To give some further context outside of Salah and Slot, it must be understood that everyone expected Liverpool to explode this season in spite of the tragedy with Jota and his brother because of how ridiculous their transfer window was in the summer as mentioned above.

First thing's first, we need to understand English Premier League money is bullshit. England has deliberately attempted to make sure their domestic pyramid is commercially strong as one can expect, with its ability to target the Anglosphere and the fact it hosts some of the biggest clubs in the world turning it into a juggernaut no other league can compete with.

This alongside the growth of billionaire and state owned clubs (i.e. Man City, PSG, Newcastle) has made football a capitalistic wasteland in terms of transfers, with some arguing Neymar's move to PSG at what was at the time somewhere around $250+ million signaled that you either have to spend big or die. Simply put many leagues and clubs cannot afford to compete in the modern market.

Liverpool certainly isn't one of those clubs.

Alexander Isak is a proven striker that showed results at Newcastle and although it was arguably an hefty overpay at $170+ million, with the striker market being in such short supply at a top level some considered it a worthwhile cost. Not to mention beforehand they nabbed Hugo Ekitiké from Frankfurt at $100+ million, meaning they in theory two world-class strikers to rotate between with different profiles, even if this was an absurd amount of spending.

Milos Kerkez is a young and exciting left-back that showed his stuff at Bournemouth, with Liverpool clearly wanting to entrust that position to him for the long-term by shelling out $50+ million for him. Jeremie Frimpong is a crazy right-back who was a part of the invincible Leverkusen season that shocked the world in 2023/2024, and I'll get to why he was needed at $40+ million.

Giovanni Leoni was weird admittedly, being an eighteen-year-old center-back from Parma who did very well, but also didn't play that much and $30+ million for a wonderkid is pretty expensive. Not that he isn't talented, a ton of the big Serie A clubs wanted him for a reason, but Prem money is a drug and even as everyone takes risks on younger talent in the wake of La Masia's resurgence there wasn't a lot of hype around him.

But the crown signing had to be Florian Wirtz. Like Frimpong he was at Leverkusen when they won the Bundesliga, but he wasn't just a good player, he was their talisman. A highly technical attacking midfielder who through intellect and creativity create chances out of nowhere, he led what was derided as "Neverkusen" to an invincible season in the league, never losing once and winning the double by nabbing the DFB-Pokal. And we need to remember he was twenty at the time and is only twenty-two now, meaning he could be even greater. He came at a whopping $150+ million, but no one debated if this was worth it or not.

Yet to afford such players even Liverpool needed to offload some folks, and here's where it gets tricky.

Darwin Núñez went to Saudi Arabia, even if I hate the fact how entrenched the nation and royal family are to the sport, made sense with their new striker signings and his inconsistent form with a hefty $60+ million. Quansash left for Leverkusen, but he has a buy-back clause and went for what was a pretty scam transfer at $40+ million.

Ben Gannon-Doak felt like a fleecing given he barely played for Liverpool and despite his high potential no one's turning down $25+ million for such a fee, sending him off to Bournemouth. And while Caoimhín Kelleher is an exceptional goalkeeper, Allison Becker is still one of the best in the business and they grabbed Giorgi Mamardashvili the previous season, leaving the Irish international free to leave for Brentford at $15+ million.

Luis Díaz is an interesting case in that while many wanted him to stay, being a great forward who was a major contributor in winning the title last season, some felt him going for $80+ million was too good to pass up given he's nearing 30. His playstyle was argued by some to be one that declines rapidly due to the physical nature of his game, so while he is an excellent player shipping him off to Bayern while grabbing the luxuries from earlier seemed appropriate at the time.

And then there is Trent.

Trent Alexander-Arnold was a Liverpool legend despite his young age. One of the premier right-backs in the world, he might be a defender but everyone knows it is his intellect and passing range which makes him a monster. One of those modern full-backs, capable of cutting inside for more central passing lanes, his ability at set pieces, and being crucial in Liverpool's build-up, he was beloved not just for his talent and being English, but also the fact he was an academy product, having since childhood fought for the badge.

