Remember The New Guy / Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Parodied in chapter 168, which has the then-27 girlfriends of the Rentarou family having a photo swap party in which they trade pictures of Rentarou they've taken. Throughout the chapter the girls are momentarily flustered by a new girl in the group speaking to them with familiarity. This familiarity, and the obviously affectionate way she spoke of her photo of Rentarou makes them assume she is indeed part of the group, and it's just gotten so big they forgot. It's not until Rentarou appears and asks who the girl is that the other girls realize this is, indeed, someone brand new. The next chapter would see her properly join the Rentarou Family as girlfriend 28, Shiina Usami.
  Rentarou: Who are you?
  Shiina: Who's Who?
  Everyone Else: I knew it!
• Not exactly a character, but the A Certain Magical Index movie A Certain Magical Index: Miracle of Endymion does this with the Space Elevator Endymion. Lampshaded when Index sees the structure for the first time and asks what it is and where it came from. Touma pokes fun at her, comments that her Photographic Memory must not be as perfect as she thought, and claims the structure has always been there. He has a flashback montage that shows the structure edited into the background of several important past scenes. Index gets really confused, as she is sure she's seeing it for the first time.
• Orin the Pink Ninja in Akazukin Chacha is revealed later to have been in class the whole time, but clinging to the ceiling.
  • The TV adaptation turned Barabaraman (one of the Urara School faculty) into an example of this, by delaying introducing him until about halfway through the series but having Chacha and co. recognize him on sight.
• Angel Beats!: Every acquaintance of an NPC seems to have this trope, considering how Yuri had a supposed friend when she was almost Brainwashed into becoming one.
• Attack on Titan has a minor example with Floch. He's introduced as a member of the 104th Training Corps and fellow Survey Corps soldier before the battle to retake Shiganshina, and is revealed to have been alongside Eren & co. from the beginning. While missing from scenes up until this point, later flashbacks do show him interacting with some of the main characters during their training years. While he initially seems like yet more Cannon Fodder, Floch ends up being the one to take a dying Erwin back to the main cast in Shiganshina and thus is responsible for setting off the debate about whether Erwin or Armin should be saved using the titan serum they have. After the four-year Time Skip, he's shown to be a devout supporter of Eren's ideology and seems to be in charge of carrying out tasks on behalf of an imprisoned Eren.
• Aoi Kuineda's primary circle of Red Tails from Beelzebub consisted of Nene, Yuka, Ryouko, and Chikai. Then, a random, never before mentioned purple haired member was inserted into the group, and treated as if she's been there from the very start.
• A particularly frustrating example occurs in Black Clover, where in one arc Asta and Noelle meet up with a group of three mages, Fanzell, Dominante, and Mariella, in the Witches Forest Arc. Though they have never appeared in the manga before, Asta and Noelle are not only familiar with them, but have apparently already helped them escape from the Diamond kingdom, and even received trained with them. The characters were originally introduced in a light novel that serves as a side story to the manga, but it can be infuriating when the manga has flashbacks to events that never occurred in the manga. Not only that, but it's nearly impossible to tell when exactly the events of the light novel took place relative to the manga.
• Bleach: Uryuu Ishida is first introduced in Chapter 34 as Ichigo's classmate and the highest-scoring student in the entire grade, yet Orihime has to explain to Ichigo who he is while Tatsuki lampshades the Running Gag of Ichigo's careless forgetfulness. However, careful reading of earlier chapters reveals Ishida in the background of several panels, including Chapter 1's cover, and his father is mentioned in a throw-away line in Chapter 7, so Kubo deliberately invoked this trope.
• Played for Laughs in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, when Jelly Jiggler holds a never-seen-before character named Spikey hostage and both Bobobo and Don Patch seem to know him, much to Beauty's confusion.
  Spikey: Please forgive me! I messed up!
  Bobobo & Don Patch: Spikey!
  Beauty: WHO'S THAT?!!
• Shingo Aoi from Captain Tsubasa was introduced in the World Youth arc as a Tsubasa fanboy who went to say goodbye to him in the airport as he left to Brazil.
