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Chuck Cunningham Syndrome / Video Games

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  • Animal Crossing:
    • Since Wild World was for a system that was much less powerful than the system the last game was on, roughly half of the 318 villagers from the first game(s) had to be cut. Even some special characters didn't make a return to Wild World. From City Folk onwards however, the series has gradually brought back some of those villagers, and as of New Horizons there are around seventy villagers that are still absent from the series.
    • Wisp actually had this trope happen to him twice. After he didn't return in Wild World, he returned in City Folk, only to not return again in New Leaf. However, he was added back in for the Welcome Amiibo update.
    • Even characters introduced after the original game aren't safe from this trope:
      • Kaitlin doesn't appear in New Leaf since her daughter, Katie, is now old enough to travel on her own.
      • Champ is the only villager not from the original game or its updates to ever be cut, being absent from New Leaf.
      • Serena, the Fountain Goddess, and Frillard, Dr. Shrunk's mentor, have only ever appeared in City Folk. Dr. Shrunk sometimes says in New Leaf that he misses Dr. Frillard, implying that he may have passed away after City Folk.
  • Borderlands 3: Dr Zed and Nurse Nina, who are the primary figures of medical care in Borderlands/Borderlands 2 and the Presequel respectively, do not appear or even get mentioned in Borderlands 3, beyond Dr Zed's face being on vending machines; rather, Patricia Tannis occupies the infirmary on Sanctuary III despite limited, if any, medical experience.
  • While Mario and Donkey Kong have both ascended to stardom since their debut game, their supporting cast hasn't been as lucky:
    • Pauline, the girl they fought each other for in the first place, faded into obscurity as Princess Peach took over her role as Damsel in Distress. She did reappear in Donkey Kong '94, only to disappear for another decade until Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, in which Pauline's relationship status to Mario was demoted from "girlfriend" to "friend". However, she does appear (instead of Peach) in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games March of The Minis, Minis March Again, and Mini-Land Mayhem. It goes further with one of the Puzzle Swap pictures: Pauline gets just as much focus as the other princesses in the "Nintendo Starlets" puzzle. Finally averted with Super Mario Odyssey, where she is revealed to have stayed behind in the city where her original kidnapping took place and since become mayor. She has continued to make other significant appearances since then, such as becoming an outright playable character in Mario Tennis Aces and cameoing on the New Donk City Stage in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
    • Donkey Kong Junior (as a separate character from/father of the "modern" Donkey Kong; it's complicated) hadn't appeared since Game & Watch Gallery Advance, until he made a comeback in Mario Kart Tour (in 16-bit form).
    • Stanley from Donkey Kong 3 also vanished from the series appearing only in some cameos like WarioWare or Super Smash Bros.. It's unclear, but it's said he's also the protagonist from the Game & Watch Greenhouse and it's also rumored that he is Mario's cousin.
    • Wart similarly disappeared, though it's worth noting his only two appearances are All Just a Dream. (Even that's not an entirely satisfactory explanation, as Bob-ombs returned in the very next game, and various other enemies, including Shy Guys and Birdos, would later on.)
    • Super Mario Land: Tatanga seems to have ceased to exist. He kidnapped Princess Daisy in Super Mario Land, was revealed to have been reduced to working for Wario in Super Mario Land 2, and was never heard from again. Even in WarioWare he doesn't return despite Wario wanting to hire people to make games for him and a different alien, Orbulon, appears. He also didn't return in Super Mario Run, with Bowser instead kidnapping Daisy in the Remix 10 mode. Lastly, this also seems to have happened to Sarasaland itself, as Mario never ventured there again after SML; the only proof it even exists is Daisy herself, through mentions in her profile bios or text quotes in most Mario spin-offs.
    • Most characters in the Wario Land series just vanished without a trace after the original games they were in. Captain Syrup returned in Wario Land: Shake It!, after a ten odd year gap between appearances, but God knows what happened to Rudy the Clown after he returned in Dr. Mario 64...
    • Poochy had an entire level designed around him in Yoshi's Island, but was absent from new titles after Yoshi's Story and before Yoshi's New Island. This has effectively been revoked as of Yoshi's Woolly World, which features him prominently and even gives him pups (as well as being added to the title) in the 3DS port. Much like Pauline and the Koopalings, he has continued to make significant appearances since then, even appearing in Super Mario Odyssey.
    • Every non-standard human character Camelot creates for their Mario sports spin-offs tends to fall into this, such as Plum, Charlie, Sonny, Harry, and Maple, from Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64, and Alex, Nina, Harry and Kate, from the Game Boy Color version of Mario Tennis (and the Game Boy Advance sequel, Mario Tennis: Power Tour). None of them has made a single appearance in any game since, unless you count Plum's cameos in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl as a trophy and sticker respectively. Not to mention that that's five out of fourteen playable characters in Golf, while the four of Tennis were the protagonists of the GBC version's story mode.
    • The Koopa Kids (also known as the Baby Bowsers during the N64 era, and Mini Bowsers in the European versions of the later installments) were staple characters in the Mario Party series ever since their debut in the very first installment and one of them even was Promoted to Playable in Mario Party 5 and 6. Starting with Mario Party 8 however, Koopa Kids vanished from the series completely without an explanation. This was most likely done in favor of Bowser Jr., who essentially fulfils the old role the Koopa Kids had ever since his debut in the Mario Party series in the Nintendo DS installment. Most tellingly, Mario Party: The Top 100 and Mario Party Superstars have minigames that originally featured the Koopa Kids reworked to replace them with Bowser Jr.
