Who Is This Guy Again?: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|'''exenefevex:''' Now according to the nice people on the internet... World 6, will feature Morton, who is not Roy.

'''exenefevex's Dad:''' Oh, but Morton is ''not'' Roy?

 

The fearsome recurring villain has struck again! The heroes grit their teeth and draw their weapons, prepared for the fight of their lives. They've spent most of the arc waiting for this battle. It's time to bring down... umm...

 

 

 

 

If a series takes too long to tell you a character's name, expect the [[Fan Nickname]]s to flow.

 

 

 

{{examples}}

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

* ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'' is a major offender in this regard. For example, there are three [[Bridge Bunnies]]. Megumi is part of the [[Love Dodecahedron]], so her name comes up a lot. Ruri is quite distinctive. But name the third. {{spoiler|Minato}}. While you're at it, name the guy with the bowl cut who joins the crew along with Akatsuki and Erina. {{spoiler|Admiral Munetake}}. Or the head chef {{spoiler|Ms. Howmei}}. The characters in the [[Show Within a Show]], ''Gekiganger 3'', are easier to identify by name than the cast of this show.

* Canada in ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]''. In fact, he's the ''definition'' of this trope.

** [[Running Gag|Who?]]

* Poor [[Suzumiya Haruhi|Kunikida]] is so unknown that he hadn't even been mentioned yet. The novels make it a bit easier for him, since his name is mentioned whenever he appears (obviously), but not by much.

* Genzo in ''[[Oh! Edo Rocket]]''. Funny enough, he shares [[Katsuyuki Konishi|the same seiyuu as Canada.]]

* ''[[Kamichama Karin]]'': Kirio fails to give his name the first time he shows up, which leads to Karin calling him "Mr. Glasses Man" for the rest of the series, due to not remembering his name.

* Averted in ''[[Legend of Galactic Heroes]]'': Whenever a character appears who has not been onscreen for a while, his/her name is shown in the subtitles. [[Loads and Loads of Characters|Sometimes it isn't enough.]]

'''Joey:''' Sorry pal, doesn't ring a bell. }}

 

* One of the things The X-Axis criticised ''Nick Fury's Howling Commandos'' for:

{{quote|After reading it through once, I realised that I couldn't remember the names of any of the lead characters. So I read through it again, and this time I took notes. Even then, I could only identify the names of three of the lead characters. I then crossreferenced with the Howling Commandos' entry in this week's ''Official Handbook'', whereupon I discovered that (a) one word which seemed to be a name from the context wasn't one at all, and (b) four of the lead characters aren't named anywhere in the comic.}}

* In ''[[52]]'', Bea plays a very important (if minor) role within the series. She consoles [[Elongated Man|Ralph Dibny]], [[What the Hell, Hero?|confronts]] [[Booster Gold]], and serves as the heart of the hero community, all while only speaking on the phone and later appearing "on-panel" for two small scenes. Unfortunately, she is only ''ever'' addressed as "Bea," and is never called by her superhero name, last name, or shown in her costume. The series does not make it easy to identify which character she is in the [[DC Universe]].

* In the first arc of the 2010 relaunch of ''[[Birds of Prey]]'', the Birds wind up fighting a mysterious Asian woman dressed [[Woman in White|all in white]] who identifies herself as the White Canary. The team has absolutely no idea who she is and theorize that she might be either [[Batgirl|Cassandra Cain]] or [[Dark Action Girl|Lady Shiva]], two candidates [[Oh Crap|that do not soothe their thoughts]]. Ultimately, it is revealed that she is the sister of the Twelve Brothers in Silk, a [[Reveal]] that came at the end of five issues and after numerous "Who is she?" questions, except the Twelve Brothers in Silk themselves have not been seen, or even ''mentioned'', in several years, appearing in only a handful of issues of ''BOP'' in a self-contained arc. There was also nothing in her appearance or fighting to serve as a hint to the reader, despite [[Black Canary]] claiming to have figured it out from body-language clues, and after her reveal there is no mention of her true identity again for the next two issues, remaining only the White Canary for the remainder of her appearance in the series. If a reader had skipped a bare two pages of Issue #4 they would never have learned her identity at all.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* The first film of ''[[The Mummy Trilogy]]'' doesn't seem to mention Ardeth Bay's name anywhere. His first speaking scene in the sequel comes complete with two characters greeting him by name, as if to make sure you know what it is.

* The terrible lighting and sound quality of ''[[Ax 'Em]]'' makes it impossible to figure out who ''anyone'' is, which isn't helped by the fact that some major characters die offscreen and others seem to die onscreen [[Beyond the Impossible|multiple times.]]

* ''[[Seven Samurai]]'' has had at least two sets of English subtitles; in one of them, two of the title characters are never named.

* In ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'', some of the Basterds don't get any mention on-screen.

* The Ewok that Leia first meets in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' is called "Wicket", but you only find that out in the end titles, as the Ewoks can't talk. In fact, because of their lack of speech, the word "Ewok" is never mentioned in the actual film either.