• One reason Ryo of Digimon Tamers is seen as a Canon Sue is this. Even if one takes into account his huge backstory (that most of the viewers outside of Japan never even got to see until later) that explains his presence, his sudden appearance still comes a bit out of left field even with the proper context.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dr. Gero is a perfect example: he was a scientist that worked for the Red Ribbon Army and created the androids for them, including the previously seen Android 8, but he was never mentioned in the Red Ribbon Army Saga. It's only when he shows up in the Android Saga years later in real life and many years later in-universe, we know all this time he was making more androids until he made ones that could defeat Goku and the others, and is also revealed that the whole time he was spying on the main characters with hidden cameras and collecting cells from them to create the bio-android Cell. It even creates a plot hole in the anime, where Dr. Flappe was said to be the creator of Android 8 in the RR Saga, which was only addressed in a supplemental book that states they both worked on him together.
    • History repeats itself with Dr. Hedo, Gero’s never before seen grandson introduced in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero as well as Magenta who’s the son and successor of Commander Red who’s been working behind the scenes for decades to rebuild the Red Ribbon Army. The same movie also briefly cameos of Gero’s eldest son and wife: Gevo and Vomi, although they aren’t really new characters if you’ve read the supplementary materials or played Dragon Ball Fighter Z which reveal Gero respectively based Android 16 and Android 21 (a God-Created Canon Foreigner herself) on them, albeit they hadn’t been named before the movie.
  • The God of Destruction Beerus from the movie Battle of Gods is a semi-example. One of the strongest beings in the entire universe (in fact, the only one stronger is his attendant Whis), no one ever mentioned him until the movie, even though King Kai, the Supreme Kais, Frieza, and Vegeta all knew about him, yet in the series they named many weaker people as "the strongest in the universe". Although this could also be explained by the fact that they were referring to the strongest "people". Beerus is a God and, just like all the Kais, is not factored into mortal power rankings. Beerus is retroactively inserted into backstory with the revelation that he's the previously unknown being that sealed Old Kai in the Z Sword.
    • Beerus does in fact take naps that last decades, so it would make sense he wouldn't be around in important points in history. He still qualifies in some way because when Frieza is resurrected, he mentions him (as well as Majin Buu), even though he was completely unaware of what happened to them. There'd be no reason he'd suddenly mention them other than this trope.
  • Dragon Ball Super introduces Bulma's older sister Tights; both Goku (who's known Bulma since they were kids) and Vegeta (her husband) react to this news with "You have a sister?!" Of course, the meta reason is that Tights is from Toriyama's manga Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, which was written almost 20 years after the Dragon Ball manga ended. Jaco himself could also count, since Bulma has known him since she was little but it apparently never came up in the intervening decades. Tights late mentioning can be justified by Bulma's tendency of not talking much about her family to her friends, just as she never mentioned her parents in the first two arcs. Tights has also distanced herself from her family for most of her life, so it's easy for them to forget her.
  • Speaking of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, the Dragon Ball Minus chapter also introduces Gine, Goku and Raditz’s mother and Bardock’s wife who like Tights hadn’t been shown or hinted at all in the manga or anime. It’s common for characters to have a Missing Mom so many assumed she wouldn’t show up in the story (besides some Wild Mass Guessing that Fasha, Bardock’s teammate was the mom as she’s the one who reminds Bardock that he has a son). Gine’s presence like Dr. Flappe creates a Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole as she doesn’t appear in the Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku special despite being a former member of Bardock’s squad and obviously being an important character — all due to being created decades after the fact. Dragon Ball Super: Broly however makes Dragon Ball Minus Retcanon firmly putting Gine within Goku’s origins. Now it’s more peculiar when Gine isn’t featured in Bardock’s story e.g Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot's “Bardock Alone Against Fate” DLC, even if said DLC is based on the TV special where Gine wasn’t created yet.
• Fairy Tail: Gildarts gets this treatment in the anime. It was supposed to end before he was introduced, so the five or so mentions of his name before the Edolas arc are cut out.