He then left for Real Madrid effectively on a free before last season even ended.

The sheer hate this spurred within the Liverpool fanbase is a post in its own and anyone who's into sports knows how this all goes. They technically got about $10+ million for Madrid to get him in for the Club World Cup, but one of their best players left effectively for nothing and was speaking fluent Spanish off the bat at a press conference. They had Connor Bradley to replace him and later to nabbed Frimpong from earlier for an even better starter, but it was ugly.

So what does this all mean? What does all this money spent and gained reflect?

Well as you can imagine it means in 9th place, ten points behind the current league leaders.

Isak has not hit the ground running. Frimpong seems to be struggling to replace Trent. Poor Leoni is injured. And Wirtz looks like a fish out of water, either not yet adapted to the league and its unique traits, but perhaps also just not utilized well on a tactical level. Ekitiké looks decent enough, but he's fighting with Isak for position and strikers struggle badly when the rest of the team is crumbling given they need support from behind to do anything.

Meanwhile Luis Díaz is killing it in the Bundesliga, creating one of the most terrifying forward line-ups currently with Harry Kane and Michael Olise, the two best players in Germany right now, acting as his partners up front. And while Trent has had some difficulties, recently he's gotten into the groove for Real Madrid after recovering from injury, reminding people why they wanted him in the first place.

It's just an embarrassing situation and you can feel it all crumbling for the former champions. For me there's a lot Slot has to answer for and Salah is not helping matters by reacting this way when his own form is just not it alongside the fact he's got the contract extension a bit ago, but the entire squad is struggling beyond a shadow of a doubt. Some like Dominik Szoboszlai are doing their damnedest every day and put out good performances, but a handful of individuals fighting for badge is not enough.

Will Liverpool side with coach or back their star player? I don't know, I think it's a bad move to put players over team, but God right now it is beyond toxic and it's disturbing to witness unless your a Toffee, United fan, City folk, or maybe a Gooner (Yes, that's what Arsenal fans are called).

But let's say if replacing Slot doesn't change things or Salah continues to dip in form as he ages, then the question becomes what the hell was all of that money burnt on?

I mostly know Mo Salah from the quorn adverts he did like ten years ago so this is how I find out he's a footballer...

Who are some other "bit players" that gained an outsized importance to their initial appearance?

Cam was, apparently, meant to be killed off pretty early in Bones - which might explain why her backstory makes no sense (she's a cop, a doctor, the head coroner of her area she comes from, and just... a bunch of stuff that doesn't fit into a timeline for someone so young)

And on the subject of Oz and things that only appear briefly, the silver shoes/ruby slippers are definitely the most iconic objects in the series, but again they only appear in the first book. When Dorothy wishes to go home the shoes disappear forever, because magical items cannot exist in non-magical countries. From the third book onwards the role of powerful magical item is taken instead by the Nome King's belt.

Stargate was chronic about this. Frequently they would bring in a character to play a one or two episode antagonist only to have them go on to become series regulars or even leads.

In SG-1 David Hewlett portrayed everyone's least favourite STEM major they know, Dr. McKay, and went on to be a lead character in the spin-off series Atlantis. Scifi veteran Robert Picardo played a bureaucratic henchman antagonist with Richard Woolsey, went on to make regular reappearances, and then ended up in charge of said Atlantis expedition. Tom McBeath did a fantastic turn as Harold Maybourne, an overly ambitious and cowardly ratbag USAF colonel and on-again-off-again toxic best frenemy of SG-1 series lead Jack O'Neill, and while never did become a regular, he did have a satisfyingly insane character arc going from hardline patriot to literal traitor then going on the run and becoming crowned king of a medieval planet. And so many others. None of them, afaik, were meant to be more than one note antagonists, but either due to convenience or actor chemistry, they got brought back so often they became fixtures.

Edit: Wrote the original post at 6am on my phone tired as hell, edited to fix formatting and errors and add in Maybourne's delightfully stupid character arc.

