Wolverine Publicity/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Wolverine Publicity in Live-Action TV include:

  • This actually happened to live-action sitcoms on ABC, with Steve Urkel, at the height of his popularity, being crossed over onto almost every show in the TGIF lineup at one point or another.
    • He even had cameo appearances in shows on completely different networks. "Hey, what's Urkel doing on All That? ... for the third time?"
    • Later syndication advertisements of earlier episodes often were ONLY about his small scene unrelated to the actual plot of the episode.
  • ABC also milked the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to death, turning it from a mega-hit to Deader Than Disco almost overnight. It's still on, though most people hardly know that.
  • Castiel is starting to get this in Supernatural's sixth season, with most of his appearances cameos at best, and Cas mostly showing up once per episode to explain why he's too busy offscreen to help out this week. On top of that, Misha Collins is now receiving credits for episodes in which he doesn't even appear.
    • He also gets his own solo TV bumper (Dean and Sam had to share one) and is one of the only three cast members to be included in the official publicity photos despite appearing only about thirty minutes total in the entire sixth season so far.
    • Possibly justified, now, considering his large role in the 19th episode, Day in The Limelight in the 20th, and massive part in the 21st and 22nd.
    • Extends to Misha Collins himself - ever since he started appearing in the fourth season he's been doing as many, if not more, interviews as Jared and Jensen and appearing at just about every convention going.
    • Even after supposedly getting killed off (death doesn't always stick in the Supernatural world) he's still getting as much attention from fans and reviewers alike as the two main characters.
  • Blunt: The Fourth Man was a British TV movie from the '80s. The video was released in the late '90s or the 21st century. Anthony Hopkins's face featured prominently on the cover. When I watched it, I saw that Ian Richardson played the eponymous Blunt (not a drug reference), the main character, while Hopkins played someone else. But then Richardson never played a cannibal (or at least not Lecter).
  • Kamen Rider has been doing this to a point with Momotaros from Kamen Rider Den-O. If it's a Kamen Rider production, and Den-O is in it, you WILL at least hear his voice, even if other Riders don't even have a line (That being said, it should be noted that his voice actor Toshihiko Seki, being a voice actor, is indeed the most readily available of all the lead actors in the entire franchise when it comes to role reprisal.). The Den-O series itself counts as well, having more crossovers with other Riders and more spinoff movies than any other in the franchise.
    • Both of the movies for Kamen Rider Decade extend this. There is no real need for Momotaros to be on-screen, but they put him in anyway just because of his Wolverine Publicity.
      • Decade is at least consistent with this; each Rider has a Final Form related to their abilities that Decade can activate but due to the Demonic Possession that Den-O is known for, his Final Form is Momotaros himself. Diend can also summon former Riders, including Momotaros in one episode. Not to mention that the first of Decade's movies was the epilogue to the Den-O arc in the show and the second was a Reunion Show featuring every single main Kamen Rider in history...
      • Lampshaded in said second movie. The final line before the credits roll is Momo telling Tsukasa to stop pestering him because he's "super busy" (the Super Den-O Trilogy of films soon follwed.) Busy doing some Wolverine Publicity, we presume... oh wait, not just Wolverine Publicity: he's also a Wolverine Publicist!... and he even advertised for McDonald's! Choke on that, Wolverine.
      • Hey! It's not just that! He's got movies with his own True Companions coming out—and do you think all that food and coffee in the DenLiner dining car is free?
    • The franchise's 40th anniversary movie stars the original Kamen Rider, then-current Rider OOO... and Den-O. And Momotaros will be part of OOO's movie-exclusive powerup mode. At least they have the grace to justify Den-O's involvement by making it a Time Travel plot.
  • "Hey guys I heard this rumor that Libby/The Smoke Monster/Walt/Christian/Desmond is going to be in this episode! Oh look there they..." * blink* Lost.
  • The Sky 1 adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather went to DVD with David Jason (who had probably minutes of screen time, total) front and centre, making him look like the most important character in the story. However, his character was barely necessary and most of his minutes were padded, timewasting scenes to show off the big name star. He was also used in all their advertising and his name dropped constantly in all promo material.
  • If you look online, you'd be excused for thinking iCarly was actually iSam or even iSeddie and that the star is Jennette McCurdy and not Miranda Cosgrove.
  • Nick-At-Nite does this with The George Lopez Show, and it's still getting progressively worse. At first, they would look for any excuse they could find to air a George Lopez marathon. ("Hey, it's St. Patrick's Day! How can we celebrate Irish culture? George Lopez is Mexican - close enough!") Then they dropped the pretenses altogether and now air George Lopez marathons without even giving an excuse.
  • Currently happening with advertisements for Merry Christmas Drake and Josh on Nick, wich focus much more on iCarly stars Miranda Cosgrove and Jerry Trainor, despite their characters relatively minor roles in this show. Heck it won't even say the stars' names until the end, and that's because they're the title characters(and they have to say what show they're advertising).
  • Since 1985, Elmo from Sesame Street has been given more prominence than older characters on the show such as Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, much to the chagrin of long time fans.
  • Almost every CBS episode promo for How I Met Your Mother heavily features Barney Stinson, so if you didn't actually watch the show, you could be forgiven for thinking he's the main character. In the actual show, he gets lots and lots of entertaining subplots, being a legitimate Breakout Character, but is actually the focus of the A-plot only around 1/4 of the time. So that promo you just saw that dedicated 15 out of its 20 seconds to Barney pulling some crazy stunt? Chances are, said stunt takes up only around three minutes of the episode.
  • The Stargate franchise has a particular case of this with Samantha Carter, every episode where she appears she is heavily advertised regardless of screentime. A particular notorious episode was early in the first season of Atlantis where she was identified as "guest starring" in the commercials. In the episode, she had ONE WORD and 10 seconds of screen time.
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