Small Role Big Impact / Literature

Instances of Small Role, Big Impact in Literature.

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• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest: Aiko's apperances in the light novels can be counted on one hand, yet it's because of her that Hajime went from being from a very selfish anti-hero into someone willing to help others to avoid living "a lonely life".
• The Ashes Series: Carl Adams, a right-wing fanatic who even the main characters view as a madman, engineers the nuclear war that causes The End of the World as We Know It and the subsequent rise of new governments such as Ben's secessionist movement, kicking off a forty book series. However, Adams is killed in the fifth chapter of the first book, making way for more (mostly liberal) antagonists.
• Bazil Broketail: Smilgax, in more ways than one. He is the one who cuts off the tip of Bazil's tail, causing the need to regrow it via magic and earning the hero his titular nickname. Also, because he is outed as a traitor and a part of assassination scheme, it forces Thrembode to change plans and abduct Princess Besita instead — basically setting up the plot for the entire second half of the novel.
• Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus:
  • The Dark Elf mother and her child only appear very briefly in the manga, but it's only because Rita stopped the caravan in order to help them that Nagi learned about the Leviathan in the first place.
  • Astarte shows up at the start of the story, guides Nagi to Cecil, and then is never seen or heard again once Nagi buys her. Yet if it had stayed silent, Nagi's prospects in this new world would have been quite grim, and Cecil would still be a "useless Dark Elf" slave, waiting for death in a cell.
• The Cold Moons: Tendril appears in only one chapter, the second chapter, and it's heavily implied that she died off-screen. However, without her, the Decoy Protagonist Bamber would have died and, with him, all the other badgers would have likely perished as well.
• The Crocodile God's main antagonist is one of Mirasol's Spanish employers in the newly-colonized Philippines, and the story only refers to him as Mirasol's master or "the Spaniard." His major action is to shoot the heavily-pregnant Mirasol so her husband Haik shuts up about being the Tagalog tribe's sea-god. This means he has committed Deicide by killing their unborn daughter, clinched the Death of the Old Gods in the Philippines after Haik has long assumed the rest of the pantheon is dead, and sent their Reincarnation Romance into a spiral of trauma and separation.
• In Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Hikaru, the programmer that disappears before the story begins. Without Hikaru helping, Ichiro Suzuki is forced to do a programming "Death March" of 80+ work weeks to meet a deadline to finish a game. When he finishes and falls asleep, the next he knows is that he has been returned to his 15-year-old body and sent to the fantasy world where the entire story takes place.
• In the Creepypasta The Devil Game, the reader might take on said role if he accepts a dare from the Devil that seems innocuous, like scribbling some numbers inside a toilet stall, which will further the Devil's plans to harm countless people. It could get you the winning lottery numbers though.
• Dracula: Dracula himself. He actually only appears "on screen" in a handful of scenes, but he dominates practically everything that happens in the book.
• Arianna Ortega in The Dresden Files interacts only with Harry, and appears in a grand total of three chapters before biting it. Her plans result in Harry changing supernatural geopolitics forever, and sets the plots for book 12 and 13 in motion.
  • The minor Red Court Vampire Bianca St. Claire only appears in Books 1 & 3. However her falling out and subsequent attempts at petty revenge against Harry both start off the war with the White Council and eventually gives Harry the opportunity to wipe out her entire species. Whoops?
  • He Who Walks Behind. He is a powerful demon knight on the levels of being a Physical God. As of book 14 Cold Days, he was only in a single chapter flashback in book 13 Ghost Story. Besides that, he was referenced maybe five times in the entire series. But his actions in Harry's past, the brutal murder of a gas station attendant Harry tried robbing drove him to avenge the little guy and develop the Chronic Hero Syndrome that would make Harry face down forces that no mortal had tried challenging before.
• Clarisse McClellan from Fahrenheit 451 is obscurely written out of the story very early on; however, her influence on Guy Montag instigates the entire plot and every event that happens therein. (Some adaptations even write her back in later.)
