a bigger role than background characters like Wendell and Richard, but is demoted to background character as characters with more distinct personalities start appearing. Lampshaded in a few episodes, such as "Das Bus," when Bart can't remember who's Lewis and who's Wendell.
  • New Transfer Student characters who are voiced by a Celebrity Voice Actor in their debut episode, but would reasonably still be in school afterwards, tend to slide into the background for crowd shots or classroom scenes. If they have any brief lines at all, they are usually done by a regular cast member. Examples include Jessica Lovejoy (Meryl Streep), Allison Taylor (Winona Ryder), Alex Whitney (Lisa Kudrow) and Francine (Kathy Griffin).
  • Homer’s coworker Charlie is treated as a third member of the Lenny and Carl duo in a couple of early episodes. In later seasons, he mainly functions as a prop in scenes taking place at the power plant.
  • Princess Kashmir, the stripper from "Homer's Night Out" in Season 1, featured prominently in early merchandise with the "extended cast"; in later seasons, she appears only as crowd filler, if that.
  • Krusty has a number of employees who are quickly demoted to extra, including his bodyguard, "Corporal Punishment," Tina Ballerina, and his secretary, Miss Pennycandy, who in any early episode seems to be being set up as a possible love interest for Krusty. Today, the entire Krusty the Klown show seems to consist of simply Krusty, Mel, and Mr. Teeny.
  • In the first episode featuring the Springfield Mafia ("Bart the Murderer"), Fat Tony has three goons named Legs, Louie, and Joey. Legs and Louie go on to appear in almost every episode featuring the Mafia. Joey has one brief speaking appearance in "Homey the Clown", and after that only appears as a background character in scenes with lots of mafiosos in them.
  • While Dr. Nick was never a major character, he'd usually have one or two speaking roles a season. He doesn't appear much past season 20, with his last important role being "Eeny Teeny Maya Moe". This is likely due to Dr. Hibbert's moral decay into less ethical treatments, meaning that having a separate "bad doctor" character was redundant. Dr. Nick's only speaking roles since are in "Judge Me Tender", "Replaceable You", "Treehouse of Horror XXIV", and "My Fare Lady", all of them only one or two lines. He also makes a silent cameo in "Pretty Whittle Liar" from season 33.
  • Since the release of the documentary “The Problem With Apu”, Apu has become a silent background character, unlike the other minority characters he has yet to be replaced by an Indian actor.
  • Plopper, Homer's pet pig from The Movie, better known as Spider-Pig. After the events of the film, he leaves the Simpson household without explanation and is instead a sporadically-seen background character (such as being used by Luigi to find truffles), despite still ostensibly being Homer's pet. It took him ten years after his introduction to play a major role in the show, in Season 28's "Pork and Burns," where it's revealed that he's been living in the backyard the whole time.
  • After his relapse in season 14, Barney went from being a supporting character to a barely-appearing Living Prop. Scenes taking place at Moe's will mostly involve Lenny and Carl as Homer's drinking buddies rather than Barney.
• Spencer Smythe plays a far more prominent role in the comics than in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, with his son Alistair even carrying out schemes his father did in the source material.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Almost every character who doesn't frequently visit the Krusty Krab. For specific examples, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy used to make at least a couple of speaking appearances per season. Since the deaths of their respective voice actors, they only make non-speaking cameos in the background.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Admiral Wulff Yularen was a major speaking character throughout Seasons 1 & 2. Then, he only had only two appearances in Season 3, one in Season 4 and none in Season 5. Ironic, since he is also an Ascended Extra: he started as an unnamed extra in A New Hope and wasn't even given a proper name until the Star Wars Customizable Card Game in 1995.
• In the 2003/2007 version of Strawberry Shortcake, Honey Pie Pony is usually a speaking character, but her final appearance was among the audience in It Takes Talent / Playing To Beat The Band, with no lines and no plot. She was then shoved onto the bus.
• Escher from Street Fighter went from a recurring character in the first season to only appearing in one episode of the second season.
• Street Sharks: The Street Sharks' main ally Lena Mack rarely shows up in Season 3, and even then only as a non-speaking background character.
