Small Role Big Impact / Video Games

Instances of Small Role, Big Impact in Video Games.

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• Assassin's Creed has Khemu, the son of Bayek and Aya who is murdered by the Order of the Ancients. His death is what motivates his parents to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the group and form the Hidden Ones, the ancient precursors to the Assassin Brotherhood who would become The Rival to the Templar Order.
• Bane in Batman: Arkham Asylum. His only appearance is a brief confrontation, but his Venom serum is the catalyst for the game's plot.
  • The same could be said for the Electrocutioner in Batman: Arkham Origins. The fight with him ends with you hitting him and him hitting the ground, and then he's unceremoniously killed off by the Joker, but the weapons you get from him, the Shock Gloves, have a heavy impact on the rest of the game. Not only are the Shock Gloves just that awesome, but they also allow Batman to save Alfred's life, as well as enable him to get around the Joker's Sadistic Choice by Taking a Third Option.
  • Dr. Penelope Young from Batman: Arkham Asylum appears for few moments and is then killed by Joker, but her research with Bane's Venom is how TITAN is manufactured, which Joker planned in order to destroy Gotham. Said use of TITAN eventually drives Joker into terminal illness, which means Dr. Young indirectly avenged herself as Joker dies in the end of City.
• In The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, the first of the True Final Bosses that you face upon reaching Home is Dogma, which represents the televangelism that not only drove Isaac's mom insane, but led to Isaac's own self-loathing and suffering. Despite only showing up in the final level of this game's final DLC, Dogma has done more to cause the story of Isaac than any other enemy that Isaac has faced.
• Bloodborne:
  • The Blood Minister only appears in the opening cutscene and is never mentioned again, but he's the one who got you to sign a hunter contract, allowing the rest of the game to take place.
  • Gehrman, the closest thing the game gives you to a Mission Control, only shows up about four times in the game^note  (he sometimes pops up in the garden at random times, but he's always sleeping), two of which are to direct you to things that aren't even necessary to complete the game (though they are necessary for the Golden Ending, and to completely understand the story). However, he's also the one who founded the Hunters, made all of the early game weapons and Hunter Tools, and was part of the group that inadvertently created the Beast Plague. His pact with the Moon Presence is also what creates the Hunter's Dream, and what gives you your powers as a Hunter. Finally, he's also the penultimate boss in the Childhood's Beginning end, and the Final Boss in the Honoring Wishes ending.
  • Mergo's Wet Nurse counts for this as well. Maybe. It's difficult to say for sure. The entity itself goes completely unmentioned in lore notes and only appears as the Final Boss in the Neutral Ending, or the Penultimate Boss in the Bad Ending, making it come across as a Giant Space Flea Out Of Nowhere, not helped by the fact that, unlike all other beings in the game, it doesn't bleed when struck, instead giving off dark, dusty clouds, almost as if it's just an illusion... The fact that it is the Wet Nurse of Mergo alone makes the entity a significant one however, and while it goes unmentioned in the Lore, there's a very prominent statue in the Grand Cathedral sporting the signature robed, winged, headless traits of the Wet Nurse; a statue that pours a liquid down upon the main altar and the worshipping effigies below, which may represent the Wet Nurse bestowing the Healing Church with Old Blood, a possibility that's reinforced by the fact that the Wet Nurse dons a pendant bearing a striking resemblance to the Communion Rune. The fact that it does not bleed may also qualify it as "the bloodless" that the Fishing Hamlet Priest calls to in the Old Hunters DLC. Finally there's the fact that the Wet Nurse's invisible nature, namelessness and potential ties to Blood Ministration makes it one of the prime candidates for being Formless Oedon... which, if true, would make it the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire game.
  • Laurence, the First Vicar, only appears in a short cutscene (and since it's only really his arm onscreen, his model is actually Micolash). But he founded the Healing Church, source of the Blood Ministration that makes you a Hunter and also cause of most of Yharnam's problems. He does appear in The Old Hunters DLC, having turned into the first Cleric Beast because of the Old Blood the Healing Church used.
  • Ludwig, the first Church Hunter, is the one who organized the system of Hunting that Yharnam uses to stave off beasts, and is the one behind several weapons, but never appears in the game and is probably dead or a beast himself. He too shows up in person in The Old Hunters, as the boss Ludwig the Accursed/Ludwig, The Holy Blade.
• The Case of the Golden Idol: Willard Wright only appears in Chapter 3, and only speaks one line, and then he is dead at the beginning of Chapter 4. It is in Chapter 3 that Willard Wright uses the magical power of the golden idol in a public place, which is witnessed by Edmund Cloudsley. Cloudsley's pursuit of the golden idol and the consequences of that pursuit comprise the rest of the story.
• Yakra XIII from Chrono Trigger, who impersonates the Chancellor from 1000 A.D. to take Revenge on the Guardia lineage for the death of his ancestor from 600 A.D., attempts to frame Crono for the abduction of Marle and get him executed, which leads to Crono, Marle and Lucca taking the Gate to the ruined future of 2300 A.D. and finding out about Lavos. The group doesn't get the chance to fight Yakra XIII until after Crono is resurrected on Death Peak after being killed by Lavos in the Ocean Palace, and his fight is completely optional.
• Dead Rising: Larry the cannibalistic butcher comes out of nowhere and kills Carlito, the Big Bad of the entire game, in his only appearance.
• Dragon Quest XI: Jarvis is encountered very early on and dealt with in minutes, but he's the reason Veronica spends the whole game in the form of a child.
• Fallout 3: The player character's mother, Catherine. She has roughly 3 lines, dies within a minute of your birth, and is the driving motivation for James' escape from the vault (and trying to restart Project Purity) and, consequently, your reason for doing the same.