White Glint is an iconic mecha design from Armored Core and is the mech from prior games that is most frequently referenced by Armored Core players today as one of the "coolest things ever" in the Amored Core games. it has its first appearance in Armored Core 4, where it appears in a handful of missions, being piloted by the player's erstwhile ally, Joshua O'Brian. And by handful, I mean that there are 4 missions that White Glint can appear in, and only if certain conditions are met (either the Player drops to low health, in which White Glint appears as an ally, or you're playing Hard mode, in which he appears to help your enemy).

White Glint appears in the direct sequel, Armored Core For Answer in has a more prominent role as the cover mecha for the game and its opening trailer, but it appears in even fewer missions. You only see it once per 30 mission playthrough, in either Destroy White Glint or Defend Line Ark. It's heavily implied that the pilot of White Glint is the player character from Armored Core 4, which further lends to its myth.

White Glint is salvaged and heavily modified as a shadow of its former self in Armored Core: Verdict Day as the final boss as a signifier for how iconic White Glint had been, but that's a tiny amount of actual screentime for how much reverance White Glint earns.

So, there's a very interesting Library of Ruina/Limbus Company example here; The Blade Lineage.

In Library of Ruina, there are two types of main gameplay encounters; Red/Story Invitations and General Invitations. The former are, as you could guess, the game's main story encounters, and the latter are story-less encounters that are the game's non-random equivalent to random encounters. And none are more well-known than the Blade Lineage and their leader, Bamboo-hatted Kim. The Blade Lineage as a whole is very interesting because they're actually referenced in the main story as a rival to one of the main story receptions, the Kurokumo Clan. And Kim's key page is notably EXTREMELY strong for when you get it (amusingly, especially with the Kurokumo Clan cards) with one of the game's most stand-out cards, Yield My Flesh, requiring you to screw up an integral game mechanic in exchange for an extremely powerful second card, To Claim Their Bones.

In general, the faction was moderately popular as a result of those two factors, and in Limbus Company they came back in SPADES. Not only were they one of the factions that got IDs at launch, but around the time of the game's first anniversay we got the Event/Intervallo/Interlude "Yield My Flesh to Claim Their Bones", which as you can probably guess by the name focuses on the Blade Lineage and Kim. (And, amusingly, the event also contains a minor example of this, with the character Jun and his mighty Rules of the Backstreets getting a playable ID version during the event's rerun)

There's a twist to this, though; It almost wasn't like this. The Blade Lineage were actually originally planned to get their own story encounter in Library, it just never made it into the final game. Heck, a few of the Limbus characters and IDs are explicitly based on concepts that showed up in the LoR art book! So their Limbus reappearance is half due to their popularity, and half so Project Moon can tell the story they never got to tell.

I say Home Alone most people say "Movie with the booby traps". However, the time when the Wet Bandits go to his back door (1:16:21) to start the booby trap segment to the Wet Bandits getting arrested (1:30:51) is less than 15 minutes!

But surely it was longer than that! What about all the time spent preparing the traps? Well the time from when Kevin gets home (1:13:45) to booby trap his house to him having put the final trap in place (1:15:05) only adds a minute and twenty seconds!

The actual Bride doesn't appear onscreen in Bride of Frankenstein until the last like 5 minutes, and doesn't really do much but scream and hiss. But god damn were they cookin with that character design.

Honestly this is probably the only thing anyone ever talks about with that movie. Personally I think we should be talking more about Doctor Pretorius, who is a riot and the main antagonist.

Saul Goodman was only supposed to appear in 4 episodes of Breaking Bad, and Mike Ehrmantrout was literally an afterthought filler goon.

I can’t say about “4 episodes”, but showrunner Vince Gilligan said that dark and dramatic material needs “a leavening agent” so it isn’t just miserable to watch. When Jesse moved from goofy comic relief to being broken on the wheel of life, in comes a sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer with silly tv ads, a line in patter and gaudy suits.

Mike wasn’t really “an afterthought goon” so much as “I have a guy who can do that”, but he was only created because something needed doing and Saul couldn't do it because Bob Odenkirk was busy. Still, you wouldn't expect the two of them to be at the core of another series.

