Drop-In Character: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A neighbour who drops in on a regular basis and mooches around. He or she is often a friend of one of the household kids who is either very annoying or very cute. Because he or she is the neighbours' kid and we never meet his or her parents, he can exhibit all sorts of zany behaviour without the need for too much explanation.

 

 

 

 

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Miu from ''[[Ichigo Mashimaro]]'' drops in by Nobue and Chika by jumping the roofs of their adjacent houses and climbing in through Nobue's bedroom window. She even does this in the middle of the night to sit on Chika's stomach, for no other reason than to be the [[Jerkass]] she always is. Heck, she even drops in through the window when the crew are staying at a hotel, purely out of force of habit.

* Vanessa in ''[[Madlax]]'' [[Character Development|starts out this way]].

* Lucy from ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' is an inversion; she's the one that gets dropped in on... constantly... by ''everyone''. People make themselves so comfortable at her house it's ridiculous.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** Slightly lampshaded at one point near the end of the series when Monica can't remember the last time her apartment door was locked.

** Also lampshaded when Ross is about to finally tell Rachel he loves her, but is interrupted by ex-fiancee Barry bursting in the door and beating him to the punch.

*** And again in the last episode, where Monica and Chandler, about to leave their apartment for good, solemnly drop their keys in a dish for the landlord to pick up - followed by all the other leads adding their own key to the dish.

** This is also mentioned by Monica, in episode 3.19, when she enters her house only to find Phoebe, Chandler and Ross there.

'''Phoebe:''' We were out of Doritos. }}

* Howard on ''[[The Bob Newhart Show]]'' was a classic Drop In Character, often having just flown in or about to fly out.

** Spoofed in at least one of ''[[Cracked]]'' magazine's "Happy Daze" parody comics, as illustrated above.

* As already mentioned, Kramer on ''[[Seinfeld]]'' is one of the most popular, well-known examples. A little more justified than other instances in that they lived in an apartment building with security so Jerry only had to worry about other tenants dropping in unannounced.

** They eventually had to cut down on his drop-ins because the studio audience would applaud for like a year when he entered and throw off the timing of the scene.

** In one episode, Jerry actually had the door locked for an unrelated reason leading to a loud crash as Kramer tried to perform his trademark slide.

* Kimmy, DJ's best friend on ''[[Full House]]''. The opening credits actually have the Tanners <s>practically</s> closing the door in her face.

** Until [[Promotion to Opening Titles|the character gets included in the regular cast]], at least. Then the whole "closing the door in her face" thing gets dropped, replaced and subverted by the scene in which she opens the back door in her character introduction in one season.

** Sure you're not thinking of Steve Urkel in the ''[[Family Matters]]'' opening? Because that was in there too.

* "Bud", "Cockroach" and several of Vanessa's friends on ''[[The Cosby Show]]''.

* On ''[[Frasier]]'', Niles was always just dropping by, though reasonably explanations were often given, usually involving Maris and her friends doing something that drove him out of his own house.

* Ed Norton, from ''[[The Honeymooners]]''

* In the British sitcom ''[[Birds of a Feather]]'', the drop-in character, when faced with a locked door, smashed a window to get in while the main characters watched.

* Willona on ''[[Good Times]]''. This editor only recalls ever seeing Willona's apartment once, when she adopted a young Janet Jackson, but that's a whole other story...

* Inverted in ''[[Keeping Up Appearances]]'', in which the main character, Hyacinth, forcibly drags Elizabeth, her neighbor, into Hyacinth's house and forces tea on her.

** Usually in Royal Doulton teacups (...with the hand-painted periwinkles...). The fear of dropping these teacups has turned Elizabeth into an agoraphobic wreck.

* Charley Dietz from ''[[Empty Nest]]'' would frequently drop into Harry's kitchen just to raid his fridge and hit on his daughters.

* Raymond's parents in ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]'' are constantly dropping into his home without notice.

** Such unwanted behavior even makes it into the musical introduction.

* Maynard G. Krebs on ''[[The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis]]''.

* ''[[Martin]]'' had a character simply referred to as "Brother Man", who occasionally invited himself into Martin's apartment ''through his window''.

* ''[[Reba]]'' featured possibly the worst example of this trope, as Reba's ex-husband and the woman he left her for felt perfectly justified in walking into her home without any form of notice or even knocking. This troper frequently wondered why the hell she never locked the doors.

*** IIRC, she'd often say "Hey, Sam" as a result of the musical sting before the ladder even showed up.

* Likewise, Morgan in ''Chuck'' often uses the "Morgan Door" - Chuck's window.

* In ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'', we never see Kel's home or family, while much of the action takes place at Kenan's home and his parents and sister are relatively major characters. Kel also hangs around Kenan's place of work, Rigby's.

** Being a recurring side character, Freddie's mom is a classic example of the trope.

** At one point Spencer mentions he almost didn't recognize Sam and Freddy since they weren't sitting on his couch.

* [[Cloudcuckoolander|Monroe Ficus]] was this in ''[[Too Close for Comfort]]'', generally when he appeared, it was obvious that he was going to say or do something that would irritate Henry Rush. Eventually when the show became a first-run syndicated series, he would become a live-in character, when he moved into a third floor addition of the Rush house, after his apartment is torn down. By the time the series was rechristened as ''The Ted Knight Show'' for its final season, he reverted back to being a drop-in character when the Rushes moved from San Francisco to nearby Marin County.

* Tsk, tsk, who forgot [[Stalking Is Love|Rose]] from ''[[Two and A Half Men]]''?

** He even lives with the Golds for a while, after his parents have kicked him out for being gay.

* Penny from ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]''. Howard and Raj could count as well.

* Landlord D. Álvara in Brazilian sitcom ''Toma Lá, Dá Cá''. And at a certain point, she appeared [[Speak of the Devil|everytime someone spoke her name.]] (to the point that the characters became [[Genre Savvy]] and tried to stop utterances of it)

* Aunt Jackie from ''[[Roseanne]]'' neatly solved the question of why she's not locked out by being the title character's sister.

* Pretty much the entire cast of ''[[Sanford and Son]]'' other than the title characters were this with Esther, Grady and Bubba being the most frequent offenders.

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. Spike once he became allied with the Scoobies in Seasons 4 and 5.

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* An inversion of this, of course, would be ''[[Dennis the Menace US|Dennis the Menace (US)]]'', whose title character frquently dropped in unannounced (and unwelcomed) on crotchety neighbor Mr. Wilson.

 

== [[Radio]] ==

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* Ron Stoppable is pretty much this, almost never seen at his own house, he's even there when the [[Romantic False Lead]] is hanging out with [[Kim Possible]] during [[The Movie]]. On the occasions when he ''is'' seen at his own house, it usually foreshadows an event of real significance, such as an impending move to Norway or the acquisition of an adopted sister (none of which his parents ever tell him about in advance).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characters As Device]]