• In the Fear Street spin-off series Fear Street Seniors, the first actual senior to die was Danielle Cortez. She only appears in a few pages and doesn't even receive the courtesy of a yearbook entry until the sixth volume, which is three books after her death, but the fact remains that she dies on the very first day of the new school year, which sets the mood for the rest of the school year. Her death is the harbinger for the rest of the seniors who die throughout the year.
• The Great Greene Heist: Keith's cousin Naomi is never mentioned again after the fourth chapter (out of forty-four), but her unopposed run for student council threatens to give Keith and Wilton a tiebreaker vote if they win their own bids.
• The Story Within a Story in Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates about a boy plugging a dike with his finger and preventing a flood is more famous than the actual story of Hans Brinker and his skates.
• Harry Potter:
  • Lily Evans really doesn't show up a lot, but her actions drove the entire characterization of Snape, and her Heroic Sacrifice set up the entire plot.
  • The eponymous Goblet of Fire only gets a couple of appearances early on the book and then is (almost) never mentioned again. It, however, kickstarts the book's main plot.
  • Narcissa Malfoy in the latter Harry Potter books. In terms of facetime and notoriety, she takes backseat to her husband and son and is mostly just another snobby wizard supremacist. However, in the sixth book, her binding Snape to the Unbreakable vow is ultimately responsible for the climax of the story. And in book 7, her willingness to lie to Voldemort about Harry's death is what gives Harry the chance to win the war once and for all.
  • Lucius Malfoy’s role in the story also by far eclipses his actual screen time. Dumbledore had suspected all along that Voldemort had made horcruxes at some point but didn’t have any proof, know how many there could be, know what kind of objects they’d be, or have a time frame. When Lucius slips Ginny the diary horcrux in second book, he sets in motion the events of the rest of the series. Dumbledore was able to work backwards and figure out everything he didn’t know (that he’d made them in his young adult years, they were objects based on the Hogwarts founders, and since he’s not dead that there were more) to ultimately take him down. When Ginny uses the diary to open the Chamber of Secrets, it also lets them get basilisk venom which is one of the few things that can destroy horcruxes.
  • Kreacher. When screenwriter Michael Goldenberg tried to adapt him out, J. K. Rowling told him that doing so would put a Spanner in the Works of the seventh film. (Goldenberg can be forgiven for attempting it, since Kreacher's one plot-critical moment had, at the time, not yet been published.)
  • The sixth book introduces many characters who appear only via Pensieve Flashback, most — if not all — of whom are also long gone by the time the series start: Marvolo, Morfin, and Merope Gaunt; Bob Ogden; Tom Riddle, Sr.; Mrs. Cole; and Hepzibah Smith and her House Elf, Hokey. They're all connected to Voldemort's backstory: Marvolo, Morfin, Merope, and Riddle Sr. are Voldemort's maternal grandfather, uncle, mother, and father, respectively; Ogden's encounter with them eventually led to Voldemort's birth at the orphanage Mrs. Cole would be running by the time Dumbledore went there, and Voldemort met Hepzibah Smith and Hokey when he was employed to liaise with Hepzibah for her collection of antiques, two of which eventually fell into Voldemort's hands.
