Absentee Actor

Princess Clara: Have you noticed we haven't been getting any screen time this week?
Toot: Well, uh, duh! That's because we've been in the basement all week making this awesome potato gun!

— Drawn Together, "Captain Hero's Marriage Pact"

So you're watching your favorite show, and it has Loads and Loads of Characters. This particular week's focus is on the Beta Couple, lower decks, an icosahedron, or even the Cast Herd. In any event, some people we haven't seen much of or in a while are taking center stage... but what's this? Why are some of the main characters completely absent? Did their actor get sick? Pregnant? Sacked? Killed?

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For some reason, we have an Absentee Actor for a character (main or bit) whose presence would be either plot-relevant or at least plausible in the episode, and is completely absent for the episode. They don't even get a non-speaking cameo even though they should be involved with the plot at hand, or at least present in the location. It stretches belief for Bob and Alice to have a long chat in Mary's Bar and there be no Mary in sight (especially since it turns out she and Alice were just revealed to be fraternal twins separated at birth last episode).

The reason usually has something to do with Real Life. Maybe the actor is sick or otherwise unavailable — but not so unavailable that the writers have to drop a bridge on them or put them on a round trip bus. Maybe the producers need to save money and can't afford to pay them for the episode (hey, every penny saved goes to pay for that big CGI-laden Season Finale!) - in fact, some actors' contracts restrict them to appearing in only a certain number of episodes each season. After all, you get days off work - sometimes actors do, too! Maybe there was just nothing for the character to do that episode. If it's a Lower-Deck Episode then it could easily be said the character was just doing something else that day, but usually explanations for the absence given in show are way too flimsy to explain a total absence — just how unavailable can Captain Picard be if he's at the hair salon for this week's crisis?

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See also Fake Shemp. Compare Written-In Absence, where they at least write in a (flimsy) reason for the character not to be there. Contrast with Promotion to Opening Titles, when an actor that has been present starts getting acknowledged in the credits.

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Examples:

Anime

• Digimon Xros Wars can be pretty bad at this at times. Especially with Beelzebumon, who despite stating that he'll always be somewhere near Taiki to help out if he ever needs him, still has a tendency to be completely absent for several episodes straight with no explaination given. Gets even weirder when one considers that his voice actor Daisuke Kishio voiced at least two other recurring characters in the show, and even in episodes where Beelzebumon didn't appear, one of his other roles would often be there anyway.
• Galaxy Angel does this, along with written-in absences, every few episodes (and to varying degrees). Milfeulle, Forte, Ranpha, Mint, and Vanilla, all take turns disappearing from episodes, giving the audience a chance to focus on specific groupings and pairings such as Milfeulle/Forte/Ranpha only, or Mint/Vanilla. Taken to this trope's logical extreme in that over the run of all seasons collectively, every girl has at least one episode that solely depicts them with the absence of all four other girls. This all said, there's just as many episodes in which this trope isn't used at all, and all five Brigade members are present and active.
• An important plot point in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, all of the main characters are never seen together, not even in the openings, when they stand side by side. And if you pay attention, you'll notice that the optimistic, enthusiastic and energetic protagonist, Kafuka Fuura, albeit, one whose smile is probably covering up her traumatic past, is almost never present during them, except for full openings, or specials. It's because she died long before the series began, and began to inhabit her classmates' bodies after they each got her donor organs, in order to stop the entire class - and probably even the whole of Japan - from committing suicide. In the end, her entire class forget that she even existed, except from the teacher, Itoshiki Nozomu, who ends up marrying and divorcing his entire class - including Jun Kudou, the only male to be possesed by Kafuka - in order to find her. A very odd and sad end to a long running and darkly comic Gag Series.
• Sgt. Frog: In several later episodes, Koyuki just disappears. When she doesn't have a speaking role, she often isn't even drawn among the students in Natsumi's class.
  • Or else she's in Stealth Mode.
• Due to the fact that the main character actually is two separate people in Detective Conan, this happens a few times during the series VERY long run. But most notably, during one and a half of the Scarlet return episodes (Episode 779-783), Conan/Shinichi succeeds to be almost completely absent AND have a Moment of Awesome at the same time. Liar.
• Pokémon: Prior to the Best Wishes series, in which they started to appear less frequently, Team Rocket trio was absent only in a couple of episodes: "Pokémon - I Choose You!" (the very first episode) and "Ash and May! Heated Battles of Hoenn!!" (a clip show which recapped Ash's Gym Battles and May's Contests in the Hoenn region that was never dubbed).
  • There were a couple of Diamond & Pearl series episodes where Dawn's Piplup and/or Jessie's Wobbuffet don't appear such as "The Keystone Pops!".
  • A number of episodes in the Sun & Moon series have only one of Ash's classmates appear alongside him, for example Sophocles is the only one appearing in "A Shocking Grocery Run!".
• The Garlic Jr. Saga from Dragon Ball Z is the only arc where Goku is completely absent from the story as he was lost in space following his battle with Frieza, making it the only time where he doesn't save the day in some way.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid
  • Chapter 61 is the only one to completely lack Kobayashi, Tohru, Kanna, and Ilulu.
  • There are chapters taking place in Kobayashi's apartment in Kanna's Daily Life where Ilulu is completely absent, even when she should logically be present (or at least mentioned). This is lampshaded during her first appearance, with a caption that says "sometimes she's here, sometimes she isn't."

Comic Books

• Old Lace was conspicuously absent for much of Terry Moore's run on Runaways.
• Suske en Wiske: In some of the older Suske en Wiske stories Lambik or either Sidonia were sometimes absent, despite having been added to the main cast already. Vandersteen was still experimenting with his characters in those days and sometimes tried having Suske, Wiske and Lambik going alone on adventure, other times tried to have Sidonia and the children do the same, without Lambik.
• Tintin: After being introduced to the main cast in the series Thomson and Thompson appear in all albums, except for Tintin - Tintin in Tibet and Tintin: Flight 714.
• Nero: A character named Jef Pedal was part of the main cast in the early albums, then disappeared from the series without any explanation. He reappeared in some of the later color albums, but always for a quick cameo and it was never made clear why he had left the series.
• While Harvey Comics had many junk food ads featuring its characters, Little Lotta was never included in any of them, for obvious reasons.
• As the Madballs comic book published by defunct Marvel Comics subsidiary Star Comics started introducing the second series Madballs and the Super Madballs into the series, stories started only featuring a handful of the Madballs with no explanation given for why the other Madballs were absent. The first, second, third, fourth, and ninth issues were the only issues where every existing Madball was present in at least one story.
• All the heroes introduced so far in Ultimate Marvel took part at some point or another during the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, except for Ultimate Spider-Man.

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Fan Works

• Calvin and Hobbes: The Series:
  • In the episode "Roughin' It," only the titular duo is present.
  • Lampshaded in "Cyberboy", as Calvin and Hobbes argue over whether the peaceful beginning means a Breather Episode or an upcoming villain attack. Calvin believes that it can't be the former, since everyone is present - the series' Breather Episodes usually only have him and Hobbes.
• In the The Prayer Warriors fic, "The Prayer Ponies", Rarity is the only one of the Mane Six who does not appear, and no explanation is given. By contrast, the other Prayer Warriors fics made a token effort to include the entire main cast of their respective works, even if they weren't in character.
• This fanfic uses the trope as its premise, explaining what off-screen adventures Spike was having whenever he no-showed during an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Films — Animation

• Kanga and Roo were the only characters who do not appear in Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin.
  • Owl and Christopher Robin did not appear in Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie.
• In Recess: School's Out, Cornchip Girl and Menlo are the only major supporting characters not to appear in the film.
• Despite the first two being present from day one in Justice League: War and the latter joining in Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, Green Lantern, Shazam, and Aquaman are nowhere to be seen in Justice League vs. Teen Titans; in fact, unlike GL and Shazam, Aquaman even isn't even mentioned, though it's likely his duties as Atlantis's king are why he's not helping the League in Vs. Teen Titans.
• Gantu did not appear in Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch.

Films — Live-Action

• Throughout the Harry Potter films, the teachers present at the staff table in the Great Hall correspond curiously with the teachers who have scenes elsewhere in that particular installment.
  • So you'll only see Professor Trelawney at the staff table in the third and fifth films because they aren't going to hire Emma Thompson unless they have a real scene, however brief, for her to do. In that case, however, it was stated in the third book that Trelawney joining the other Professors at the staff table is a rare thing to happen anyway. The remaining seats are filled by extras who don't talk and even they change with each movie. The same goes for any scene which supposedly or should logically include "all" the teachers in the school.
  • The actor who portrayed Vincent Crabbe in the movies wasn't available for the last movie, so Gregory Goyle replaced Crabbe as the one to die from his own Fiendfyre and Blaise Zabini replaced Goyle as the Slytherin student other than Draco Malfoy who almost died from that.
• Happened occasionally in The Little Rascals series, usually due to an actor taking ill or working on other assignments during production. A notable example is Buckwheat's absence from the film Feed 'Em and Weep (with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in his place).
• Some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films have done this.
  • The Avengers has Don Cheadle's War Machine absent without explanation (a tie-in comic would later reveal that he was stopping a terrorist attack in China during the events of the movie), and Natalie Portman's Jane Foster relegated to a cameo as a photograph.
  • Jane is absent again in Avengers: Age of Ultron, as is Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts, with a Written-In Absence explaining that Jane was on a lecture tour while Pepper was busy running Tony's company.
  • Pepper is again absent in Captain America: Civil War with the explanation that she and Tony had an Offscreen Breakup.
• Star Trek: Generations. They couldn't get Leonard Nimoy or DeForest Kelley (Kelley was in too poor health and he and Nimoy felt their characters had been given enough send off in the previous movie and the lines could be given to anyone else) so they got James Doohan and Walter Koenig instead. You can tell essentially no rewriting was done what with Chekov going off to Sickbay when the refugees are beamed aboard and administering a sedative to Dr. Soran. Scotty also delivered one of McCoy's lines from a previous movie: "Would you like a tranquilizer?", likely written as a Continuity Nod for DeForest Kelley. Scotty also calls Kirk "Jim", something only Spock and McCoy called him.

Literature

• Statius joins The Divine Comedy's main cast from the 22nd canto of Purgatorio to the 33rd, but despite his assumed presence, there is not a single indication in the texts of the 29th, 30th, and 31st cantos that Statius exists. Apparently, Statius remained completely silent as Dante lost his mentor to Hell and reunited with his angry, dead ex-girlfriend.
• Rowley, aside from one flashback, is absent from Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.

