Demoted To Extra / Webcomics

• By season four of Ansem Retort, Marluxia is demoted so much he's left behind with Darth Maul while the rest of the cast members take Red XIII with them to Hawaii. This is one of the reasons he's so keen on fighting Xemnas in season six: he gets more screen time that way. In a later season, though, he's one of four people traveling through time to stop Xemnas. (Apparently, Axel and Zex need him to drink the time-traveling gay drinks. Because he's gay. It Makes Sense in Context.)
• Rowby from The Bug Pond was featured in some of the earlier comics and was even given a bio on the character page but hasn't done anything of significance since.
• Justin from El Goonish Shive eventually sank in the background, seemingly existing only to be a gay male. He was at least a major focus in the "New and Old Flames" arc.
• In Homestuck, this happens to several characters mostly to ones that got killed.
  • Sollux, Nepeta, Feferi, Eridan, and Equius all move further to the back with the conclusion of Act 5 because of their deaths, and while they do appear later on for some character moments or to end up fused to some sort of sprite, they're considerably less important now that the cast has increased. The same has happened to Aradia post Act 5 as well; while she isn't dead and she does serve more of a story importance than the other five, she's content to stay out of the spotlight.
  • Post Act 5 has also done this to Jade. Of the original 4 main kids, she's had the least to do, and when the story checks in on them during the Act 6 intermissions, Rose and Dave get into shenanigans with the trolls, and John gets the story focus, while Jade ends sidelined (its notable that of the main 4, Jade wasn't given a talksprite and was absent from the walk around sections). When they all finally arrive at the Null session Jade is turned evil and later killed, and while she does get a major story role and post death gets to narrate what happened to her it just means she's absent from all the major character interactions and big family reunions. Her having a Story-Breaker Power that could potentially make victory too easy has probably contributed.
  • Initially, the Exiles of the kids were given heavy prominence and had their own plotline running alongside the main kids. Then Cascade happened. Three of them died, a barely-alive WV was transported to the Meteor and PM put on the Queen's ring to avenge her friends and kill Jack. While WV still appears with the Meteor Crew, we never get to see from his perspective again and he's mostly a background character. PM, meanwhile, spends much of Act 6 chasing Jack Noir around, with the narrative very sparsely cutting back to her. It's only when she gets to the Post Scratch session that she begins to become important again, but by that point she's sharing screen time with all the Jacks.
• In Least I Could Do, Rayne's best friend John was given a rather strong demotion as writers switched over, being replaced with a long lost best friend. He began to see a resurgence in later times, though. Supposedly, this is because he was based on the writer's real best friend, who he had a falling out with.
• Stephan used to be a much bigger part of Ozy and Millie. The cartoonist explains that he was created to represent the overly confident geeks of the dotcom era; when the dotcom bubble burst, there simply wasn't as much of a place for Stephan.
• Several characters in Questionable Content. Of course, none of them have had the indignity of being eaten by an Allosaurus.:
  • Most notably Steve (Marten's best friend, now rarely shown). Steve was demoted to extra very early on - the joke about him being locked in the hall closet for months was as early as comic 155 (of 1750+). Steve seems to have returned, and appears far more frequently than before, although still very much a secondary character.
  • Pintsize and Winslow seem to be slipping towards this with their ever decreasing appearances.
  • Raven was demoted to extra when Penelope arrived, and has now definitely been Put on a Bus. But The Bus Came Back. Apparently Jeph was doing an Archive Binge for a book release and realized that Raven was hilarious. She showed up to ask for her job back that day.
• Endemic to Sam & Fuzzy. The comic is based into arcs separated by month- if not year-long Time Skips, bringing with them a severe disruption of the status quo. Characters like Lance, Alexa, Ackerman, Carlyle, Malcolm, Earl and Sidney, who were frequently appearing characters in the arcs that introduce them, later move on and away and appear sparingly if at all.
• Rachel and Tessa start off Scary Go Round as the main protagonists, but after the first chapter they're demoted to the supporting cast. The comic would often spend time focusing on some characters at the expense of others before rotating back, but they never really recover: it's another six chapters and nearly a year later before they get the limelight back. After that, they make another few appearances, but they're inexorably sliding towards a Face–Heel Turn and finally being Put on a Bus to Hell.
• Sinfest: The Dragon has been out of focus ever since the Sisterhood appeared. Eventually meets up with them.
• Dr. Lorna hasn't had more than the (very) occasional reference in Sluggy Freelance for years, despite being Riff's mom and still living in the same town by all accounts. She's essentially been Put on a Bus, having disowned Riff and fired Gwynn and Zoe, leaving her with no connections to the cast (and satirizing Dr. Laura no longer being in style).
