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Sounds like a variant on Not-So-Small Role.
Makes me wonder if there should be a video game and animation trope for "The animators wouldn't waste a completely unique model/sprite on such a small role, so this seemingly minor character is probably going to be important later," as a counterpart for Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize (aka "The director wouldn't waste this big-name actor on such a small role, so this seemingly minor character is probably going to be important later").
I didn't write any of that.
Distinctive Appearances, perhaps. Was wondering if we had a more specific The Law of Conservation of Detail trope akin to Nominal Importance ("they wouldn't waste space giving this character a name if he wasn't important").
Given that Grunt's distinctive profile is viewable on the party selection menu before he's recruited, I'd say Interface Spoiler.
Edited by BattleMaster
The corollary of You All Look Familiar: if there's someone with a unique sprite/model, chances are he/she is an important character.
We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza
In Mass Effect 2, one of the early missions requires you to recruit a Krogan warlord. When you finally meet him, he has been creating tank bred Krogan, and has created a "perfect" specimen. The Krogan still in the tank has a unique model, while the warlord is just a reskinned Krogan model seen everywhere else in the game. Of course, the warlord dies and the perfect Krogan is recruited, an outcome almost anyone would expect. Is this an example of Spoiled by the Format or Interface Spoiler?
Edited by Billlington