Live-Action TV

• Kaley Cuoco's fondness for horseriding led her to unintentionally give new meaning to the saying "Break a leg" on both 8 Simple Rules and The Big Bang Theory. The former wrote her injury into the show; the latter led to one or two "Penniless" episodes (as an E4 continuity announcer put it).
• 7th Heaven: The show's credits are somewhat odd; while they credit actors in the opening titles if they appear in the episode, this includes actors that have left the main cast ^note Barry Watson and Jessica Biel are never credited as guest stars despite having both having left the show in season 6 and making sporadic appearances afterwards. Also, the dog Happy is credited in every episode even if she doesn't appear onscreen. Though in a particularly odd case, in the season 8 episode "The Kid Is Out of the Picture", all of the original cast (even Jessica Biel and Barry Watson, who'd already left the main cast at this point) are credited though only David Gallagher (Simon) appears onscreen; everyone else appears in photos. This is because of a framing device where Simon is making a video essay in order to get admitted into a college. Also, Catherine Hicks (Annie) is credited for an episode where she's mentioned but doesn't appear in season 11.
  • Barring that, only Stephen Collins (Eric) and Beverley Mitchell (Lucy) appear in every episode, while Hicks doesn't appear in one (as mentioned above) and Mackenzie Rosman (Ruthie) is absent from the first six episodes of season 11.
• Averted in Alias with Jennifer Garner's pregnancy. Sydney simply had a baby with her in-series boyfriend and worked it into the plot, even. Nice going, writers.
  • However, the writers did add several new women to the cast in order to pick up some of the Action Girl slack, as Jennifer Garner could no longer film intricate fight scenes while pregnant. If anything, it was actually something of an inversion of this trope.
• On All in the Family, Norman Lear wrote the character of George Jefferson with Sherman Hemsley in mind, but when the show began in 1971 Hemsley was unavailable due to his commitment to the Broadway show Purlie. Lear promised to hold the role open for Hemsley, and got around this by a.) making George an offscreen character for the first couple of seasons and b.) creating a different character, George's brother Henry, to serve as a kind of pre-emptive Suspiciously Similar Substitute until Hemsley finally became available in season 4. (Once that happened, of course, Henry Jefferson was promptly Put on a Bus and never heard from again.)
  • Season 5 also had a three episode story arc focused on Archie disappearing on the way to an Army convention (turns out he had taken the wrong bus). This was due to Carroll O'Connor having gone on strike over a salary dispute.
• Supporting characters in Andromeda would often be absent in first season episodes, given the relatively small cast they frequently had in-character explanations (Harper in a surfing competition, Rev Bem at a spiritual retreat...) in episode 12 their frequent absences was even lampshaded by Captain Hunt.
  • The ship itself (and by extension the actor playing its avatar) is missing for most of the start of the final series. Sometimes she appears but it's more like a glorified cameo to justify her name still appearing in the credits.
• In Are You Being Served?, after Young Mr. Grace had died and the replacement Old Mr. Grace had proved unacceptable, the writers decided to move the character permanently off-screen. The character was still around and at Grace Brothers, issuing orders via telephone or memo, but he was never seen nor heard. There was never any indication whether this "Mr. Grace" was the "Young" or the "Old" one.
• Arrested Development: During the first season, there were a number of episodes in which Buster or Tobias were absent (fortunately, they've never been both been absent in one episode). Curiously, this may be why Tony Hale and David Cross were credited last aside from the "And Starring" credits for Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter. In fact had he had perfect attendance Cross might have been put right before Will Arnett or even Portia de Rossi, as he, aside from Jason Bateman, Tambor and Walter, was arguably the most established star going into the show.
  • For the next two seasons, Buster and Tobias would have perfect attendance, as would the rest of the cast, even if only for a small part (i.e. Lindsay only appearing in one scene in "Queen for a Day"), or not coming in until the episode is past the halfway point (i.e. Lucille in "Righteous Brothers"). There was one exception: "For British Eyes Only" did not feature Maeby. Given that George Michael appeared in only a single scene that episode, it is assumed that there was a subplot involving the two that was scrapped because Alia Shawkat was unable to make it to the episode, and the episode was rewritten at the last minute with George Michael's scene only serving to squeeze him into the episode.
  • For season 4, this was much more common. Michael was the only character to appear in every episode of the season. This was somewhat understandable, as the actors were busy with other projects.
• Arrow: Stephen Amell and David Ramsey are the only actors to appear in every episode.
• So frequent on Babylon 5, that wikis note which regulars appear in each episode, instead of which ones are missing as usual. It wasn't until a couple of seasons in that a normal episode featured every regular.
  • On a more serious note, Michael O'Hare and his character Jeffrey Sinclair went AWOL after season one, and only appeared in tiny guest appearances, even when it would be appropriate to have him return. After O'Hare's death, it was revealed that the reason O'Hare left was an increasingly severe case of paranoid schizophrenia. O'Hare was offered to seek treatment before season one wrapped, but declined, saying that getting rid of the lead character mid-season one would kill the franchise before it got off the ground and that he would not be responsible for putting the rest of the cast and crew out of work, and chose to grit his teeth and bear it.
• Happens a lot on Atlanta. The only characters who are likely to be in every episode are Earn, Alfred or Darius, and it's not a guarantee that they'll be in the episode all together. In season 2 this is even more common, with several episodes only starring one of the main characters. The episode "FUBU" takes this to the extreme and contains none of the lead actors, being a Whole Episode Flashback to Earn and Al's childhood with time shifted actors.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003) has the Cylons, robots who after rebelling designed twelve "models" of mass-produced Artificial Human bodies to infiltrate colonial society. A big part of the series' appeal was the the notion that anyone can be a Cylon, even main characters thanks to Fake Memories and sleeper personalities. However, the writers hadn't decided who all was going to be a Cylon from the get go, ^note (They instead chose to use Schrödinger's Gun by telling actors to keep in mind they could be playing a Cylon) so in scenes where the Cylons are away from humans and planning the downfall of humanity, or on Cylon occupied Caprica, several of the twelve models would be completely absent. For a long time in the first and second season, the only models shown in pow-wows would be those previously revealed^note (though in 3's case, her appearance in one such pow-wow was the episode's shocker ending), usually a 6 and 8 with maybe a 2, 4 or 5 brought in for variety. There was also a monetary factor, several of the Cylons were expensive-ish Special Guest Stars^note (Dean Stockwell of Quantum Leap as #1, and Lucy Lawless of Xena: Warrior Princess as #3) in addition to being extras, so showing them all would run up costs. This is why the 1s and 3s are almost completely absent except for a handful of episodes or as out-of-focus extras.
  • Sixes and Eights are the norm, since both actresses are stars and get paid the same regardless of how much they appear on screen. Doral seems to be the go-to "third Cylon" for most of the series, especially the early seasons.
  • Another BSG example: the "webisodes" that were produced during several of the hiatuses primarily focused on supporting/minor characters.
  • In The Plan, many of the main characters appear only in stock footage. In one bizarre instance, they edited Laura Roslin out of a scene she previously appeared in and gave her line to Col. Tigh!
• Beverly Hills, 90210 original and reboot series:
  • In the original, none of the main characters appear in every episode. Of the four main cast members that are regularly featured in every season, Tori Spelling (Donna) appears in the most episodes; missing just two in season 1. Jennie Garth (Kelly) and Ian Ziering (Steve) miss three, while Brian Austin Green (David) is absent in four.
  • In the reboot, Annie, Silver, and Naomi appear in every episode. Adrianna misses one episode, while Dixon doesn't show up in three. Liam appears in every episode from his introduction towards the end of the first season. Navid tends to miss between one and five episodes per season, while the teacher Ryan missed episodes regularly for his three-season run on the show (appearing in just half of season 3). Ethan appeared in every episode in season 1, and then Put on a Bus at the start of season 2. The rest of the cast missed multiple episodes before departing the cast.
• In the fifth season of Bewitched, Dick York had gotten injured and could not stand during the filming of the show. So, the writers constantly had to either transform Darrin into different items like a monkey or have him out of town on business. Darrin was recast in the following season.
• In one episode of The Bill, actor Andrew Macintosh (DS Alistair Grieg) was sick; whenever it was reasonable to expect that he'd be called on to take part in the investigation, DI Burnside would ask where he was and be told he was in the loo. Cue many sarcastic remarks from Burnside...
• InThe Blacklist, all the main characters (minus Red) are absent in "Cape May".
• The western Bonanza theoretically centered on a father and his three sons. However, Pernell Roberts, who played the oldest son Adam, left the show in 1965 and Dan Blocker - the middle son Hoss - died in 1972 (his passing is widely considered a factor in the series' cancellation the following year). Therefore, there are entire seasons in which Adam is "away;" in his absence, various ranch hands, long-lost nephews, and adoptive sons join the family. Hoss is implied to have died offscreen: the father looks at a picture of him while trying to console another grieving character. However, the family does not visibly mourn for Hoss or refer to any of his past adventures, nor do they write to, visit, or talk about Adam.
• Buffyverse:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer was usually very good about not doing this, with regulars showing up in most episodes, even if it was just for a mandatory line. Despite that, every season but 4 contains at least one episode with a main character absent. None of these absences are explained on-screen.
    • Season 1: Cordelia is absent from "The Pack" and "I Robot, You Jane".
    • Season 2: Angel missed "Inca Mummy Girl".
    • Season 3: Oz is missing from "Consequences". Believed to be because Seth Green was filming the second Austin Powers movie at the time.
    • Season 4 is technically an aversion. All four characters billed as regulars for the whole season appear in every episode. Oz, Spike, and Riley are only regulars for part of the season, so their absences from certain episodes are justified.
    • Season 5: Spike does not appear in "The Body".
    • Season 6: Anya is absent from "Normal Again".
    • Season 7: Both Xander and Anya do not appear in "Conversations with Dead People", with Anya also missing "Help" and "Dirty Girls." There were plans for Anya to talk to Hallie (who died earlier in the season) and Xander to talk with Jesse (remember him? From waaay back in the first two episodes?), but they didn't pan out. This is only episode where Xander doesn't appear, leaving only Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) and Alyson Hannigan (Willow) with perfect attendance.
  • Angel, unlike the parent show, tended to explain any absences among the main cast.
    • Season 1: Doyle is in the opening of "Parting Gifts" despite having died in the previous episode. This was to avoid spoiling that Wesley becomes a regular from this point forward.
    • Season 3: Cordelia misses "Loyalty", "Sleep Tight", and "Forgiving", as she is on vacation with Groo. From this season, only David Boreanaz (Angel) appears in every episode.
    • Season 4: Lorne, though technically not a regular at that point, appears in every episode except "Ground State". Also in "Ground State", Connor appears but does not speak.
    • Season 5: Wesley misses "Destiny", having taken time off due to the events of "Lineage". This is because Alexis Denisof was on his honeymoon (with the aforementioned Alyson Hannigan) during filming.
• Charmed had this occur during the tumultuous Season Eight due to budgetary constraints. Brian Krause's episode count was drastically slashed, leading to Leo Wyatt appearing in only the first ten episodes and returning for the final two episodes. The void in-between was explained by a convoluted plot where Leo was supposed to die, but (via a deal the sisters make with an Angel of Destiny) is instead simply frozen in a block of ice. Bad as that might've been, Dorian Gregory fared worse: being cut altogether and it being stated that Darryl Morris moved back east with his family. Curiously, this trope is not invoked in the first few episodes of the season where the sisters cast a spell to make themselves and Leo look like different people. (Other characters see them that way, but viewers see their true selves.)
  • This happened during the previous seven seasons, though not for the exact same budgetary constraints. During their respective tenures, Cole, Andy, Chris and Dan missed a handful of episodes. Even after being promoted to main cast half-way through Season 2, Leo missed a few episodes over the next five years. Darryl had it even worse, though. He doesn't appear in half the episodes of seasons 3-7. Andy is an interesting example. While Ted King appears in all but one episode of the first season, his character technically does when the Charmed Ones encounter his younger self in the past.
• Anna in Chuck is increasingly absent from episodes she has no large role in.
  • In Season 3 Julia Ling, who plays Anna, has left the cast, turning this into a very drawn out version of Put on a Bus.
  • Due to budget cuts for season 3, the only characters that appear in all episodes are Chuck, Sarah and Casey. So there are episodes where Awesome, Ellie, Morgan, Buymorians and even the special guest star played by Brandon Routh are conspicuously absent. The one that disappeared the most seems to be Big Mike, who would sometimes vanish even when lots of action took place in the Buy More or all the other Buy More people appeared.
• For the first three seasons, every member of the study group appeared in every episode of Community. However, non-study-group series regulars Ken Jeong and (as of season three) Jim Rash were frequently absent, and Chevy Chase does not appear in season four's "Intro To Knots" and "Heroic Origins." And then, of course, he left the show.
• The later seasons of The Cosby Show frequently had multiple cast members absent. Technically this started as early in the second season, when Sabrina LeBeauf was added to the opening credits, but it really became noticeable later on. In fact, some recurring characters (not in the opening credits) made more appearances in certain seasons than some regulars did.
• The 7th season of CSI had Gil Grissom go on a four-week sabbatical because William Petersen took some time off to do theater. He was "replaced" by Michael Keppler (Liev Schreiber) during his absence.
  • There was also "Gum Drops" a bit earlier, which had Grissom absent due to William Petersen attending a funeral, with his absence explained by a throwaway line about him teaching a class at the body farm. That said, many eps have had missing characters without much explanation.
  • More recently, Jorja Fox is the Absentee Actor quite a bit, counted as a regular but not appearing in every single ep.
• Daredevil (2015) is pretty good about avoiding this regarding its three leads. That is until season 3 episode 10 "Karen", which is the only episode of the show in which Foggy does not appear, which means that Charlie Cox (Matt) and Deborah Ann Woll (Karen) are the only actors who have been in all 39 episodes.
• Dawson's Creek is named after the title character played by James Van Der Beek; he does not, however, appear in all 128 episodes. He is missing from season five's "Four Scary Stories" and "Downtown Crossing" and a few season six episodes. In fact the only credited regular who does appear in every episode is Katie Holmes, who plays Joey Potter.
• Desperate Housewives had Bree and Orson abruptly leave for a honeymoon in Switzerland in the middle of Season 3 - apparently months after the two were married - in order to explain away Marcia Cross's maternity leave.
• Pushed to extremes in season 8 of Diagnosis: Murder when either Jesse, Amanda or both were absent from nearly every episode. There are only 6 episodes of the entire season where all 4 main characters appear, and Jesse isn't even in the series finale.
• Fairly prevalent for Disney Channel shows:
  • The Suite Life of Zack and Cody:
    • Brenda Song is absent from 2 episodes: ("Have a Nice Trip" and "Birdman of Boston") in the second season.
    • Ashley Tisdale is absent from one episode in the second season ("Loosely Ballroom") and 11 episodes in the third season ("The Summer of Our Discontent", "Baggage", "Sleepover Suite", "The Arwin That Came to Dinner", "First Day of High School", "Of Clocks and Contracts", "Arwinstein", "Orchestra", "A Tale of Two Houses", "Tiptonline" and "Benchwarmers"). Her absence in the third season became prevalent to the point that her character was written-out as studying in Antarctica, and ended up getting two semi-replacement characters.
  • The Suite Life on Deck: Cole Sprouse, Dylan Sprouse and Brenda Song were the only 3 characters to appear in every episode of the series. Debby Ryan was absent from 9 episodes: "The Mommy and the Swami", "Mom and Dad on Deck", "The Wrong Stuff", "Splash & Trash", "Cruisin' for a Bruisin'", "Any Given Fantasy", "My Oh Maya", "Das Boots" and "Computer Date". Doc Shaw was absent from 4 episodes: "Seven Seas News", "The Silent Treatment", "Rat Tale" and "So You Think You Can Date?". Phil Lewis was absent from 16 episodes: "International Dateline", "Flowers and Chocolate", "Boo You", "Shipnotized", "The Wrong Stuff", "Kitchen Casanova", "Family Thais", "Goin' Bananas", "Can You Dig It?", "Marriage 101", "Seven Seas News", "The Silent Treatment", "Rat Tale", "Senior Ditch Day", "My Sister's Keeper" and "Frozen".
  • Hannah Montana: Miley Cyrus was the only main character to appear in all episodes. Emily Osment and Jason Earles were absent from 1 episode of Season 4. Billy Ray Cyrus was absent from 4 episodes. Mitchel Musso was absent from 12 episodes. And Moises Arias was absent from 19 episodes.
  • As well as starring in Shake It Up!, Bella Thorne and Zendaya are the only cast members to be in every episode.
  • A.N.T. Farm: Carlon Jeffery missed many episodes of Season 1 and 2 before leaving the show. Stefanie Scott missed a few episodes as well.
  • Austin & Ally: Averted: all four main cast members have appeared in every episode of the show.
  • Cory in the House: Only Kyle Massey and Rondell Sheridan appeared in every episode. Madison Pettis and John D'Aquino missed eight episodes each. Maiara Walsh missed one and Jason Dolley missed four.
  • Pair of Kings: Geno Segers missed many episodes. Kelsey Chow missed a few back in the day.
  • Zeke and Luther: Hutch Dano and Adam Hicks appeared in every episode. Daniel Curtis Lee missed several, as did Ryan Newman before she left the cast after season 2.
  • Kickin' It: Olivia Holt was the one most likely to be absent, due to her other projects at the time. Alex Jones only missed one episode before he left the show, and Jason Earles was absent just one time as well. And if you count two episodes that Mateo Arias and Leo Howard (despite being the lead role) appeared very briefly in, then Dylan Riley Snyder is the only cast member with fully perfect attendance!
  • Lab Rats: Hal Sparks is the only main cast member who wasn't in every episode. He only had perfect attendance in Season 3.
  • Mighty Med: Bradley Steven Perry, Jake Short, and Paris Berelc appeared in every episode, but Devan Leos and Augie Isaac were absent frequently — each of them had an episode where they played another character but not their regular role.
  • K.C. Undercover: Impressively, the first season has all the regulars with the exception of Zendaya miss multiple episodes. There was one episode that did not feature Marisa, but had Veronica Dunne do a PSA announcement at the end of the series.
  • Kirby Buckets had several episodes that did not feature Belinda.
  • Best Friends Whenever: The Royer twins were often missing.
  • Crash & Bernstein: Only the title characters have had perfect attendance, although Landry Bender at least made it through all of season 1.
  • That's So Raven: Raven and Cory are the only characters to appear in every episode. Anneliese van der Pol was missing from three episodes in season one, and Orlando Brown was absent from one episode of season four. T'Keyah Crystal Keymah and Rondell Sheridan were absent from five episodes of season 1. Keymah was again absent from five episodes in season 2. In season 3, she only appeared in the first 29 episodes before her character was Put on a Bus, and was absent from twelve of those episodes.
  • Lizzie McGuire: Lalaine was absent from final few episodes of the series and the movie due to focused on her music career.
• Doctor Who:
  • In the 1960s, filming was nearly year-round, so characters - including the Doctor - were often written out of episodes to give the actors a holiday.
    • In "The Aztecs", Susan has very little to do in the whole story (she's around for the setup, the ending, and a couple of scenes in a seminary) because Carole Ann Ford was having time off.
    • "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" has one episode where the Doctor is unconscious for the whole time (he only appears briefly at the start, shot from behind).
    • In the one-episode "Mission to the Unknown", the Doctor and his companions are completely missing. (William Hartnell is still credited, because of the terms of his contract.)
    • "The Celestial Toymaker" pits the Doctor against a villain who turns him first invisible and intangible, and then mute, except for his hand. This meant he could be portrayed with a spot of ADR and a hand double for the effects shots, and get some much-needed time off.