    • The Koopalings have a long and convoluted history of being Put on a Bus. They first appeared as recurring antagonists in Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Safari, then vanished without mention for over a decade before reappearing in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, then vanished again, before reappearing a second time in New Super Mario Bros. Wii (with their original relationship to Bowser having been retconned away) and have been making fairly regular appearances since.
    • All the original characters from Super Mario RPG like Geno or Mallow are property of Square Enix, therefore they simply vanished from all the subsequent Mario games except from a brief cameo of Geno in Superstar Saga (and even that was removed from the Nintendo 3DS remake), and his apperances as a Mii Costume in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and as a Spirit as well in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
    • Mario RPG characters in general rarely reappear in other Mario titles. Exceptions include Goomba King, Baby Peach, and the Star Spirits, although in Baby Peach's case her debut in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time was likely coincidental. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is notable for not returning any previous Paper Mario characters and only using characters from the main series, introducing only Kersti as a new character.
    • Even Luigi went through a low hiatus for almost ten years. Eventually he came back though.
    • Mario rescued Daisy in Super Mario Land and she didn't appear again for years. Now she's a standard of Mario spin-off games.
    • Except for some cameos and guest star appearances in some spin-off games, Dixie Kong virtually disappeared from the franchise after Donkey Kong Land III in 1997. She wouldn't return as a playable character in a mainline Donkey Kong game until Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze in 2014.
    • King K. Rool, Donkey Kong's arch-nemesis, hasn't appeared in any game (except as a cameo in Smash Bros.) since Mario Super Sluggers in 2008 or in any Donkey Kong game since DK: Jungle Climber in 2007. This is especially baffling, as King K. Rool once appeared as reliably in Donkey Kong games as Bowser does in Mario games. Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze make no mention of him whatsoever, mostly because Retro Studios weren't interested in using the Kremlings as villains in those games. He does make a physical return in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018), and as a playable fighter no less!
    • Kiddy Kong appears as the playable sidekick in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! and its Game Boy counterpart. The instruction manual for Donkey Kong 64 says he's Chunky's baby brother and he was going to be in the cancelled Donkey Kong Racing. He never appears nor is even mentioned again.
    • Similar to Kiddy or Swanky Kong, Chunky Kong get this treatment. He hasn't got any major physical appearance since Rare buyout. (although Chunky appeared as a cameo in the GBA remake of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!). He is the only Kong in Donkey Kong 64 to not appear in Donkey Kong Barrel Blast (although his Pineapple Launcher was included).
    • Lanky, Tiny, Candy Kong haven't appeared in any game (except as a collectible in Smash Bros.) in over a decade since DK: Jungle Climber in 2007 or Tiny in Mario Super Sluggers in 2008.
    • While never being a regular, Toadsworth would appear around every 2 years at worst, and appeared in every Mario & Luigi game. However, his last appearance has been Mario & Luigi: Dream Team in 2013 after being absent for 4 years, and was even absent from Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam.
    • Toadette was dropped from the series after Mario Super Sluggers in 2008 and was absent for six years before finally returning in Mario Kart 8 and making frequent appearances in spinoffs since major role debut in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker in 2014.
    • Bowser had a brother in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels that appeared as a "miniboss" in the final level, who was blue in the original version. Outside of this game, he stopped appearing outside of Palette Swap nods, and Bowser having siblings is not so much as mentioned. It took until tips in the Super Smash Bros. series to even acknowledge him at all, referencing that Bowser's blue palette is based on him.
  • Zhuzhen and Halley from the original Shadow Hearts are unmentioned in the sequels. This may be somewhat justified, though, in that the former returned to China while the later left for America. The Valentine family gleefully subvert this.
  • Mega Man:
    • Everyone and everything to do with the much-reviled DOS Mega Man (Classic) games (including all the robot masters and CRORQ) appeared in only those two games and never again. Four robot masters from those games (Wave Man, Oil Man, Blade Man and Torch Man) even had their names recycled for other robot masters.
    • After what is very nearly a perfect attendance record since their introduction (excepting III for the Game Boy), Proto Man and Bass are both inexplicably absent from Mega Man 11. Proto Man is mentioned under the gallery entry for Sniper Joes, but Bass is completely AWOL. According to Word of God, this is because Mega Man 11 was designed to be a Soft Reboot for the series, so the limited cast was an intentional choice to avoid overwhelming newcomers.
    • Dynamo in Mega Man X5 and X6. The only antagonist in the series to remain alive and intact, that is, not coming Back from the Dead or even appearing on the traditional Boss Rush at the final stages. He worked for Sigma in X5, returned in an arbitrary cameo in X6, and vanished off the face of the Earth.note 
    • Similarly, Douglas only appears in X5 and X6, then disappears after that. Lifesaver only appears in X5 (granted, he wasn't very popular due to his Nice Job Breaking It, Hero action). Dr. Cain was last seen in X3, last mentioned in X4, and gone after that.
      • The Updated Re-release Maverick Hunter X has Dr. Cain dying in an attack on the Hunters' headquarters; whether this is a retcon or not remains unclear.
    • In the Mega Man Star Force series, Pat Sprigs is a major character in the first game, cameos in the second, and vanishes in the third. What's frustrating is that the game itself acknowledges that it still has plot points to wrap up regarding him. Pat also disappears from the anime as well, only to make a very minor cameo at the end of the final episode.
    • None of the new characters introduced in Mega Man X: Command Mission have ever appeared again in any capacity despite the game spawning many Ensemble Darkhorses. Partially justified by the game's ambiguous place in the timeline (or if it even belongs in the timeline at all.) However, at least four of them (Cinnamon, Marino, Steel Massimo, and Ferham) will appear in the mobile title Mega Man X Dive as playable characters.