• Fallout 4: Though he is only encountered when you visit the town of Quincy in the southeast corner of the Commonwealth, and he's already hostile so you'll likely kill him anyways, Lt. Clint played a pivotal part in the near-collapse of the Commonwealth Minutemen shortly before the player character left Vault 111. He was once a loyal Minuteman until he witnessed the decline of the organization and committed a Face–Heel Turn when the mercenary group called the Gunners attacked Quincy. He sided with them and helped massacre most of the other Minutemen that arrived to help, leaving only the group led by Preston Garvey who escaped and continued to have their numbers whittled down until reaching Concord. There they are saved by the Sole Survivor which potentially allows for the Minutemen to be reborn and regain their strength as protectors of the Commonwealth. This can even come full circle if you bring Preston with you when visiting Quincy and killing the Gunners there, as he will highly approve of killing Clint in revenge for his betrayal.
• Fatal Frame:
  • Kunihiko Asou. He was an occult philosopher and brilliant researcher, focusing on Japanese folklore and the spirit world during the second half of the 19th century. Despite not even physically appearing until the fifth game, Asou has influenced the entire franchise. He is the creator of the Camera Obscura, as well as other tools to battle against spirits, and left them to his descendants. And outside of this general influence, his personal interaction with Ouse Kurosawa was among the reasons her ritual failed, cursing Mt Hikami.
  • Mafuyu Hinasaki. His role for the entire game mostly consists of a minor tutorial, before focus shifts onto Miku, and to eventually choose to remain behind with Kirie at the Hellgate. However, his sacrifice and actions cause Miku huge amounts of guilt and grief, to the point that they are the reason Miku ends up wandering the Manor of Sleep in the third game, and even influences her actions in the fifth game.
• Marisbury Animusphere from Fate/Grand Order; the deceased founder of the Chaldea Security Organization which the protagonist and Mash Kyrielight are members of, he won the Fuyuki Holy Grail War in 2004 with King Solomon and allowed his Servant to have his own wish, setting up the eventual defeat of the game's primary antagonist by using Solomon's final magic ring as a catalyst and leaving it behind for Solomon after his death. He's also revealed to have signed off on several projects with several consequences in the present, with Mash being a Demi-Servant because of his attempts to protect the future by creating a Heroic Spirit army and human experimentation in a private oil rig unintentionally providing the means and power of world-ending threat Kiara Sesshouin.
• Reddas in Final Fantasy XII. His backstory reveals that he was the one Judge who nuked Nabradia with nethicite, and that leads to such a hatred of it that he destroys the Sun-Cryst, banishing the Occuria's influence from Ivalice and, in a sense, completing the Big Bad's not-so-evil plan.
• Final Fantasy XIV: A certain raid boss ends up being the key to half the story. Omega is an alien war machine that chased Midgardsormr from their homeworlds across an unknown, but enourmous, distance to Hydaelyn. Upon landing, it became the basis for all the technology of the Allagan Empire. It's at the root of plot elements in A Realm Reborn (the Ultima Weapon was based on it), Binding Coils of Bahamut (it captured Bahamut and put it in Dalamud), Crystal Tower (the tower's technology was derived from Omega) Heavensward (it's the reason there are dragons in the world to begin with), Stormblood (made the liberation possible by destroying Baelsar's Wall during its fight with Shinryu) and Shadowbringers (the techniques used to summon the Tower and the Scions to Norvrandt were developed by studying Omega's Rift manipulation ability). Despite all this, its only direct appearances are at the end of Heavensward where it fights Shinryu and disappears, and its eponymous raid series in Stormblood where the player gets to fight it.
• Argath in Final Fantasy Tactics is a noble and squad member of Ramza's party in the beginning of the game. He absolutely cannot stand commoners and believes only those with noble blood have the right to rule. Ramza eventually kicks him out of the group, but this causes Argath to work with Zalbaag and, in a hostage situation later on, is given the order to shoot through Tietra to kill a member of the Corpse Brigade. Argath's murder of Tietra gets him killed by Delita and Ramza, but Argath's actions causes major shifts in Delita and Ramza's characters; Delita distrusts the nobility and works to overthrow them from behind the scenes so that he can rise to power and make things right. Ramza distances himself from his brothers and begins work as a mercenary while still fighting for justice.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening, as is the norm for the series, has a massive cast with most of the characters having little to no actual part in the storyline. Early on in the game, Maribelle, who herself has only a slightly larger part than most of the other playable units and loses all plot relevance shortly into the game, is held hostage by Plegia and used as a scapegoat to start its war with Ylisse, kickstarting the storyline as a whole.
  • Previously in Binding Blade and Blazing Blade, there was King Desmond of Bern. He only appeared for one chapter of the latter game, but it mainly highlighted how much of an abusive father he was to his son Zephiel, initially The Ace and an overall Nice Guy, to the point of attempting to have him assassinated multiple times. By the time Binding Blade rolls around, Zephiel is now the Big Bad, having become so disillusioned with humanity due to Desmond's abuse and neglect that he starts a war to Kill All Humans and have dragons rule the world in their stead.
  • All the way back in the first game, there's Bantu. A Manakete who can't even fight unless you find an optional item, he's not much of a character. But you need to recruit him in order to save Tiki, since he's the one who unsealed her and the only one who can recruit her. Tiki goes on to be a major character throughout the series.
  • In Heroes, Seth appears in a single early-game Paralogue (side chapter) with about as much screentime as any other non-OC character added to the game. Yet in that screentime, he delivers "The Reason You Suck" Speech to then-Big Bad Veronica, sowing seeds for her Character Development. In fact, in Book VI, almost 5 real-life years later, Veronica says that this particular dressing down was the first step to her eventual Heel–Face Turn. Not bad for someone with not even five minutes of screentime.