    • "The Tenth Planet" has a whole episode where the Doctor is unconscious due to Hartnell being ill. This has the lucky effect of foreshadowing his regeneration at the end of the story.
    • In "The Enemy of the World", both Fraser Hines and Deborah Watling had vacations during the filming of episode 4, so Jamie and Victoria were unmasked as spies and arrested at the end of episode 3.
    • Patrick Troughton's vacation came a few weeks later, and so for all of "The Web of Fear" episode 2 the Doctor is missing, presumed [by the characters] dead.
    • During the filming of "The Mind Robber", Fraser Hines took ill and was replaced by his cousin. Since Hamish Wilson looked nothing like Hines, and because the story had such a surreal nature, Jamie lost his face twice, and the first time it was reconstructed wrong.
  • Jamie spends most of "The Moonbase" unconscious because the script was written before his last-minute addition to the regular cast and it was hastily altered to fit him in. He gets one good scene about his clan history and is involved in a solid Cliffhanger scare but is mostly just a Distressed Dude and shuffled off to the side while Ben and Polly manage the plot.
  • During the Third Doctor's era, the semi-regular UNIT characters were often left out. The most blatant example is in "The Three Doctors", where, despite a massive attack on UNIT HQ, Captain Yates is nowhere to be seen (and a guest character, Corporal Palmer, takes charge when the Brigadier and Benton are indisposed).
  • The Whomobile isn't in "Robot" because it was personally owned by Jon Pertwee, and his absence meant the car's absence. The result is that the Doctor is forced to confront a giant robot in Bessie even though his flying car would be a lot more useful for dogfighting a giant robot with.
  • Nicholas Courtney was unavailable due to prior commitments for "The Android Invasion", and so the Brigadier is replaced with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute with a hilariously identical personality in the final two episodes. It ends up giving the impression that UNIT middle-management is made up of virtually identical Brigadier clones.
  • K9 would frequently be left out of stories in the Tom Baker era due to lack of anything for him to do (and the cast and crew disliking the character). K9's absence in one story in particular was because the writer of the script, Terry Nation (who was also the creator of the Daleks), didn't want the robot dog to go up against his most famous creations. So K9 was given "laryngitis" for an episode, and was forced to stay behind in the TARDIS. K9 was also left out sometimes because they were filming in a location where K9 prop would have difficulty moving—e.g. a swamp, a rock quarry etc. In "The Power of Kroll", set mostly in a marsh, K9's voice actor was cast as a side character to give him something to do.
  • Similarly to the Whomobile example above, it's often mocked that the Doctor's shoes turn from boots to brogue shoes upon the Fourth Doctor's regeneration into the Fifth Doctor. This is because the brogues were part of the original costume design, but Tom Baker disliked the look (they were paired with plus-fours and long argyle socks) and bought a pair of his own boots to wear with the outfit instead. No Baker, no boots.
  • Nyssa was left out of "Kinda" because originally she wasn't written into it and the writer did not want to change the plot to include her. She does appear briefly in the first and last episodes; her absence from the rest of the story is explained as being due to "mild mental disorientation" which means she needs forty-eight hours of undisturbed rest.
  • This became premeditated for most of the Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat eras. To economize on both financial and actor resources, every series after the first was written to have a "Doctor-lite" and a "companion-lite" episode. These could be filmed simultaneously to shorten the overall production schedule.
  • For an example where a character should logically have been there but wasn't, the Doctor's army in "A Good Man Goes To War" was supposed to include Captain Jack Harkness, but John Barrowman was unavailable. Madame Vastra was created to take his place and proved a compelling enough character that she ended up being a minor character in the next couple of series.
• Every character, apart from Carl Winslow, has been absent in Family Matters at least once. Laura and Harriette didn't appear in "A-Camping We Will Go". Harriette was also absent from a few Season 9 episodes, due to Jo Marie Payton leaving the show shortly before its cancellation. Estelle and Richie don't appear in most episodes of the final two seasons. Eddie doesn't appear in "Fight the Good Fight," "Par for the Course" and a few other episodes. Steve Urkel is a downplayed example, because while he didn't appear in the show's first 11 episodes, he appeared in every episode since his introduction in the 12th episode "Laura's First Date", due to his Breakout Character status, and was later even added to the cold opening in 4 of the first 11 episodes.
• This happened with Meredith Baxter-Birney on Family Ties, but not with Phylicia Rashad on The Cosby Show. Because an obstetrician/gynecologist and a lawyer who live in a two-story Manhattan brownstone and already have several children can't possibly afford another kid.
• For most of Season 3 of Farscape, the cast was split into two groups with alternating episodes focusing on each group with Crichton being the only character that was in both sets of episodes.
  • Season 4 experimented a little with this. For example, after the characters are largely separated at the end of Season 3, the first five episodes focus on the crew coming back together.
• Ron Glass does not appear in one episode of Firefly.
  • Due to her one scene with dialogue being cut, Summer Glau only appears in "Our Mrs. Reynolds" as a background extra.
• The Flying Nun: "The Dumbest Kid In School" is the only episode in which Sally Field, as said aeronautical habit-wearer, does not show up.
• The TV series The Four Just Men starred Dan Dailey, Richard Conte, Jack Hawkins and Vittorio de Sica as four soldiers in WWII who following the war made a pact to fight for truth and justice. Except for the premiere, every episode concentrates on one of the four, usually with one or more of the others making brief appearances; the only episodes in which all four leads appear are "The Battle of the Bridge" (the first episode) and "The Night of the Precious Stones" (a de Sica episode, with cameos by the other three).
• Frasier, which ran for 262 episodes over 11 years. Kelsey Grammer (Frasier), David Hyde Pierce (Niles) and John Mahoney (Martin) appeared in every episode. Jane Leeves (Daphne) missed a couple in Season 8 due to her pregnancy (Daphne was said to be a fat camp after piling on the weight due to worrying about Niles saw her) and only appeared in a non-speaking cameo in a Season 11 due to her second real life pregnancy. Peri Gilpin (Roz) missed the second and fourth episodes of Season 11 but otherwise appeared in all episodes.
• Notably averted with Friends, which may well be the crowning example. All six main characters appear in every single episode. Keep in mind this is 236 episode show, that ran for ten years and no new cast members were added. Real Life Writes the Plot moments were worked around, such as Lisa Kudrows pregnancy which meant she couldn't film in London (Phoebe carried on the plot over the phone), and Matthew Perry's drug addiction (Chandler worked in Tulsa for several episodes, so his scenes could be shot separately).
• Since Game of Thrones has Loads and Loads of Characters, no one makes it into every episode, but of particular note is Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran) who appears in barely half of the first 50 episodes and is the only surviving member of the original main cast to be completely absent from Season 5.
• "Opening Night", the seventeenth episode of season five of Glee, is the first episode in which Kevin McHale does not appear - he's the only cast member to appear in every episode up to that point. He does not, however, appear in the most episodes of the show - that honour goes to Lea Michele, who throughout the run of the series is only MIA from three episodes, all in season four ("Dynamic Duets," "The Role You Were Born To Play" and "Shooting Star").
• On Season 1 of Good Eats, "W" appears only on a screen, because Vickie Eng was out of the country trying to adopt a child. In a later season, she is also temporarily replaced by "The Dungeonmaster" in Alton's basement.
• Gossip Girl roll call:
  • Both Ed Westwick (Chuck) and Chace Crawford (Nate) are absent from "Dare Devil."
    • Ed also doesn't show up in "Blair Waldorf Must Pie!," "Roman Holiday" and "All About My Brother."
    • Chace, meanwhile, is similarly missing from "The Serena Also Rises," "Bonfire Of The Vanity" and "In The Realm Of The Basses."
  • Jessica Szohr (Vanessa) was promoted to a series regular for season two, but she doesn't appear in the season two premiere "Summer, Kind Of Wonderful," and in fact is absent from several other shows throughout seasons two (she misses seven in all), three (five) and four (six). But she does turn up for the fourth season finale - when Vanessa was Put on a Bus.
  • Both Taylor Momsen (Jenny) and Kelly Rutherford (Lily) are AWOL from the season three premiere "The Freshmen."
    • Taylor is also missing from season one's "Bad News Blair," "School Lies" and "Woman on the Verge," and in the first half of season four she only appears in four episodes - "Gaslit" was her final episode before leaving - although she remains listed in the credits for the entire season and like Jessica Szohr and Connor Paolo (and several other performers), she comes Back for the Finale.
    • Kelly, meanwhile is the only regular cast member to miss at least one episode of every season, including the premieres of seasons two, three as mentioned above (due to maternity leave and personal issues) and five.
  • Matthew Settle (Rufus), on the other hand, is only absent from two episodes in the entire run - season five's "The Fugitives" and season six's "High Infidelity."
  • Kaylee Defer (Ivy) was added to the main cast in season five but was absent from seven episodes (including four consecutive episodes mid-season), as well as missing two episodes of season six ("High Infidelity" and "It's Really Complicated").
    • Which leaves Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley and the uncredited voice of Kristen Bell as the only cast members with a 100% attendance record.
• Greek had an episode where the entire ZBZ sorority had to welcome back a former member to re-instate her. ZBZ member (and main character) Rebecca Logan did not appear in the episode. Nor did a few other extra ZBZ members that would've been seen in such a ceremony. (This might have been justified if it excused pledges if other recurring pledge characters weren't also seen in the ceremony.)
  • Also, not surprisingly in a show about fraternities and sororities, there are many episodes without Rusty's non- and anti-Greek roommate Dale.
• In Grey's Anatomy the actress who played Lexie was absent a lot, having taking time off to spend time with family. She was eventually killed off. Arizona broke up with Callie and went to Africa for a bit because of the actress's pregnancy. She came back soon. Meredith had surgery that required her to miss work for weeks because of the actress's pregnancy; she did make appearances, but was always shown in bed.
• Taken to ridiculous levels on the later seasons of Happy Days, where Anson Williams' Potsie was pushed to being a side character and only appeared in six episodes of each of the last two seasons. And yet, he was still credited as a main cast member!
• Hawaii Five-0 is pretty much guaranteed to have Steve and Kono in every episode,^note Except for a bit of the second season where Alex O'Loughlin (Steve) was out due to a shoulder injury and later rehab for pain med addiction from said injury as well as a bit of the fourth season where Grace Park (Kono) was on maternity leave but other characters may or may not appear. After their Promotion to Opening Titles, Max, Jerry, and Grover are usually present, but the first two have plenty of non-appearing episodes.^note Of these, Max seems more likely to be missing, and generally has the shortest scenes if it's not a Lower-Deck Episode; this may have something to due with Masi Oka's schedule and the fact that he has projects in both California and Japan as well as Hawaii. If one of them is absent, other characters may mention they received information from them (particularly in the case of Max, who as the medical examiner should be present whenever they're dealing with a dead body; it's not Always Murder, but it's More Often Than Not Murder). Starting with season 5, Danny is absent one out of every five or so episodes.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys had this occur more than once. Some episodes had Kevin Sorbo not appear in order to give Iolaus A Day in the Limelight. During the fourth season, though, health issues sidelined Sorbo for many episodes. He still appeared often with the focus was on other characters, but he doesn't appear at all in "Men in Pink," a Autolycus/Salmoneus comedic episode. (Iolaus does not appear in this episode either, but Michael Hirst still turns up in a major role. Playing a woman...)
• Throughout the run of Heroes, all the main cast members skipped at least one episode with many of them usually missing one per season; even Hayden Panettiere was absent from a couple, but skipped fewer than anyone else - Panettiere is both the only cast member to appear in every season one episode and the only original cast member^note  Robert Knepper, who was a regular in the final season, also appears in every instalment to be in every season four show. The trope is so prevalent on Heroes that Sendhil Ramamurthy is the only other cast member to take part in all episodes of one season (he narrates all 11 episodes of season two).
  • In the fall of 2007, it was announced that Zachary Quinto would be taking a break from the show in order to film Star Trek (2009), which would have meant several episodes without Sylar. However, the writer's strike shut down production on Heroes, so there were no episodes for Quinto to be absent from. Volume three averted this by tossing in everyone into every episode, even when they had nothing to do. Played straight by the rest of the show, however.
  • Sylar gaining shapeshifting powers may also have been an attempt to avert this, allowing the character to be present even when Quinto was unavailable.
• In Highlander: The Series, Duncan MacLeod appears in only half the Season 6 episodes. Actor Adrian Paul may have been losing interest, but Duncan also steps aside so a series of Immortal females "auditioning" for a spin-off could be introduced. Sometimes Duncan only appears in an episode to bed one of the women, an "old friend."
• Lily was written out of four episodes of the fourth season of How I Met Your Mother to accommodate Alyson Hannigan's maternity leave. The excuse was very clever; she got so upset at a dirty joke that Barney told that she didn't hang out with him.
  • Lampshaded as well since Future!Ted specifically states that she didn't talk to Barney for exactly four weeks when it happened.
• Sam Puckett in iCarly during the episode iWon't Cancel The Show. It was created due to Jennette McCurdy being in the hospital for an operation.
• The IT Crowd gave the minor character Richmond scurvy when Noel Fielding was unavailable for filming due to the tour schedule with The Mighty Boosh.
• On It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Dennis was absent from "The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot" and "Mac Finds His Pride" despite being mentioned as well as the Super Bowl two-parter^note "Charlie's Home Alone" and "The Gang Wins the Big Game", although granted as these two took place while he was in North Dakota; Dee was absent from "Mac's Banging the Waitress", and, after his introduction in the second season, Frank was absent from the aforementioned Season 4 episode as well as "Paddy's Pub: the Worst Bar in Philadelphia". As of 2018, Charlie and Mac are the only members of the Gang to appear in every episode, as they appear on FaceTime in the Ladies Reboot.
  • A location example: Paddy's Pub doesn't appear in "The Gang Gets Trapped", "The Gang Gets Analyzed", "The Gang Dines Out", "The Gang Beats Boggs" and its reboot, "The Gang Hits the Slopes", both parts of "The Gang Goes to Hell", "The Gang Goes to a Water Park", "Hero or Hate Crime?", or "The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies' Reboot".
• Jericho had this happen on occasion, presumably to save on cost. This got strange when Mary, owner of the local bar who did not appear to have a hired maid or waiter, would not show up in her own bar when the episode's focus characters showed up.
• In The King of Queens, there were many occasions where Arthur Spooner (Jerry Stiller) might appear on the opening credits and be billed as a cast member, but did not appear in the actual episode.
• In The Last Man on Earth, Phil and the other main survivors don't appear in "Pitch Black".
• In Last Man Standing, the Baxter daughters have all missed at least one episode: Kristin in "The Ring", Mandy in "Tanks for the Memories", and Eve in "Papa Bear".
• Bill Owen, one of the stars of Last of the Summer Wine, died after only partially completing three episodes for the 2000 series. In order to use what footage they had of Owen, the producers devised an excuse for his character, Compo, to leave for a while in each of the three episodes - in one, he goes to the betting shop to watch the races, and in another he goes to see his Thursday lady-friend, which becomes plot-relevant in his funeral episodes. Scenes which Owen couldn't complete were then rewritten without him. Once all Owen's footage had been used, the character of Compo died.
• Lois & Clark episode "Soul Mates" had the case lampshaded by Lois Lane stating she expected Lex Luthor to be the villain of the problem she and Clark had to solve. It would have been Luthor but John Shea, the actor who portrayed him in that series, wasn't available when the episode was filmed.
• Only the first season of Lost featured any actors that were in every episode. From season 2 on, each actor misses at least one episode, if not more. Sometimes it's explained...but usually not. Worse than Miles's fate being left in the air after getting a grenade stuck in his mouth for half the season, Jin holds the record for missing episodes-he's gone in six episodes in a row in season 3, not appearing even after his wife Sun begins to again.
  • Even worse with fan favorite Richard Alpert, who appears greatly in season 3 and then drops off the face of the Earth (or the island) in season 4. The reason? Nestor Carbonell became a regular on a competing TV series, Cane. Luckily, the writer's guild strike cancelled Cane and Richard was able to return.
  • Claire Littleton was the first main character to miss an episode and appeared much less often than the other original characters and rarely had much to do when she did. She missed season 5 entirely before returning in season six.
  • Desmond in season 5 beats Jin's; he's prominent in the first half of the season, then only appears in two more episodes...both brief, and both with almost no lines. Irritating, since while the series juggled the 1977 and 2007 Island plotlines rather well, he's just left there. In fact, he's in less episodes than guest stars Richard & Phil and ties with Ilana and Radzinsky (...all four of which received more screen time than him).
    • Henry Ian Cusick is listed in the credits on every episode of season six. He appeared in about 30 seconds of the premiere, reappears in episode ten, and appears in a grand six more episodes, some of them only as his flash-sideways counterpart.
  • Ilana was made a regular, but only appears roughly every other episode until she's unceremoniously blown up. One cameo after that, and she vanishes; not even in the finale. This is due to her entire storyline becoming an Aborted Arc due to a lack of time.
• M*A*S*H: Around the fifth or sixth season, Gary Burghoff had his contract changed to limit his appearances as Radar to 13 episodes of each 24-episode season. During these episodes, Radar was frequently said to be "away on R&R".
  • Pretty much everyone in the cast other than Alan Alda was missing for at least a couple of episodes.
  • After Larry Linville (Frank Burns) left the show, the episode following his departure had him going AWOL. To resolve the plot of "what happened to Frank?" Hawkeye receives a call from him and finds out that he was arrested, put in a hospital, and promoted, all without the presence of the actor.
• Not every episode of Mission: Impossible contains the full complement of IMF regulars. In season one's "Elena", the only IMF member involved in the mission is Rollin (although Briggs appears in the first few scenes, he does not directly participate in the mission itself). And in "Action!", Briggs does not appear at all thanks to Steven Hill's behind-the-scenes behaviour.
  • In fact, no one appears in every episode of the original version (unlike in the revival, where the full team appears in each show).
• Modern Family:
  • Tends to happen to the Dunphy children frome time to time. Luke and Alex missed quite a lot of episodes in the early seasons. Some fans suspect that their respective portrayers, Nolan Gould and Ariel Winter, were subject to child labor laws since they were under fourteen at the time.
  • So far Averted by all the adult family members, who have appeared in every episode.
  • Understandably, none of the children appear in "Las Vegas".
  • Manny is the only one of the kids to appear in "Valentine's Day 4: Twisted Sister".
• Monk:
  • There are three episodes ("Mr. Monk Goes to the Asylum," "Mr. Monk and the Game Show," and "Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic") where Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher do not make on-screen appearances.
  • There are a few episodes ("Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation," "Mr. Monk Gets Married," "Mr. Monk Is Underwater," among others) where Randy appears but Stottlemeyer does not appear.
  • "Mr. Monk and the UFO" marks the only episode where Stottlemeyer still appears but Randy is absent.
  • "Mr. Monk and the Game Show" is actually a unique case as it was a filler episode made during contract disputes with Bitty Schram, Ted Levine and Jason Gray-Stanford. Because of this, Sharona, Stottlemeyer and Disher do not appear on-screen at all (though Monk's first scene has him speaking on the phone with Sharona), and of the regular cast members, only Tony Shalhoub appears. The assistant part ends up going to Monk's talkative upstairs neighbor Kevin Dorfman (Jarrad Paul).