• Yoki and May in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are this to viewers who haven't read the manga or watched the 2003 anime version. They cut the Youswell episode which serves as a proper introduction to Yoki, and May was also supposed to be introduced later in Youswell. To Brotherhood-only viewers, Yoki and May are just two random people who join Scar because they somehow know of the Elric brothers, and Yoki wants revenge for some reason. Yoki's back story and desire for revenge are explained later in the show in a series of quick flashbacks. These flashbacks occur several episodes after Yoki is introduced however, still leaving people who had never read the manga or seen the 2003 anime thoroughly confused for a while. Hilariously, when Yoki actually meets them, Ed himself doesn't remember him at first, despite ruining his life.
• In Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE, we're shown that Hiroto, the main character, was present in the final battle of the original Gundam Build Divers and that he could have altered the ending in an instant but couldn't bring himself to do so. As the Gunpla he was using, the Uraven Gundam, was a long-range sniper machine, this gives him plausibility as to why he never appeared on-screen.
• In Haikyuu!!, Nekoma has a new starting player, Lev, in their second appearance of the manga. The explanation given is that he wasn't with them in their first appearance because he was still a newbie and they only took their main squad to training camp. In the two months between their two appearances, he developed enough to become a starter. The first OVA (which takes place between the first two seasons) properly introduces him to the anime viewers and shows how much he trained to become a starter, averting this trope.
• Hunter × Hunter: The 2011 anime has a very frustrating example in the form of Kite, Gon's inspiration for becoming a Hunter. Unlike the manga and 1999 anime, Kite does not appear in the first episode of the Madhouse adaptation, so his return in the Chimera Ant arc is his very first appearance and we're treated to a never-seen-before flashback to his first meeting with Gon. To make matters worse, other than his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it silhouette in the first episode’s narration, there are absolutely zero hints of his existence and his importance to the story. No prior mentions, no allusions, nothing. So to any newcomers who've never read the manga or seen the 1999 adaptation, Kite really feels like he comes out of nowhere.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 6 introduced us to Enrico Pucci, close friend, confidant, and possibly-gay-lover of Stardust Crusaders Big Bad DIO... years after DIO's defeat (more than a decade out-of-universe, and two decades in-universe). Of course, neither his existence, any of the flashback scenes he shows us, or the Plot Device given to him by DIO (or his motivation for doing so, for that matter) were ever hinted at in Stardust Crusaders. Admittedly, the series almost never showed us DIO's point of view until the heroes caught up to him, so Pucci at least had a hole he could fit in, but still...
• Parodied in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War at the start of the new school year when Shindo is first introduced with all his classmates talking about how awesome he is... and Kaguya is just as clueless about who he is as the reader.
• Kuroko's Basketball: Teppei Kiyoshi first shows up after Seirin loses the Inter High. Prior to this, he's never mentioned by his teammates or the coach. When he's introduced, he's mentioned to be the one who brought Seirin's basketball club to life, and after that, several opponents would remember him as the "Iron Heart" of the Five Uncrowned Kings.
• Padparadscha of Land of the Lustrous is suddenly introduced in episode 11—Rutile, the doctor, had been working to resolve their chronic coma for much longer than the time-span of the series. The protagonist knew about this character the whole time (saying "I'm glad I didn't forget about Padparadscha"), but never mentioned them before this point.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1999): It's revealed that Volvagia is a baby dragon that Link brought seven years ago. During the Young Link part of the manga, there's no place where that scene could have taken place.
• In Lucky Star, when the cast starts their senior year, Kagami is approached by Misao and Ayano, noting that they are glad to be in Kagami's class again. Kagami then walks off, Misao notes their position as background characters, and the two then become members of the regular cast. Misao did make a brief appearance prior to this, and she even had a line... with a different voice actress than the one she had when she started showing up regularly. Ayano also made a brief, unnamed appearance as a participant in the sports festival before becoming official. In the manga, though, the two were at first unnamed and were only intended to be random classmates of Kagami's class. It was later when they were actually given names and personalities.