  • Dumbledore's siblings, Aberforth and Ariana, don't show up until very late in the series (Aberforth is mentioned in passing a few times and shows up about three quarters through Deathly Hallows but Ariana goes completely unmentioned until the beginning of that book) but are very important to his backstory and the story in general. To make a long story short, some Muggle boys did something horrible to Ariana when they saw her using magic when she was a child, implied but not outright stated to have been some sort of sexual abuse, and their father went to prison for attacking them in Revenge. The trauma caused Ariana to repress her magic and she became unstable, accidentally killing their mother. Albus did not take his Promotion to Parent well, being forced to stay and left unable to see the world because he also wanted Aberforth to finish school. Gellert Grindelwald came knocking at their village and Albus wanted to go on his trip with him to Take Over the World and take Ariana with them. Aberforth put his foot down and a Mêlée à Trois ensued, with poor Ariana accidentally killed in the chaos. Her death made Albus realize that power went to his head and explains why the greatest wizard of his age became a teacher instead of an Evil Overlord. He still hates himself for it, so much that the only time he ever actually mentions her is in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald while trying to empathize with Leta Lestrange who similarly still hates herself for incidentally causing her younger sibling’s death as a child. Aberforth also feels incredibly guilty for it and it's why the brothers aren't necessarily close as adults. She's been dead for about a hundred years by the time of his death but wanting to see her to apologize to her in the Resurrection Stone is how he gets the curse that kills him. It's also clear on a re-read that Aberforth uses his role as the barkeeper at the Hog's Head to spy on Death Eaters for his brother. In fact, he's the one who kicked Snape out of the bar halfway through the prophecy, setting in motion the event that caused Harry's parents' death and Snape turning into a spy against Voldemort.
• An unnamed Medusan native who wandered into the human enclave on the planet and ended up dead due to a drug overdose was responsible for much of the Honor Harrington series. It was his possession of a firearm that shouldn't have been possible for the native population to develop on their own and ravings about a religious leader that alerted the Manticorans that something serious was going on. The resulting series of events secured Harrington a promotion and the notice of her superiors, which put her into position for more critical events that the junior captain of an old destroyer wouldn't have been.
• Max Quist only appears at the start of The Howling (1977), but he kicks off the whole plot by raping Karyn, prompting her and Roy to move to Drago to help Karyn's recovery. His vile actions cast a shadow over Karyn and Roy for the rest of the story, influencing later events.
• Primrose "Prim" Everdeen from The Hunger Games in the first book. She isn't present for most of the plot, but it's because of her that Katniss ends up in the Games in the first place.
  • And by extension, Katniss's role in those Games were what ended up sparking the rebellion.
• The ghost of James Incandenza in Infinite Jest doesn't even have any lines, but single-handedly sets almost the whole novel's plot into motion which culminates in the apocalypse.
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Yuuichirou Satomi, Koutarou's father, doesn't appear often, but it's only because Koutarou wanted to lessen his father's burden following his mother's death that he moved into Room 106 and met the girls in the first place. This leads to events up to and including the creation of the Universe.
• The Last Days of Krypton: Tyr-Us and Gil-Ex's four allies on the reformed Kryptonian Council have no names, little Back Story, and only three lines of dialogue between them, but their existence gives the troublemakers on the Council a majority vote, directly leading to Krypton's destruction.
• In Looking for Alaska, the title character has a boyfriend, a college student named Jake, who is repeatedly referred to throughout the book but actually seen a grand total of once. Nevertheless, his influence is felt throughout the story, his existence being the reason Alaska and protagonist Miles never act on their feelings for each other, causing no shortage of angst for him (and, it's implied, her as well). And then, just when you've probably forgotten him, a phone call from him at exactly the wrong time about exactly the wrong subject causes something very, very bad to happen.
• Lord of the Flies has a Royal Navy officer in the story for a grand total of one scene, right at the end of the book. He also kind of comes out of nowhere, but this was intentional on the part of the author. His sudden appearance was meant to highlight how the savagery of the boys could have been solved if there was an adult around, and how the sudden appearance of authority can change everything in a situation.
• The Lord of the Rings books are full of this. You have characters like Erkenbrand, a Marshall of Rohan leading the troops that Gandalf collects to save everyone at Helm's Deep, or Ghan-buri-Ghan, a Noble Savage tribesman who leads the Rohirrim around an ambush so they can arrive at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in time and at full strength.
  • Also occurs in The Hobbit with characters like Bard, and elsewhere as well — Tolkien was obviously very fond of the idea that everyone, not just the protagonists or the most powerful beings, can have a major influence on the world.