Apparently, Kim Wexler wasn’t supposed to be quite so central to Better Call Saul, but Rhea Seehorn was doing a great job so they kept giving her more to do.

The highest ratio of initial screen time to later importance must be one line from Saul in Breaking Bad - “It wasn’t me, it was Ignatio!” - that becomes Ignatio “Nacho” Varga in Better Call Saul. By the second series, he’s also once of the show’s core characters.

There's an often stated claim that Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs has an astonishing low 16 minutes of screentime in the film as Hannibal Lecter while still receiving the Oscar for Best Actor. The stat is someone misleading, as he has about 25 minutes of actual presence - much of the film's editing has him talking while Jodie Foster's face is presented.

The other shockingly low screentime snag is for Best Supporting Actress for Shakespeare in Love, which was given to Judi Dench for her role as Queen Elizabeth I, with about 5 minutes of total presence.

Black Canary is probably best known for the time she lead the JSA or her relationship with Green Arrow but that's not where she came from. Originally she was a sexy thief in an issue of Johnny Thunder. It took less than a year for Johnny to be removed from his own series and Black Canary to take over and go on to become a major B-list hero in the DCU (and later two B-list heroes for reasons).

In fairness to the writers Johnny was kind of impossible to write for. His power was that he had an omnipotent genie who would do whatever he asked. His weakness was that he was so stupid he couldn't survive without the constant help of an omnipotent genie. When the character was brought back in the 90s he was reworked into bed-ridden dementia patient to give the character some pathos while still reining in a ludicrous ability.

Before reading One Piece, I assumed the character Yamato would be introduced early into the Wano arc, considering how much discussion and discourse came from the character. Turns out they are only in about half of it, and are introduced pretty squarely in the middle of the big raid the entire arc was building to with practically no buildup prior.

Hannibal Lecter is a minor character in Red Dragon (and the initial Manhunter adaptation), and even in Silence of the Lambs he's a supporting character.

Background ponies in general from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. For those who don't know, background ponies are just filler NPCs that don't talk and there to populate scenes when needed. A number of them became super popular among bronies (off the top of my head that includes Lyra, Bonbon, Vinyl Scratch/DJpon3, Dr Hooves/Time Turner, Derpy Hooves, and Colgate). Towards the end of the series there was a fanservice episode that allowed a lot of these background ponies to have speaking lines for the first time.

As for speaking MLP characters that had a small role that left a big impression, I'd say that goes to Trixie or Discord, though I'm not sure if their continued appearance was initially planned or not.

Trixie is a unicorn who relies on slight of hand and special effects for her magic shows because she's not very good at magic and she generally has a bit villain role, but she eventually becomes friends with Starlight Glimmer (basically an additional member of the mane 6 added later in the show).

Discord was a season finale villain who eventually gets a full redemption arc where he lives with Fluttershy. He's also voiced by John DeLancie, who played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, which isn't really important but is cool bevause they're quite similar character.

tak from invader zim shows up in one episode but left a huge impression on fans. in comparison, her ship shows up in more episodes including the movie.

Beetlejuice, for all that his name is the title, is only in 18 minutes of the movie. That's less than a fifth.

The Web of Fear is a 1968 Doctor Who serial, where they took the popular villains from the previous year (robotic yetis), and put them in the London Underground - or, at least, a London Underground set that was so lifelike, they got calls asking if they had illegally filmed there. This leads to the Patrick Troughton Doctor Who teaming up with / having friction with the military sent down there to fix the problem, led by one Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. He's a pretty standard military leader guy, played by the second choice for the role, Nicholas Courtney, after the first choice ditched for other work. At the end of the episode, like most every other supporting character up to this point, they are left behind as the Doctor and his companions make their excuse and run for the TARDIS.

