Ensemble Darkhorse/Real Life

Examples of Ensemble Darkhorses in Real Life include:

Astronomy

Pluto, the former planet. The outrage when it was downgraded to planetoid was unprecedented.

Creators

Voice Actors are quite possibly the biggest example of an Ensemble Darkhorse when it comes to actors. The Animation fanbase online quite often love various Voice Actors for all the work they do in Animation (and to a lesser extent Video games) and are often guests in various conventions. Unfortunately often enough they are generally the only audience that these people truly have. Which the fact that often enough they get little pay and companies often seem to see them as nothing more than cheap disposable labor is considered all the more disheartening. But sadly if you talk about Voice actors to normal people chances are they most likely will have no idea what you're talking about. (The only exceptions are generally folks who either used to be/still are well known for screen acting.)
- Unfortunately it doesn't help that often enough many vocal fans of Voice actors are young adults who are often not the Target Demographic of the shows they watch.
  - Mel Blanc came from the Golden Age of American Radio, where it was possible to become famous based solely on voice work. He also got a lot of his fame in front of the camera playing comedic characters and guest starring on variety shows. Lucille Ball, Orson Welles, and Jimmy Stuart also first became famous in radio. Even voice actors who weren't able to make the leap to the camera had fans with the older generations who remember the radio era. With that last group, it's less about being an Ensemble Darkhorse, and more about being a fading star as time marches on.
- Japanese-wise, the darkhorse seiyuu would be Norio Wakamoto. When seiyuu these days about the younger people, especially those catering to the more Moe archetypes, there's this old school Cool Old Guy seiyuu who stockpiles about classic and awesome villain roles. Thanks to his epic hammy performance, he's still viewed as one of the greatest seiyuu in business despite being not really the norm of this age's seiyuu (a man and old), and a Memetic Badass (and Real Life Badass too).

Politics

Frequently happens in elections where unknown or unlikely candidates come out of the blue and sweep into a position of power. This is most likely because their unknown status means the media has not yet accumulated a warehouse of dirt to use against them.
- Examples form US elections:
  - Both Barack Obama and John McCain were considered unlikely to even be allowed to run as their party's candidates in the 2008 US presidential election.
  - On that front, Obama is far more of a darkhorse than McCain. McCain has run for president before, lots of people knew who Mitt Romney was, and everyone knew who Hillary was. Most people outside of Illinois had never even heard of Obama until the middle of 2007. Plus, as many people, even Obama himself, have noted, if you had told people in 2005 that the next president would have the middle name "Hussein" (and a surname that's one letter away from "Osama"), they would have assumed you had a crappy sense of humor.
  - Similarly, Sarah Palin was virtually unknown outside of Alaska prior to the 2008 election.
  - Who would have through the 2012 Republican front-runners would include Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum?
  - Through he was in no position to win the race, congressman Ron Paul was easily the most popular candidate in the 2012 elections to young people, and even to some in the left. Don't believe me? Just compare the numbers in a Romney or Santorum rally to the number of participants in a Ron Paul rally!
  - At the beginning of the 2016 primaries, nobody expected Donald Trump to be anything more than an also-ran. In late-May, he has the GOP nomination all but guaranteed. In November he won the presidential election the media was sure he would never win.

Sports

Dwyane Wade, drafted after Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony. Most people were only focused on James and Anthony and Wade barely got any attention. Today he is the only one of the three with a championship ring and finals MVP award.
The 2001 Seattle Mariners and Arizona Diamondbacks. No big stars and almost everyone was over 30 on the Mariners, who would go on to win the most games in an American League season ever and tie with the 1906 Chicago Cubs for most wins in a season in all of baseball. This coming from a team that had never gotten serious consideration in a post-season before and had never gone to the World Series. The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, were the oldest team in baseball and did what neither the Mariners or anyone else in the past three years could do - beat the Yankees and win the World Series,
Nobody expected the Spanish national team to win a World Cup anytime soon. Their weapons were fear and surprise and a ruthlessly efficient defense.
- Just to prove Real Life is just as surreal as fiction, the only person who thought Spain would win was Paul the Psychic Octopus, clearly the Dark Horse of world cup pundits.
- The Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys of 1998. France failed to make the World Cup in 90 and 94 and got into the 98 tournament only by hosting the dang thing. They shocked the world with one of the most dominating defenses ever (one non-PK goal for the entire tournament) and capped off their improbable win with a 3-0 win over supposedly invincible Brazil in the final.
- Greece winning the 2004 European Championship. No one expected them to even win a match, let alone the tournament: they were 80-1 outsiders before it got underway.
- Denmark winning the European Championship in 1992. They weren't even supposed to be in the tournament, but replaced Yugoslavia (who was excluded due to UN sanctions) at the last moment. Both players and trainer were thus utterly unprepared and treated the whole thing as an experience.
- For other continental soccer/football championships - we have Iraq winning the 2007 Asian Cup (not only during the War, but also overcoming multiple continental giants) and Zambia taking home the 2012 African Nations Cup after a long penalty shootout against the Ivory Coast.
For the NHL, the Phoenix Coyotes have a surprisingly large fanbase, despite it's hot climate for the city. It also helps that the Coyotes are The Woobie of the NHL, having never won a playoff, but still loved. Well, at least in the U.S.
During the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Australian comedians H.G. Nelson and Roy Slaven, unimpressed with the games' mascots, unveiled their own mascot, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat. Fatso became more popular than any of the official mascots.
David Freese had some fine, if not outstanding seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals before going absolutely nuts in the 2011 MLB playoffs, culminating in hitting the game-tying triple in the 9th and game-winning home run in the 11th during Game 6 of the World Series (with his team one strike away from elimination in the 9th, at that).

Theme Parks

From Disney Theme Parks, Figment is undoubtedly the most popular character at EPCOT, and the Hitchhiking Ghosts have become the unofficial mascots of The Haunted Mansion, despite only showing up near the end.

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