  • In Genealogy of the Holy War, Munnir/Gandolf, eldest son of Verdane's king Batu, would launch an invasion on Grannvale's Yngvi Castle under the orders of his father. Sigurd of the neighboring Chalphy Castle would repel the invasion, but Munnir/Gandolf had already kidnapped Yngvi's lady Edain during the siege to make her his wife. This would cause Sigurd launch a rescue mission that would spiral into an all-out war with Verdane, which in turn would lead to a series of events that would end up having Sigurd unwittingly conquer Verdane and Agustria on behalf of Grannvale, as well as give Grannvale a reason to conquer Silesse once Grannvale transitioned into The Empire. However, this would also lead to Sigurd meeting Deirdre in Verdane, which would not only help the Loptr Church locate Deirdre but also lead to the birth of Seliph, who would go on to become The Hero of the second generation and liberate Grannvale and Jugdral as a whole from the Loptr Church's control.
• God of War:
  • Kratos's wife Lysandra and daughter Calliope only appear in flashbacks in God of War, but their Accidental Murder at the hands of Kratos orchestrated by Ares in order to corrupt him leads to him becoming an outcast as well as the eventual destruction of both the Greek and the Norse pantheons, as well as kickstarting Kratos's Character Development that lasts well into Ragnarök.
  • The Colossus of Rhodes only appears at the beginning of God of War II, but Kratos is forced to drain his powers into the Blade of Olympus to destroy the Colossus, which then crushes him afterwards, leading to the rest of the game.
  • God of War Ragnarök: Forseti, the Norse god of justice. He never appears, but he investigates Heimdall's death and learns that Kratos did it (not that Heimdall gave him much of a choice), resulting in Sif confronting Odin about it and getting Thor to attack Atreus- which in turn leads to Atreus having to escape and leaving Odin just as Odin's plans for him were about to be completed.
  • Ultimately the biggest example of a small role having a big impact in the series was the Barbarian King, Alrik, the one who caused Kratos to become the Ghost of Sparta, pledging himself to Ares as a warrior of the gods, then killing Ares and becoming the God of War, then deserting his throne to become the destroyer of Olympus, followed much, much later on by leaving for Midgard and becoming the father of Atreus, the slayer of Baldur, Magni, and Modi, and the General who led the allied forces of the Nine Realms against the All-Father Odin, in the end becoming the Norse god of hope.
• The "Oriental Gentleman" from Grand Theft Auto III, an unnamed man who just so happens to be a prisoner in the same police convoy the player character is in — the fact that the game consists of typical Grand Theft Auto fare rather than the player being behind bars for the whole game (or at least a few minutes, considering the series) is because the Colombian Cartel decided to hold up the convoy and take this one prisoner.
  • Darko Brevic from Grand Theft Auto IV. His betrayal for 1000 dollars to buy drug money gets Niko's squad killed, leading to Niko's Start of Darkness, leading to the rest of the game.
  • Similarly, Brad from Grand Theft Auto V. He only has 2 appearances, one in the prologue and one in the mid-game as a corpse, but he's the reason Michael was able to fake his death and move to Los Santos as he was buried in place of Michael, for which Trevor and Michael became enemies for most of the latter half of the game after the former found out what Michael did to get his current life.
    • Also, Simeon Yetarian. His illegal attempt to repossess Jimmy's car is the entire reason Michael and Franklin meet, thus indirectly setting the plot of the main game.
    • Kyle Chavez as well. If Amanda hadn't cheated on Michael with him, thus Kyle hiding in a mansion, Michael won't have tore the said mansion down and incurred the wrath of Martin Madrazo, the real owner. Michael then conducts a heist at the jewelry store just to pay Martin back, causing Trevor to return to Los Santos and FIB hiring the trio for their dirty work and Devin Weston recruiting them for his own goals.
• The G-Man of Half-Life fame features, in the main, only in the intro and outro cutscenes of each game — his other appearances are mostly of the "you spot the G-Man in the distance, he walks behind a corner and vanishes" variety. (He does have a significant scene in the middle of Episode 2 when he gives Gordon a "heart-to-heart".) Everything about him is mysterious, but he's widely suspected of being responsible for, literally, the entire plot of the series from start to finish. Well, as finished as it'll ever be.
• The Hanged Man has George Schmid, whose full name only comes up twice. Once on a quote written on a photograph, and once as the owner of a black notebook that Ed is looking for. George was one of the inmates living in the asylum-turned-homeless-shelter, and began to come up with the idea that society considered people like him to be 'bad', and made themselves happy by shoving them into this shelter. This made him think that the unhappy inmates could do something similar; by killing the 'bad' inmates, the others could 'become happy again'. His twisted thinking resulted in the Happy Murders, which caused the shelter to be shut down and abandoned for good. Having written this 'method' into his notebook, he sparks a desire in Ed to return to the shelter and look for the notebook. Which results in Ed planning to kill Will, and Keith in some endings, to 'become happy again', before he heads to the police and atones for having killed his father.
• Jason in Heavy Rain is one of two sons to Ethan. Jason is introduced in the prologue and is quickly killed off in a freak accident via being hit by a car, even though Ethan tried to jump in front of the car to save him. Despite Jason's very short screen time, his death kickstarts the entire plot. Scott Shelby, who couldn't save his brother when they were both kids due to their abusive and neglectful father, wanted to find a father that would do anything for their sons. Scott witnessed Ethan's attempt to save Jason, giving him the idea of kidnapping a bunch of young boys and slowly drowning them in a pit being filled with rainwater unless their fathers can find and save them. Thus the Origami Killer was created.
• In Horizon Zero Dawn, it's revealed through a collectible that an unnamed programmer made the machines code uncrackable, which meant that if they glitched (which they eventually did), there was no way to regain control of them.
• The Joker from Injustice: Gods Among Us only appears in a single cut-scene in the game itself and the first four panels of the prequel comics before being killed by Superman but it is ultimately his actions to nuke Metropolis, murdering Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, and corrupt Superman that kickstarted the events of the Injustice universe. Of course, there's another Joker running around, but he's from the main universe.
• While the Injustice version of Joker appears as a fear-induced hallucination in Injustice 2, his role as The Corrupter towards Harley Quinn is still felt there, as is his twisted legacy of causing Supes' Start of Darkness.