    • After King decided to Walk The Earth after his defeat in Mega Man & Bass, he was never heard from again.
  • In Xenogears, Billy's dad Jessiah disappears (much like most of the game) when Disc 2 starts. At least, from the storyline, technically he is still around as he is the gun/bullet in one of Billy's gear's special moves. Oh, and Kaiser Sigmund too - despite the fact that an early Disc 2 plot point would probably have him heavily involved. Disc 2 has a much tighter story focus than the first disc, playing more like an interactive novel than a standard RPG, and the planned storylines for both characters may have gotten lost in the same budgetary constraints that are rumored to have caused the gameplay shift.
    • Yui, Citan's wife, also vanished from Disc 2 onwards, although it's implied that she may have become a Wels like most of the other ordinary people.
  • Parodied in Banjo-Tooie, where the face of Tooty, Damsel in Distress of the original Banjo-Kazooie and kid sister of Banjo, appears on a milk carton in Cloudcuckooland, one of only two appearances of Tooty in the game (the picture of her in Banjo's house from the previous game is still there; in fact it's one of the few things in the house that is not significantly damaged or destroyed). Rare obviously never saw her as anything more than a walking plot device for the first game, and thus hand-waved her absence circa Nuts and Bolts, saying she was hauled off by the "Rubbish Video Game Characters Police". However, three other characters stated to be hauled off by said police (namely the Tutorial enemies with the exception of Quarrie) make small cameos in the game. It wouldn't be until 2019 that she would make another physical appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, making a cameo alongside other Banjo-Kazooie characters on the Spiral Mountain stage.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Every surviving character from Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake that didn't make the transition into the Metal Gear Solid series was forgotten by default: Ellen Madnar, Diane, Jennifer, Holly White, Yozef Norden Johan Jacobsen, and George Kasler.
    • Subverted with Meryl, who vanished without explanation, except for an implied reference in an optional conversation in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty in which Snake says he's had enough of tomboys. Players were left to assume that the ending of MGS1 in which she died was canon, until she showed up in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
    • Surprisingly enough, this is averted with Dr. Pettrovich Madnar in MGS4. While he doesn't make an actual appearance, it's explained that he saved Raiden's life behind the scenes, even though he hadn't been mentioned at all in the previous games (nor is it mentioned that Snake killed him by firing remote-control rockets into his back to hit Madnar, but that's probably for the best), and him being the original creator of the first Metal Gear had long since been retconned.
    • Also averted with Big Boss, specifically, the one fought in Metal Gear. The general consensus was just that the deal with the Big Boss fight in Metal Gear 2 was just a retcon of killing him in 1 lazily handwaved as a body double, leaving plenty of plot holes unaddressed. Then Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain rolls around, and the twist turns out to be you playing as that body double, and pretty intricately exploring the implications of Big Boss using other people as unwilling decoys to save his own skin.
  • Angry Birds: Due to the failure of the Angry Birds Stella brand, all the characters (Luca, Dahlia, Poppy, Willow, Gale and Handsome Pig) introduced in Angry Birds Stella have gone on to face this fate, especially after the game itself was discontinued and removed from the App Store. Angry Birds POP!, the only other game that featured them, has gradually seen them be replaced with the original Angry Birds cast (Although Willow, Dahlia, Poppy and Gale manage to made a cameo in The Angry Birds Movie).
  • Slime Rancher 2 does away with emails, effectively removing Casey from the story. Also, BOb is the only Range Exchange requester who doesn't return.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Soul Calibur V is notable for having a lot of new characters at the expense of losing some old faces, including, rather infamously, popular faces Talim and Zasalamel as well as Rock, who have literally disappeared without a trace. At least Cassandra had her fate told in an artbook and the fate of Seong Mi-Na, Yun-seong and Setsuka were mentioned later on (with Setsuka having been Patroklos' teacher at one point) but Talim, Zasalamel and Rock have seemingly vanished off the face of the earth with no mention whatsoever from artbooks or Word of God as to what happened to them, almost as if they never existed. Soulcalibur VI, being a Continuity Reboot, along with bringing many other characters who were part of V's story but excluded from the playable roster, brought Talim and Zasalamel back.
  • Touhou Project's transition from PC-98 to Windows is either a Continuity Reboot or the single largest case of this ever. Only four characters ultimately survived the changeover out of forty or so. Many of the disappearances may have been caused by the fact that ZUN became the sole author of the Touhou series once it moved to PC.
  • Pac-Man:
    • Ms. Pac-Man and just about the entirety of the Pac Familynote  have been missing for years. note  With the reboot they might have been retconned out of existence.
    • Any of the ghosts outside of the main four from the original game note  also seemed to vanish.
  • Punch-Out!!:
    • The characters Kid Quick and Pizza Pasta have not been seen since the original arcade version of Punch Out. Though Pizza's absence is commonly attributed to his character being a potentially offensive stereotype of Italian people, the reason for Kid Quick's absence remains unknown.note 
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • The series' Player Characters have a semi-enforced and downplayed variant: the following games do acknowledge what happened in the preceding ones, and they do touch upon the character in question, insofar as the character would be known to the public. However, details that would vary from play-through to play-through (race, sex, playstyle, etc.) are, for the most part, strenuously avoided, presumably to avoid invalidating people's play-throughs and to avert Cutting Off the Branches. Word of God on the events of Skyrim tries to explain this by saying "all the quest chains present in the game happen, but not all are necessarily done by the Dragonborn." This could also be taken as their attitude towards the protagonists in previous games.