• The Maltese Falcon: General Kemidov is The Ghost, but even before the story begins, when Gutman wanted to buy the McGuffin, he realized that it would be important and replaced it with a MockGuffin that the gang found very easy to steal, making him the real Magnificent Bastard of the story.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Baron Shelley only shows up in flashbacks involving Anne, and nothing he ever does directly affects any members of the primary game cast, but him sending Anne to be with the Claes family after effectively disowning her was how she and Catarina become such close friends and she started breaking out of her submissive shell, and Catarina's efforts to stop him from marrying her off against her will is the major push that truly allowed Anne to break free of her mental shackles and decide to be her own person instead of what would potentially please other people.
• Roll Over and Die: The black market slave merchant appeared in only the first two chapters of the light novel, but the impact he has is immense. If it wasn't for him, Jean would not have had the opportunity to sell Flum into slavery. This causes the Hero's party to start to break apart due to Flum being The Heart of the party and Jean being short sighted. Additionally, this leads to Flum discovering the true nature of her affinity Reversal, and she also meets Milkit along with beginning her own Hero's journey.
• The Scholomance: Clarita is only mentioned once, in passing, before the last fifth of the first book, but plays a significant role in the climax.
• Watson's friend Stamford has about two lines, doesn't make it past the first chapter of A Study in Scarlet, and is promptly never seen again. But he introduced John Watson and Sherlock Holmes to each other, resulting in their forming a life-long friendship, and kicking off one of the most well-known and enjoyable mystery series of modern literature.
  • Professor James Moriarty is only in two works in the entire Sherlock Holmes canon (the short story "The Final Problem" and the novel The Valley of Fear), and he is almost entirely behind the scenes in both, with no dialogue in either work, and no explicit appearances aside from one brief scene where Holmes points him out to Watson on a train. Nevertheless, he is the only character in the Canon who Holmes ever called his intellectual equal, and he was the catalyst behind Holmes' infamous three-year disappearance — which was originally meant to be his death. For good reason, many adaptations significantly increase his presence, making his role as Holmes' archenemy much more explicit.
  • Likewise, Irene Adler only ever appears in one story, "A Scandal in Bohemia". She outwits the Great Detective and escapes scot-free, and an admiring Holmes refers to her as "the woman" ever afterwards. Many modern adaptations have her stick around and promote her to love interest (somewhat ignoring the fact that Holmes was the best man at her wedding).
• Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs. He's a minor character in the novel (and in the film he's on screen for only fifteen minutes or so), and yet he drives the plot forward on several occasions all by himself. (Amusingly, Anthony Hopkins set a record by winning the Best Actor Oscar in the shortest amount of screen time.)
  • This is even more the case in the preceding novel, Red Dragon. Unlike his relationship with Clarice, which formed the real meat of Silence of the Lambs, his relationship with Will Graham is mostly restricted to a mutual hatred. He appears on a total of seven pages, and new scenes had to be written for him in the Edward Norton adaptation to justify his billing. His actions continue impact the story long after his final appearance, however.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Balon Greyjoy is one of the eponymous monarchs in the War of the Five Kings. He barely has any time interacting with the POV characters, and appears in only small parts of two chapters in the second book, and doesn't reappear before dying off screen in the third. However, his decision in the second book to go to war with the North rather than joining them effectively ends the chances of that king to win their war.
  • Mirri Maz Duur only appeared in four chapters (three episodes) of A Game of Thrones, including the one where she is killed. The only POV character she interacts with is Daenerys. However, her actions become not only the driving force behind much of Daenerys's story arc, but also the reason that dragons (and in turn, stronger magic), have returned to the world. (Given that said dragons are expected to defend the Wall against the Others, Mirri Maz Duur might end up having a greater hand in saving Westeros than anyone besides Daenerys.)
  • Lord Walder Frey appears in only three chapters of the series (or episodes of the show). He is still able to orchestrate a Wham Episode in which he helps win the war for his side by killing off several important characters.
  • Lysa Arryn has very little pagetime, but while Saying Too Much in her last chapter she reveals that she is directly responsible for the events that lead to the War of the Five Kings (murdering Jon Arryn, causing Robert to ask Ned to be his Hand; implying the Lannisters as his murderer to Catelyn causing her to eventually take Tyrion captive and anger Tywin Lannister).