• The Monkees:
  • Davy Jones was written out of one episode (“Alias Micky Dolenz”) in order to attend his sister’s wedding in England.
  • Michael Nesmith was also notably written out of a few episodes in the second season: He was absent due to both a tonsillectomy and the birth of his son, Jonathan.
• The first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 suffered from this. Before the creative team behind the show got a budget and were moved to cable, they were just a local cable access show and they shot the movie segments live. Thus, if one of the crew had to be out of town for any reason, they'd do something in the host segments to explain it. For example, when Joel had to be in Hollywood for a meeting, his character was explained by the bots to have gone outside the ship to do routine maintenance, which they then quickly forget about. Later, they notice that he's not back yet and look out the window to see a Ken doll in a jumpsuit and space helmet floating outside, suggesting that Joel had lost his grip and was floating away. Similarly, there's an episode where both puppeteers were unavailable and Joel spent the entire episode alone in the theatre.
• On The Nanny, Lauren Lane had to miss several episodes in the fifth season since she was giving birth. To cover this up, her character C.C. suffered a breakdown and spent those episodes in an asylum.
• Just before season three of Nashville began, executive producer Dee Johnson said that a lot of the main cast wouldn't appear in every episode of said season - and indeed Chris Carmack, Will Chase, Oliver Hudson, Eric Close and Lennon & Maisy all miss at least one episode each (and often more than one). Hayden Panettiere's screen time was already reduced due to her real-life pregnancy, but a lot of material was shot before she took time off to have her baby, meaning "That's The Way Love Goes" is the first episode of the series in which she does not appear at all (although her character Juliette is talked to on the phone). Unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last - the following season both Juliette and Hayden came down with post-partum depression, leading to the actress having to take medical leave from the show (she only appears in stock footage in "Unguarded Moments"). Aubrey Peeples also had to miss episodes due to filming of Jem and the Holograms.
• NCIS usually includes everyone in the main cast (minus whoever's playing the NCIS director) in every episode, which makes Ducky's absence in "Legend (2)" (the second part of the NCIS: Los Angeles pilot episodes) all the more noticeable. Bonus points for the fact that this was first time a main character introduced in the JAG back-door pilot episodes missed an NCIS episode (Thomas Morrow was never a main character and Vivian Blackadder never appeared in the series itself).
  • DiNozzo was absent in 13x22 "Homefront" due to Michael Weatherly filming his new show, Bull, in New York City. This is the second time a JAG-introduced character was absent.
  • Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is the only character to appear in every single episode.
• In the Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn episode "This Little Piggy Went to the Harpers", Aidan Gallagher (Nicky) was missing from all but the final few minutes. The reason in-universe was that Nicky went to a cooking camp.
• The Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation episode "Going Ape" noticeably does not feature Venus de Milo, Michelangelo, or Splinter, with no explanation given for their absence.
• In season one of Once Upon a Time Robert Carlyle is absent from only three episodes, whereas fellow regular Raphael Sbarge only appears in 10 out of 23 (one of which only has him as the voice of Jiminy Cricket) - which is significantly less than, say, Meghan Ory^note  who plays Ruby/Red Riding Hood (there are only five episodes in season one where she doesn't turn up, which would explain her Promotion to Opening Titles in season two - and Sbarge getting Demoted to Extra).
  • In season two Carlyle missed three (again) but Ory is absent from 10 (in fact this trope affected all the regulars except Josh Dallas and Jared S. Gilmore, who appeared in all 22 episodes); ultimately Ory left the series, but the door's open for her return as a guest star.
  • Going into season five the most frequently seen cast member is Jennifer Morrison, who to date has only missed season two's "The Crocodile."
• Police, Camera, Action!: Gethin Jones, former Strictly Come Dancing contestant hosted a Very Special Episode entitled "Drink Driving Special", which aired on 17th December 2008. Alastair Stewart and Adrian Simpson did not appear.
• In Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Jason Frank's limited availability led them to go to great lengths when it came to keeping his face offscreen: He's one of four rangers, The Mentor, the Big Good, and yet for entire arcs he's not actually there. First, he was trapped in amber, while suited. When it was dissolved, found that he could no longer demorph, and remained this way for a very long time. Then he finally demorphed... but was now invisible (his civilian-mode power for that season.)
  • And it happened to him again when his character appeared in Power Rangers S.P.D.. To cover his absence, the character only appeared morphed and was voiced by Jeffrey Parazzo.
  • This was also why Ernie, the owner of the Angel Grove Juice Bar in the original series through Zeo was written out of the show; Richard Genelle, who portrayed the character, retired due to weight-related health problems. Continuity wise, Ernie left to do volunteer work in South America. (Lt. Stone's actual quote was, ""Well, his foreign service unit recalled him and he had to suddenly leave. I don't know, something about building a bridge in the Amazon." (On another note, Genelle successfully lost forty pounds and later founded a company called Retail Logistics Solutions, Inc. in Cerritos, California, providing transportation services.)
• This was the reason for Kendrix's death via Heroic Sacrifice on Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. Valerie Vernon had to leave the show after being diagnosed with leukemia, and due to overwhelming positive response to this plot device in the previous series (where Zordon sacrificed himself to save the universe) the writers felt they were safe with it.
• If you are a cast member of Pretty Little Liars and your name is not Troian Bellisario, Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale or Shay Mitchell, you can count on having at least one (and sometimes more than one) episode off.
• Prison Break did this to John Abuzzi who got his throat cut and disappeared for a while; the actor who portrays him, Peter Stormare, was contractually obliged to go and film some bizarre Volkswagen commercials. He came back 6 episodes later with a haircut.
• Patrick McGoohan was away filming Ice Station Zebra for much of The Prisoner (1967) episode "Do Not Forsake Me Oh my Darling". This was justified by having the mind of Number 6 being put into a new body.
  • The replacement also allowed them to have Number Six kiss a woman; McGoohan's contract stipulated that he would not appear in a love scene.
• In Reba, Kyra only appeared in the first four episodes for the fifth season due to actress Scarlett Pomers struggle with an eating disorder. She returned in the sixth and final season.
• In Season VIII of Red Dwarf, the crew were suddenly returned to life. This meant Captain Hollister returned (as a regular), as did Lister's friends Selby and Chen (as guest stars). However Olaf Petersen, Lister's best friend and the character most often seen in flashbacks to before the accident, was mentioned twice but never appeared.
• Roseanne blurs the line between this and Written-In Absence in one episode without the title character. The cast doesn't comment on her disappearance, but the Real Life Roseanne shows up during the credits to inform the audience she was gone due to her pregnancy. But don't worry—she still got paid.
• Roswell does better but still the only characters to appear in every episode are Liz, Max and Michael. (Tess appears in every episode of Season 2, the only one where she's a regular.) Maria and Isobel miss an episode each in Season 3 (as does Jesse, who only appears in that season) and Isobel also misses one in Season 2, while Alex, Kyle and Valenti are frequently absent.
• Sanford and Son: Foxx's salary-related departures derailed the show on several occasions, in one instance leading to Whitman Mayo's temporary elevation to lead actor.
  • Demond Wilson also missed an occasional episode here and there... and both Foxx and Wilson were absent for "The Family Man", the Season Four finale.
  • When Lamont is about to get married in a first-season episode, one guest is noticeably absent from the ceremony - his Aunt Esther. But that's because LaWanda Page (who played Aunt Esther) had yet to be added to the show at that point.
• The main cast of Sabrina the Teenage Witch besides Sabrina herself, her aunts, Harvey and Salem, tend to miss a handful of episodes per season.
• The eighth season of Scrubs did this as a cost-cutting measure, in addition to a smaller-than-usual writing team. Certain main characters went missing, especially Carla; in one instance because she was 'out of town' but in another she was mentioned several times as being there but just didn't appear on screen.
  • Every character is absent for at least one episode in the eighth season. It gets really noticeable when there are whole episodes without JD, the star of the show. One episode only featured his voice, as he talked to Turk and Elliot on the phone. One scene had Turk upset to find that JD has gone to Disneyland without him.
    • Strangely, Turk appears in more episodes than JD, according to IMDb, as a result of his actor being absent a number of times that season. He eventually leaves the show in season 9.
• The Seinfeld episode "The Pen," when Jerry and Elaine visit Jerry's parents in Florida, does not have Kramer and George. However, this had nothing to do with actor availability; the show at this point was simply not being written with the mindset that all four characters would appear in every episode. Jason Alexander, who played George, let it be known that he was not happy about being excluded, and that he would quit if he were ever written out of an episode again. Kramer is also absent from "The Chinese Restaurant", but "The Pen" would be the only Costanza-free episode of the series. Julia Louis-Dreyfus isn't in "The Seinfeld Chronicles" (the pilot), which was shot before she was cast, and due to her pregnancy midway through the series is also absent from both parts of "The Trip." In fact, only one cast member appears in every episode— no prizes for guessing who).
• Smallville has tons of this: Clark is the only character to appear in every episode and Lex the only other character to appear in every episode he's credited on (the first 7 seasons plus a guest appearance in Season 10). Whitney, Pete, Lionel, Jason, Jimmy, Oliver, Kara, Tess, Davis and Zod never appeared in every episode of a season despite being on the opening credits at various points (Lionel was a regular on Seasons 2 to 7, the others for between one and three seasons). Chloe misses episodes in Seasons 2 and 4 and hardly appears in Season 10. Lana misses episodes of Seasons 5, 6 and 7. Jonathan misses episodes in Seasons 3, 4 and 5. Martha misses episodes in Seasons 4, 5 and 6. (All three leave the show after that, only managing occasional guest appearances.) Lois doesn't manage a whole season until Season 10, despite being on the show since Season 4 and the opening titles since Season 5.
• On Sonny with a Chance, the Show Within a Show So Random! was defictionalized due to the lead actress leaving the show for rehab.
• Stargate SG-1 tended to do this a lot in its later seasons. Hell, Jack O'Neill did this for almost the entirety of the eighth season.
  • And then there was one episode "Nemesis", where Daniel Jackson has only a minor part in the beginning, when he was out of action due to appendicitis. The real Michael Shanks had been unable to feature in this episode for the same reason, so they added that first scene in later while he was still recovering.
  • Notably, as of season six, only one main cast member didn't miss an episode: Christopher Judge. He missed his first one that season, but he's still the SG-1 member with the most episodes under his belt.
  • Aside from a brief video appearance, Amanda Tapping was absent for the opening five episodes of Season 9 due to being in the final stages of pregnancy at the time. In order to avoid carrying an all-male cast for that stretch, they reintroduced Claudia Black's guest character, Vala Mal Doran, from Season 8 for those episodes, who eventually also then became a series regular for Season 10.
• Due to each generation of Skins containing a large cast compared to its limited episode count, each season features at least one or two episodes wherein one or more cast members are absent.
  • Tony, Michelle and Sid are the only characters to appear in every episode of the first generation.
  • JJ is the only character to appear in every episode of the second generation.
  • Franky, Mini, Liv, and Alo are the only characters to appear in every episode of the third generation.
• Star Trek (particularly the Next Generation era) did this on occasion, and those shows had only seven or eight characters. Most episodes could easily work in all of them, but sometimes one would go missing; we can only assume they were in the toilet.
  • The worst offender was the final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where Jake Sisko appeared in fewer than half of the episodes. Even in earlier seasons, Jake Sisko would often go missing for 4 or 5 episodes at a time. In the end, the ascended extra Morn appeared in more episodes than Jake.
    • Memory Alpha mentions in the notes for several episodes that the original, Jake-centric plot of the episode was scrapped because the actor was unavailable due to his education commitments.
  • Colm Meaney did not want to give up his film work during the filming of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so the writers allowed him to be absent for a few episodes, then return for a heavily character-centric "O'Brien must suffer" episode each season.
  • On the original series, George Takei was also missing from a string of second-season episodes because he went off to film The Green Berets.
    • Though the plan coming in that season was for Takei and Koenig to alternate due to budgetary reasons; Sulu and Chekov rarely appear together until the third season.
• The first episode of Supernatural which does not have the Impala in it is "Hollywood Babylon" (S02, Ep18).
  • Misha Collins' Castiel and Mark Sheppard's Crowley, despite eventually being upgraded from guest stars to series regulars, are often absent from multiple episodes every season.
• Contestants on the show Survivor appear at least on screen at some point in every single episode until they are voted out, however, due to there being many contestants on the show, it is nearly impossible to focus on every single on in an hour-long episode. As a result, some contestants are often relegated to background roles for one or more episodes, having no on-screen interviews (called "confessionals") and are completely irrelevant to the plot of the episode. In extreme cases of this, they are considered by fans to be "invisible" in the episode, indicating that they were all but completely absent from the episode.
  • Often times, contestants are so "invisible" throughout the entire season that their invisibility actually becomes a running gag with fans. Examples include Mary in season 16, Brett in season 19, Kelly S. in season 21, and Rick in season 23.
• The original version of Survivors had this throughout Season Two, with various characters "off gathering salt".
• Due to the terms of his contract, Andy Kaufman (Latka) didn't appear in every episode of Taxi.
  • Judd Hirsch (Alex) was absent from the episode "What Price Bobby" while away filming Ordinary People, only appearing via phone call during the closing minutes of the show.
• William Shatner's TekWar did this, funnily enough, with William Shatner. Shatner played the mysterious Bascom in the original miniseries and appeared in the opening credits for all of the series episodes even with the character not appearing in most of them. Bascom was still referenced several times throughout the show, once being said to be out of the country and unreachable. His absence was even lampshaded in "Skin Deep" when the Police Commissioner complains that he hasn't seen Bascom for months and Sam (Jake's second partner and not present in the miniseries) admits that she's never seen him. Finally, in the episode after "Skin Deep", Bascom made a return appearance.
• There was an episode of Third Watch where a paramedic appears. Not any of the regular paramedic cast though, none of whom appear in the episode at all.
• Three's Company: In season 4, Suzanne Somers was involved in bitter contract negotiations with the show's producers, and was absent for the taping of numerous episodes (citing suspiciously vague health issues). It got to the point where the writers were forced to write two versions of each episode's script: one WITH Chrissy, and one WITHOUT Chrissy, depending on if Suzanne showed up or not. She was consequentially fired, but her role still appeared on the show in a greatly reduced role to burn off her contract, with her character "moving to Fresno to take care of her sick aunt" and essentially reduced to a cameo appearance at the end of each episode (with Chrissy shown talking on the telephone with Jack and/or Janet). A new character, Chrissy's cousin Cindy, was brought in to serve as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of sorts, Somers' contract ran out, and the character was hardly mentioned again, being permanently replaced with another replacement character: Terry. That said, to this day Chrissy is still the one most associated with the show.
  • Also, Janet doesn't appear in the Season 3 episode "Stanley's Hotline," leaving Jack as the only character to appear in every episode.
• Ultraman: There is only episode in the entirety of the original series where not all members of Science Patrol appear, and that would be episode 30 "The Phantom Snow Mountain", in which Captain Muramatsu and Fuji are absent.
  • Ultraseven: Anne does not appear in either episode 11 "Fly to the Mountain of Evil" or episode 13 "The Man from V3", while both Soga and Amagi are absent from episode 19 "Project Blue" (although they are mentioned).
• The Vampire Diaries: Tyler disappears for one reason or another for large chunks of each season.
• Every lead character except Veronica and Keith would be absent from episodes of Veronica Mars across all three seasons. Only their actors had full season contracts. Everyone else was contracted for smaller numbers of episodes because of budget constraints.
• The Walking Dead does this fairly regularly, with numerous episodes doing a deeper focus on a few characters and everyone else absent or reduced to a cameo. No one's immune; even series lead Andrew Lincoln has missed several episodes.
• The final seasons of The West Wing rotated the cast on a frequent basis to save on costs, to the point where all the main cast appearing in the credits of an episode (for Leo McGarry's funeral episode) was something of a noteworthy event.
• A strange example in Wizards of Waverly Place. In season 4, Max (Jake T. Austin) has been turned into a girl through magic (and thus played by a female actress) for most of it due to Jake T. Austin taking a break for school.
  • David DeLuise would miss a few episodes every season, usually with a reference to Jerry being out of town. Sometimes this was because DeLuise would be directing an episode.
• During the second season of Xena: Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless had to sit out an episode due to breaking her pelvis in a The Tonight Show stunt. In an episode completed just before Lucy's injury, Xena's Arch-Enemy Callisto had swapped minds with Xena. Rather than resolve the body-swap at the end of the episode, the producers allowed Callisto's actress Hudson Leick to continue to play Xena for the following episode, and had her body-swap reversed at the end of that ep.
• The X-Files:
  • Dana Scully's actor Gillian Anderson got pregnant in late season 1, inspiring the famous UFO abduction plot in season 2.
  • Season 5 episodes' absenteeisms are explained because of the filming of the first movie.
  • Other reasons included commitments to unrelated projects. Episode "Hungry" of season 7 was the first one narrated from the monster's point of view, and the episode even played with shots of the leads' doubles. The stars were both unavailable, shooting other films.
  • When one of the lead actors directed and/or wrote an episode, they almost invariably focused entirely on their own character, leaving the partner character either barely there or literally absent (e.g. Duchovny's "The Unnatural" or Anderson's "all things").
  • David Duchovny did not want to stay in the production after season 7, so Mulder disappeared for more than half episodes of season 8. He was also absent for whole season 9 and returned only for the series finale.
• On The Young And The Restless, there was a big storyline involving Drucilla learning that her daughter Lily was not fathered by her husband Neil, but her brother-in-law Malcolm whom she mistook for Neil due to being doped up on cough medicine. However, by the time this storyline kicked into high gear, the actor playing Malcolm left the show and they never recast the character.
  • Absenteeism is a fact of life on soaps, especially when you have octogenarian actors who have been on the show for decades. All My Children, As the World Turns, and Days of Our Lives all had/have actors in their late eighties who are kept on minimal contracts as a courtesy, even though they may go years—literally—between appearances.
  • This often happens on the soaps, for a variety of reasons. It is most often due to an actress' maternity leave (particularly if her pregnancy was not written into the show. It can also happen because of contract negotiations (the reason that the aforementioned Drucilla disappeared for a time), or if a late-teens actor is heading off to college, the character is sent off as well.
• Zoey 101: Dustin Brooks, portrayed by Paul Butcher, appears in less than half the episodes throughout the entire series' run (24 out of 65, if memory serves). The reason for this is unknown, but for whatever reason he's not always there.
• Malcolm Tucker doesn't appear in the first and third episodes of The Thick of It's fourth season, despite him practically being the main character at that point.