• The King of Fighters: K9999, probably due to being a blatant Captain Ersatz of AKIRA's Tetsuo Shima, may have only appeared in 2001 and vanilla 2002 and, as Krohnen, XV, yet if it wasn't for his attempt on Foxy's life, Kula Diamond may have never defected from NESTS, and the company would thus not be reduced to a shell of its former self.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Riku spends most of the game absent, and when he does show up occasionally he doesn't do much. However, his interactions with Xion make her realize that she needs to give up her existence and return to Sora so he can wake up.
  • The Toy Box world in Kingdom Hearts III seems to be another Disney world for Sora to visit with the appeal of a Verum Rex brand featuring Yozora as the main character. However, it later turns out that Yozora is Real After All where he appears in the Secret Ending as a Sequel Hook character. In other words, the entire Toy Box world serves as an Early-Bird Cameo for a character who undoubtedly becomes significant in the sequels.
• Knights of the Old Republic: Trask Ulgo is dead before the end of the tutorial level, charging into a hopeless battle against Darth Bandon in order to buy the Player Character time to escape. There's a passing mention by a Hutt in game about the "Ulgo" noble house of Alderaan. Come Star Wars: The Old Republic, that incident drives almost every arc on Alderaan! A distant relative of Trask's declares himself king, and asserts Alderaan's independence from both the Republic and the Sith Empire, with Trask remembered on Alderaan as a martyr who was betrayed by both factions.
• The Last of Us
  • Joel's daughter Sarah dies roughly 20 minutes into the first game, but the trauma from it is still affecting him 20 years into the future. Over the events of the game, Joel begins to see Ellie as a Replacement Goldfish for Sarah. It ultimately drives him to essentially damn the world of its best shot to cure the fungal infection that caused the zombie outbreak. Ellie is immune and having the surgery to get the mutated fungus out of her brain will kill her. Joel rips her off the operating table before the surgery can start because he can't bear to lose another daughter.
  • Similarly, there's the nameless soldier responsible for killing Sarah. Without this character who only had a few lines and a couple minutes of screentime, Sarah would be alive and Joel would not be the person he is at the start of the main story.
  • In a similar vein, one of the surgeons who is killed in this scene is named Jerry Anderson. It turns out he has a daughter named Abby, and his death causes her to murder Joel in the opening moments of the sequel. A character who has only one scene before his death and a similarly limited role in a sequel flashback helps kick off the plot of the sequel.
• Cassius Bright makes a small but significant role in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV as he ends up forming a senpai/kohai relationship with Rean and ends up testing to see if his junior is ready to become a Divine Blade which Rean passes with flying colors. He's also commanding the army resisting against the Erebonian Empire who are at war against the entire Western Zemuria continent because of events that had happened in Cold Steel III (an attempted assassination to the emperor happens and the perpetrator used a gun made in Calvard) and is buying time for the heroes to save the day.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The King of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is never seen on screen, but is shown meeting with Ganondorf in Hyrule Castle. Princess Zelda has visions where she sees Ganondorf stealing the Triforce, but her father doesn't believe her when she tells him what she saw. Had he actually listened, the events of the entire game could have been prevented.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, the original purpose of Queen Ambi's Evil Tower of Ominousness, the construction of which led to her corruption and eventual possession by Veran, was a lighthouse to guide her unnamed sailor sweetheart back to her. Who's that character? The unnamed skeleton pirate captain from Oracle of Seasons.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • Kass's teacher. An unnamed Posthumous Character, he is responsible for teaching Kass the various songs the latter uses to guide Link in uncovering Shrines. Furthermore, a century ago he was a Hopeless Suitor for Princess Zelda who resented Link for being the object of her affections instead of him; Kass's revelation of this makes it clearer than at any other point that she was in love with Link.
    • One character from a previous Zelda game manages to make a surprise appearance in this capacity. That character being Fi from Skyward Sword. Although her physical form is unseen, she manages to communicate to Zelda in the final Memory when Link is mortally wounded by several Guardians. She manages to provide Zelda with the information needed to save Link from biting it for good.
• In Lost Ark, Executor Solas is a relatively minor antagonist who serves as the Arc Villain for a handful of quests towards the end of the East Luterra arc. However, his actions during those quests end up having major, long lasting consequences for the rest of the story, as his callous murders are the final straw for Armen, who was already deeply struggling with his half-Demon powers. Armen snaps completely, declares that humanity is Not Worth Saving due to all the death they cause, and willingly joins up with Kharmine because he now genuinely believe he has no place at the protagonist's side.
• The Puppeteer from LittleBigPlanet Vita. You're told early on through Exposition from Colonel Flounder that he's the Big Bad (being the creator of the Hollows you see wreaking havoc in the various worlds). Despite this fact, you don't even get to hear him until a cutscene near the end of the final world, which features his recorded voice, and you don't get to see him in person until the final cutscene of the game.
• Scab from Mad Max (2015), a former War Boy who suffered a crippling injury and was converted into a human blood bag before being sold off by Scrotus, and who wants revenge for being cast aside. He only appears briefly in two scenes, but his blood saves Max from a fatal injury, and he later tells Max where to find Scrotus for the final confrontation. He even gleefully declares that he's gotten his revenge because it's someone who's received his blood who will kill Scrotus.
• In Mad Rat Dead, Mad Rat and Heart come across a group of stray rats in the forest. The only thing their onscreen roles culminate to is yelling about cheese and dying. However, one of the rats cries out "Thank you Rat God!" as it is killed, giving the player a big clue that the Rat God isn't as benevolent as she seems.
• The unnamed Genius Girl seen in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle only shows up for a few minutes in the intro and the 100% ending for the Donkey Kong Adventure DLC, but she's the one responsible for building the SupaMerge machine that sets the entire plot into motion and serves as the main source of conflict. Beep-0, the character you play as during the game's overworld segments, is implied to be one of her creations as well.