• Happens to several characters in Something*Positive, but the most notable example is probably Monette. After years of being a major focus in the Texas storylines, she's Put on a Bus to California and has shown up sparingly since. Arguably significant to her Character Development, but her drop in panel-time is very noticeable.
• Take Sonichu, the titular character of Sonichu. He's ostensibly the main protagonist, appearing in some capacity on many of the front covers, but he, along with a good proportion of the rest of the cast, largely took a backseat after the first few issues, as a Spotlight-Stealing Squad made up of Christine Weston Chandler's Author Avatar and a successive slew of sweethearts and internet trolls take centre stage. Sonichu gets a bit more attention from Episode #8 onwards, but it's nothing to really write home about.
• Emmit hasn't had much to do in later years of Station V3, though he's probably not complaining too hard about it.
• Sticky Dilly Buns: Amber (a secondary character in the parent comic, Ménage à 3) starts the comic's run sharing an apartment with the title character, and appears in most of the early strips, with a potentially complex Single Woman Seeks Good Man plot hook and some other issues attached — and she is always part of the set-up for her sister Ruby's story, which could have brought her into a full-scale Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry. However, she finds the answer to her romantic problem at the first attempt (Ray is literally standing around the apartment when she comes home one evening), she never does address many of those other issues, and so far as Ruby is concerned, she mostly serves simply as someone to be rude to and finally reconcile with.
• Homestuck Stylistic Suck fancomic Sweet Jade and Hella John:
  • Pretty much every troll except Nepeta. Word of God stated that he even hates writing for them because he can't come up with anything for them that isn't walls of comparing the hemospectrum to race relations, romance discussions, and plot exposition. Notably, Vriska, opposite of Nepeta, turns from one of the most important characters in Homestuck who deliberately tries to force herself into the plot into an Earl expy early on in the comic that becomes obsessed with karma. This was intentional. Lampshaded in the Shipping Intermission when Tavros asks Vriska what the last big plan she had was. She answers with a long pause, followed by a "fuck you."
  • Rose, Roxy, Dave, and Dirk were all fairly background characters in the Intermission, and while Dave always has a hold on the plot, he only showed up very sporadically. In fact, the "==>" command arrows now represent John, Jade, Jane, and Jake, in addition to the number of their alternate selves that they get over the course of the story. This is averted early into Act 2, as they play the role of major antagonists.
  • Within the fan fic, Elitaa and Puerco. Elitaa was at first quite the spotlight taker and her introduction and surrounding initial mysteries heavily took up most of the Sweet TROLLS and Hella MORE TROLLS portion early into the story. There was even a segment where she wandered around the yellow ship and looked at what all of the trolls there were doing. Unfortunately, nobody suggested, so that didn't go anywhere. She's now a Living Prop who went over several hundred pages without a physical, non-cameo appearance, and never really contributed to the plot. (Everything she did was tied directly with another character, such as destroying the T-800s with Eridan.) Puerco also may have had similar build up, except she was even less relevant to the point where she may be one of the few characters who contributed absolutely nothing to the story.
  • Meenah Peixes. She's overall less relevant and gets less screentime than her Homestuck counterpart, but at least in the Intermission and Act Two Act One she gets some roles in tampering with Dave's stuff. She's soon equated with many of the other pre-scratch trolls (or, as they're called in this world, "good twin trolls") and some of the post-scratch/evil twin trolls when Slender-Aranea assimilates her offscreen, and she's technically dead for good when Aranea herself dies.
• Mr. Birdbeak from Tragic Deaths. In the first three comics that that Petalklunk made, he was the main focus, but now he's only made one appearance after it switched focus to the war between Petalklunk and Mr. Bignose.
• Wapsi Square:
  • In the slice-of-life years, Tina was a moving prop, Katherine was just a weird Drop-In Character, and Tep was such a joke that he wasn't added to the cast page at the time until after the Heather arc, when she'd been there for months already; essentially, Monica and Shelly are the only two left of the original cast. Even Shelly hadn't been very prominent among Monica's friends until the Heather arc and her Important Haircut boosted her popularity.
  • Tepoz rarely shows up anymore.
  • Jacqui was much more important before the paranormal elements of the strip showed up. However, she does have the most appearances of any character who is not in on the paranormal.
  • After the situation between him and Shelly was resolved, Owen stopped appearing. In March 2012, Shelly got a postcard announcing that Owen and Lakshmi had eloped.
  • Darren isn't quite as important as he used to be.
• Kendall in TRU-Life Adventures, after receiving multiple story arcs exploring her backstory and developing her beyond the Mean Boss archetype, found herself unceremoniously fired by new store director and Bad Boss Simon. Now shows up once a year or so in relation to her new job as one of the higher-ups at theme park Wonderworld.
• ReBoot: Code of Honor: Despite being the main threat at the end of Season Four of ReBoot, Megabyte is largely irrelevant in the story.

---