• Due to being a Long Runner with a fairly dubious sense of continuity, the Lupin III franchise has multiple instances of this:
  • Part 5 saw the debut of Albert d'Andrésy, a French thief turned Dirty Cop who supposedly has an extensive history with Lupin as both a rival and an occasional ally. The later prequel series Lupin Zero expands on this by showing how the two first met, with a young Albert depicted as the new criminal apprentice of Lupin's grandfather.
  • The Part 6 episode "Two Terrible Ladies" introduces Amelia, Fujiko's old partner in crime whom she had a falling out with after a botched heist several years ago. The other members of Lupin's gang have seemingly never heard of her, and Jigen is surprised to learn Fujiko has any female friends.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Most good characters from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS have met the characters from previous seasons before.^note Griffith is the only real exception, as his mother mentioned him during the final A's Sound Stage (though not by name). It's justified by the fact that there was a ten-year Time Skip. At that point, it would have been surprising if they didn't know new characters.
  • Inverted with Corona Timil from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, who has been Vivio's friend since shortly after the StrikerS epilogue. It is also played straight when Corona remembers characters from previous seasons, even in cases when she doesn't meet them again.
  • Done with Thoma, the main character of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force. Something of an odd case, since he seems to have met everyone in the Time Skip between Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS and Force.
    • Thoma's backstory, presented in part via flashback chapters, shows that he first met Subaru (and through her, the rest of the Nakajima extended family) in the apparent aftermath of StrikerS Sound Stage X. It's also worth noting that outside of the Nakajima family (and Teana and Alto), the other, more established main characters don't know Thoma (at best, for instance, Nanoha knows of him), and they all introduce themselves properly once the circumstances allow for it.
• In My Monster Secret, the two main characters first met Karen at chapter 60, yet it's revealed later that she's the Student Council President of their school. In the next chapters it's shown that Nagisa (the Class Representative) and Mikan (president of the news club) have known her since the start. Apparently, normal students are unaware of her existence, or that they even have a student council at all.
• My Hero Academia: Although a flashback shows that Todoroki has three siblings, only one of them is shown living with him, his sister Fuyumi. Almost 200 chapters in it's shown that another of his siblings is also living with him, Natsuo, and apparently has been living with them all along. His lack of appearance is handwaved by Fuyumi saying that since he started college he has spent very little time at home and maybe also due to a secret girlfriend.
• Queen Diamond in Mysterious Joker. She's Silver Heart's granddaughter and grew up alongside the main protagonist and his rival, but doesn't show up or even get mentioned until chapter 41.
• Naruto:
  • Naruto already knows the members of Team 8 and 10 and is later shown interacting with some of them in flashbacks during his time at the academy even though they do not appear to be anywhere in the classroom in Chapter 1 or 3 of the manga, even in wider shots showing the entire classroom. Likewise, Sakura first appear as Naruto's classmate in Chapter 3, but is nowhere to be found in the classroom scenes in Chapter 1. Averted in the anime, where all of aforementioned classmates make brief Early Bird Cameos in the respective episodes. Possibly a case of Fridge Brilliance; Naruto had failed the Graduation Exam twice already, so he might simply have been moved to another class that had not taken the exam yet. There are at least 10 teams of three Genin so there should be at least 30 new Genin but we barely see half that number in any scene.
  • Karin who first appears later in the series is shown as a participant of the Chunin Exams from earlier in the series having first met Sasuke during the Forest of Death portion of the exams, yet she did not actually appear in chapters that originally depicted the Chunin Exams.
  • Another example: the presence of Danzo Shimura and his organization "Root", only introduced as of Part II/Shippuuden, having largely affected the behind-the-scenes politics and histories of major characters. Which is, in-universe, what they precisely intended to be.
  • Hamura Ōtsutsuki, the brother of the Sage of the Six Paths, Hagoromo and inheritor of Kaguya's Byakugan. Not once has he ever been hinted at existing (in-universe reasoning is the Uchiha Tablet being modified), but since his introduction, he's been noted as helping Hagoromo defeat the Juubi, a feat originally seen as a solo act by Hagoromo.