Next year, the production team were doing a similar kind of episode - monsters invading recognisable locations always got good results - and so staged an 8-part story of the Cybermen invading modern day London. Again, the military are roped in to go up against them, and rather than casting a new head soldier, the production team decided to bring back Colonel, now Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, in charge of the international anti-weird-shit organisation, UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, this lasted up till 2005, when legal threats from the real UN about branding on a website had them change it to United Intelligence Taskforce). This episode also introduced John Levene as Sgt No-First-Name-Ever-Given-On-Screen Benton, also played by a replacement actor after the first was demoted for not working out. The Invasion was also important for serving as a "test-model" for what the show could look like in future - Doctor Who at this point was coming up on six series, and ratings weren't what they once were. To keep going, the production team wanted to reduce costs by making the show purely Earth-bound, allowing characters and sets to continue across a whole series rather than being purely for one episode (amortising the costs), as well as reducing the need to re-create space-bound locations. The show would retool itself to be like popular spy serials at the time, centered around this new UNIT organisation fighting threats from the stars.

This was deemed acceptable, and so both the Brigadier and Benton were made into series regulars, alongside the newly regenerated Jon Pertwee Doctor Who. With a few companions (Caroline John's Liz Shaw for the first year, Katy Manning's Jo Grant for the 2-4th years, and Elizabeth Sladen's Sarah-Jane Smith for the final year), and two new recurring characters joining at the start of the second series (Richard Franklin's Mike Yates, and the Doctors Time Lord nemesis, the Master, played by Roger Delgado), the UNIT era was a smash with children, and the "UNIT Family", as they're often known, was the basis for a lot of fanfiction and canon-adjacent productions over the years. While the production team would start doing stories set on alien worlds as early as the 8th serial, the UNIT family, UNIT HQ, and aliens trying to conquer the home counties would remain a constant feature up to Jon Pertwee's final series. The 3rd Doctor's death sees him lost in space, the TARDIS flying by instinct, until she brings him home - the floor of UNIT HQ, watched over by the Brig and Sarah-Jane, where he dies, and is reborn as Tom Baker.

At this point, 1974, the production team is used to making space-bound stories again, with no worry of cancellation, and you can see this shift in priorities through Tom Baker's early seasons. His first episode, Robot, is in effect a Jon Pertwee UNIT-era story abour some evil society making a giant killer robot, and Tom Baker plays the whole thing as flippant and disregarding as possible. This is not your dashing action hero 3rd Doctor. UNIT Doctor Harry Sullivan comes along for a TARDIS ride, but the Brigadier is left behind, and won't re-appear until the opening story of next year, Terror of the Zygons. This would mark an end to the Brigadier's time as a regular on the show. Benton would make one more appearance later that series, in The Android Invasion, until he too was gone. And, in Doctor Who, with a show constantly churning through side-cast members and production teams, once you're gone, you rarely come back, unless they want you to cameo for an anniversary special. Well, about that...

1983 was the show's 20th birthday. They had the big anniversary celebration coming as a charity-associated special in November, with somewhere between 3 and 5 past Doctors represented, plenty of old companions showing up, and a big role for the Brigadier alongside his old friend, the Patrick Troughton Doctor Who. However, the production team had an idea for a story set around the Queen's Silver Jubilee (cause that's also an anniversary, wow). and wanted to focus it around an old companion as another way of paying homage to nostalgia and stuff. Not just as a quick cameo, but the star of the show, second to Peter Davision Doctor Who. The original idea was to get back William Russel, one of the first three companions, but when that fell through, who should it be but the Brigadier, for the first time in 8 years, now retired and teaching at a private school. They fucked up the UNIT timeline in the process, but it was all worth it. He would make one more appearance, 6 years later in the very final season of the show, 1989's Battlefield, where he is retired until a new, 90's UNIT un-retires him and he almost dies fighting a magic demon from another dimension summoned by King Arthur's eternal rival, Morgana. Intriguingly, Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who (berating what he thinks is the Brig's corpse) says he should have "died in bed". Keep that in mind.