    • From Arena, General Warhaft. He was the leader of the Imperial Legion, wrote two of the in-game books on armor and fighting, and was imprisoned along with the Emperor by Jagar Tharn...but he never is mentioned after, except for in the aforementioned books. If you visit the Imperial Leagion headquarters in Oblivion, there is still no mention of him and he's replaced by Commander Adamus Phillida.
    • In Daggerfall, Ebonarm is a god of war worshiped in the Iliac Bay region and is held in high regard by the Redguards. He is a Black Knight with an ebony sword fused to his right arm and is never seen without his dark ebony armor. He is a noted adversary to most Daedric Princes and, despite being a god of war, usually appears on the battlefield to prevent bloodshed and reconcile the opposing sides. Ebonarm hasn't been mentioned in any form since Daggerfall, in Online, there is a book from Daggerfall appears that previously mentioned him, but has all mentions of Ebonarm removed. However he is mentioned in a book added in a DLC. Ebon arms has since also been added into Skyrim:Legendary Edition
    • Oblivion:
      • In a large-scale Chucking, the cities of Sutch, Artemon, and Mir Corrup were mentioned as being in Cyrodiil in several prior games. However, in Oblivion, the entire cities are gone. The developers admitted they never had time to add them into the game (a semi-canonical explanation was made for Sutch, though - apparently, the city was ceded to Hammerfell as part of the peace settlement following the events of Redguard. Which only left the problem of why Sutch had been implied to have been a part of Cyrodiil after that point, of course).
      • The Shivering Isles expansion ends with Jyggalag freed from the curse that forced him to become Sheogorath. However, come Skyrim, he is not mentioned or referenced even once. It's implied in some obscure texts and interviews that he doesn't have much of an interest in Nirn and is more active in Oblivion. Which makes sense, because Nirn is already pretty ordered, and Oblivion is an infinity of chaos.
  • Almost half the kids in the Backyard Sports series. But the series never explains why anything happens anyway.
  • In Daughter for Dessert, Veronica is a dating option for the protagonist early in the the game, and soon afterward, she is hired at the diner as the office manager. However, her only appearance after that is to tell Amanda that she can’t fire Lily just because. She doesn’t join the first attempt to get Amanda back from Cecilia, she’s not at the protagonist's not-going-to-prison party, and the protagonist can’t finish the game in a relationship with her. Amazingly, even if the protagonist took Veronica to the video game arcade instead of Heidi, the dialogue between him and Heidi will flat-out say that this date was between Heidi and the protagonist.
  • Simon the Sorcerer 3D has a strange character called Jar Nin whom you accidentally kill at the beginning of the game. Towards the end of the game it turns out that you have to resurrect him because you need him on your team. But when you do, he does exactly nothing and even vanishes shortly after, never to be seen or mentioned again.
  • Not characters per se, but every creature from the Xen borderworld in the first Half-Life - apart from the headcrabs (and zombies), the barnacles, the Vortigaunts (now as an ally), an ichthyosaur as a cameo, and the leeches (who are now invincible barriers to the ocean) - somehow vanished from the cast list before the start of Half-Life 2.
    • For that matter, with the exception of Barney, pretty much every major character from the first game's expansions (Adrian Shephard from Opposing Force, Gina Cross and Colette Green from Decay, and Rosenberg from Blue Shift) disappeared entirely between the first and second game. Considering the circumstances, this could be justified.
  • Pokémon:
    • Agatha was a member of the Elite Four in Pokémon Red and Blue and their remakes, but disappears without a trace in Pokémon Gold and Silver and their own remakes. This wouldn't be a problem, since you would think that Agatha could have retired, but neither set of games make any further reference to her past.
    • Ultimately subverted with Lorelei, who was also an Elite Four member in Pokémon Red and Blue but was absent in Pokémon Gold and Silver. While she's still gone in the latter's remakes, the remakes of the former gave a reason for this, implying she retired to protect her home island after an incident with Team Rocket. She does return in Let’s Go!, but now poor Janine ends up as this.
    • Somewhat infamously, Blue's Raticate from Pokémon Red and Blue. He has it as a Rattata in the battle the first time you arrive at Cerulean City, and as a Raticate for the battle at the S.S. Anne; however, it vanishes without a trace from the Lavender Town battle onward, despite the fact that in that particular battle he's got a free slot in his team thanks to its absence. It's still gone as of Pokémon Gold and Silver and all of Blue's subsequent appearances. Given that the first battle it's absent for is in the Pokémon Tower, a dedicated burial site for Pokémon, some fans theorize that it died for whatever reason at least after the Cerulean City battle (since you can technically skip the S.S. Anne until after visiting Lavender Town, and he won't battle you there if you go back afterwards) and he's there to mourn it.
    • Red used an Espeon in Pokémon Gold and Silver, implied to have evolved from the Eevee obtained in Celadon City in Red/Blue. HeartGold/SoulSilver replaced it with a Lapras (which is obtained in Silph Co.), and in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 and Pokémon Sun and Moon, the Lapras remains on Red's team with no sign of Espeon.
  • Jak and Daxter:
    • Gol and Maia are the duo's first major baddies, and after their defeat in the first game a return is hinted at by the Green Sage. However, the series decided to go Darker and Edgier and thus the rogue Sages were "chucked" out.
    • The second game introduces us to Brutter, the leader of the local Lurkers who befriends Jak and Daxter. At the end of the game, he seems to be working for Ashelin as captain of the New Krimzon Guard, but he is nowhere to be seen in Jak 3. Admittedly, Brutter does make a short appearance in the Daxter spin-off, but since that game is set before Jak II it doesn't explain what happened to him between Jak II and 3.