• The Mass Effect series has several notable ones:
  • In the first game, it's because of a lazy dockworker named Powell who managed to survive the geth attack on Eden Prime by being asleep behind some dock crates that Shepard's team is able to learn about Saren Arterius going rogue, which results in Shepard being made the first human Spectre and going on to save the colony of Feros by killing the Thorian, defeat Matriarch Benezia and uncovering the return of the rachni at Noveria, destroy a krogan cloning facility on Virmire, and ultimately discover the impending threat of the Reapers.
  • In the second game, it's because of the medical officer Wilson on orders from his benefactor the Shadow Broker sabotaging the systems at Lazarus Station where Cerberus was putting the Commander back together after the destruction of the Normandy, that pushed Miranda Lawson to wake Shepard up ahead of schedule, allowing the Commander to, among many things: cure the Collector-designed deadly plague ravaging the slums of Omega, eliminate three of Omega's strongest criminal gangs while saving Archangel, rescue the genetically perfect krogan Grunt from being destroyed or exploited, protect the remainder of the colonists on Horizon from capture, realize the origins of the mysterious Collectors as heavily augmented Protheans controlled by the Reapers, lay the seeds for a lasting peace between organics and synthetics by interacting with the geth called Legion, and ultimately eradicate the Collectors as a major threat ahead of the Reapers' coming invasion.
  • In the third game, it's because of a hanar special operative who tagged along on an Alliance military operation to raid a batarian research facility that was studying Reaper tech unknowingly that there is a chance for two species to go extinct in the midst of the Reaper invasion if certain factors are not present when Shepard confronts the "big, stupid, jellyfish". Namely, if Kasumi Goto was never recruited or did not survive the Suicide Mission in 2, then Shepard is forced to make a Sadistic Choice between saving the hanar homeworld supporting both the primary species and their cadre of loyal drell aides, or rescuing an affable salarian Spectre that shows a more respectable side of the organization before he's strangled to death.
  • The salarian scientist Maelon, who only appears once, serves as one for both 2 and 3. He used to be a novice member of Mordin Solus' old research team that made a crucial update to the genophage virus afflicting the krogan race. During Shepard's mission to fight the Collectors, Mordin asks the Commander to help rescue him from a krogan clan, only to find out that not only was Maelon trying to cure the genophage, but he was doing it voluntarily. Mordin can execute him unless Shepard intervenes, after which he disappears, while Mordin is relieved of the mental burden and has better chances to survive the Suicide Mission. Come the Reaper invasion, the data that Maelon gathered doing his experiments proves crucial to finalizing the new cure required to arrange an alliance between the turians and krogan against the Reapers. If Shepard convinced Mordin to keep the data, then the female krogan survives the development process and helps to usher in a new age for the krogan, but if it was destroyed, then she dies trying to finish the cure, an outcome that's only made worse if the Urdnot clan leader is Wreav instead of Wrex.
• Mega Man:
  • Magma Dragoon plays a huge role in Zero's Character Development throughout the Mega Man X series despite just being a Maverick boss who only sticks around for one game. He's the one who destroyed Sky Lagoon in Mega Man X4, the event which sparked the civil war between the Maverick Hunters and Repliforce and eventually led to Iris' death at Zero's hands, which haunts him even after the game. The Repliforce incident is also the first instance of the Maverick label being used against a group of uninfected Reploids, eventually leading to the term Maverick being used as a McCarthyist label to mark dissidents for execution in Mega Man Zero.
  • Passy, a Cyber-Elf in Mega Man Zero who sacrifices herself to revive and restore Zero at the very beginning of the series, and is never mentioned again. However, if it weren't for her, Ciel would've been killed by the approaching Neo Arcadian forces and that would've been the end of the Resistance.
  • Mega Man Rock Force has Shock Man. While otherwise just a regular Robot Master who largely stops mattering after the intro stage, he is responsible for harming Justice Man while going haywire. Leading, by proxy, to the latter's decision to revolt.
• In the Metal Gear franchise, it turns out that the members of Naked Snake's support team in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater would become the founders of the Patriots. Additionally, Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin, the Russian scientist whom Naked Snake had been tasked with extracting as part of the Virtuous Mission, was the man who created the concept of the Metal Gear bipedal tank.
• The Mars People in Metal Slug 2/X would've wiped out both the P.F. squad and the Rebel Army with one blast of their Wave-Motion Gun if it weren't for the Heroic Sacrifice of a random Rebel Army Red Shirt crashing his plane into it in a Shout-Out to Independence Day.
• Quiet Robe is this for his single speaking role in Metroid Dread where he drops a huge bombshell in regards to what happened to his tribe and why the Metroids became a massive problem for the entire series. Quiet Robe's tribe wanted to blow up planet SR388 to destroy the Metroids (and by extension, the X Parasites) since they couldn't be fully controlled and could put the galaxy in danger if they got out, but Raven Beak and his tribe wanted to use the Metroids as a weapon, thus they killed off Quiet Robe's entire tribe and kidnapped him so that they could learn how to control and produce the Metroids. The living Metroids were eventually found by the Galactic Federation and shortly thereafter stolen by the Space Pirates, which set off the first game in the series and all the trials thereafter.
• The Worried Mother in Miitopia. Being one of three Greenhorne residents who didn't get their faces stolen by the Dark Lord, this allows her to give the hero the antique charm which releases a guardian spirit who bestows the hero the power to vanquish evil, kicking off the plot of the game.
• Mother:
  • In Earthbound Beginnings, the plot kicks off years before the start of the game as the protagonist's grandfather stole knowledge of PSI from the species of the alien he and his wife adopted. George is dead by the time the game begins, and makes no appearance whatsoever. In fact, every single thing that goes wrong in the entire series can be traced back to George, up to and including humanity's eventual destruction.
  • In the sequel, EarthBound (1994), the protagonist is visited by a bee (or not) from the future that starts up the plot of the game, is unceremoniously killed off moments later, and doesn't appear again until the credits.