  • Daella Targaryen and her daughter Aemma Arryn are barely mentioned in the history books but they are the ancestors to the current line of Targaryens through Rhaenyra and her son, Viserys II.
  • Lyanna Stark only appears as a statue and in the memories of Ned Stark, but she had one of the largest influences in the plot: her kidnapping led to the death of Ned's father and brother and Robert's Rebellion, her death turned Robert Baratheon into a depressed man whose disdain for ruling caused no short end to problems and she might be mother to Jon Snow, a character whose role in the books has been incredibly important.
  • One of numerous long-dead historical figures introduced in the supplemental encyclopedia The World of Ice & Fire is "The Bloodstone Emperor", the semi-mythical ruler of Yi Ti (a civilization that's mentioned several times in the main series, but never actually seen) who's said to have presided over a brutal reign of terror that began after he forcibly usurped the throne from his sister "The Amethyst Empress" in an event that came to be known to future generations as "The Blood Betrayal". He gets exactly two paragraphs devoted to his story, and receives considerably less description than any of the various kings of the Targaryen dynasty. Yet in those two paragraphs, it's strongly implied that he was personally responsible for the apocalyptic events of "The Long Night"—which play a major role in the series' backstory.^note  While it's left deliberately ambiguous whether the Bloodstone Emperor actually caused the Long Night (this is said to be merely a common claim in the annals of the Further East, not an undisputed fact), it's worth noting that this is the only potential explanation for the Long Night that has been presented thus far. Assuming this is really the case, a sizeable chunk of the novels' primary plotline can be traced back to him.
• Star Wars: Kenobi: Being set on Tatooine just after Revenge of the Sith, Anakin's role is limited to allusions and mentions in Obi-Wan's meditations, but he has a great deal of importance in the story's events. Aside from being the reason Obi-Wan is on Tatooine in the first place, his massacre of the Tusken clan in Attack of the Clones is responsible for both A'Yark's clan's dire straits and the decrease in demand for the Settler's Call that drives Orrin to fabricate Tusken attacks.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Vassago Casals/PoH. He has very little screentime in Aincrad compared to Akihiko Kayaba but his actions have an impact that extends far beyond him. Him establishing the Player Killing guild Laughing Coffin and corrupting many a player into becoming player killers and even real-life serial killers is what directly causes the Phantom Bullet and Alicization arcs.
  • Atsushi Kanamoto/Johnny Black. He's a minor but named member of Laughing Coffin, and later plays a small role in Phantom Bullet, since the Shinkawa brothers needed an additional accomplice to carry out the murders on the day of BoB. However, his real impact comes at the start of the Alicization arc, in which he injects Kirito with his succhyoline, forcing him to be hooked up to the STL and essentially causing the storyline to happen.
• The Twilight Saga:
  • Although Jake is promoted to Tritagonist in New Moon, his role in the first book is certainly small; and Sam is also more major in subsequent books, having only 2 lines in one conversation in the entire first book. Yet one of Sam's statements, and Bella's conversation with Jake in response, gets the plot of this book going.
  • Irina, who is certainly a minor character in the entire series, causes both the alliance between the Cullens and the werewolves in Eclipse and causes the Volturi to go to the Cullens in Breaking Dawn.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Sasha in Warrior Cats: The New Prophecy. Although she only appears once or twice, she mothered the villain's children, who go on to become super important characters.
  • Socks and Ruby in the manga The Rise of Scourge. Both were mean to Tiny, causing him to run away and become Scourge. Also Tigerclaw, but only in the manga.
• In the present-day The Wheel of Time, Aginor is one of the least appearing, least accomplished members of the Forsaken ( he dies twice without accomplishing much that's noteworthy). In the backstory, on the other hand, he created the Shadowspawn races, meaning he was responsible for most of the mooks the heroes fight and for untold suffering caused by his "children" over the millennia.

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