Ensemble Dark Horse: Eric Openshaw, to the point where creator Pete Nash has admitted to sometimes seeing him as more the strip's main character than Nick Jarvis.
He's Just Hiding: Virtually nobody believed that Li Ming was actually killed off permanently in 2014, with the most common theory being that she had faked her death and gone into hiding with the help of MI6, in order to keep Nick safe and ward off any more threats to her own life. Three years later it turned out that her death had indeed been faked... though it wasn't her own idea, but rather that of a Greater-Scope Villain who was behind the person who originally ordered her assassination.
