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New Neighbours as the Plot Demands aka: New Neighbors As The Plot Demands
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A Sub Trope of Geographic Flexibility, when writing a small town setting for long enough, you start introducing new characters everyone apparently knows, but has never mentioned before. In Police Procedural and medical shows, new neighbours are handy for Ripped from the Headlines and Subculture Of The Week plots.
Can be a feature of a Quirky Town. If the city was larger, it'd be a City of Adventure. See also 24 Hour Party People, Long Lost Uncle Aesop, and Remember the New Guy.
Examples:
Comic Books
- Sam & Max
- Averted in the videogames though; Bosco, Stinky and Sal are neighbours of Sam and Max who are mentioned long before their on-screen introductions.
Literature
- This happens in the Mary Minor, Mrs. Murphy and Tee Tucker mystery series written by Rita Mae Brown. The series is set in a small town in Virginia and there are always at least a few new characters introduced with each novel.
- R L Stine's Ghosts of Fear Street series. It must be one long street...
- Some characters don't live on Fear Street, but if they don't, they do something that involves Fear Street or the also-cursed forest and lake beside it.
Live-Action TV
Video Games
- In the first few days of playing Animal Crossing, a new neighbor moves in every day.
- WarioWare series. Not explicitly stated how big Diamond City is as a place, but each game adds new characters apparently just living a few houses away from each other that have never been seen before in the entire series.
- Arguably The Sims, in particularly The Sims 2 and 3 if you're following the stories of the Maxis/EA premade families.
- The Reality On The Norm Shared Universe is set in a city which seems to gain more and more citizens with each installment.
Western Animation
- Springfield started out this way, until all the side characters were cemented as a part of the Loads and Loads of Characters cast.
- Also, neighbors of the Simpsons (aside from the Flanders) occasionally appear at random, then disappear, never to be mentioned again.
- Although this too has settled down a little. Flanders lives on one side, Laura Powers lived on the other side (until that house was bought by Sideshow Bob wearing someone else's face, with a brief mention of Powers leaving). More distant neighbors are seldom specified, although Mrs Glick seems to live on the same street somewhere and the house across the road was once owned by George Bush Senior and then by Gerald Ford.
- That huge house opposite the Simpsons certainly seems to pop out of nowhere.
- Fillmore! reuses the faces of previous episodes' characters, but they never speak or do anything of importance. Outside the safety patrol itself, no character features in more than one episode, even those who have a history with the regulars.
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