Crowdfunder Cameo

Sometimes, crowdfunded media (often using sites such as Kickstarter, Patreon, or Indiegogo) gives backers the opportunity to put their own cameo character in the finished work. This can go anywhere from a backer putting their name in the work, to them appearing as a background extra, to them creating and designing a fully-fleshed character who makes multiple appearances.

Adding an entire character to a work takes up time and resources, so cameo opportunities are often expensive and limited in number. There might be multiple backer "tiers" for cameo characters, at increasing price levels scaling with the number of appearances the character will make.

This type of crowdfunding reward has particularly caught on with the tabletop roleplaying and Furry Fandom communities where there are many people with established characters and strong cultures of commissioning artists to illustrate them.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• A graphic novel adaptation of Good Omens went on Kickstarter in August 2023. Two of the higher-level pledge tiers included the pledgee making a cameo appearance in the book.
• Each issue of Magic Powder features cameos by a select number of backers who paid $100 or more to fund the previous issue.

Live-Action TV

• One of the high-tier rewards for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 11 Kickstarter was to appear in an episode of the show, with the backers who pledged showing up in the Season Finale as the Observers acting as guests at Kinga's Ratings Stunt wedding to Jonah.

Tabletop Games

• Battletech has an epic and still ongoing one for their 2019 Kickstarter. Anyone pledging at one of the middle tiers or above^note this could be waived for a credit as Catalyst Game Labs realized that they'd badly underestimated how successful the Kickstarter was going to be, resulting in far more people signing up for that backer level than they'd anticipated were entitled to submit the names and details of a character they would like to see cameo in an official work, even their own name or forum handle. Those who pledged at higher tiers (or bought the privilege as an add-on) could even submit their photo to be used as the basis of an official character in a series of character decks released as part of the Kickstarter rewards.
• The Delver's Guide to Beast World has cameo-tier rewards in the Kickstarters for the rulebooks, while the NPC card decks are partially populated by auction.
• Has become a standard practice for Sanguine Games since Kickstarter debuted, with contributor cameos in most every rulebook they've published since 2014 for gamelines such as Ironclaw, Myriad Song, and Urban Jungle.

