Expand: Early Bird Cameo

Sounds like Exactly What It Says on the Tin: someone that's important later appears early. Actually that's another trope; this one is about when something that's important later in an original work gets to appear early in an adaptation.

Well, nothing in the title suggests that. No need to even go looking for decay- just press "related to" and look at the amount of works listed there which have never had an adaptation.

I think this should redirect to Chekhov's Gunman (or the other way around) and the adaptation one should get a new title. Preferably with the word "adaptation" in it.

A lot of examples seem to be mistaking this for Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.".

Something definitely needs to be done. I've seen Early-Bird Cameo used like Chekhov's Gunman more often than I've even seen Chekhov's Gunman. There are a lot of examples that are on both, that only belong on one. Avatar The Last Airbender appears on both pages, and on its work page has a Chekhov's Gunman list under Early-Bird Cameo.

I vote that Chekhov's Gunman be renamed Early-Bird Cameo, with the original as a redirect, and the current Early-Bird Cameo be given a name that clearly illustrates that it has to be in an adaptation.

There's also some confusion going on with Canon Immigrant.

I don't know if that was in the description in February, but it's there now. That should cover a lot of what Trip describes as miswicks.

Ok, so now I'm confused, what seperates this trope from Chekhov's Gunman and Canon Immigrant. Also why does it have two definitions.

edited 8th May '11 6:35:00 PM by captainpat

Did a bit of skimming-

• Chekhov's Gunman is when the character shows up in Act 1 of the work but doesn't become important until Act 3. Bob being in the train station in Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven when Alice gets killed then turning out to have engineered the whole thing.
• Canon Immigrant is when a character is introduced and gets developed in an Expanded Universe or Alternate Continuity, then gets imported into the main continuity. Bob gets his own set of side stories that aren't necessarily canon, then he gets brought into the main continuity pre-developed.
• Early-Bird Cameo is when a character from an adaptation shows up before they do in the source work. Bob shows up in The Movie of Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven, then shows up in the second season of the show.

I think we might need a new trope like Sneak Peek Cameo for all the examples of things like Pixar in which characters appear in something completely unrelated.

So then isn't this trope just Canon Immigrant?

Not precisely - a Canon Immigrant is someone who is created in a questionably-canon Expanded Universe story, and then immigrates into main canon for whatever reason. Early-Bird Cameo is about someone who is already in main canon, but hasn't appeared there yet, and they show up before they're really important.

It's more like the reverse of Canon Immigrant, isn't it? Anyway, I sorted the examples into two piles based on the description, but someone else can decide what stuff to actually delete. (Anything that seemed to not fit #1 just got filed under type #2, regardless, and I probably missed a lot anyway). Y'all weren't kidding; this trope it a mess. Do people even read the descriptions? o_O

edited 4th Jun '11 6:13:31 PM by batgirl1

No. :)

Oh wow, I got this trope completely wrong. Maybe a rename?

So, are both definitions supposed to be in the same trope, or not? It seems to me that the addition of the second one is more making EBC into another flavor of Chekhov's Gunman.

This TRS thread got brought to my attention by an edit in Characters.Honor Harrington regarding Thomas Thiesman (he's not the only one EBC has been applied to, on that page).

edited 2nd Oct '11 4:58:13 PM by Nohbody

Bump. The adaptation part needs to be in the title.

As I understand it, it doesn't just apply to adaptations; it can also happen with rereleases. See the first two examples under "Comic Books".

So, wait.

• Chekhov's Gunman: Appears early in the story, but isn't important until later.
• Early-Bird Cameo: An adaptation or remake of a story turns a character into a Chekhov's Gunman.
• Canon Immigrant: A character originating in an Expanded Universe work is later used in the main work.

Right?

edited 12th Oct '11 4:59:27 PM by NativeJovian

Yes.

IMO Early-Bird Cameo is an infinitely better name for what we currently have at Chekhov's Gunman, which the misuse of the former as the latter will attest to. Yet another example of how Everythings Worse With Snowclones.

Chekhov's Gunman is actually a Good Snowclone because it works within the pattern: it's a Chekhov's Gun that is a person.

Or a person who, in a critical moment in the third act, makes use of something mentioned earlier to gain an advantage. Or an author who really, really likes using the Chekhov's Gun trope. Or, most obviously, the person carrying the Chekhov's Gun.

...We really need to redlink or TRS Everythings Worse With Snowclones. It's being misused to get rid of any valuable snowclone just because it's a snowclone.

edited 12th Oct '11 9:10:48 PM by SilentReverence

Way back when, "Everything's worse..." was a tongue-in-cheek title, and the page actually contained some qualifications for when a snowclone is a good idea — some of which I put in there myself. Then some time later Eddie swooped in and nuked that entire part (I can't find his edit in the history for some reason, but I distinctly recall it).

So from this I gathered they are not welcome any more. Anyway, this one really doesn't have to it any brilliance to write home about. Since a "gunman" is a person holding a gun, and not a person who is a gun, this makes it an example of Chekhov's Pun. Which is not fun.

edited 12th Oct '11 9:40:05 PM by TripleElation

Please note that Chekhov's Gunman is not the trope under discussion here.

We are here to determine what to do with Early-Bird Cameo. A Trope Transplant is something that we can do with it.

A Trope Transplant always involves two tropes. By this logic it'd be off-topic wherever we discuss it.

Seems like what we need to do is rename Chekhov's Gunman to Early-Bird Cameo and rename the current Early-Bird Cameo to something like Adaptation Early Cameo or Early Adaptation Cameo. Not sure if there's enough misuse to justify that kind of change or not, though.