    • The second game also had the Crocadog, a Mix-and-Match Critter that Jak seemingly adopts as his pet in the end. He is never seen or referenced after Jak II.
    • Jak's uncle in the first game. While Jak was born in the future and thus he can't be his real uncle it feels a bit weird how after delivering the orbs to him he is never mentioned again. You'd think that he'd care a bit more about Jak's adventuring since he probably raised him.
    • Ottsel Veger is adopted by Kleiver as a sidekick, yet vanishes entirely by Jak X and is never mentioned again. His fate is unknown, but hopefully very unpleasant.
  • More or less every single non-Swordian user from Tales of Destiny is completely absent from Tales of Destiny 2, except for a brief reference to Mary in one of the first few skits. This was, in retrospect, just a side-effect from what happened to them in the last third of the first game, though.
  • A handful of the characters from the very first Street Fighter are nowhere to be found. At first Ryu, Ken, and Sagat were the only ones to return, then the Alpha series brought back Birdie, Gen, and Adon. Eagle made an appearance in Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium and the handheld version of Alpha 3. To this day, however, Geki, Retsu, Lee, Mike, and Joe are all but disowned from the series, not being so much as acknowledged until Street Fighter V (and even then, only through a website, with their mentions primarily meant to dispel fan theories of post-SFI appearancesnote ).
    • The comics have had some fun with these. Lee reappears in the Sakura Ganbaru manga as an opponent for Sakura, and in UDON's comics, reappears to challenge Fei Long and is stated to be the uncle of Yun and Yang. Also in UDON's comics, Geki attempts to assassinate Gen, and in the Ibuki miniseries, "Geki" is retconned to be the name of a ninja clan, not an individual, which has a rivalry with Ibuki's clan.
    • Some of the Street Fighter III cast would qualify, too. Only a few characters like Ibuki, Dudley, and Makoto were reintroduced rather quickly, many of them took a few versions in other Street Fighter games to make another appearance (Yun, Yang, Elena, Hugonote , Alex, Urien, Gill, Oro). The remaining ones got non-player appearances at best in Sean's case, and Necro, Remy, Twelve, and (possibly) Q have yet to make an appearance since. Part of the problem, it should be said, is the near-decade-long lull in Capcom fighting game releases between III: Third Strike and Street Fighter IV.
    • The characters who debuted in Street Fighter EX have never appeared in another Street Fighter game outside of the EX series. The fact that the characters are joint-owned by Capcom and developer Arika may have something to do with it (though a few have made the occasional cameo in other Arika games, and the company started work on a game featuring the EX-only cast, later to be released as Fighting EX Layer).
      • One of the most unusual cases within the EX series was a character called Hayate, a young Japanese swordsman. He appeared as a newcomer in EX 2, but was mysteriously removed from the updated version of the game. The PS1 port returned him to the roster as a secret character, but after that, he never appeared again (and was the only character from EX 2 to not return for EX 3). There was a persistent rumour that he had been killed off between the two games, but no, he simply vanished entirely without a trace. Fighting EX Layer eventually revealed that his body was taken over by Garuda.
      • A potential explanation for Hayate is that Capcom removed the character because they couldn't sell EX 2 in Korea due to that country's hatred of samurainote ; he does stay around in another way, as his Super Combos were given to Garuda as his Meteor Combo.
      • And speaking of Fighting Layer, the only characters from the original to return in Fighting EX Layer were Allen Snider and Blair Dame, who were carry-overs from Street Fighter EX. None of the game’s newcomers returned.
    • This also happened to Ingrid, whose profile on the CFN refused to label her as an actual Street Fighter character. note . This seems to have been reversed since then, considering her appearance in V, and even then, only as a costume for Karin.
  • Mortal Kombat: All of the characters from Special Forces and Mythologies: Sub-Zero who haven't appeared in a Fighting Game before (Sareena had a playable appearance in a portable version of Deadly Alliance called Tournament Edition) didn't made the cut for Armageddon.
    • Except Sareena's two partners in Mythologies; they appear in Konquest Mode of Armageddon as minibosses.
    • Tremor later resurfaced as a Challenge Tower opponent for the PS Vita release of Mortal Kombat (2011) due to immense fan demand, and would reappear as a playable character as part of Mortal Kombat X's first Kombat Pack.
    • This also applies to the Konquest Mode-exclusive characters. Some of these characters, with the odd exception of No-Face, do make appearances in the comics, though. No-Face’s existence was not acknowledged until Mortal Kombat 11, alongside Hydro, as a possible assist.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Calia Menethil, heir to the throne of Lordaeron, disappeared without trace shortly before Warcraft III. It was speculated by players that she has taken the name Calia Hastings and was working for SI:7, based solely on the One-Steve Limit. However, Calia finally made a reappearance in Legion as one of Priest's class champions, having taken up the life of a discipline priest. It's even lampshaded that it's a big deal that she's here but that they aren't going to discuss it much.
    • A Q&A with Warcraft's creative devs had them answer all "where are they now" questions with a general "we have plans and don't want to spoil them" answer.
    • Following the reworking of almost the entire Vanilla world in Cataclysm (and the eponymous near-apocalyptic event), a large number of NPCs disappeared without explanation. Overlaps with Never Found the Body in some cases.
    • The black dragon Sabellian, as the only one of his race who doesn't seem to have a problem with the player races, is conspicuously absent from all the events surrounding the return of his father Deathwing, the destruction of the rest of the black dragonflight as incurably corrupted, and the birth of his uncorrupted brother Wrathion. Possibly he decided he wanted no part of the whole thing and just stayed in Outland. It was later confirmed that Sabellian is still alive and Wrathion simply doesn't know about him.