Music

• KISS: Ace Frehley, during much of Music From The Elder and the entirety of Creatures Of The Night, leading to his replacement by Vinnie Vincent. Also Peter Criss during much of Dynasty and the entirety of Unmasked, leading to his replacement by Eric Carr. And finally, both Frehley and Criss were absent for most of Psycho Circus, with Frehley playing guitar only on two songs (three if you include bonus track) and Criss playing drums on only one song.
• Alabama drummer Mark Herndon rarely played on their studio recordings to begin with, but due to a series of disputes with the band over the years, he stopped playing on their studio recordings entirely beginning with In Pictures in 1995. He continued to be a nominal member of the band until the early 2000s. Randy Owen later revealed that Herndon was never "officially" a member of the band to begin with, and was only counted as one by their label due to Executive Meddling.
• Da Yoopers' We're Still Rockin', their first album with second guitarist Jim Bellmore, also has Bellmore playing bass. This is because bassist Doc Bradbury had just left, and the band had yet to replace him due to a touring hiatus at the time. A couple years later, they found Reggie Lusardi as a road bassist, but for the most part, Bellmore continued to play the bass parts in studio.
• The New Pornographers:
  • Kathryn Calder was originally a touring member who would fill in for Neko Case when Neko herself was promoting her solo work and wasn't able to tour with the group. She was officially promoted to a full-time member in 2006, and regularly appears on studio albums alongside Neko Case, usually contributing backing vocals and keyboards.
  • In 2017, Whiteout Conditions was their first album not to feature singer/songwriter Dan Bejar or drummer Kurt Dahle. Dahle formally left the group, while Bejar was unavailable for the album due to working on a new album by his band Destroyer.

Puppet Shows

• "Cry UFO" in the series Terrahawks is notable as the only episode in which Zelda never appears.
• Oobi: Kako, played by Noel MacNeal, was frequently absent in later episodes. Kako's absences were never explained on the show, but they were due to MacNeal being hired as Sesame Workshop's production consultant during Oobi's last year in production.
• The Muppet Show episode with guest star Dizzy Gillespie is the only episode where Statler doesn't appear, being sick (of the show.) Waldorf is accompanied by his wife, Astoria, who happens to look like Statler in drag.
• Several Sesame Street skits try to explain the absence of main characters. One "Ask Oscar" segment has Bob fill in for Telly, who is said to be at the dentist. Another features a grouchy Linda filling in for Oscar.
  Telly Monster: "I know, I know. You're not Oscar, you're Linda. (to viewers) You see, Oscar could not be here today. But Linda asked if she can pretend to be Oscar."