  • In Mother 3, Hinawa, Lucas and Claus' mother, is only seen in the prologue of the game then dies offscreen during Chapter 1. Even so, she has a big impact in the story afterward, since she later saves Lucas' life through her father's dreams, then helps bring Claus to his senses despite him being robotically controlled.
• NieR: Automata: The aliens may not appear in the game due to being wiped out by their own machines, but their invasion of Earth caused 14 Machine Wars against the androids, the Terminals they created to monitor the Machines slowly growing beyond their programming to "destroy the enemy" eventually perpetuating the war just to have a purpose. The aliens are also the reason the YoRHa androids exist at all, because their consciousness is copied from their machine lifeforms, by the original androids left by humanity due to them being disposable.
• PAYDAY 2 has Hoxton, one of the characters from the first game, thrown in jail after being caught by the FBI. Nobody knows who ratted him out until the Hoxton Revenge heist comes into play. Said rat turns out to be Hector, who is just a contractor for the PAYDAY gang that offered jobs for money and is nothing more beyond that. Hector worked with the gang without any of them knowing that he was the one that got Hoxton caught by the police. The crew winds up having to do a few jobs for The Dentist, who has information and power to help the crew get Hoxton out of jail. After the events of the Hoxton Breakout heist where the crew frees Hoxton, they go over the FBI server they stole and find out where Hector is hiding. Once the crew discovers that Hector is the traitor, they waste no time killing him and Bain is shocked to see that someone unassuming like Hector was the one that ratted out Hoxton. Hector's actions caused the crew dynamic to be changed since they had to replace Hoxton with Houston and they had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get Hoxton freed.
• Persona:
  • Persona 4:
    • Mayumi Yamano's presence has a huge impact on two antagonists the Investigation Team encounters. Namatame is motivated to "save" the other victims due to Yamano's death and Adachi discovers the ability to travel through the television after pushing Yamano into a TV during a confrontation.
    • Saki Konishi's appearance on the Midnight Channel and subsequent death is what motivates Yu and Yosuke to begin investigating the TV World, leading to them awakening their Personas and forming the nucleus of the Investigation Team. Also, her brother Naoki's Social Link is mostly about him trying to cope with her death. Distraught at her death, Namatame contacted Adachi to inform him about the murders, who then "convinced" Namatame to save the victims, thus kickstarting his crusade and him trapping all the people who then appeared in Midnight Channel in order to save them, but accidentally endangering them in the process.
  • Persona 5:
    • Shiho Suzui. She's the best friend of Ann and a member of the Shujin Academy's volleyball club, meaning she's under Kamoshida's abusive thumb. And outside of a few lines to the protagonist, she has no real connection. However, when the physical and sexual abuse of Kamoshida's gets too much for her, her attempted suicide ends up sparking the Phantom Thieves of Heart to be created. Before, the protagonist and Ryuji were hesitant to steal Kamoshida's heart, too worried of the potentially lethal consequences messing with a person's inner cognitive might do. But her attempted suicide shows them the ramifications of letting Kamoshida continue on, and it drives Ann to follow the protagonist and Ryuji into the Metaverse, gaining her own Persona, and making things personal for all three members. Shiho started to roll the ball, though she remains in a coma for months after and only has a small cameo in Ann's Rank 9 Confidant event.
    • Suguru Kamoshida. The first target of the Phantom Thieves of Heart and basically a Starter Villain for them. Unlike later targets, he has no connection to the Conspiracy and only gets seriously targeted when the above Shiho's actions make things personal for the initial party members. However, it's Kamoshida's change of heart that shows the Phantom Thieves that their methods work, and tip off the principal that the Phantom Thieves of Heart actually exist. This causes him to discuss things with the Conspiracy and eventually make Makoto Niijima try to find out the thieves' identities, leading to Makoto becoming a Phantom Thief herself, and further plot events occurring. His expulsion also paved the arrival of Takuto Maruki in Royal to help the students victimized by him, which obviously included Joker, and becoming inspired by them and after Yaldabaoth's defeat, Maruki took over as the new God of Control and tried to brainwash the planet into happiness.
    • Ichiryusai Madarame. Beyond being the second target and his personal connection being with Yusuke, Madarame is quickly forgotten. However, he is the one to first mention a second Metaverse user in the form of the Black Mask, letting the party know that they aren't the only Persona users around and getting a hint towards the real reason behind the Mental Breakdowns occurring.
    • Natsuhiko Nakanohara. Introduced as a stalker and introductory target for Mementos, he turns out to lead the Phantom Thieves further down their path. He mentions Madarame, who turns out to be their next big target, and gives them a connection to their next team member in Yusuke. Once again, his prodding leads to Madarame becoming a personal target.
    • Wakaba Isshiki. As little as her role is in being Futaba's deceased mother and Sojiro's former friend/implied love interest, her handprint is all over the background plot. Wakaba was a researcher and was focusing on learning about Cognition, eventually leading her to find out about the Metaverse, Cognitive Dissonance and similar. Her research and knowledge in this allowed Shido to realize how he can use the Metaverse and Cognition to his personal advantages. He chose to have her killed, making it look like an accident/suicide, and stole her research to use Mental Breakdowns to further his plans of becoming the next Prime Minister.
    • Rumi. She was the fiancée of Takuto Maruki, the Shujin councilor, whose parents were killed in a home invasion. Said event traumatized her and drove her insane, leading to Maruki awakening Azathoth's powers by accident and using the Persona to edit her past and changing the circumstances of their deaths, and erasing Maruki himself from her memories, leading to him moving away. Finding proof that his newly awakened powers work, he decided to write a paper on cognitive pscience, which was stolen by Shido under excuse that it was unprovable, but actually using it to further his plans to become Prime Minister. He then later became obsessed with using his Persona to enact happiness on the entire world, eventually making Sumire Yoshizawa believe she's her deceased sister Kasumi on her request, and seeing the results, Maruki would later enact a false paradise in the Third Semester.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon has Mohn, caretaker of the Poké Pelago islands. He's heavily implied to be the former Aether Foundation president and Lusamine's husband, who disappeared in an Ultra Wormhole years ago and was never seen again. His disappearance turned his wife into a sociopath gone cuckoo for Ultra Beasts, and thus several years of child abuse and the entire plot of the game happens as a result. And yet you'll never see him outside of Poké Pelago, which is an entirely optional feature. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon confirms the spoilers, and has the two reunite, albeit with Mohn having no memory of Lusamine because of his going through the Ultra Wormhole.