** [[Big Bad|Palpatine's]] name is never given in the original trilogy; he is only ever refered to as The Emperor (or variants like "Your Highness", "My master" etc.), but he is called Senator Palpatine in his first scene in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'', which is an [[Easter Egg]] for those fans who learnt is name [[All There in the Manual|from other sources]] and he becomes a [[Devil in Plain Sight]] for them (and those who looked at the cast credits / knew the actor, of course).

* The main character in ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]'' is never named through the entire movie and in the credits is only called "narrator."

* The love interest in [[Surf Ninjas]] has her name mentioned only once in the movie. It's mentioned during an action sequence, in panicked dialogue, and because of the way it's said, it isn't even obvious that he's saying her name.

 

== Literature ==

** It also doesn't help that lots of characters have multiple names. So Elwë, which in Sindar is Elu, not to be confused with Eru, who is aka Illuvatar, is aka Thingol, which in Quenya is Singollo, not to be confused with Sulimo, who is aka Manwë.

 

* In ''[[The Amazing Race]]'', teams are usually referred to by the names of both contestants. Because of this, it's easy to forget which team member is which on homogenous teams (such as the second season's Chris & Alex and Osward & Danny).

** This is largely subverted in the later seasons, though, as he gained [[Ensemble Darkhorse|enough popularity]] to be directly addressed by his name even several times in a single episode.

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'': {{spoiler|Noah Bennett, Claire 'The Cheerleader' Bennett's adoptive father}}, though he became a major character well into the series, was originally a menacing "government conspiracy" type figure. "HRG" was coined by Tim Kring and used in the original pilot script, so as not to give away the reveal that he's Claire's father. This eventually stuck with the fans.

* Tom on ''[[Lost]]'' first appeared in the season 1 finale but was not named besides being credited as "Mr. Friendly"; his repeated appearances in season 2 also left him without a real name. When his name was finally revealed as Tom in the season 2 finale, some fans continued calling him Mr. Friendly, to the point that up until {{spoiler|his death}} the press releases continued to call the character "Tom/Mr. Friendly" to avoid confusion. As [[No Name Given|his last name has never been revealed]], some speculate his full name is "Tom Friendly," a name that was made pseudo-canon in the captions of an enhanced episode.

** Mikhail Bakunin was also not named when he first mysteriously appeared on a TV in the Pearl station; his nickname onset was "Patchy" and this was adopted by the fan community. However, his name was revealed immediately upon his second appearance, and so he didn't fall victim to the same confusion Tom did.

* ''[[The Wire]]'', as part of its [[Viewers Are Geniuses]]/[[Better on DVD]] package, often doesn't namedrop characters on first appearance, and not very often afterwards. Add to this that actors' names in the credits aren't even linked to their character name, and that many of them go by nicknames, and things can get confusing...

* A running gag in season 6 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' was that no one could remember Andrew's name. He was always "that other guy." His biggest claim to fame was being "Tucker's brother."

** This was actually a meta joke about how Andrew was the only member of the trio who had never appeared on the show before, so fans would likely be [[Remember the New Guy?|calling him that anyway]]. Originally Tucker himself was going to be in the group, but his actor wasn't available so they had to create someone new.

** He's the [[Big Bad]] of the [[Musical Episode]], he threatens to take Dawn to the underworld and make her his queen, he has many names... But he never actually gives one. The end credits say say 'sweet demon makeup done by...' and so the fandom has adopted the name Sweet for him ever since.

 

== Theater ==

* [[William Shakespeare]] was often stingy with character names. In ''[[Hamlet]]'', Claudius is never actually named except in the stage directions; the other characters all just refer to him as "the King". In ''[[Twelfth Night]]'', Viola doesn't reveal her real name to the audience until the very last scene (though she has the excuse that she spends most of the play in disguise).

* Also frequent in [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]; many of their operettas have a character whose name is given in the script and program, but never mentioned (or barely mentioned) onstage: Pish-Tush in ''[[The Mikado]]'' and Cousin Hebe in ''[[H.M.S. Pinafore]]'' are examples.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** This can be invoked a few times in the first ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' with [[Recurring Boss|Jr. Troopa]] {{spoiler|(and later, the Koopa Bros.)}}. He'll ask if you remember him, and you can answer "No" to tick him off.

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]: Oblivion'' has a few NPCs that no one seems to be able to remember the name of. For starters, what's the champion of the Imperial City Arena's name? The Grey Prince, yes, but what about his ''real'' name? It's Agronak gro-Malog, for the record. Also, Dar-Ma's mother is ''always'' called just that in the community, but never by her real name. The kicker here? Every NPC's name comes up when they're selected in-game.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Darths and Droids]]'' parodies the trope in [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0485.html this strip]. [[The Rant]] points out the inherent problem with making NPCs too memorable; your players tend to completely forget about the "ordinary" ones.

** This is at least in part due to what [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|he does on a daily basis.]] When Roy tries to narrow it down for Xykon, he mentions that he killed several unrelated people with the same name in the same city. Xykon remembers well enough once he connects that particular murder to how hard it was to clean out the blood stains.

* In ''[[Shortpacked]]'' there's Ken, who rarely showed up and had no importance for a long time. This was lampshaded when one of the characters asked who he was despite him working at the titular store for 6 months at that point. The next strip featured Ken actually doing something.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Naming Conventions]]