• Clawgrip in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. A boss in the second game, he is not only reduced to a mook, but a generic mook.
  "Look out! A clawgrip!"
• Super Mario World:
  • King Koopa in the Super Mario World cartoon. After appearing in nearly every episode of the first two animated adaptations, he has main roles in about half of Super Mario World's episodes, and four episodes don't feature him at all!
  • The Koopa Kids are Koopa's most prominent minions in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. Their appearances in Super Mario World are so limited that Kootie Pie, Kooky, Hip and Hop have speaking roles in just one episode each.
• Tak and the Power of Juju (2007):
  • Tlaloc was the main villain of the first two games, while his counterpart in the animated series, renamed "Traloc", only makes one appearance in the episode "A Shaman's Shaman".
  • The Caged Juju went from being a major character in the first two games to only getting a voiceless cameo in the animated series episode "Lok the Offender".
• Despite being a member of Titans East in Teen Titans, Bumblebee is all but ignored in Teen Titans Go!. She didn't even appear until several years into the show (and in a non-speaking role at that).
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987):
  • In the original Mirage Ninja Turtles comics, vigilante Casey Jones is a good friend of the turtles and one of the most prominent members of their supporting cast. In this cartoon, well, if you remember him at all it's as that loon who showed up in a few episodes wanting to break things.
  • The Triceratons, one of the most iconic recurring Turtles villains who appeared in numerous media including the original comic, the games, the toyline, and the 2003 cartoon, only appeared in one of the later episodes of the 1987 show.
  • After Carter showed up, major character April was relegated to sitting in her apartment and researching stuff on the Internet for all of Season 9 and the first few episodes of Season 10. Fortunately, she started taking a more active role in the final few episodes once Carter was written out.
• In Season 5 of the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Casey and April really fell into this, largely a result of the season's sharply reduced episode count; it did not help that half those episodes were spent outside New York. They grew even less prominent in the Fast Forward Retool, since they did not accompany the turtles into the year 2105, and could only appear as cameos or in flashbacks. Back to the Sewer reversed the trend, however, giving them a season-long arc in which they prepared to get married.
• Thomas & Friends: The show does this regularly, as a result of having a large cast and the tendency to introduce several new characters every season. As a general rule, the new characters get a couple of seasons in the spotlight at most before demotion:
  • After Big World! Big Adventures!, Edward and Henry got demoted from the main cast entirely and got relegated to the background due to the introduction of Nia and Rebecca, two female engines who joined the main cast in response to the show being criticised as sexist due to a lack of prominent female characters. While Edward has still had occasional speaking roles since his demotion, Henry has copped it much worse (most likely due to being despised by the writing team), by getting shafted in favour of Nia, Rebecca and other international characters. In Season 22, Henry is limited to only two lines of dialogue, marking his least amount of lines to date in any season. It's a massive fall from grace for a once-loved original Awdry character.
  • In Hero of the Rails, Toby not only gets one line, not only one word, but one syllable. He is completely absent from Tale of the Brave, and is also demoted from the main cast in Big World! Big Adventures! due to the introduction of the Nia and Rebecca.
  • Duck disappeared altogether shortly after the show started deviating from the books. His last starring role prior to "The Thomas Way" was Season 4's "Fish". Subverted following his return in Season 17, where he started receiving regular key appearances.
  • Scruff was relegated to the background for two seasons following his debut, but got some spotlight once season 17 aired.
  • Rosie made regular appearances in the model seasons. Come the CGI transition, she has had only one spotlight episode, being reduced to quick cameos otherwise. Starting with Journey Beyond Sodor, she gains a new red livery and slowly builds up to having more regular appearances again.
  • In season 4, Duke is a major focus of the first four episodes. For the rest of the season, he is relegated to the background. In addition, he doesn't have a single role at all from that season onwards.
  • After their debut episode, Mighty Mac were quickly relegated to the background with only a few minor speaking roles.