Nicholas Courtney made appearances in a bunch of the fan-shot Wilderness Years productions of the 90's and early 2000's, as well as fan mass-hallucination "Dimensions in Time", but so did everyone who had so much as looked at Doctor Who, so that doesn't say much. What he did manage was an appearance in Doctor Who's educational spin-off for kids, "The Sarah-Jane Adventures", in its second series finale Enemy of the Bane, making him the second Classic Who character to properly return after the title character, and she's regarded as one of the best companions they ever wrote. Still retired, he helps the gang fight alien infiltrators to UNIT. All because Freema Agyeman was too busy filming Law and Order UK to come back instead.

This would be Nicholas Courtney's final on-screen appearance, as the main show didn't manage to get him in before his death in 2011, with UNIT as a more modern, militirised organisation rather than the quaint "boy's own army" of the 70's. They did pay touching homage to him in 2011's finale, The Wedding of River Song, where Matt Smith Doctor Who was facing his own certain death, and flippantly phoned up his old mate The Brig to tell him he was coming round to cause trouble. The Brigadier, it turned out, had died off-screen, in his bed at a nursing home, but had always asked for a second glass to be set out, in case this was the day the Doctor finally showed up. Wedding of River Song was controversial at the time (like a Doctor Who finale has never been controversial before or since), but this scene was and still is regarded as a highlight.

The Brig's legacy would continue the next year, with 2013's The Power of Three re-introducing UNIT for the first time since 2008, led by one Kate Stewart - the Brig's daughter, first invented for one of those 90's fan productions, who would go on to become a regularly recurring character of her own for the 2010's/2020's, to the point where she's a main character in a spin-off that airs literally today. Her and her dad met on screen - or, at least, her and her dad's corpse turned into a Cyberman as part of the Master's-now-Missy's evil plan - in 2014's Death in Heaven and the Peter Capaldi Doctor Who would finally get a chance to salute his old friend. At the end of the episode, the Brigadier-Cyberman survived the explosion of all the other Cybermen, and flew off to adventures unknown. This was, uhhhh, somewhat less well received than the above tribute. Kate Stewart has now become Kate Lethbridge-Stewart as of David Tennant 2nd Doctor Who's episodes, and I guarantee you, the spin-off will have her reference her beloved dad who everyone lover taught her how to UNIT at least once. Probably more. Maybe they'll reference that one time he committed war crimes against a surrendering Silurian outpost

The last time we heard the Brigadier's voice was 2021's Survivor's of the Flux, detailing the creation of UNIT in the 60's (where the timeline gets even more screwed up, but who's counting at this point), in archive audio. The rank given for him is a little off, but he's still there, after 54 years. Not bad for a side character created for one episode to shoot at some robot yetis.

(I also haven't mentioned the novel series focusing on the Brig and his adventures with whatever old 60s/70's UNIT enemies they can get the rights to, and the child-focused spin-off of said novels that starring his grand-daughter (not Kate Stewart's daughter, that's different) that once did a book focusing on George Floyd's death. That's a whole mess.)

Two Robotech examples here. Both of these were one episode characters (who, spoiler alert for 40+ year old animation, die at the end of their respective episodes) but have had outsized influences.

Jonathan Wolfe(1) may in many ways be the Boba Fett of Robotech. His single episode appearance depicted him as a legendary war hero, albiet one who had fallen far. This led to the plan to include him in the main cast of Robotech II: The Sentinels, the failed sequel series; even then he at least appeared in the finished animation.

Beyond that he's appeared in numerous pieces of Robotech expanded universe media. Most notably, he was one of the protagonists of The Malcontent Uprisings, the first Robotech comic to be an entirely original story and not an adaptation. Since them he's made appearances in a lot of other pieces of Robotech secondary media. And to add to it, his son, Jonny Wolfe Jr was in one of the early drafts of what eventually became Shadow Chronicles(2).

The second is Dusty Ayres. He's a pretty cool character being a post-apocalyptic motorcycle-riding cowboy looking to avenge himself against those that left him for dead. What makes him stand out is his unique twist; Dusty was captured by the Invid(3) who replaced the right side of his body with cybernetic parts.

