Expand: Early Bird Cameo

I think the description has two diferrent tropes.

• A character in an adapted work appears earlier than they did in the original

• A character from a future work from a company appears in a previous work (like what Pixar does in all of their movies). This is more trivia.

Chekhov's Gunman is one of the oldest Chekhov snowclones in existence, but I could support having a Trope Transplant to Early-Bird Cameo, while renaming the current EBC somewhere else.

Unkess I'm missing something in the description, I don't see how Chekhov's Gunman fits what we are interpreting here as Early-Bird Cameo. C'sG occurs within the same work and it is an integral part of it, whereas Early-Bird Cameo, as per the proposals above, goes more to trivia, and to a point it is about the metawork.

The argument is that Early-Bird Cameo is being used as a synonym for Chekhov's Gunman when it's not. However, nobody's presented any wikilink checks to document this....

Wait, Early-Bird Cameo is misused so we rename Chekhov's Gunman? That is an odd way to deal with the problem.

If we want to rename Chekhov's Gunman than someone has to show that something is wrong with this trope. We can't just rename a trope with 1163 wicks, because an other trope is misused.

Bumping this, because this is one of the most consistently misused tropes on the wiki right now. Chekhov's Gunman is a perfectly fine trope name for what that trope describes - a Chekhov's Gun in the form of a character. If there's any confusion about Chekhov's Gunman, it's because (from my own observation) about 90% of the uses of Early-Bird Cameo on trope pages actually mean Chekhov's Gunman, so the tropes become interchangeable in people's minds.

I think Early-Bird Cameo needs to be renamed to something containing the word "adaptation" - Adaptational Early Appearance, perhaps, for some pseudo-alliteration. Most of the instances of misuse could be swapped for Chekhov's Gunman, though it sounds like there are a few cases where the actual trope at work is Canon Immigrant or Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.".

Alternately, make Early-Bird Cameo the new Chekhov's Gunman, since that's what most people use it to mean currently, and create a new trope to mean what Early-Bird Cameo is supposed to mean according to its trope page.

No matter what we do we'll probably need to point the name "Early-Bird Cameo" to the Chekhov's Gunman trope.

That said, "Adaptational Early Appearance" sounds like it's on the right track, but it lacks a certain pizazz. Maybe "Early Adaptation Cameo"?

Alternately displacing Chekhov's Gunman to Early-Bird Cameo would also have the fringe benefit of eliminating a Chekhov snowclone, albeit one of the oldest such in the wiki.

BTW, can we get some documentation of the usage? The misuse claim is largely conjecture right now.

edited 20th Nov '11 5:36:33 PM by Stratadrake

As I've already stated, "adaptation" is not the word to use because there are examples that are more rereleases than adaptations into another medium. The "cameo" part of the current title might be misleading as well. I would suggest something like Retroactive Debut.

Keep in mind this trope page is being used for two tropes right now.

The first is "Character appears earlier in the adaptation/remake".

The second is "Character from a series first appears in adaptation, remake, or different series", with the most prominent example being Pokemon's Ho-oh (appearing in the anime before it's game was released - it was originally the trope image). It can be considered a combination of Canon Immigrant and Chekhov's Gunman, or an "intentional" Canon Immigrant. I'm suggesting Out Of Series Preview...or maybe even Ho-oh Debuted In The Anime, though that might be stretching it.

I can only offer ancedotal evidence, but I've seen it happen too many times. Right now I removed about three examples from the trope page that I knew were Chekhovs Gunmen - and I think I should remove the Lion King example too. I've seen people use Early-Bird Cameo in the Homestuck and Adventure Time character pages. We really need to rename/split this trope.

edited 21st Nov '11 9:32:22 AM by universalperson

^ Wait, what? Your two definitions are exactly the same — "first appears in X" means "appears in X before Y" ?

edited 21st Nov '11 7:28:30 PM by Stratadrake

For the first, I think he means the adaptation/remake has the character show up earlier in the story than the original. That definitely sounds like a different trope than a character getting a cameo in the adaptation before the original introduces them in real-world time. So we'd be taking the current softsplit and making them separate tropes.

Or like I said on the top of the page. These are definitely two different phenomena and should be treated differently. Also, I think one's a trope, the other's trivia.

Yeah, one is "this character shows up earlier in the adaptation/remake than s/he did in the original series".

The other is "this character appears in the adaptation/remake/other series before actually appearing in the actual series or getting their own series in the real world".

Not the same.

Okay.

So shall we get started? I'm up for moving everything in Type 2 section of the page to something like Trivia/OutOfSeriesCharacterPreview

edited 23rd Nov '11 6:15:54 AM by universalperson

Trivia "tropes" still go in Main/ - Trivia/ is reserved for works' trivia lists.

Regarding the second type, isn't it mostly to promote a new series/sequel with these characters? Wouldn't that be similiar to a Poorly Disguised Pilot? And yet, the latter is a trope.

D'oh!

Well, any objections?

edited 23rd Nov '11 2:42:36 PM by universalperson

Not the way Pixar does it. Usually with Pixar cameos, you have no way of knowing that said object is from a future movie until you actually see said movie. It's less an advertisement and more an "ah hah" moment when you watch the previous film.

Bump.

Bump.

Early Adaptation Cameo?