Who Is This Guy Again?: Difference between revisions

{{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...

** Minato has a romantic subplot that is an important part of the 2nd ½ of the series, at least. Before that, there's Two Big Reasons that make her memorable...

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' is rather stingy when it comes to even often-seen [https://web.archive.org/web/20090612071244/http://gurennlagann.wikia.com/wiki/Minor_Characters_of_Team_Dai-Gurren members of the Team Dai-Gurren]. Name four of them, not counting Kamina, Simon, Yoko, Nia, Leeron, Rossiu, Kittan and his sisters, {{spoiler|Viral, or Lord Genome}}. Hard, isn't it? Of all of the other characters, five are namedropped exactly twice in the first two ''arcs'', one takes fifteen episodes to get a name, and the rest have their names mentioned once and then left unsaid

* The Mechanic Couple in ''[[Shinkon Gattai Godannar]]'', while being the cutest couple in the show, if they ''did'' get names, they're used once.

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

** [[Running Gag|Who?]]

'''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]] ==

** 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).

** In an attempt to make this easier on the viewers, when next to each other, such as on the mat or in post-leg interviews, teams sit or stand in the same order as their names will appear on the screen. Meaning the racer whose name is first is always on the viewer's left.

** 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.

** 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.

* The rebooted ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' had this problem with the Cylon clones, especially the Sixes, which frequently had, but didn't use distinct names. It was important to know which you were watching (as they were distinct characters), but there was frequently very little way to tell. Of course, the fact they all impersonate each other anyway all the time didn't help. Avoided for the most part with the Eights when {{spoiler|Sharon Agathon took the callsign "Athena"}}, and names didn't matter as much with the other models as they had less differentiation. And they never even named the hallucinations, which got the [[Fan Nicknames]] Head!Six and Head!Baltar.

 

== 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.

** Although sometimes he can remember Roy's last name, [[They Call Him "Sword"|Greenhilt]], well enough to make a passing comment about "Bluepommel."

** 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]] ==

 

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