• Psychonauts 2 has Dr. Jack Potts. He was Hollis Forsythe's former boss at the hospital she worked at, and he was a jackass who stole her research methods and patented them as his own. He's never seen in person but the "Breaking Dr. Potts" memory vault reveals that Hollis accidentally messed with his mind and broke him, leading her to have to call the Psychonauts when Potts starts running around the hospital in his underwear. Truman comes to help mend Potts' mind and offers a regretful Hollis a job as a Psychonaut. The rest, as they say, is history.
• Punch-Out!! has Aran Ryan's mother. She's barely even a Bit Character^note she is The Ghost, only being mentioned in the manual for Super Punch-Out!!, but her stubbornness on spelling her son's name in an untraditional fashion sparked a chain of events that led to present-day Aran Ryan being a borderline criminal Blood Knight.
• A character who's only ever brought up three times (once while fishing with Jack, once to either Reverend Swanson or Sister Calderon, and once to Rains Fall) in the course of the game plays a huge part in explaining many of Arthur Morgan's decisions in Red Dead Redemption II, his deceased son Isaac. He died at an unspecified point before the events of the game but his death hardened Arthur and explains much of his self-loathing. He believes that Isaac dying was his karma for his choices in life. It also explains why he's still so resentful of John for his treatment of Jack. It's also why he decides to sacrifice himself to give John a chance at a normal life with Jack and Abigail. He wanted John to have what he couldn't.
  • Dutch van der Linde murders a young woman by the name of Heidi McCourt in cold blood in the botched Blackwater ferry job that happened right before the beginning of the game. Allegedly, the job was going well until he was goaded into killing her by Micah. This got the law on their tail and made them stash the take (worth over $4 million today when adjusted for inflation) which was enough for them all two dozen or so of them to retire from the outlaw life. It was their One Last Job. The law follows them for the rest of the game and Dutch comes up with increasingly erratic plans to replace the take with another last big score, including picking a fight with the US Army. The botched job is essentially the noose around the whole gang’s necks. Had he not killed her, the events of both this and the first game wouldn’t have happened at all. She's so important to the story that a strange man John meets in I who's implied to be God, The Devil, or the incarnation of death brings her up, and says that if John has forgotten someone as important as Heidi, he certainly wouldn't remember the stranger.
  • Thomas Downes is one debtor among many victimized by Strauss' loansharking, and even dies during the first third of the game, but his suffering from tuberculosis dramatically changes the plot and ending. If Arthur hadn't gone to collect his debt, he wouldn't have gotten infected. But if he hadn't, he also probably would never have resolved to help John and Abigail escape the gang or left Dutch despite his deteriorating mental state if the TB diagnosis hadn't served as a wake-up call.
  • Molly O'Shea has limited screen time as Dutch's latest fling, but her violent death establishes two things that end up sealing the fate of the Van der Linde gang towards the end of the story. First, Arthur asking Dutch to spare her in the face of her supposed treachery despite the gang's rules about traitors convinces Dutch to isolate himself from his adopted son and those with him. Second, because Molly drunkenly claimed she was the traitor ratting on them to the Pinkertons, when she's killed, it ends up protecting the actual rat, Micah Bell, giving him more time to get his hooks into Dutch and weaken the gang from inside. By the time Agent Milton confirms that Micah is actually the traitor, Dutch's Sanity Slippage has progressed to the point where he isn't willing to listen and turns the remainder of the gang against Arthur and John.
• Resident Evil has a few:
  • Resident Evil happens because helicopter pilot Brad gets spooked by a group of zombie dogs and flies away, abandoning the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. team as they're forced to seek shelter at a nearby mansion that is filled with monsters and traps. He doesn't appear again until at the end of the game where he comes back to rescue the remainder of the team.
  • A group of Umbrella soldiers in Resident Evil 2 appear for a small scene in a flashback where they wind up nearly killing William Birkin for his G-Virus sample. Birkin is Not Quite Dead and uses his G-Virus on himself, transforming himself into a monster as he gets revenge on the soldiers and spreads the virus to the whole city via rats ingesting the spilled virus samples dropped by a soldier.
• Solatorobo: Red the Hunter has Carmine and Rose. They never appear in the main game, instead in the prequel light novel series "Red Data Children", but they are responsible in shaping Red Savarin into becoming The Hero he is in the main game, including introducing him to his sister Chocolat, training him in mechanics and how to utilize the DAHAK, protecting them from Baion's forces and the jealous-driven Vermillion and Rouge, and wiping his memory when he was losing control of his sanity after first activating his Trance.
• In Soulcalibur VI, Geralt of Rivia is a Guest Fighter whose Soul Chronicle involves him trying to get back home, pointedly ignoring the struggles of the strange world he finds himself in. However, his story is canon, and his encounters with native characters Mitsurugi and Zasalamel have a significant impact on the Character Development of both.
  • Mitsurugi is still stinging from his losses to Geralt, and Geralt's dismissal of him, three years after Geralt's return to his own world, listing him by name as one of the very few Worthy Opponents he has faced.
  • Zasalamel helps Geralt return home, and also states that he'll be considering the existence of other universes like Geralt's in his future schemes.
• First Lieutenant McPherson of the Damned 33rd, from Spec Ops: The Line. Because of him, Walker decides to buck orders and turn Delta Squad's recon mission into a rescue op. And when they actually find him...