  • Boruto introduces a bunch of kids (Sumire, Denki, etc) that weren't seen in Boruto: Naruto the Movie, Naruto Gaiden, or the original Distant Epilogue. They however are good friends with Boruto during his Academy days. The episode showing Naruto's inauguration short had new scenes added with some of them in it.
• One Piece:
  • Sabo. We are made aware of the shared history of sworn brothers Luffy and Ace throughout the show. Even seeing some quick flashes of them sharing a ritual to become brothers. But when they finally show the full flashbacks of the two meeting and developing their relationship, we are suddenly introduced to a new character, their third sworn brother, Sabo. Even the previously mentioned flashback of their ritual suddenly had Sabo involved in it too. There was the very subtle hint in Ace's misspelled tattoo (ASCE, with the S crossed over), that was downright impossible to know what meant, and what we saw of the brother-making-ritual contained three cups - only with Sabo, the drinker of the third, never being shown.
  • Ace himself is a lesser example. His introduction comes with the surprise that Luffy even has a brother, since the first chapter of the manga shows Luffy as a lone child with no older brother in sight. This is explained by The Reveal that Luffy and Ace aren't biologically related and further flashbacks expanding on Luffy's childhood, as he hadn't even met Ace until after the events of his initial backstory.
  • Sanji’s whole family the Vinsmokes, are an even bigger example of this. The Baratie arc Flashback to Sanji’s past depicts him as a cabin boy and apprentice chef on the cruise ship Orbit, with absolutely no hint that he’s actually a runaway prince from a tyrannical kingdom of techno conquerors. Before said revelation in the Zou arc, it was easy to assume Sanji was an orphan like Nami or just had absent parents like Zoro. The only few hints we got that Sanji had a family were a small moment in the Jaya arc where Sanji reveals he’s actually from North Blue (something Nami realises later shouldn’t be possible given the Red Line separates the seas) and slightly earlier on Sanji staring sadly at a ruined photo of smiling woman he finds in a shipwreck◊ which becomes apparent after Totto Land he was thinking of his mother Sora.
  • The One Piece movies have a bad habit of introducing characters who were instrumental to the wide world and the Straw Hat’s pasts whom were never hinted at before in the manga and for the most part don’t exist in the canon e.g Saga (Zoro’s childhood friend), Shiki (Gold D. Roger’s old rival), Zephyr (the legendary marine who trained the Admirals), Carina (Nami’s childhood rival/friend), Douglas Bullet (a member of Roger’s crew) and Uta (Luffy’s childhood friend and adopted daughter of Shanks). The two exceptions are Shiki, who did become a Canon Immigrant to the manga and is revealed to have once been part of The Dreaded Rocks’s crew, and Uta, who is shown to exist in the manga via a one-panel cameo.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Since Episode 35 ("The Legend of Dratini") of Indigo League was not aired outside of Japan and a couple other Asian countries, the 30 Tauros Ash accidentally caught in that episode appear to come out of nowhere in "Showdown at the Po-ké Corral".
  • During the Battle Frontier arc, which took place in Kanto (the setting of the first season), second- and third-generation Pokémon were portrayed as being indigenous to Kanto... even though no one seemed to know about them the first time around (barring an Early-Bird Cameo or two like Misty's Togepi, and even then the cameos were presented as one-of-a-kind in the region).
  • Pokeathlons weren't in the original Pokémon Gold and Silver, instead introduced in the remakes, which were released nearly ten years later. Despite this, Ash and Brock act like they had experience in the sport when Lyra mentions them in Diamond and Pearl.
  • Serena is supposedly one of Ash's Childhood Friends. Naturally, since her design is based on the default female player character from Pokémon X and Y, she first appeared in the anime arc based on these games and was never seen or mentioned prior. Justified because of Forgotten First Meeting courtesy of Ash.
