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If you cannot sing Siegfried you can at least carry a spear.
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow note Of course, this means one of the mooks in the choir from Götterdämmerung. Not Wotan, who also carries a spear, but is the protagonist of two of the four operas of the cycle.
A character who walks into a scene, says a few lines at most, and departs. Essentially, an extra with a line. But hey, it's a part. You have to start somewhere, and they wouldn't give away a part this small unless it served some purpose in the story, however small... right?
Plus it's usually enough to get you a card in one of the actors guilds.
Bit Character is the next step up. Compare with the Almost Dead Guy, who walks into a scene, delivers a message, and dies horribly.
The term comes from Greek theater, tragedy in specific: While the plot of a given play focused on members of important nobility, the theater still needed actors to fill the role of their military entourage - you know, the kind of soldiers whose only job on the stage is to stand at attention and give a salute whenever a noble walks by them. It has also become the standard term for an operatic supernumerary, one of several silent extras (of either sex) who may carry anything from a flagon to a kidnap victim. (See here .)
A Herald is usually more dramatic and foreshadows The Call.
Compare The Cameo and Pursued Protagonist. Not to be confused with the native assistant of the Great White Hunter, or with The Lancer, or with literal wielders of spears. Can sometimes result in a One-Scene Wonder.
Examples
Film
- Back to the Future:
- The couple at the dance at the end of the film, who are amazed that George McFly stood up to the school bully.
- There's also Red the Bum, who calls Marty a "crazy, drunk driver" towards the end of Part I, and a "crazy, drunk pedestrian" in the alternate 1985 in Part II.
- In Bruce Almighty: Bruce asks a young boy if he knows how to work a video camera. He replies, "Duh." They even make special mention of him fitting this trope (not in those words) during the DVD commentary.
- In Citizen Toxie Toxic Avenger IV, an actress playing a nurse agreed to be nude on screen in exchange for a line.
- From Ghostbusters: the carriage driver in Central Park who remarks: "What an asshole," after Rick Moranis has a conversation with the horse.
- The member of the crowd in Monty Python's Life of Brian who is individual enough to admit he isn't. Interestingly, that was a Throw It In line—and he was paid extra for coming up with it.
- Jamie in Mystery Team is essentially this; she does very little to add to the plot, and is good for a few laughs.
- In The Naked Gun, the man at the baseball game who yells out "Hey, it's Enrico Palazzo!!!" is credited as such during the closing credits. At least one other spear carrier is billed as such, which is common for the ZAZ team.
- The extra who wasn't supposed to speak in Star Trek IV, but her answer to the "Nuclear Wessels" question was so perfect, it was a Throw It In.
Literature
- In a commentary to the Dragonriders of Pern, author Anne McCaffrey described Masterharper Robinton and Mastersmith Fandarel as spear carriers in the first book, who later evolved into major characters.
- In Alexei Panshin's 1968 science fiction novel Rite Of Passage, the main character muses on the existence of spear carriers as disposable:
"A spear carrier is the anonymous character cut down by the hero as he advances to save the menaced heroine. A spear carrier is a character put in a story to be used like a piece of disposable tissue. In a story, spear carriers never suddenly assert themselves by throwing their spears aside and saying, ‘I resign. I don’t want to be used.’ They are there to be used, either for atmosphere or as minor obstacles in the path of the hero. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers."
Live Action TV
Music
- Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida has a messenger who is possibly the smallest credited role. He has like three lines.
Theatre
- Shakespeare uses a lot of those in his plays:
- The servant from King Lear is known for delivering one line, getting killed, and being one of the best characters in the play.
- In Theatre/Macbeth, Seyton only shows up to tell the king his wife is dead (and to hint where she's gone).
- Depression-era American playwright and former actor Clifford Odetts was so frustrated by constantly being cast as Spear Carriers that when he started writing plays, he deliberately wrote many of his minor characters to be One Scene Wonders. The union members in Paradise Lost in particular stand out.
Web Comics
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate: Hold there, traveler, Elminster just wants some attention.
- In The Curse Of Monkey Island, Guybrush wants to be in a theater production but is told he "doesn't have the hands of a spear carrier."
- The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind: the prisoner Jiub only managed to deliver ten short lines of dialog before you were separated from him. Fans became so fond of Jiub that mods eventually allowed you to free him, as well. There's also one mod that makes Jiub the prophesied hero, and the PC just a random adventurer. Even Bethesda got into the act. In Oblivion we learn that "Saint Jiub" drove the Cliff Racers from Morrowind, and in Skyrim you can meet his ghost and help him complete his opus, detailing his incredible feats.
- Half Life
- Half Life: Barney the guard pops up to deliver a message or herald Gordon a few times. Sometimes you can recruit him to do something, and once he manages to become the Almost Dead Guy just before Gordon is ambushed too.
- Half Life 2: A woman is in a culvert as Freeman goes by, she says she's going to stay there to keep the underground railroad open a while longer, and tells him to keep going.
- Gothic: his name is Mud and he wants to talk to you. Sadly, he has nothing useful to say. No, Mud, go away.
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