While Dusty's never received more development as a character, the concept has been expanded upon. The idea of the Invid experimenting on humans has reappeared in other sources, across comics, novels and even roleplaying games(4). It remains a present idea in the fiction, well out of proportion to its actual represnetation.

(1) The spelling of his name has changed numerous times, but "Wolfe" seems to be the generally accepted modern version.

(2) which reminds me of a Hobbydrama piece I totally will write one day

(3) Mysterious bug aliens who are experimenting with their own evolutionary processes

(4) To the point where Palladium made several stupidly overpowered and mechanically broken character classes around the concept

Does this count? Gene Parmesan from Arrested Development. I always remembered him as being a kind of recurring character, but he's in ONE episode of the original show. He's in I think 5 or 7 episodes of the two revival seasons so they expanded his importance obviously.

Also for the Oz books, Glinda too! Isn't she only in the last chapter? Her importance got beefed up so much that a lot of people don't even know there are four witches because Glinda stole the other one's role (which makes Glinda come off as even more of a bitch in the MGM movie - why didn't she just tell Dorothy how to go home right away?)

Hank Scorpio appeared in one episode of The Simpsons but you would never guess it from how much love he gets. I mean it was one hell of an episode to be fair (one of my favourites) but it was also 27 years ago. His legend lives on though.

In Pokemon Black & White, there's a Battle Subway where you can challenge a string of NPCs for points. Once you reach a certain streak, your next battle with be with one of the Subway Bosses, Ingo and Emmet. Despite being minor characters most players won't even encounter in their playthrough, the two were very popular in Japan, and 12 years later Ingo appears as a Warden in Legends Arceus, where he plays a much bigger role

The quintessential example for me is Kaworu from Neon Genesis Evangelion. He does have more of a presence in the Rebuild movies but in the show he's literally in a single episode. You could definitely come to the conclusion that he's like the 4th main teen in the show from merch and such though.

Considering how much fanart she gets, I was shocked that Bridget appears in only two Guilty Gear games, with one of her appearances being DLC-exclusive. 

Reinhardt is a villain in Fire Emblem Thracia 776 (as far as I know, Jugdral is the one continent I have not personally interacted much with except in Fire Emblem heroes) that appears in a few chapters and then dies or is captured by the player. I'm summarizing his role in 776 as I type this.

Enter Fire Emblem Heroes, roughly 8 years ago, a gacha game that features both old and brand new for the game characters for the player to collect and fight with. Up to you how you view the state of the game. One of the early releases in heroes was, Reinhardt, and he became an international sensation due to how powerful he was and how VERY little could take a hit from him during that time. Since his release, he received three other versions which wasn't really expected for a character that placed 584 of the series' most popular characters in CYL, a yearly vote for FEH to add the 4 most popular characters (2 male and 2 female, winners are removed from the poll) to the game as Brave units, compared to series juggernauts like Lyn (CYL1 winner), Camilla (CYL 3 winner), Hector (CYL 2 winner) and others. Granted his 4th version was a more recent and the time span between the seasonal dancer alt (3rd) and rearmed (4th) was several years, he still exploded in popularity those first few years even among Thracia units, who are largely unknown to the English speaking Fire Emblem community, but its been getting attention more recently, I assume the larger community (not just reddit) still don't know much about it aside from memes and FEH.

To this day, he continues to be strangely popular due to his Heroes debut/early game power, long term reliability (due to a very low rarity thus easy to merge) and frequently featured in memes, at the least on the subreddit, which I frequent. His place in CYL has dropped down to the mid 50s due to his alts, Three Houses dominating everything even now, frustration over character rosters remaining incomplete even as we've entered Book 10 and players dropping the game/voting due to getting who they've wanted in CYL, unhappiness with the state of the game, realizing that they no longer enjoy the game anymore or what other reason that they have, but he's never dropped below even 60th since pre-FEH release.

James Moriarty was my first thought. He's not too prominent in the original Holmes novels, certainly not as much as Watson. However, there's been a more sizeable emphasis placed on him in later, different Holmes iterations.

(My personal favourite iteration is his Ruler-class character from Fate/Grand Order, although of course Archer Moriarty is a total scene chewer.)