  • Kaya Daidouji is a pretty important character in Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army. In the sequel, Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, she isn't mentioned once, though it's implied she moved away, as her old mansion is inhabited by ghosts in a side mission.
  • Magma is the point-of-view character and saves the planet in X-Men Legends but isn't even mentioned in its sequel.
  • Happens to quite a few characters in Vanguard Bandits due to the branching paths in the game. An important ally in one path can disappear into the ether on the next.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
  • LEGO Island was hit with this hard. Let's see, we had Captain D. Rom, Enter and Return, the Funbergs, Polly Gone, Studs Linkin, all of the flying Legondos (excluding Jack O'Trades), and the two workers.
  • Nutorious across the Richman franchise, as many characters appear only once in their debut title and disappear ever since.
  • Dynasty Warriors 6 was notorious for cutting some of the roster and relegating twenty-four of the remaining forty-one characters to "Free Mode only" (having no Musou Mode storyline and cutscenes, though its PS2 re-release converted six of them to Musou Mode, for a total of twenty-three Musou Mode characters and eighteen Free Mode only), but in Dynasty Warriors 7 when all of them were brought back except Zuo Ci and Pang De. The former was an inconsequential Daoist mystic, but the latter a notable warrior who'd participated in several key battles and brought his own coffin to his final military campaign ("win or die," literally), only to not be mentioned at all in the game, which KOEI explained was due to "certain storyline constraints" (namely, that they didn't have room for him in the direction they were taking the story). In a subversion, however, Pang De reappears in Xtreme Legends, which made it look like the trope was a harbinger for his eventual return (and eventually does, alongside Zuo Ci, in 8).
    • Samurai Warriors has an egregious example with Goemon Ishikawa, who has never been seen again after the first game. And after the second game, Musashi Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki never appeared either. However, along with Zuo Ci, the three are still present in Warriors Orochi. Zuo Ci would later appear in Dynasty Warriors 8, while Goemon, Mushashi, and Kojiro would appear in Samurai Warriors 4.
  • General Vladimir, who was an important supporting character in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, is nowhere to be seen in Yuri's Revenge, the game's expansion pack.
  • Dragon halfling Halfas in Dragon Valor is nowhere to be seen after chapter five, despite the fact that his actions drive the plot of chapter four (either killing the Sacrificial Lion or cursing the character to die in a month).
  • The Wave Race series has the four races from Wave Race 64 appear... except for Miles Jeter, who just didn't come back without an explanation.
  • In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Flak and Adder are completely absent from the story, though they are playable after you beat the campaign. This may have been because of how similar they are to newcomers Jugger and Koal, who have actual bearing on the story.
  • Loading the first pre-made neighbourhood included in The Sims 2, the player is greeted with a short slide show which informs them that this particular neighbourhood's story picks up twenty-five years after that of the default neighbourhood in the first game. Members or descendants of four of the five original base game families are there (as well as one or two of the families from later expansion packs). But Chris Jones and Melissa Smith (a.k.a. Chris and Melissa Roomies), who were at least as important and popular with the fans as the other characters - they're simply not there, nor do they even turn up in later expansions as some others eventually did.
  • Fairune: The Purple Fairy only appears in Fairune Origins as a thoroughly flat Damsel in Distress and vanishes from the series afterwards.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Most of the first half of the game is spent working with the Returners, including the old man Arvis who's the first non-Imperial you speak to and Banon, their leader. You last see the two of them in the ruins of the Imperial capital, Vector. Kefka's ascension and the destruction of the world might have killed them, but they're simply never seen or mentioned again.
  • In the Kingdom Hearts series, a number of supporting characters have gotten hit with this over the years.
    • Tidus, Wakka and Selphie were friends of Sora, Riku and Kairi at the start of Kingdom Hearts but have pretty much vanished from the series apart from Selphie's brief appearance in Kingdom Hearts II and data-versions appearing in coded. The series never really re-visiting the Destiny Islands likely has something to do with this.
    • Sora's mother is a especially bad example of this. We only hear her briefly in the prologue of Kingdom Hearts, and she's never been mentioned again at all.
    • A whole world was permanently retconned out of the series: Deep Jungle. This is justified, as Disney could no longer secure the rights to the franchise. In the dreams at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II, when Jafar mentions that Sora's found a Keyhole, the following scene is Sora sealing the one for Agrabah (after Jafar's defeat), when he actually said it after the one for Deep Jungle was sealed. As of 2021, Disney no longer sees Deep Jungle as canon, even to the point where a few official Facebook posts mention that Aladdin was Sora's first Guest-Star Party Member.
    • Zack Fair was last seen in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep vanishing in the end credits and has never been mentioned since.
    • A complaint about Kingdom Hearts III was how the Radiant Garden Restoration Commitee (Leon, Aerith, Yuffie, and Cid) fell victim to this despite being Sora's closest allies in Radiant Garden. They did return for the Re Mind DLC though averting this.
    • A number of character are hit by this in Kingdom Hearts III,
      • Tifa, Sephiroth, and the Gullwings.
      • While the absence of Seifer and his gang is accounted for in NPC dialogue, Vivi and Selzter are nowhere to be found in Twilight Town.
      • Pain and Panic are absent from Olympus despite the role they played in the original film.
