Any work that lasts a long time or has a large scope can accrue a large cast. As time goes, some of these characters can fall by the wayside if the cast rotates or characters are passed over for those favored by the creators or audience.
But every character has their fans. Whether they spoke to them, or saw potential in their concept. And sometimes, these people get to work on the latest version or adaptation of that work. Or maybe someone just wants to go beyond the standbys found in most versions. The Limelight Series can bring old or obscure characters back to the forefront for audiences who may have forgotten about them or never seen them before.
Compare Team-Up Series.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Pokémon Chronicles, a Spin-Off of Pokémon: The Series that centered around characters that had been Put on a Bus by that point in the series (including Misty, Tracey, Richie), in addition to various One Shot Characters.
- The various gaiden manga series for Fist of the North Star are these, with different miniseries for Raoh, Toki, Rei, Jagi, and Juza, currently.
Comic Books
- Watchmen was originally supposed to star a team of Charlton Comics superheroes, though that plan was cancelled when it was decided to integrate said characters into The DCU at large.
- Marvel Comics' The Defenders, for most of its versions.
- DC Comics' The Outsiders too.
- DC's Gotham Central focuses on the Gotham City Police Department with only cameo appearances by Batman, The Joker, etc.
- Archie's Sonic Universe, which focuses on anyone not named Sonic the Hedgehog (and even then, he can take center stage!) and allows for storylines that can't be fit into the main comic to be addressed.
- Transformers: More than Meets the Eye follows the exploits of G1 characters who have been underused or relegated to the background in most continuities.
Live-Action TV
- Smallville. Oh so very much. The biggest one is probably making Green Arrow a main character. Many, many episodes focuses on a guest star, reaching an all time high after season eight, among them Perry White ("Perry"), Bart Allen ("Run"), Aquaman ("Aqua"), Cyborg ("Cyborg"), Mxyzptlk ("Jinx"), Shelby ("Krypto"), Lucy Lane ("Lucy"), Dinah Lance ("Siren"), Zor-El and Lara ("Lara"), Plastique ("Plastique"), Legion of Super-Heroes plus Persuader ("Legion"), Bruno Mannheim ("Stiletto"), Livewire, Parasite and Neutron ("Injustice"), Roulette ("Roulette"), Metallo ("Metallo"), Wonder Twins ("Idol"), Justice Society of America ("Absolute Justice"), Silver Banshee ("Escape"), Maxwell Lord ("Charade"), Conner Kent ("Scion"), Female Furies ("Abandoned"), Ultraman ("Luthor"), Booster Gold and Blue Beetle ("Booster"), as well as cameos of Captain Cold, Solomon Grundy and Black Manta in "Prophecy".
Video Games
- The (sadly Japan-only) Wii game Captain Rainbow, in which the player controls a superhero who has to fulfil the wishes of a bunch of Z-List Nintendo characters, including Birdo, Little Mac, a platoon of Advance Wars soldiers and Lip.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold doubles as this and a Team-Up Series; just about each episode, Batman teams up with some random hero to fight some random villain. The heroes were usually B- or C-listers (Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Adam Strange, etc.), and often the lesser-known version of a Legacy Character (for example, Ryan Choi as The Atom and Guy Gardner as Green Lantern). The villains were usually even more obscure, and often weren't from the Rogues Gallery of Batman or his current teammate.
- Harley Quinn (2019): While Harley is obviously big enough to be the show's star, her supporting cast is made up of lesser-known DCU villains like Dr. Psycho, King Shark and Clayfacenote .
- Underfist was meant to be this for The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, starring Irwin, Hoss Delgado, General Skarr, Jeff the Spider and Fred Fredburger. By the time the pilot movie was completed, the network had lost interest thanks to a change in executives.
- Justice League's third season gave plenty of screen-time to minor and B-Level DC Heroes, with Character Focus on Captain Atom, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Huntress and The Question, and plenty A Day in the Limelight episodes.
- The Simpsons episode "22 Short Films About Springfield" was the Poorly Disguised Pilot for a Spin-Off that would have done this to the residents of Springfield. The idea ultimately fell through, but viewers got a good episode out of it, showing that The Simpsons doesn't always focus on Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.
- The Cleveland Show was this for Family Guy character Cleveland Brown, who was put out of the spotlight after his son was Brother Chucked and his wife, Loretta, divorced him (that, and the fact that Mike Henry [the voice of Cleveland Brown] had a lot of good ideas for Family Guy episodes centered on Cleveland, but they were rejected). The show also had jokes about other Family Guy characters wanting their own spin-off (on the first episode, the last line before the show focuses on Cleveland is Stewie yelling, "What the hell? He's getting his own show?!" and seasons one and two had some throwaway jokes about a possible spin-off centering on Quagmire, which, given his highly sexual nature, would piss off a lot of censors and drive away a lot of conservative viewers and sponsors).
