Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Narrative

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

Genre

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
• Love
• News
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

Media

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

Topical Tropes

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School
• Sex

Other Categories

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Did Not Do The Research
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Weirdness Isolation

A character whose motivations and overall personality essentially revolve around their interaction with another, possibly more interesting, character with whom they really should be on an equal standing. Without this interaction, they would otherwise be pretty bland.

Sometimes a series will remove that "central" person from the equation somehow, and the Satellite Character has to establish their own motives. This is a common way to make a Battle Butler more interesting. On the other hand, a Spin Off can fail entirely if the star is a Satellite Character whose character can't support their own stories.

Contributing to their poor image in some circles, badly-written Magical Girlfriends become Satellite Characters if not outright Shallow Female Love Interests with disturbing frequency.

Note that not all satellite characters are friendly, though... Some satellites are the exact opposite, full of all-consuming jealousy, rage, bitterness, vengefulness, or outright hatred, orbiting until the time is right to crash violently into the character they circle. This is EXCEEDINGLY rare, though.

---

Examples:

• Sakuya in Shin Tenchi Muyo / Tenchi In Tokyo, who was also a Magical Girlfriend. This was, however, deliberately built up for The Reveal.
• In Sailor Moon, the original author admitted Michiru was so unlike her she was difficult to write for, a trait carried over to the television show. The otherwise cryptic girl is largely defined by her interactions with Haruka, who she usually appears alongside. In contrast, the fans liked Haruka's personality enough she got her own mini-arc and Back Story episode.
  • Mamoru turned into this in the anime post-Shipping Bed Death, when the writers ran out of anything to do with him.
• Asuka in Yu-Gi-Oh GX grew to serve less and less purpose over the course of the series outside her interest in the protagonist and The Rival's interest in her.
• It can be argued that most of the cast of Friends were like this at some point or another, being meaningless without the others, but Phoebe and Joey were most noticeable. This makes more sense when you note that they were originally supposed to be supporting characters; naturally, Joey's eventual Spin Off only lasted a season and a half.
  • Actually it was Chandler, not Joey who was intended to be supporting (along with Phoebe); this is easier to tell in the first season where Joey is relatively competent if sexist, and Chandler is actually more neurotic than in the rest of the series. And of course they were interdependent, they were all...well, look at the title. Which explains spinning off just one of them resulted in less than success.
• Hazel in Degrassi The Next Generation became the butt of constant jokes among the fandom over how little she did. Depending on the episode, she's either a Spear Carrier or the Idiot Of The Week. The problem was that she started out as a Recurring Character, received a Promotion To Opening Titles -- and then received the exact same amount of screen time and plot relevance as before.
• In Boston Public, the school coach was billed as a main character in the opening credits, but his entire role seemed to be commenting on other people's plotlines. The Television Without Pity recaps dubbed him "Coach Lamphrey the Plot Parasite."
• Quite common in kids' shows, where writers try to portray duos, cliques, entourages, and other groups of background characters. In the all-too-common worst case, a character can go throughout the entire series without ever speaking, let alone being given a first name, despite appearing in almost every episode.
  • This is spoofed with the character "Star" on Danny Phantom, a preppy blonde who Tucker nicknames "Satellite," because she is "the marginally attractive girl who always orbits around the popular girl". Before this, she'd received a few solo cameos, but ever since the joke, her appearances have almost always been beside Paulina, the popular girl in question.
• While Starfire from Teen Titans has gotten some days in the limelight, she's at the bottom of the list when it comes to being focused on; for instance, she was the only character without her own seasonal arc. This is mostly because a large part of her character has to do with her relationship with Robin.
• Michal, Lucia's love rival from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, revolves almost completely around Kaito until she becomes Michel's mana battery. In fact, she does this intentionally, thinking that being completely devoted to Kaito in every way will help her steal him from Lucia before he gets his memory back, while her brother Rihito worries about her well-being for it.
• Angry variant: Depth Charge, from Transformers: Beast Wars, is an Ahab-esque satellite character defined by his all-consuming hatred for the monstrous Rampage. It's implied that Rampage set this up intentionally.
• Also played straight on Beast Wars by Inferno, a Predacon pyromaniac with the mindset of a real ant, who considers Megatron to be "The Royalty".
• TenTen from Naruto, who seems to have no purpose other than to fill up a slot in Lee's team and to lose to Temari in the Chuunin Exam arc.
• Jealous variant: Veronica Star from The Fairly Odd Parents, is Trixie Tang's satellite. She is in love with Timmy, and wishes that she could be Trixie, because Timmy likes Trixie,
• Due to limits on how much story time there is to develop characters with, non-RPG videogames have far too many examples of this to list, mostly in the form of rivals, love interests, parents, slain mentors and other already-cliched roles.
• Angry variant: While Wario's main characteristic is his greed, Waluigi seems to be defined entirely by his hatred of Luigi.
  • This also had to do with Waluigi being too perfect a pun in Japanese to pass up.
  • Nintendo seems to be fond of introducing these characters in the Mario games; Waluigi exists solely so that Luigi can have a "rival" (though this rivalry is never shown anywhere in a game), while Princess Daisy seems to exist solely to provide the series with a second female character other than Princess Peach. Characters like Toadsworth and Baby Bowser probably fall under this trope as well.
• Kaorin of Azumanga Daioh exists mainly to be Twice Shy about expressing her feelings towards Sakaki.
  • And Chihiro has even less to call her own than Kaorin, being defined almost entirely as part of a pair with Kaorin herself. Kaorin at least is defined around Sakaki, Chihiro, and Kimura.
• Played with in Final Fantasy X: Wakka and Lulu, while fulfilling indispensable roles in gameplay, are largely Satellites to each other and to Yuna, who is even more of a main character than the game's hero.
• Real Life example, Ant and Dec. As The Now Show once said, "You can have one without the other but what would be the point."
• Sakura Kakei, the Team Mom of Get Backers, is largely defined by her relationship with Makubex, and rarely appears without him. And he's a minor supporting character himself (a Non Action Guy unable to exist outside of Mugenjou), So Yeah.
• A lot of Shakesperian love interests fall into this catagory, making this, da dada daaaaaaa...
• Although Vala is more than capable of standing on her own feet as a character in Stargate SG 1, she is noticebly much more interesting and funny when she's teasing Daniel.
• Gretchen from Mean Girls, toady in chief to Regina; despite being beautiful and rich she is such an insecure mess that she is willing to put up with any amount of crap just to be follow Regina (seething bitterly all the while). At the end of the film it is revealed that she actually learns Vietnamese just so she can join the new top clique.
• Disney sidekicks by their very nature, whether good or bad characters. Possibly the most glaring (and inexplicable) example is Lefou, Gaston's little stooge in Beauty and the Beast. Lefou spends most of his time running errands for his 'friend', only to be constantly abused and beaten up for his pains. And yet still he insists he thinks Gaston's wonderful. If Lefou was a girl the implications would be very disturbing.