Radio

• Believe it or not, this was the reason why kryptonite, one of the biggest threats to Superman, was conceived. In The Adventures of Superman, the actor providing his voice became sick, and couldn't perform. So the writers became clever, concocted a substance called kryptonite that weakened the Man of Steel, and had a gang of criminals use it to hold the hero hostage. For most of the storyline, the hero didn't need any dialogue, the fans only heard groans coming from the weakened captive, provided by someone else, until the actor recovered and the story was resolved. And as you know, this clever idea turned into something very big.

Theater

• On the 1776 original Broadway cast recording, Howard Da Silva is replaced by his understudy Rex Everhart. This is because Da Silva suffered a massive heart attack just before the opening of the show. He still played the opening nights, mind, but spent a month in the hospital after that.

Theme Parks

• At the Universal Studios parks:
  • Elliot is nowhere to be seen in E.T. Adventure, though it can be argued that he is "spiritually" there, since the guests are essentially assuming his role.
  • Most of the Hogwarts staff doesn't appear in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, including most notably Professor Snape, as Alan Rickman didn't want to be in the ride.
  • Sheen, despite being one of the main characters in the series, is completely absent in Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast.
    • Timmy Turner was absent from The Fairly OddParents! scene, but he did appear in a Cosmo and Wanda clip in the post show room.
    • Plankton wasn't in the SpongeBob SquarePants scene, despite The Chum Bucket appearing in the background.
  • In Transformers: The Ride, all of the human characters are absent except for General Morshower.
  • In The Simpsons Ride, because Harry Shearer chose to not be part of the ride, many of his characters either have no dialogue or are completely absent.
  • Fred, Daphne, and Velma were all absent in the Scooby-Doo scene from the former attraction, The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. In the same attraction, despite the Jetsons playing a major role, Judy is nowhere to be seen.
  • Janine was the only major character from the series to not appear in the former Ghostbusters Spooktacular show.

Video Games

• In video games based on anime with Loads and Loads of Characters, a lot of major characters are missing for no good reason. The Naruto video game developers apparently have forgotten that Squad 8 exists (but then again, they aren't usually given the best developers). Thankfully averted in the Xbox 360 games, though generally not anywhere else.
• Bill doesn't get any new lines in the Crash Course DLC for Left 4 Dead. The reason was because the voice actor Jim French couldn't be contacted. Likewise, in The Passing, Bill was dead, so he got no lines there, either. They made darn well sure to avert this for The Sacrifice, however.
• The Legend of Korra game focuses heavily on Korra, to the point that you barely see anyone else from the cast. Mako and Bolin only get a short cutscene appearance both in the beginning and end of the game. Asami is not given even that, making her the only one of the main cast to remain completely absent.
• Yoshi's House appears in Super Mario World: Piranha Island, but Yoshi himself doesn't even make an appearance at all. The Koopa Kingdom (other than the basic Koopa Troopa) and Princess Peach also don't show up at all.
• Diddy Kong doesn't appear at any point in Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. A particularly odd case, as he's appeared in every other Donkey Kong game since his debut.
• King Dedede never appears in Kirby & the Amazing Mirror or Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, though he appears in the latter as a figurine and a terrible drawing in Elline's diary.
• Five Nights at Freddy's resident helper character, nicknamed "Phone Guy" by the community, has only appeared in the first three games (and even then his third appearance was as a number of audio tapes). Five Nights at Freddy's 4 has him entirely absent outside of an Easter Egg, World instead has Scott himself cameo in the game and Sister Location replaces him entirely with the HandUnit AI.
• In Shin Megami Tensei, Recurring Extra Stephen appears in every numbered game except the third, where he is absent and not even mentioned. Somewhat justified as most games are standalone and III is the only numbered game without another game in the same continuity.
• Toad is the only major character in the Super Mario Bros. series that does not appear in Super Mario World.
• The first Crash Bandicoot portable game, The Huge Adventure, featured every character from the third game with the exception of Doctor Nefarious Tropy and Joke Character Fake Crash. What makes this notable is that in the sequel, Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, Uka Uka decides to get rid of the four other villains and has Tropy replace Cortex because of his absence in the previous game, and as an indirect result, Fake Crash gains plot importance and becomes the third boss.
• Bebop is nowhere to be found, even separately from Rocksteady, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Hyperstone Heist.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is particularly guilty of this in its expansions and DLCs, especially since the game had such a small cast to begin with.
  • There are no female Nords, Orcs, or Redguards anywhere in the Shivering Isles, since Lynda Carter (voice actress of the female Nords/Orcs) and Gayle Jessup (female Redguards) were apparently unavailable.
  • While the male members of nine of the ten playable races (the exception being the Bretons) all have new dialogue in Knights of the Nine, only the female Imperials have new dialogue. This is unusual, since they share the same voice actress and voice type as the Bretons.
  • Some of the minor plug-ins have to resort to recycling voice clips from pre-existing NPCs when their voice actor is unavailable to record new dialogue. While the developers were sometimes clever enough to re-use lines of dialogue that had been cut from the main game for the plug-in characters, it especially becomes noticeable in the Vile Lair plug-in, where the Breton merchant Rowley Eardwulf uses the exact same greeting as another Breton named Shady Sam, whose location is very close to the inn where Rowley is staying.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Starting with after they joined the series, the Ice Climbers, Snake, Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Wolf did not appear in Wii U/3DS, Dr. Mario, Mewtwo, and Roy were absent in Brawl, and Pichu & Young Link didn't appear in either of the two. All of these fighters return in Ultimate. It should be noted that Mewtwo and Roy along with Lucas were downloadable content in the Wii U and 3DS versions so they weren't initially in the game.
  • For non-fighter examples, the Bumper item and Meowth as a Poke Ball Pokemon didn't show up in Melee.

Web Animation

• In Homestar Runner email "anything", Strong Bad doesn't appear in email despite them being his email. Instead, it's answered by Homestar.
  • Ironic, since all of the characters (except Marzipan) are voiced by the same person.

Web Original

• In Aitor Molina Vs., sometimes Lugosi or Ganchito appear, other times they don't.
• In Philthon Jones, "Emergency Appeal" was caused by Jones not turning up to a recording session.
• Poor Donut. Misses an entire season of Red vs. Blue, and reappears only to seemingly be shot to death because the voice actor had other priorities. Thankfully, the writers were able to pop him back in for a few episodes of seasons 9 and 10, and it looks like he's back for good in season 11.
• While Turpster regularly appears with Sips for Garry's Mod, and has done for a year, he took a break due to the birth of his daughter in January and February 2015, requiring him to divert his attention elsewhere from time to time. Thus videos mostly consist of Sips and Hat Films, with Turps appearing for the odd video in between.
• Simon Lane has been missing from most of videos on his and Lewis Brindley's joint channel from March 2015, because of his falling ill and going into hospital for surgery. He has since been released, but is still unwell and absent.
• The Thrilling Adventure Hour "Beyond Belief" segments feature Frank and Sadie Doyle, a Happily Married pair of mediums who always work together. Despite that, there are a few episodes where one or the other does not appear. Frank is absent from "She Blinded Me with Seance" and "Rosemary's Baby Shower", having locked himself in their walk-in liquor cabinet in a fit of pique in the former and simply not going along when Sadie visits a friend in the latter. Sadie is absent for "Nuns the Word" and "Molar Express", where respectively she is at a spa and Frank is going to a dentist appointment alone.
• Most Welcome to Night Vale episodes are narrated entirely by Cecil, the local radio host, with other characters appearing on occasion. However, there are several episodes where Cecil is absent or has very few lines. 19B takes place in the neighboring city of Desert Bluffs, and is narrated by their own radio host named Kevin, although Cecil does have a few lines about halfway through. Episode 47 does not even mention Cecil, as StrexCorp has taken over Night Vale and the whole episode is done by Kevin and Lauren Mallard. Episode 65 has a recording of Cecil's voice at the beginning, but the rest of the episode consists of other characters leaving messages on his voicemail. Episode 70A is again hosted by Kevin, with Carlos reporting in every few minutes.
• An example involving a convention, when the Sidemen (then still known as the Ultimate Sidemen) went to EGX 2014 (the event formerly known as Eurogamer Expo), they didn't have their most famous member KSI with them. This was due to his history with the organisers that led to him being banned from future Eurogamer events for life. The following year, they decided not to attend EGX 2015 as they did not want to leave him behind again, and warned their fans to not expect any of them there.
• Kakos Industries: During "The Woman", the announcements aren't at all provided by Corin and instead a very much random yet beautiful woman.
• In The Annoying Orange, Orange doesn't appear in "The Weenies" despite him appearing in the video thumbnail.
• In The Nostalgia Critic reboot, occasionally Tamara won't appear because she's either sick or on tour with her boyfriend.
  • Santa Christ is always there for the December videos, however he was absent from 2018's. This gets Lampshaded in the Elf Bowling the Movie review when Santa Christ mentions his absence off-screen during the credits.
• It's not uncommon for certain Achievement Hunter videos not to include the entire main six. However, since late 2015, Gavin Free tends to be absent in most of the videos especially geared towards Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V. This is due to the fact that his new position allows him to travel more.
• SMG4's Mario Bloopers: Due to its Loads and Loads of Characters, no one aside from Mario appears in EVERY blooper, however the overly-competitive Meggy was noticeably absent from "Mario Gladiators". Instead the Old Man made his grand return.