      • Owl, Kanga, and Eeyore are absent without explanation from the Hundred-Acre Wood level. Inverted with Gopher, as this was his first appearance in any licensed product since Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Spyro the Dragon:
    • Elora was a major character in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! but only got a cameo at the end of Spyro: Year of the Dragon. After that she's suspiciously left out of every other title in the "classic" line, aside from popping up on a trading card in Spyro Orange, despite the fact the others (even Bianca) became Ascended Extras. There were plans on include her in two games but she was Dummied Out.
    • Minor supporting characters Colossus Yeti, Mr. Bones, Handel and Greta all debuted in Ripto's Rage! and returned for Year of the Dragon, but haven't made any appearances since the original trilogy (remakes notwithstanding). Oddly enough, it's subverted with Mr. Bones' caveman friend Ooga, as he appeared in Spyro: Shadow Legacy without Mr. Bones.
  • In the ending of the Decepticon version of Transformers: The Game (DS), the player's last words imply that Megatron is the only Transformer still alive. While all of the Autobots and most of the Decepticons are killed on screen, Brawl is never seen again after he kills Ironhide.
  • Assassin's Creed, after meticulously chronicling Altair and Ezio's rich, complex, influential careers from beginning to end, got really bad with this.
    • Connor: Has one last melancholy conversation with Davy Crockett before leaving to face an uncertain future. The last we hear about him at all is a random comment on an Abstergo Entertainment e-mail which hints that he had a turbulent marriage and suffered a brutal death, but there are no specifics. Later materials retcon this so that he actually had a happy marriage and was a loving dad, but give no details on his actual fate (Black Flag hangs a nasty lampshade on Connor's popularity by having Abstergo state "we could only get one game out of Connor.")
    • Shay: Assassinates Arno's father and reaffirms his loyalty to the Templars. Completely disappears afterward.
    • Arno: The main game ends with him gazing at his lover's grave and quietly contemplating the meaning of the Creed; the expansion ends with him watching as Napoleon is arrested. Never mentioned again; no indication that his actions had any real effect on future events.
    • Evie: No word on what she does with her newfound influence after completing the Queen's missions, or for that matter what her status in the Brotherhood even is. As Syndicate covers the most recent time period, it's extremely unlikely we'll ever see what legacy she had, if any. (Jacob at least has a tangle with Jack The Ripper and eventually becomes the grandfather of Lydia, who more or less brings the Assassins into the modern era.)
    • Even the modern era isn't immune. At the end of III, Desmond Miles frees Juno...a highly infamous precursor whose bitter eons-old rivalry with Minerva indirectly led to the current crisis...so that she can save the world. She does, but the final scene very strongly hints that she'll be a serious threat in the near future, if not an outright Big Bad. ("You played your part well, Desmond. Now it's time that I played mine!") In the next game, Black Flag, she's trapped in Abstergo Entertainment's computer network and only has one brief appearance near the end, claiming that she needs "more energy" to escape (oh, and her biggest ally dies shortly afterward). In Rogue, her situation has not improved in the slightest, and all she does is send out a bunch of patronizing messages. She's never mentioned or heard from again in the games, with Assassin's Creed: Odyssey only momentarily touching on the event of the comics where she died.
  • Tristan and Duke Devlin don't appear in Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour, even though everyone else from the first three seasons does.
  • Super Smash Bros. has had a few of these, all averted in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which had every past character return.
    • Brawl cut five characters from Melee: Dr. Mario, who returned in the fourth game; Mewtwo and Roy, who returned in the fourth game's DLC; and Pichu and Young Link, who returned in Ultimate.
    • The fourth game cut the Ice Climbers, Snake, Wolf, and Lucas from Brawl, though Lucas returned via DLC. In addition, Charizard was spun off from Pokémon Trainer, effectively cutting Ivysaur and Squirtle in the process.
    • As for boss characters, Tabuu and Duon from Brawl make no further physical appearances in the series. At least Tabuu's boss battle music returned for later installments, but even that doesn't reference him by name. Both bosses appeared as Spirits in Ultimate, however.
  • Kirby:
    • The Animal Friends and Gooey were prominently featured in Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Kirby's Dream Land 3 with Gooey even being upgraded to Kirby's sidekick in 3. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards replaced them with Adeline, Ribbon, and an unnamed Waddle Dee ally. However, ever since series creator Masahiro Sakurai left the series, all of these characters have effectively vanished from the main cast and are only acknowledged through trophies in Super Smash Bros. or in-game referencesnote . Ribbon could be justified in that she lives on a completely different planet while the unnamed Waddle Dee's role has effectively been filled by Bandana Waddle Dee with many Fanon theorizing that they are in fact the same character. Part of the problem comes from the fact that Kirby's Dream Land 2, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64 were directed by relatively obscure developer Shinichi Shimomura, himself a notoriously Reclusive Artist.
      • Rick, Coo, and Kine, the original animal friends, have made cameos in recent games, but the three Animal Friends introduced in Dream Land 3 were still nowhere to be found until they made cameos in Kirby Star Allies within another Kirby's Dream Land 3 exclusive, the Clean ability (renamed Cleaning).
    • Meanwhile, an enemy featured in Kirby's Adventure and Kirby Super Star (Bounder) was excised from the franchise and substituted with an entirely new enemy (Gip) come their remakes. This rule also extends to the mid-boss Rolling Turtle, who showed up in Adventure, only to be replaced by Phan Phan in Nightmare in Dream Land, as well as Togezo, who was replaced by Needlous in the remake of Adventure, despite making a few cameos in Dream Land 3 and Dream Course.