  • After the transition to CGI, Bertie the Bus's appearances became scarce. When he did show up, he was usually either avoiding an accident or in need of rescue after getting stuck or breaking down. Season 22 was the first season in the series that he was completely absent from. Bertie started getting more screentime after Season 23, serving as the main non-rail vehicle for passengers on Thomas' branchline. After Bulgy returned to Sodor, Bertie also began to serve as the double-decker's foil.
  • If one is inclined to count appearances from the The Railway Series books that the TV Series is based on, Daisy the Diesel Railcar was prominently featured in them. However, her appearances in the television series were limited during the model era, due in part to her model being troublesome to work with. As a result, Daisy appeared in two episodes from Season 2, and two more from Season 4 (counting one where she makes a cameo appearance), her role in the adaptation of "Mavis" was taken by Devious Diesel, and she made a brief (non-speaking) appearance in Calling All Engines. Since Daisy's return to the television series after Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, she started to be featured more prominently, having three A Day in the Limelight episodes in Season 20, three more in Season 21, and being seen in several other episodes as a supporting character.
• Snarf plays a much smaller role in ThunderCats (2011) than in the original version of the series. Sometimes halfway through the episode you find yourself remembering he's still in this version and wondering where he is.
• Transformers is somewhat the reverse of many other examples on this page, in that a number of characters appear only in the toyline. That said, there's plenty of straight examples,
  • Transformers Generation 1 isn't innocent on this by a long shot. It introduced loads of characters, one set after another, to sell toys, and some had more staying power than others. Many characters' roles went by this formula: 1: Show up one day without comment. 2: Have one really good episode of focus later. 3: Be occasionally seen in the background or fights. 4: Disappear mysteriously.
    • As an example, Jazz, who was a major character in the first two seasons of G1, had a supporting role in the movie, but when Scatman Crothers died shortly afterwards, Jazz's later appearances were non-speaking cameos.
    • Many G1 characters survived the events of The Movie but were gently pushed to the background for marketing purposes. Hasbro wanted the series to showcase their 1986 additions to the toyline. Most of the car-based autobots (such as Cliffjumper and Bluestreak) were rarely seen in the 1986-87 season.
  • From the latter half of Transformers: Prime Season 2 onward, Raf has a rather diminished role compared to that of Jack, Miko, and Fowler. This is also seen in him getting the least amount of Character Development throughout the series.
• Winx Club:
  • The pixies are often subject to this. In season 2, they served as fairly important characters to the plot. In season 3, barring their A Day In The Lime Light episode, they serve mainly as comic relief alongside Kiko. In season 4, the are reduced to one episode, and are completely absent in season 5. They return in season 6, but as comic relief again, and two of their members are replaced with Canon Immigrant from Pop Pixie.
  • Mirta. Some of the events from season 1 revolving around her character, culminating in leaving Cloudtower for Alfea, suggested that she was going to be the sixth Winx girl. For some unexplained reason and despite having a good friendship with all of them (especially Flora), she never became part of the group. She does manage to get a cameo multiple times, establishing she's still around.
• In the animated series of W.I.T.C.H., The Oracle has a much smaller role than in the original comics and doesn't even meet the Guardians face-to-face until the second season, probably because Yan Lin is at hand to explain things.
• Xiaolin Showdown and Xiaolin Chronicles:
  • Katnappe was a recurring villain in the first series who ended up being the focus of at least two episodes. She is also the one who brought Wuya back after the first season finale. Her role is greatly reduced in the second series, where she spends most of the time voiceless and someone to beat up.
  • Tubbimura has one line of dialogue in the second series and then remains a voiceless goon to be fought. Interestingly enough, his dog Muffin Face ends up having more lines than him, being Jack and Wuya's therapist in several episodes.
  • Wuya started out as the main villain and the most considerable threat the monks face, especially when she regained her physical form the first time. While she is still present in both series, her role as the main threat was replaced by Chase Young in both Showdown and Chronicles.
  • Raimundo received this treatment in the second series, which omits his entire character arc of becoming the leader the first series ended with. Here he has a single episode focused on him, and even then, Omi takes up most of the plot. He is also the only monk never challenged to an individual showdown. Raimundo and Clay are little more than Those Two Guys in the background for most of Chronicles.

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