Western Animation

• In Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Oblina and Krumm were absent in "The Great Escape" and "Showdown", which makes Ickis the only character of the series to appear in every episode.
• The The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode "Life's Ruff" is notable as the only episode of the Mario cartoon trilogy where Mario himself doesn't appear, leaving Luigi as the only character to appear in every episode of all three shows. Even then, he is completely silent in the Super Mario World episode "A Little Learning", the second-to-last episode of the series.
• Most episodes of Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers have at least one Ranger absent, and a mid-season run of episodes focusing on Doc and Niko. Some of this was likely due to Jerry Orbach (Zachary) filming Dirty Dancing at the time, as well as giving Doug Preis (Goose) room to voice roles on ThunderCats (1985) and Silverhawks but most of this was deliberate on the part of the writers, who placed much more emphasis on character development than most animated series from The '80s.
• Adventure Time seemed to be trying to avoid this in regards to Finn and Jake for whatever reason, as they have appeared in every episode for the first four seasons regardless of how important they are to its plot. Even if they're not the central characters, they have been given some sort of in-person appearance, even if it's very brief.
  • Finn and Jake don't appear at all in "Bad Little Boy", which was a Fionna and Cake episode, and the only central characters to appear were Ice King and Marceline.
  • They don't appear in "The Prince Who Wanted Everything" (another Fionna and Cake episode), "Princess Day", "Evergreen", "Friends Forever", "Be Sweet", "Orgalorg" and "Varmints".
  • Jake has been absent in season 5 episodes "Rattleballs", "The Red Throne" and the Lemonhope two parters episode.
  • Finn is absent in "The Diary".
  • A very strange example is the episode "Food Chain", the only one where the Snail doesn't appear. It was made by a guest animator who was apparently unaware of the joke!
• "The Apprentice" and "The Awkwardness" are the only episodes of The Amazing World of Gumball in which Darwin doesn't appear, and Gumball doesn't appear in "The Sucker".
  • Neither of them appear in "The Singing", "The Spinoffs", or "The Buddy", despite being mentioned.
• Hayley and Klaus are absent in a number of episodes of American Dad! to the point where it was lampshaded in "Ricky Spanish".
  Klaus: "Ha ha ha, I made it into the episode. Pay me, bitches!"
  Hayley: "Ha ha, me too!"
  • Steve missed "Stan's Night Out" and "Lost in Space," which Francine and Stan appear in the recap for but are otherwise completely absent. Also, Roger appears in every episode, but there is one where he is only present for one short scene and has no dialogue.
• Wakko is the only Warner appearing the Animaniacs shorts "Ups and Downs" and "10 Short Films About Wakko Warner".
  • Skippy doesn't appear in "Guardin' the Garden", though Nate Ruegger does have a role in the episode as a cameo appearance by Baby Plucky.
• Lana does not appear in the Archer episode "Ladyfingers", the first episode of the entire show in which that is the case.
• In Arthur, the episodes Arthur does not appear in are "Poor Muffy" ^note except for the episode introduction "Prunella Sees the Light", "Fern Fern and the Secret of Moose Mountain", "Thanks a Lot, Binky!", "Big Horns George", "My Fair Tommy", and "World Girls".
  • In the episodes "Sue Ellen Gets Her Goose Cooked" and "Best of the Nest", Jane and David Read do not appear.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "Zuko Alone" is the only episode that doesn't feature any member of the Gaang at all.
  • In the sequel series The Legend of Korra Asami Sato tends to disappear for a while and then reappear with no explanation, especially bad in the second season, though in the last two seasons, the number of episodes she was absent decreased.
• The Beatles: John is the only Beatle appearing in "If I Fell," while only George and Ringo appear in "Devil In Her Heart."
• Big City Greens: Gramma didn't appear in "Bear Trapped", "DIY Guys", "Supermarket Scandal", or "Paint Misbehavin'".
  • Neither her nor Bill appear in "Gargoyle Gals" or "Cyberbullies".
• In Bojack Horseman, every main character other than BoJack and Todd in the Christmas special.
  • "Say Anything" features Diane at the very end, but she doesn't have any lines. Mr. Peanutbutter doesn't appear at all.
  • "Escape From LA" only features BoJack and Diane in the very last scene.
  • An in-universe example occurs in "Out to Sea"; BoJack discovers that during his two-month stay in Tesuque, New Mexico, Turteltaub had the Secretariat film finished by replacing BoJack with the 'Computer BoJack' created in the first episode of Season 2.
  • "See Mr. Peanutbutter Run" (the fourth season premiere) is notable because it doesn't feature BoJack at all (similarly, the season 4 trailer only features him at the end). Conversely, "Free Churro" from the following season features only BoJack.
  • "The Old Sugarman Place" only has BoJack and Diane, the latter of whom doesn't have much of a role during the episode.
  • "Time's Arrow" is a Day in the Limelight episode for Beatrice Horseman, and as such BoJack is the only main character present in the episode.
• The Boondocks:
  • Huey makes a very brief appearance at the end of "Bitches To Rags", and even then he has no lines at all.
  • Neither Huey or Riley appear in "Freedom Ride or Die".
• Amanda is in no way involved in the Bunsen Is a Beast episode "Split Decision".
• The title character of Camp Lazlo ^note  as well as his two friends Raj and Clam logically is completely absent in some episodes (or at least Demoted to Extra). These include "Spacemates" (which was about Squirrel Scout Nina and the Dung Beetles) and Miss Fru Fru (a Squirrel Scouts episode).
• In Centurions, Max Ray is the only member of the original Power Trio to miss an episode; he doesn't appear in "Ghost Warrior", although his teammates mention him a few times.
• Penny is absent from several ChalkZone episodes ^note not counting "Rudy's First Adventure", as she hadn't been introduced in the show yet, or any of the three-minute Snap shorts, the episodes being "Chalk Rain"^note one of the shorts that wasn't repackaged in the series, "Rudus Tabootus"^note justified as Rudy was on vacation with his parents, "Madcap Snap", "Battle Of The Hands", "Asleep at the Chalk"^note also justified as the episode took place late at night- the plot was kicked off because Rudy didn't want to go to sleep that night, "Legend of the Golden Worms", "My Big Fat Chalk Wedding", "Skrawl's Brain" ^note though the portal Rudy goes through to get into ChalkZone was shown to be in her room, and "Vampire Cannibals Of New York". And in "That Thing You Drew", "Attack of the Rudosaurus", "Teacher's Lounge", and "Calling Dr. Memory", she only has nonspeaking cameos.
  • Snap doesn't appear in "Water, Water Everywhere". Other than that, he appears in every episode of the series.
• Mung Daal doesn't appear at all in Chowder episode "The Apprentice Scouts".
  • Mung's absence is lampshaded "A Faire to Remember", then subverted as he appears with a couple of lines just before the episode ends.
  • Parodied in one episode when Truffles pops up out of nowhere asking if she can help solve a problem, Chowder's response below causes her disappear into a poof:
  Chowder: No. You're not in this episode.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: "Cajun Granny Stew" is the only episode not to feature Eustace Bagge.
• On Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, the Tiger Family Trip special is truly that. None of Daniel's friends are seen or heard, in fact, he doesn't even really mention them during the trip. The only characters are Daniel, Margaret, their parents and Grandpere Tiger.
• Danny Phantom: Valerie, a ghost hunter Fallen Princess who, in the previous episode, revealed that she worked a job to save money for college, doesn't appear in the episode where a million dollar bounty is placed on Danny's head.
  • Also, Tucker and Sam don't appear in "Bitter Reunions", leaving Danny as the only character to appear in every episode.
• There are several episodes of Darkwing Duck in which Gosalyn doesn't appear.
• Defenders of the Earth has several episodes where one or more of the regular characters are absent. Only Rick appears in all sixty-five episodes, though he is relegated to a cameo role on a couple of occasions.
• In Dexter's Laboratory Dexter doesn't appear in "Paper Route Bout" and "Surf, Sun and Science", which instead focus on Dee Dee and Mandark, respectively.
• The final Dogfather cartoon doesn't feature Pug at all.
• In Dragon Tales,
  • Ord was does not appear in 2 episodes: "Zak and the Beanstalk" and "Out With the Garbage".
  • Cassie does not appear in 7 episodes: "Snow Dragons", "Zak and the Beanstalk", "A Tall Tale", "Wheezie's Last Laugh", "My Emmy or Bust", "Ord Sees the Light" and "Out With the Garbage".
  • Zak and Weezie do not appear in 9 episodes: "Snow Dragons", "A Liking to Biking", "Blowin' In the Wind", "Get Offa My Cloud", "Frog Prints", "Max and the Magic Carpet", "Ord Sees the Light", "Dragon Scouts" and "Room For Change".
• In Doc McStuffins, Hallie was absent in 6 episodes, and Chilly was absent in 13 episodes.
• During the first season of DuckTales (2017), only Dewey appeared in every episode, and one episode featured him in a silent cameo. Huey, Louie and Scrooge each missed 2 episodes, Webby missed 3, Launchpad missed 6, Donald missed 12 and Mrs. Beakley missed 13.
• Although all the housemates of Drawn Together appeared in every episode, there were several where Ling-Ling had no dialogue, including one where he dies twice.
• Kevin, Nazz, Rolf, Jonny, Sarah and Jimmy from Ed, Edd n Eddy, were not seen or mentioned in "Nagged to Ed", which was also the Kankers' introductory episode.
  • In an inversion, the Eds themselves didn't appear in "See No Ed" until the end of the episode.
  • One episode had Eddy telling Edd that the fake post-it notes from his parents were planted by Kevin (it was actually Ed and Eddy playing a prank on him). Edd lampshades that Kevin didn't even appear in that episode.
• Yzma is absent in several episodes of The Emperor's New School such as "Auction Action".
• Poof didn't appear in most The Fairly OddParents! episodes from Season 9 and Season 10 in favor of Sparky and Chloe, and the writers have a difficulty of writing plots with too many main characters.
  • Heck, most of the supporting cast such as Chester, AJ, Tootie, and even Vicky stopped appearing since Season 9.
  • In regards to the movies, Channel Chasers is the only one where Jorgen doesn't appear, and Fairly Odd Baby is the only one where Mr. Crocker doesn't appear.
• As of 2016, every character on Family Guy has been absent for at least one episode: Chris in "I Take Thee Quagmire", "Three Kings", "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair", "Brian's a Bad Father", and "Scammed Yankees" ^note In addition, he is heard off-screen but not seen in "Mr. and Mrs. Stewie", Meg in "Believe It or Not, Joe's Walking on Air", "Stewie is Enceinte", and "Brokeback Swanson", Peter and Lois in "Brian and Stewie", Brian in "Into Harmony's Way" ^note  he is featured in the alternate canon version of this episode, but not in the original, as it was at the time of his death, " Dr. C & The Women" and "Candy Quahog Marshmallow!", and Stewie in "Welcome Back, Carter" and the aforementioned "Candy Quahog Marshmallow!".
• In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode, "Pranks for Nothing", Mac doesn't appear at all. Either the events at the beginning occurred after he left for the day, or he got sick and couldn't visit Bloo. It also could have been before he visited.
• Futurama
  • Professor Farnsworth is only absent from two episodes - "The Why of Fry" and "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" (the latter being right after the former in production order).
  • Dr. Zoidberg is not seen in three episodes - "Space Pilot 3000" (as he wasn't introduced yet), "Mars University", and "Brannigan Begin Again".
  • Amy does not appear in "Fear of a Bot Planet", "Brannigan Begin Again", "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", and "Roswell That Ends Well", while Hermes is not in "Mars University", "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", "Roswell That Ends Well", "The Why of Fry", and "Where No Fan Has Gone Before". Both are also absent from "Space Pilot 3000" for the same reason as Zoidberg.
• During the need-to-be-plotline of Gargoyles (the journeys after Avalon), there are several episodes without the main crew.
  • Also, in the last season (The Goliath Chronicles), Demona was rarely seen. This gets pretty annoying when the final episode states several times that Angela is the last of her kind. With Demona being Angela's biological mother and not being in the explosion that not killed the main cast, this just screams for her appearing. Of course, this is just a minor detail being wrong about the final episode or the final season.
  • Also in multiple episodes of the Goliath Chronicles Angela is missing (including the intro).
• The Gravity Falls episode "Irrational Treasure" is notable for being the first episode without Soos. Stan mentions him early on though. Wendy is also frequently absent in earlier episodes.
  • Soos, Stan and Wendy don't appear in "Northwest Mansion Mystery".
• In Grojband, Mina dosen't appear in the episodes "Myme Disease" and "The Pirate Lounge for Me".
• In Harvey Beaks, Harvey doesn't appear in "Buds Before Studs" and "Repo Fee".
• In Hey Arnold!, Helga was absent in "Ransom", "Big Gino" and "Jamie O in Love"
  • However, Arnold himself appeared without any lines in "Ms. Perfect"
• In Home Movies, Coach McGuirk is absent from the episode "Brendon Gets Rabies" from the original UPN run, even though his voice actor is still in the episode voicing Jason and the veterinarian. McGuirk will appear in every single episode afterwards.
• Excluding the MouseWorks shorts, Pete didn't appear in the entire second season of House of Mouse.
• In Invader Zim, Zim doesn't appear in "Battle-Dib" ^note though a hologram of him can be seen in a flashback, "Game Slave 2", and "The Sad, Sad Tale of Chickenfoot".
• Goddard and Jorgen didn't appear in the third Jimmy Timmy Power Hour.
• "Meet the Gnomans" is the only episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes where Heloise doesn't appear. Lucius, on the other hand, is absent from a number of episodes, the most prominent being Episode 21 of Season 1 ("Fused Together" and "Bus Driving B.F.F.").
• In Justice League, having all of the Big 7 appear in one episode meant a comparable threat. Smaller scale threats meant small combinations of different characters - with the ones left out rarely accounted for, but always at least implied to be busy elsewhere. Powerhouses like Superman and/or Wonder Woman, for example, would be conveniently absent when their Super Strength would easily solve the problem. Meanwhile, The Flash never appeared in an Aquaman episode as his speed would be of little use in those plots. When the League later expanded to Heroes Unlimited, whenever anyone in the Big 7 didn't appear became even more noticeable - with some episodes focusing more on guest characters like the Question or Green Arrow.
  • Often justified in Unlimited by having various heroes visible on the view screens in the watch tower, or a character casually mentioning they are helping with X crisis, Y bank robbery, or having their day off. Only three times in Unlimited do we see all of the League fighting in the same place, mass alien invasions, and one were the fighting the threat was the main focus of the plot.
• Dennis from Kid vs. Kat is not seen or mentioned Let The Games Begin, Me-Oh Me-Oh Meow, Flu the Coop, One Big Happy Family, Fishy Frisky Business, Fat Kat, Kat Whisperer, Under Destruction, Hit The Road, You Kat See Me, Mind Games, and Strange Kat On A Train.
• Understandably, no single Looney Tunes character appears in every short, due to its format and their Loads and Loads of Characters nature. However, Bugs Bunny notably doesn't appear in any shorts released from 1965 to 1969. In fact, after 1965, the shorts almost exclusively featured only Daffy Duck, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E Coyote And The Roadrunner, and nobody else.
• The Loud House: None of Lincoln's sisters appear in "The Old and the Restless", "Back Out There", the crossover with Legends of the Hidden Temple, "Snow Way Down", "Pasture Bedtime", and "What Wood Lincoln Do?".
  • As for Lincoln, he was absent from "Net Gains", "Fandom Pains", and "Missed Connection" despite appearing on the title cards and being mentioned in the first.
• The 2013 Mickey Mouse cartoon made a notable first with the episode "Clogged", which has Minnie Mouse as the main character, but is the first short to completely omit Mickey, who doesn't even have a cameo appearance as he did in "Eau de Minnie". The second Mickey-free short is "No Reservations".
• Mike, Lu & Og: Lu and Og don't appear in "Queeks, Queeks, Who's Got the Queeks?"; and Og is also absent from "To Serve Lu".
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In episodes focused on the Apples, such as "Family Appreciation Day", it's not uncommon for some or all of the main characters except for Applejack to be absent or make only a token appearance. However, this is inverted with the Lower-Deck Episode "Hearts and Hooves Day." Twilight is the only Mane Six member to appear, and only for a few lines. Applejack never appears, despite the episode prominently featuring two other members of the Apple family (Apple Bloom and Big McIntosh).
  • Zig Zagged with Starlight Glimmer. She got her first big episode in No Second Prances, in the very next episode she mysteriously disappears from the scene without a trace. She then reappears again in A Hearth's Warming Tail.