    • Poppy Bros. Sr., a larger counterpart to the smaller Poppy Bros. Jr. mooks, used to be one of the most reoccurring mid bosses in the series and usually the first to be encountered in levels. After Kirby Super Star Ultra, he hasn't been in a single game.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, party member Bao-Dur is Killed Offscreen during the game's final act but as a result of the game being Christmas Rushed he seemingly vanishes from existence entirely with no mention of his fate. Even with the Restored Content Game Mod, the only remnants of this plot thread are Atton briefly mentioning that he's missing and Bao-Dur himself appearing as a Spirit Advisor to give The Exile an inspirational monologue.
  • Kogoro and Mii, the two original protagonists of the first Project × Zone, are briefly mentioned at the end of Chapter 37 of the second game. It's revealed that Mii, despite being a high school student, is currently an intern at Shinra while Kogoro works at Shinra's intelligence division.
  • Ratchet & Clank is rather notorious for this, since most of the supporting cast from the previous games just cease to exist in the newer ones. If your name is not Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, Doctor Nefarious or The Plumber, chances are you'll either be Demoted to Extra, get a throwaway mention or just disappear altogether.
  • The Kao the Kangaroo series has a habit of not keeping any of the friends Kao makes between games. His kangaroo friends from the first game are absent in the second and third, and all the animals from Round 2 are missing from the third (aside from some pelicans that we never met before).
  • Leisure Suit Larry: Passionate Patti disappears without reason from continuity after her last appearance in Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work, according to Official Book of LSL he still lives with her, but they haven't yet married at least up to the seventh game. Larry is now an actor, who works for Sierra, and films Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!/Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail! while she remains at home waiting for him at the end of the day. Al Lowe claims the reason why she isn't in the games is they couldn't afford to hire her, to take part in the games. However, in the non-Al Lowe games he's fully broken up with her by the time of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, and pining away for her.
  • Deltarune: Of all the named characters from Undertale, Muffet is the only one who neither appears in person nor is directly referenced through dialogue. Just about the entire cast of the original game except for Asriel, possibly was Demoted to Extra for this one, but she got the worst of it—even the throwaway gag "character" Ice-E gets more attention than her. Muffet's in-universe existence may be vaguely hinted at in a line found by checking the picnic table by the lake.
  • Puyo Puyo Quest served as a massive The Bus Came Back moment for the series, bringing back most of the characters. The exceptions are Sukiyapodes, Zombie, Mini-Zombie, Nomi, Choppun, Dragon, and the majority of characters introduced in Puyo Puyo Box and the Nazo Puyo series (with the exceptions of Jan, Mandrake (who also cameoed in the GBC version of Sun and in Box), Demiserf, Succubus (who also cameoed in the GBC version of Yon), and Nega Kikimora). While many of them can be considered to be too grotesque for Sega's vision of the series (for instance the zombies who would often lose their eyeballs), the absence of others is more puzzling.
    • There's also Skeleton-T's mysterious buddies from 7, whom have vanished in the games since.
  • Goro Akechi and Kasumi/Sumire Yoshizawa, both characters who were heavily promoted in promotional materials for Persona 5 Royal (with the former being a party member in vanilla), are the only two Phantom Thieves to not appear in Persona 5 Strikers, to the point where neither of them are brought up once in the story. While this seems downplayed for Kasumi given that Scramble was in development before Persona 5 Royal and Akechi is (probably) dead, a scene late in Scramble briefly mentions a major plot point from Royal, making their exclusion even more jarring.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Barring a single mention in the manual, the princess Zelda from the previous game is nowhere to be seen or heard.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015): The player-created protagonists of FFXI, FFXIV and FFXV Comrades don't appear and are never mentioned (though the Warrior of Light and the Onion Knight still do). Shantotto, Y'Shtola and Noctis are the representatives for their games. Justified for FFXV as Noctis was the protagonist in the vanilla version.
  • Giana Sisters: Giana's twin sister Maria, who was one of the two playable characters and co-protagonists in the original game, is completely absent for the Giana Sisters DS reboot.
  • Tekken: Between the second and third games, there is a nineteen year timeskip and many characters from the former end up not returning for the latter. The vast majority eventually return in later games, but a handful of them never show up again. At least Jun Kazama gets mentioned on a semi-regular basis and eventually reappeared in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Tekken 8, but Kunimitsu never canonically does despite being Yoshimitsu's rival, as does the first Kuma, whom the fandom theorized dies in between the games.
  • Due to different reasons, Gust and Nisa never appeared again after the first two Hyperdimension Neptunia games. Their roles were either written out entirely or given to other characters in the remakes.
    • Gust represented the real-life Gust Corporation that was bought and absorbed into Koei-Tecmo.
    • Nisa represented Nippon Ichi and they had a falling out with Compile Heart that led to a number of NIS workers quitting to go work at Compile Heart. The exact reasons are unknown (Though it is apparently at least partly NIS's fault due to the rumors of mistreated employees tied to the falling out), the two companies have stopped working together and NISA eventually stopped bringing over Compile Heart's properties outside Japan.
  • The King of Fighters: Was it due to SNK's hate of him? Was it due to fear of a lawsuit by Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of AKIRA? Regardless, after The King of Fighters 2002 SNK went out of their way to pretend that K9999 never existed - replacing him with Nameless in 2002's Updated Re-release, editing him out of images in the gallery of The King of Fighters XIV, and making it company policy that even alluding to him was forbidden. This lasted for 20 whole years before he was finally repackaged and reintroduced in The King of Fighters XV.
  • In the Uncle Albert's Adventures series, Alberto the robot doesn't appear in games taking place after Uncle Albert's Mysterious Island (third game). While it's justified by the fact that these games happen in different places, it can feel a bit weird that he's never referenced again.

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