• High Templar Karass of Starcraft II fame. He and his men meet up with Zeratul, help him fight through the zerg, and then he and his remaining troops pull a Last Stand Heroic Sacrifice to allow Zeratul to escape. Yet those few minutes, he and his men might have saved the universe.
• Star Stealing Prince: Lorel, the first boss, only shows up for that boss fight and a Hopeless Boss Fight beforehand. It's essentially a wild creature unconnected to any other antagonists or the overall plot. Then Ephemeral Prince reveals that Snowe died in that Hopeless Boss Fight and is only "alive" because of Xiri's magic.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The heroes of The Subspace Emissary (the game's Adventure Mode) would never have been able to defeat Tabuu if Sonic hadn't damaged his wings at the last minute to weaken him.
• The crew of the UMS Vortex Rikers in Unreal: They only appear as dead corpses whose logs you could read in the early levels, but if their ship wasn't caught in the magnetic field of planet Na Pali, Prisoner 849 wouldn't have gone From Nobody to Nightmare, the Skaarj Queen and her Warlords wouldn't have been slaughtered, the Nali wouldn't have escaped from being a meek slave race into an uprising, the Skaarj wouldn't have been interested in humanity and their discoveries, the Seven Years War and humanity's near extinction would never took place, and most important of them all, the Terran Colonial Authority and the New Earth Government wouldn't have been formed, and the legendary Liandri Grand Tournament would have never existed.
  • Also to a lesser extent, FenTech Incorporated. Their small role? They were only mentioned in Unreal Tournament, and in only two separate bios from two players from separate teams who were created by them. Their big impact? One of said players is Malcolm, a chemical killer who went on to lead Thunder Crash, dethrone corrupt champion Xan Kriegor and dominate the Liandri Grand Tournament for almost a decade. And that's just In-Universe, as Malcolm also became the Series Mascot.
• Tekken: Roger the boxing kangaroo only appears in one canonical game, and doesn't really impact the story save for one little thing: his experimentation by Mishima Zaibatsu is what attracts Jun Kazama (a wildlife conservationist) to enter the tournament, leading her to meet Kazuya Mishima and conceive Jin Kazama. In short, if not for a kangaroo, the series' central protagonist would have never been born.
• Warcraft:
  • Grand Marshall Garithos from Warcraft III posthumously became this once certain events in World of Warcraft transpired. His fantastic racism was one of the key factors that drove the Blood Elves from the Alliance, causing a small number of them to join will Anti-Villain Illidan Stormrage, and the rest to eventually side with the Horde. To a much lesser extent, he helped Sylvannas Windrunner retake the capital of Lordaeron, which led to it being taken by the Forsaken, though in this case Sylvannas actually promised to hand the city over to him and betrayed him when she was done using him.
  • Thrall's adoptive human sister, Taretha Foxton, appears in a grand total of one book and no games, but her influence on Big Good Thrall and his philosophies can't be overstated. Her kindness and Undying Loyalty proved that friendship and trust could exist between humans and orcs, something that Thrall continued to fiercely believe in throughout his entire life. Azeroth and the Horde would've turned out very, very differently if Taretha hadn't shown Thrall so much compassion and love in his formative years.
• In The Warriors, Ash is a new recruit to the Warriors gang, but he's basically a Flat Character serving as a Player 2 (or another generic gang member if you are playing solo) and doesn't evolve beyond that. He gets killed off screen by the rival gang, the Destroyers, and his death kick starts a climactic showdown between the two gangs.
• Amelia from Will You Snail? has no lines of her own and her only screentime is a brief flashback of the circumstances surrounding her death. However, as the creator of the all-powerful malevolent AI, Squid, she has an absolutely massive impact on the story, as well as the trajectory of humanity overall in-universe.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X: The Ghosts only appear in the opening cutscene as one side in the war that destroys Earth and later as the side that attacks the White Whale, causing it to crash on Mira. None of the plot would happen without them, but they aren't even named in the game with the name "Ghost" comming from the game's Japanese artbook.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Guernica Vandham only appears at the very beginning of the game, and dies shortly after his initial appearance. Despite this, he is crucial to the plot, as he is the one to show the main heroes that humans should be able to live for more than ten years. He is also the one who gives them their Ouroboros powers, which they use heavily for their entire journey and it encourages them to go on said journey. He even gave them their Iconic Outfits. Guernica’s actions cause some of the interactions between the gang and the City-folk, since some of them were supposed to become the next Ouroboros. Both his daughter, Monica, and granddaughter, Ghondor, have crucial roles, with them both being Heroes.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Yoko Arakawa is an absolutely garbage human being who only appears for five minutes and does nothing but abuse her husband and son and steal a suitcase. However, the suitcase turns out to be full of counterfeit money and triggers a chain of events which leads her son to join the yakuza, thus beginning the life arc of Masumi "The Assassin" Arakawa.
• Yandere Simulator:
  • Magical Girl Pretty Miyuki may only be the title character of a Show Within a Show, but the fact that the first rival, Osana Najimi, bears a strong resemblance to her is critical in her story arc, as it attracts her a Stalker with a Crush Loony Fan that kidnaps her cat in order to lure Osana to his house, and Yan-chan has the option to rescue the cat in order to win Osana's trust enough to ask her to leave Senpai for Yan-chan, or kidnap Osana herself.
  • By the time the story begins, Ichiko Saikou had been estranged from her family for three decades, and is Wandering the Earth, but Akademi would not even exist if it weren't for her, and her abandoning her family had massive ramifications for her younger brother, niece, and nephew.
  • Sumire Saitozaki exists to serve as the tutorial in 1980s Mode, but her death is what catches The Journalist's eye and causes him to investigate—and eventually arrest—Ryoba, leading to the trial that discredits him as a journalist, exonerates Ryoba, and forces her to kidnap her Senpai rather than confess under the sakura tree.

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