  • None of the Mane 6 appear in the following episodes: On Your Marks, Hard To Say Anything, To Change a Changeling, Marks and Recreation, and The Break Up Breakdown.
• Oggy and the Cockroaches: Marky and Joey don't appear in "Happy Campers" and "Safari, So Good", Joey and Dee Dee don't appear in "Hip Hip Hip Hypnoses", Dee Dee and Marky don't appear in "Perpetual Motion" and no cockroaches appear in "The Pumpkin that Pretended to be a Ferrari".
• In OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, Radicles doesn't appear in "The So-Bad-Ical" and episodes where Red Action is the main focus^note "Back in Red Action" and "Red Action to the Future".
  • Neither him nor Enid appear in "One Last Score", "Glory Days", "Lad & Logic", "The Perfect Meal", "Crossover Nexus", and most episodes where Dendy is the main focus^note "I Am Dendy", "No More Pow Cards", and "Mystery Science Fair 201X".
• Very prominent in Pingu. In many occasions, most notably "Pingu Runs Away" and "Pingu and Pinga Stay Up", only one of Pingu's family members do not appear. Also not appearing in the birthday episode is Pingg, one of Pingu's closest friends (identified with the sharp, pointed beak).
• The Brain never appeared in Pinky and the Brain's "Cheese Roll Call" musical number.
• The Powerpuff Girls: The girls are completely absent in 'Custody Battle' which is A Day in the Limelight for the Rowdyruff Boys.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • Mindy was absent in "Beep has the Blues", " A Visit to the Planetarium", "Asteroids, Meteors, and Meteorites", "Tiny Blue Dot", "Earth Camping", "What's a Satellite?", "Space Junk", "Beep and Boop's Game", "Sunday Drive", "Whole Lotta Shakin'", "My Fair Jet", "Space Race", "Sean's Neptune Tune", "Castaway Carrot", and "Not a Sound"
  • Sean and Sydney were both absent in "Earth Camping", "Sunday Drive", and "Castaway Carrot"
  • Celery was absent in "Backyard Moon Base", "Mindy's Moon Bounce House", "Visit to Mom's Office", "A Visit to the Planetarium", "What Goes Up...", "Asteroid Patrol", "Treehouse Space Station", "Earth Camping", "Satellite Selfie", "Scientific Sean", "Beep and Boop's Game", "Constellation Prize", "Total Eclipse of the Sunspot", "Sean's Year in Space", "Lone Star", and "Jet's Time Machine"
  • Carrot was absent in "Mindy's Moon Bounce House", "Beep Has the Blues", "Visit to Mom's Office", "Mission to Mars", "A Visit to the Planetarium", "Ice Moon Enceladus", "What Goes Up...", "Asteroid Patrol", "Face on the Fritz", "Sunspot and the Great Red Spot", "Detective Mindy", "Satellite Selfie", "Beep and Boop's Game", "Total Eclipse of the Sunspot", "Sean's Year in Space", "Whole Lotta Shakin'", "The Mindysphere", "Lone Star", "Space Race", "Sean's Neptune Tune", and "Not a Sound".
• Gus is completely absent from the Recess episode "The Great Jungle Gym Standoff". It's possible that the episode could've taken place before he moved to town, or due to the Early Installment Weirdness, it's speculated that the episode was produced extremely early in the show's run, before he was added to the gang. He was written into the story when the picture book adaptation was released two years later.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: the two titular characters don't appear in "A Hard Day's Luck", "Powdered Toast Man vs. Waffle Woman", and "Feud for Sale".
• In Rick and Morty, Summer never appeared in "Mortynight Run" and "The Ricklantis Mix-Up".
  • Jerry didn't appear in almost half of the third season following his divorce^note "Pickle Rick", "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender", "Rest and Ricklaxation", and "The Ricklantis Mix-Up". Neither him nor Beth appeared in "The Ricks Must Be Crazy".
• In Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko doesn't appear at all in "Frog's Best Friend" and "Magic Meatball". In addition he only makes non-speaking cameos in "She's the Toad" and "Teed Off" (Rocko screams in the latter, but that's it).
• Roland and Rattfink: Roland doesn't appear in "A Taste of Money".
• There are several episodes of Ruby Gloom where one of the main characters is absent without explanation. A particular example is when Scaredy Bat is mysteriously absent in the episode where Boo-Boo needs to scare someone to become a full-fledged ghost, because of course if he was there the story would be over in a few minutes.
  • Often a character who missed the main story of an episode will appear in one of the sketches before and after that episode. For example, Skull Boy and Scaredy Bat miss the main story in "Bad Hare Day", but star in the sketch right before it.
• Rolie Polie Olie did not have the titular protagonist in "Little Bot Zoo".
• Rugrats revolves its babies depending on which Rugrat the episode focuses on. Tommy doesn't appear in "Cuffed", "The Unfair Pair" and "Pickles vs. Pickles". Likewise, Chuckie is completely absent from episodes such as "Baby Commercial". Phil, Lil, and Angelica stand out the most, though.
  • In fact, many Season 1 episodes feature Tommy as the only Rugrat to appear in them. By Season 2, the solo-Tommy episodes were greatly reduced, and by Season 3, they were abandoned altogether.
  • In one pair of episodes, Phil and Lil were absent from the A-story and Chuckie and Kimi were absent from the B-story.
  • This also applies to spinoff series All Grown Up!.
• Marge appears but doesn't get a single line in The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled", although Julie Kavner still gets a credit. (Both she and Harry Shearer objected to what they saw as an episode heavily built around guest stars, thus explaining their [characters'] absence.)
  • On the other hand, "Four Great Women And A Manicure" has the distinction of being the first (and so far only) Bart-free episode.
  • Also, "Chief of Hearts" is the first episode in which Lisa has no dialogue (although as with "Krusty Gets Kancelled" above, Yeardley Smith is still credited), leaving Homer the only talking character who appears in all episodes of this show.
  • Maggie also appears in nearly every episode, but with the exceptions of "Lisa's First Word," "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", one of the "Treehouse Of Horror" episodes and the aforementioned "Four Great Women And A Manicure" (speaking with a different voice on each occasion), she has no dialogue. However in recent seasons, Maggie has been absent from episodes such as "The Mook, The Chef, The Wife And Her Homer", "Stealing First Base", "American History X-cellent", "Flaming Moe", "A Midsummer's Nice Dream", and "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts", due to being a baby and having little free-range in episodes that focus in secondary characters, locations that are usually exclusive to Homer, Bart, and Lisa, or when no subplots revolving around Marge or the Simpson house are present.
• In Sofia the First's "The Little Witch," none of the regulars except for the title character appear; Minimus is the other regular to appear in "The Secret Library: Olaf And The Tale Of Miss Nettle," which outside the first scene doesn't take place in Enchancia at all.
• South Park:
  • None of the main boys appear at all in "Not Without My Anus", "Pip", "A Million Little Fibers", and "Handicar". There have also been a few episodes were one or some of the boys are absent throughout.
  • Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman don't appear in "More Crap".
  • Kenny didn't appear in "#HappyHolograms".
  • Kenny didn't appear at all in most of the sixth season, as he "permanently" died in the second-to-last episode of season 5. Being that he's Kenny McCormick, he eventually came back.
  • "You're Not Yelping" is the only season 19 episode where PC Principal doesn't appear.
• Space Racers: Eagle and Robyn don't appear in "Return to Sender", Robyn doesn't appear in "Ships in a Bottle"^note However, she did make a cameo in the flashbacks from the previous episodes. and Eagle and Hawk don't appear in "Space Girl Explorers".
• SpongeBob SquarePants tends to revolve its main cast depending on the setting and situation. For example, Squidward doesn't appear in "The Secret Box", but his Easter Island Head house does, and "Just One Bite" has scenes at the Krusty Krab, yet Mr. Krabs doesn't appear. Patrick doesn't appear in most episodes taking place at the Krusty Krab.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series.
  • Interestingly, the episode "The Slaver Weapon" features the only example in any 'canonical' The Original Series work (aside from the original pilot episode) where Captain James T. Kirk does not appear at all. The episode instead focuses entirely on the landing party of Spock, Uhura and Sulu, something which was actually impossible on the live-action Star Trek. After all, William Shatner was the star, and had a contractual guarantee that his character would always be front and center in every episode.
  • Walter Koenig (Chekov) was missing from the entire series because they couldn't afford to pay him. Instead, he worked as a writer on the show.
  • An aversion also occurred: originally, only William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Majel Barrett were going to be hired as voice actors. But Nimoy balked and said he wouldn't work on the show unless George Takei and Nichelle Nichols were also hired, keenly aware of the ramifications of jettisoning two groundbreaking minority characters. Luckily, Doohan and Barrett were both able to voice far more characters than just Scotty and Nurse Chapel.
• Bob the Builder tends to do this. As there are a bunch of episodes where Pilchard, Bird, Travis and Spud all don't appear, There are also some where Some of the Machines are absent and One where Wendy is not present.
  • This also happens in the reboot.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil has neither Star Butterfly or Marco Diaz in the episodes "Is Mystery", "The Hard Way", "Moon the Undaunted", "Book Be Gone", "Ludo, Where Art Thou", "Skooled", and "Tough Love". These episodes follow important supporting characters or villains like Queen Moon or Ludo.
  • Marco doesn't appear in "Puddle Defender", "Club Snubbed", "Stranger Danger", "Demoncism", "Starfari", "Ponymonium", "The Bogbeast of Boggabah", "Total Eclipsa The Moon", "Butterfly Trap", and "Bam Ui Pati".
  • Star doesn't appear in "Marco and the King" and "Sophomore Slump".
• Star Wars Rebels: So far, Ezra and Chopper are the only main characters to appear and be credited in every episode.
  • "Blood Sisters": Kanan and Zeb are nowhere to be seen.
  • "The Future of the Force": It's Hera and Sabine's turn to be absent.
  • "Legacy of Mandalore": Hera and Zeb are completely absent.
  • "Secret Cargo": Sabine's still gone. Agent Kallus is also nowhere to be seen, notable considering he had a major role last episode.
  • "Double Agent Droid": Kanan is absent for the second episode in a row, and Sabine's still gone.
• Steven Universe:
  • The only piece of official media that excludes the titular character himself is the storybook adaptation of the episode "The Answer", since the show is meant to be from his point of view. He also technically doesn't appear in "Jungle Moon," or at least his voice actor isn't present, as Stevonnie stays fused throughout the whole episode.
  • The Crystal Gems make no appearances in "Horror Club", "Open Book", "Nightmare Hospital", "Sadie's Song", "Drop Beat Dad", "The New Lars", "Beach City Drift", "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service", "Alone at Sea", "Onion Gang", "The Zoo", "Lion 4: Alternate Ending", "Doug Out", "The Good Lars", "Stuck Together", "The Trial", "Off-Colors", "Raising The Barn", "Sadie Killer", "Kevin Party", "Lars of the Stars", "Jungle Moon", "The Big Show", and "Escapism".
  • Amethyst and Garnet are absent in "Frybo", "Historical Friction", "Mr Greg", and "Gem Hunt".
  • Garnet and Pearl aren't in "Joking Victim", "Onion Friend", "Too Short To Ride", "Beta", "Tiger Philanthropist", and "Back To The Kindergarten".
  • Pearl and Amethyst don't appear in "Garnet's Universe", "Love Letters", "Future Boy Zoltron", "Room For Ruby", and "Pool Hopping".
  • Amethyst is completely absent in "The Answer", "Mindful Education", and "Your Mother and Mine".
  • Garnet is completely absent in "Last One Out Of Beach City". She also doesn't appear in "What's Your Problem?", "The Question", and "Made Of Honor" because she's unfused.
    • Some episodes will lack the characters, but still have their respectively voice actresses perform a role. "Garnet's Universe" has Amethyst and Pearl's voice actresses play Hoppy the bunny and Hopper the frog, respectively. "The Zoo", has Amethyst's voice actress voicing multiple Amethysts while "The Trial" has Pearl's voice actress voice Yellow and Blue Diamond's Pearls.
• The Twins do not appear at all in the "Mr. Grumpy-Pants" episode of Superjail!, as they could not be fit into the plot. Season 2 was a bit more egregious of an example, as they vanished for three episodes in a row. The third season had them missing from the first two episodes and relegated to silent cameos for other early ones, until the crew managed to fit them more into the later part of the season.
  • Lord Stingray, who was hyped as a new main cast member for season 2, vanishes for a while in season 3 (after his role in "Stingstress") up until the last two episodes.
  • The episode "Superfail" features all of the recurring inmates (named and unnamed), with the notable exceptions of Jean and Paul.
  • Jacknife is absent from "The Budding of the Warbuxx", "Stingstress" (that features his female counterpart) and "Last Pack".
• In Tiny Toon Adventures, Babs Bunny doesn't appear in "Test Stress", "Here's Hamton", "Kon Ducki", "Flea For Your Life", or "Toons from the Crypt". Neither her nor Buster appear in "Sepulveda Boulevard" ^note although Babs' face can be seen on a billboard in the WB studio or "Grandma's Dead".
• There are a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine episodes where Thomas does not appear. There are also some episodes where none of the Steam Team appear.
• In The Transformers, actors would generally get paid for every three characters, so if they wanted to play six characters, they'd need to be paid an additional amount, so on, so forth. Unfortunately, Transformers has Loads and Loads of Characters. For actors with only one or two regular characters (such as Peter Cullen, Dan Gilvezan, etc.), this wasn't a problem. But for actors with a large number of roles (such as Michael Bell, Corey Burton, and especially Frank Welker), it meant that many of their characters would either be absent or have no lines. This is somewhat conspicuous in the movie; Michael Bell provides the voices for Scrapper, Swoop, and Junkion, but Bombshell and Prowl have no lines. In addition, another one of his characters (Sideswipe) is absent. Frank Welker has 9 roles (Megatron, Soundwave, Wheelie, Junkion, and Soundwave's five cassettes), and three of his other characters appear without a single word (Skywarp, Sludge, and Mixmaster), two (Mirage and Trailbreaker) are nowhere to be seen. Another one, which is not related to his voice actor being unavailable (since he also voices Shrapnel, who speaks in the movie), is Snarl, who does not appear for most of the movie, only showing up for a few short scenes.
• Unikitty!: Puppycorn, Dr. Fox, Hawkodile, and Richard are entirely absent from the episode "Stuck Together".
• Victor & Hugo: Count Duckula, Igor and Nanny guest star in the episode 'Treasure Haunt', but Igor is not given any lines due to Jack May not being cast in this series. It's explained away as the butler sulking with his master and 'he's not speaking to you until (we're home)!'. The bunglers pet parrot Interpoll is also silent in his brief appearance in this episode despite David Jason still being present to voice his other characters.
  • Hawkeye Soammes, a character also voiced by Jack May in his appearence in Count Duckula, guests in several episodes in this series, voiced now by Brian Trueman. As a supporting character though, it's far less noticeable than if one of the other actors had filled in for Igor.
• Visionaries has the following examples:
  • Merklynn is absent from "The Dark Hand of Treachery", "The Price of Freedom" and "Feryl Steps Out".
  • Cryotek, Ectar and Witterquick are absent from "Feryl Steps Out".
  • Though all fifteen members of the regular cast are seen in "The Overthrow of Merklynn", Galadria, Arzon and Feryl only appear in non-speaking roles.
  • Cravex, Darkstorm, Mortdredd, Reekon and Virulina are absent from "Horn of Unicorn, Claw of Dragon", the implication being that they were all affected by the Magical Plague which sweeps Prysmos in the episode, though this is only confirmed with Darkstorm and Mortdredd.
• Wander over Yonder has a large number of episodes where either Wander and Sylvia or Hater and Peepers do not appear. These episodes are usually either about Hater and Peepers doing something on their ship or Wander and Sylvia on an adventure irrelevant to Hater.
• We Bare Bears: Ice Bear and Panda don't appear in "Anger Management", "Poppy Rangers", "Ranger Games", and "Vacation".
  • Panda and Grizz are absent in "The Demon".
  • Grizz and Ice Bear don't appear in "Summer Love".
  • "Yuri and the Bear", "Panda 2", and "Family Troubles" all take place before the bears met each other, and so they only feature Ice Bear, Panda, and Grizzly respectively.
  • All three of the main bears don't appear in "Kyle" and "El Oso", which focus on Nom Nom and Charlie respectively.
• Jack Spicer appears in all of Xiaolin Showdown episodes except The Return of Master Monk Guan where only Hannibal Roy Bean appears instead.
• Very noticeable in Young Justice, which according the creators, was usually intentional. The show was insanely expensive to produce, so oftentimes episodes would omit certain members of the team in order to minimize the number of speaking parts. This became even more apparent when the team expanded into more of a Heroes Unlimited roster in the second season.

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