Video Games

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: People who pledged to support the game on Kickstarter would depending on the tier get their face added to a portrait that would be displayed somewhere in Gebel's castle, be able to leave a message on ending credits or their pet would appear as an enemy in the game.
• Cattails and its sequel Cattails Wildwood Story included backer cameos as Kickstarter rewards:
  • The original game has 8 characters designed by backers, and one of them, Krampy, was especially beloved by fans, resulting in a plushie of him being created for the sequel's Kickstarter rewards.
  • The sequel, Cattails: Wildwood Story, included tiers that would allow backers to design a cat statue for the temple or add a suggestion to the pool of names that can be given to random NPCs encountered in the game. Krampy is also the only backer-created character from the original game to return in the sequel.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale features nine OCs of people who backed the game on Kickstarter, such as Slushie the Alpaca on the beach by Big Drink, who was submitted by Twitch streamer IndieAlpaca.
• Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a game where every character on the battlefield, generic enemies included, has a name. Since the game was crowdfunded...
• Flight Rising was backed on Kickstarter prior to its launch, and several items were sponsored by users who donated a certain amount of money:
  • Users who donated at least $70 became "Item Sponsors". Backers got an in-game item dedicated to them based on their specifications, as well as 3 copies of the item. Some items that were KS sponsored include the Opal Cobra and its recolors, as well as the Nickel Cat Figurine.
  • Users who donated at least $130 became "Monster Sponsors", and got a familiar that was based on their specifications, as well as 3 copies of their familiar. Some KS-sponsored familiars include the Bamboo Phytocat, the Kamaitachi familiars, and the Poultrygeist.
  • Users who donated $300 became "Apparel Sponsors", who were able to design a piece of apparel of their choice. Sponsors also received 3 copies of their apparel item. The Peacekeeping and Haori apparel sets were designed by KS sponsors.
  • Users who donated $700 became "Gene Sponsors". They could design a gene of their choice, and receive 3 gene scrolls. The Seraph gene was KS-sponsored.
  • Users who donated $1500 got the "Dragon Dreamer" reward and were able to design a dragon breed, as well as earn 3 breed-change scrolls for their dragon. The Skydancer breed was designed by a KS sponsor.
• FTL: Faster Than Light: The names of crew members are drawn from a large random pool, with many of the names taken from names or handles of Kickstarter backers, such as Stick, Bomfy M, and Kadreal.
• Hollow Knight:
  • Some NPCs were created by Kickstarter donors, namely Cloth^note Who was then named "Burlap", Eternal Emilitia, Grey Mourner, Tiso and Tuk.
  • Tiso was explicitly named after the patron who funded the game, Tiso Spencer.
  • The game also has a secret room where you can read messages contributed from Kickstarter donors.
• LISA:
  • Six playable party members (RT, Sonny, Beastborn, Yazan, Garth, and Jack) were created by Kickstarter donors at the "Bar Room Hero" tier.
  • Some backers also got to design enemies or NPCs for themselves. Some of these characters include Slave Lord Jim, Scott Lawson, Iori Stevens and the Superboss Satan.
• Nightcry offered several rewards for high-paying Kickstarter backers to cameo in the game. Several backers were allowed to send images that would appear in the ever-updating "SnapNPost" feed, most of them being photogenic selfies. Others had their likenesses rendered in the game for unique NPCs — one of them is a survivor hiding in a safe room who admits to Rooney that despite the scary situation he's found himself in, some part of him is oddly excited to be there. Likely the strangest form of inclusion was for certain backers who contributed both their likenesses and provided voiceover for screams, resulting in a truly inexplicable scene where on the outside of the boat, several NPCs would suddenly appear falling off the side of the cruise ship, presumably to their deaths.
• Night in the Woods: Various background characters were created by Kickstarter backers. Some (such as law graduate CJ and Russian hiker Ilya) have conversations with Mae.
• Pizza Tower: $20 donators to the game's Patreon in the first half of 2019 were added as "Pizzasonas" to the secret zones.
• Shovel Knight:
  • The Shovel of Hope and Plague of Shadows campaigns feature an optional level called the Hall of Champions, appearing as an art gallery filled with portraits of "those who founded this great land" (i.e. the game's Kickstarter contributors). Plague of Shadows even has a minigame where you must blast every portrait in the building within a certain time limit.
  • The Wandering Travelers^note Reize Seatlan, Baz, Mr. Hat, and Phantom Striker are all original characters created by high-level backers who were added to the game as a reward.
• Temtem: People who donated $1000 on Kickstarter got NPCs named after them.
• Undertale:
  • Several NPCs are custom characters created by Kickstarter backers.
  • Three bosses were also created by Kickstarter backers. One, Muffet, is encountered along the main path, while the other two are secret Optional Bosses: Glyde can be found behind the mysterious door in the Snowdin Forest, while "So Sorry" can only be encountered in the Art Club room in Hotland if your system's clock is set to October 10th between 8:00 and 8:59 PM (or all day on the 10th on the Switch version).

Visual Novels

• The Pirate's Fate: Many characters are cameos of Kickstarter backers, including queen Nakhta, one of the primary antagonists.
• Our Life: Beginnings & Always: Leandra "Lee" Last is a backer-created character.
• While most of the characters in Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane were designed by the developer, three characters were designed by Indiegogo backers as a reward for pledging at high tiers. Specifically, the backer characters are Stefanic Dracogen, the case 3 refinery owner; Mosourika Tudor, the case 3 Chuunibyou cafe owner; and Laefe Frega, the middle sister of the Frega family who first appears in case 4.

Web Animation

• Kurzgesagt gives backers their own birb that can appear in episodes. Most birbs, cameo or not, die horribly.

Web Comics

• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Most of the original cast were based on Miss Mab and her friends' Furcadia characters. From time to time it has also been possible to buy cameos as background and minor characters.
• Grrl Power: A fair number of minor characters have been Patreon cameos, in one case an alien disguised themself as a Patron.
• The kickstarter for the Homestuck spinoff game Hiveswap had a $10,000 donation reward where the donor's fantroll would show up in Homestuck. The $100,000 tier would guarantee that said character would survive past one page. Two trolls, Mierfa Durgas and Nektan Whelan, appeared during Aranea's exposition on the destructive nature of cherubs, only to be scorched to death in the next panel.
• Nip and Tuck: At times entire storylines starring supporters have been offered for sale.
• The Order of the Stick: After its wildly successful kickstarter campaign, a few people had their own D&D characters featured in the story, most prominently the favored soul Veldrina who attended Godsmoot on behalf of the Western Pantheon.
• The Probability Bomb was funded by a Kickstarter campaign with several cameo tiers.

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