  • James' Victreebel evolved from Weepinbell when he left it at the breeding center in "The Breeding Center Secret" who was never mentioned before. There were rumors that in the Japanese version he stole it, but this isn't true. The later episode "Here's Lookin' at You, Elekid" shows a flashback of James catching Weepinbell to rectify this.
  • Averted with Goh, as Ash slept through the summer camp where they would have met as young kids. Therefore, when they both hop on the same wild Lugia four years later they are complete strangers to each other.
• The Pretty Cure All Stars movies inflict this whenever extra Cures show up between the last movie and the current ones. New Stage 3 had this as a minor gag when Grell and Enyen go to confront the Doki Doki Pretty Cure team and are bewildered at the sight of Aguri and she does the same. It's only when Mana walks up that they make the connection.
• Unazuki Furuhata from Sailor Moon. She's Motoki's younger sister and a waitress at the Sailor Senshi's hangout, which the Furuhata family owns, and her brother has been a good friend of Usagi's from the start, but there's nothing to even hint at Unazuki's existence until she appears suddenly in the second season.
• Ai Kaga of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei first appears in the last episode of the first series. She explains that she hid away from the camera, believing that if she appeared it would drive down the ratings.
• Shaman King features an example similar to Black Clover. In chapter 277 (episode 48 of the 2021 anime), Yoh gets a vision of a never-seen-before rabbit-looking demon with a supposed letter Z in it’s cloth. Later in chapter 290 (episode 50), we get a flashback of Hao explaining to Yoh about said character named Ohachiyo, Hao’s first ever friend. Ohachiyo was a character who appeared in the prequel manga “Mappa Douji”, detailing Hao’s childhood and how he met the demon, but in the main series we get very few details about the events, so his presence and return in the finale would be confusing to anyone who hasn’t read Mappa Douji. Fortunately, unlike the Black Clover example, it’s easy to place that story in the series’ canon, being a prequel.
• Just as their western brethren, Transformers anime can be guilty of this as well.
  • While Transformers: Scramble City does offer some backstory for the combiner teams, Ultra Magnus is treated like he's always been a part of the Autobots and is not given any special introduction.
  • Transformers: Armada offers a baffling example, where the humongous Autobot Overload makes his grand intro by randomly rolling up in the middle of an episode to act as Optimus Prime's trailer. It's never explained where this guy came from, which is made even weirder by the fact that he's supposedly a small Mini-Con robot called Rollout who wears "Overload" as Powered Armor. Despite that gathering these Mini-Cons was the main point of the series' first half, with many episodes being dedicated to finding one or two "regular" Mini-Cons, here we have one that comes with his own set of gigantic armor and can look the regular robot cast in the eye, yet he's the one not to get an intro episode.
• Because of its episodic nature, this tends to happen in Uzumaki. One notable example is when a chapter near the middle of the manga introduces Kirie's pregnant cousin, Keiko. Even though Kirie's clearly close with Keiko, this is the first time we ever hear of her.
• In the fourth season Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yusuke Fujiwara uses the "false memory" variant on almost everyone, but it's played straight when Fubuki remembers him. Fujiwara was his classmate and he was connected with the old Obelisk Dorm and Fubuki's disappearance prior to season 1.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds featured Kyosuke Kiryu and Crow Hogan, who were apparently always best friends with the main characters despite not appearing in any of the flashbacks with Yusei and Jack in the past. Crow is particularly bizarre, since in prior episodes, Yusei was established as hopelessly scrounging for parts in Satellite to build a D-Wheel that even works, but Crow, also a Satellite resident in even worse economic straits, is introduced with a high-spec D-Wheel in perfect condition that can fly.
  • Crow's high-quality D-Wheel is later justified, since he inherited it from his late friend Robert Pearson, who was a luminary in building D-Wheels and he was even offered a job in Neo-Domino City.
• Parodied with Rise in YuruYuri. She's supposedly been the head of the student council from day one, even though none of the four lead girls have ever seen her. To drive this home, a Flash Back shows that she was present at the group's trip to the beach, but stood just out of view of the camera.

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