Early-Bird Cameo is having a definition problem for years. A rundown:

• According to wayback machine, the page started out in 2007 as a trope about adaptational early appearances of characters.
• In 2012 the trope was broadened to include cameos of character from a soon-to-be made work in a current work. I will call it a "Teaser" here for the sake of discussion. That's when trouble began because those two definitions have nothing in common.
• In 2014 the definition changed due to a TRS thread. The adaptational cameo aspect was split off into a new trope Adaptational Early Appearance (which did not move the examples along), the teaser aspect was dropped completely and the trope was now about early cameos in the same work. I will call it EBC here. Note that the description does not do a good job of contrasting itself against Chekhov's Gunman (CG). I will come back to that aspect later.
• In late 2017 someone unilaterally added a second paragraph, re-introducing the "teaser" aspect from 2012. So now we have a double definition as EBC and Teaser. Meanwhile, the laconic hasn't changed over the years and still defines the trope as (a) Adaptational Early Appearance or (b) Teaser.

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Issue 1

Since the trope definition changed dramatically and there has been no clean-up between transitions, the trope still shows examples for all three definitions: EBC, AEA and Teaser.

• The example list on the trope page seems to be a split mainly between EBC and AEA.
• The wick check of 50 items resulted in:
  • EBC: 28
  • Teaser: 8
  • AEA: 7
  • Other: 7

Action items here could be:

1. cleaning out the AEA examples
2. finding a different trope for the teaser aspect. Production Foreshadowing could be a contender. That trope refers back to Early-Bird Cameo in its second paragraph which could be changed.

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Issue 2

This would leave us with the problem of the current definition of Early-Bird Cameo (first paragraph) and Chekhov's Gunman looking suspiciously similar.

In the TRS thread from 2013 it was pointed out that there is a distinction between an early cameo and an early introduction of a character.

• Early-Bird Cameo would be someone appearing in the background, having no bearing on the plot or interaction. No job title or name.
  • Example: In the Futurama episode "I Second That Emotion" Leela's parents can be seen in the background among the mutants in a few scenes, they would be properly introduced two seasons later.
• Chekhov's Gunman has to be introduced, as their role is to be ignored.
  • Example: The presence of character X at the scene of the crime is explained.

So, do you think the line is there and solid? A Chekhov's Gunman being is a minor character introduced early and later goes on to have a more important role in the story. Early-Bird Cameo being a nameless, nondescript individual where noticing them or not early on makes no difference for later plot developments.

• If yes, I suggest to improve the descriptions of both tropes, clean up the example lists and hope that the many thousand wicks are correctly sorted :-) and be done.
• If not, we could merge both tropes under one of them and redirect from the other.

P.S. I am ignoring here the discussion about the gun part of a Chekhov's Gunman character, namely that the character must become a plot resolver later and not merely a plot point as would be sufficient for a EBC character.

P.S.S. There is also Red Herring Shirt with a similar definition to Chekhov's Gunman which could use a better contrasting also.

edited 23rd Apr '18 6:29:10 PM by eroock

Clock is up; locking for inactivity/lack of consensus. No action is to be taken on the basis of this thread.

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