I forgot where I read about being an annoying character in a video game is worst than being a evil character in video game, but ngl most complaint about Jacinthe seems to embody this. That she is very annoyingly insistent and that bothers the player, her dynamic with Lebanne aside.

Granted, I hadn’t touched the games, so it’s mostly hearing on the periphery.

As much as I feel bad for Lebanne, toxic forcefem yuri is stronger. But seriously we need a guillotine Pokemon.

Jacine must be a drama magnet because when I saw the name I thought this was going to be a write up about the recent drama over if she's Black or Indian, and whether giving a character dark skin but "white/asian" facial features is proper Black representation. 

Jacinthe has a great design, theme, and was great fun for the story.

But we are in Pokémon Paris, someone needs to put that obscenely wealthy woman in a guillotine.

You know I never thought about Lebanne staying with Jacinthe because of her ego. That makes it a tad more palatable but really I just am happy to love to hate Jacinthe because of how pompous and dense she is.

Damn, I knew I should’ve put Sub Maid to Cotton Candy dom Fae lesbian forcefemme ship on my ZA bingo card.

It’s funny to hear that people have a problem with her, since my only exposure to the Pokemon fandom right now is Tumblr and the two of them seem to be extremely popular there for obvious reasons.

Jacinthe is a beautiful design with a great theme. One point of stupid drama that is reminiscent of Nessa are chuds mad she's dark skinned. Lots of coping that she "should've been white" and "fixed" edits. Luckily, sane people aren't taking the bait and continue to make amazing art of her.

My previous reply to your comment was a joke but it does occur to me that, given how riven with strife the Star Wars fandom is over literally everything else, I don't think I have ever come across anyone who's any kind of hardcore purist of in favour of whatever the most recent updated version is.

I mean, there are plenty of people who don't really care but I've never met anybody who insists that Greedo has to say "maclunkey" and if you like any earlier version better you're betraying George's Vision.

Now, I realise that for loads and loads of fans, especially younger fans, the ones that came out on Blu-Ray 10-15 years ago or the ones on Disney+ are the only versions they have seen. But that isn't what I mean; I am talking about people who do know every version, but insist the only "right" ones are the last ones Lucas went back to tinker with.

I'm sure they must exist, but I have never met one.

The stupidest saga in film preservation is finally coming to an end (well, probably, assuming this gets a home release). 100% merits a Hobby History going over the litany of controversial special edition changes and fan restorations like Harmy's Despecialized and 4K77

Though it's just a remaster, I think they should make it a priority to somehow edit the cantina scene even more.

remastering the release versions of the original Star Wars trilogy

"Kathleen 'Hitler' Kennedy betrays George's Vision (CGI Jabba) with remaster of original trilogy!" - YouTube (probably)

I've been following the leaks pretty closely for the last month ever since someone on Reddit posted them. I've also been looking at forums arguing back and forth whether or not the leaks were real or if it was an elaborate hoax since well the leaks looked convincing it just all sounded too good to be true. Especially with how these leaks were discovered, when someone found a Youtube channel uploading random Star Wars clips with notes of it coming of a new restoration of the original Star Wars trilogy.

It's nice to get some confirmation that this is in fact happening because if everything that has been leaked is 100% true and there is no funny business going on, they seem to be going all in on doing a proper authentic restoration of these films. No AI-nonsense or cleaning it up to a ludicrous degree like with the 2019 Disney+ remasters.

he was a Gary Stu who sucked all the life and competence of its female cast

I mean, yeah. He has to be bland, so that the male target audience can self insert, but he has to be a protagonist and thus is responsible for doing stuff, because you no one wants to think themselves as mob character #3.

a lot of LGBT fans got won over by Second Light and its anime entry Ray mostly lacked fanservice.

It's a really interesting feature of anime and anime-adjacent media in general that, because actual LGBT representation is scarce, LGBT fans make do with a lot of problematic media. In MLM cases, there's still a small explicitly aimed at gay men, gay comic scene, but there's virtually no WLW media explicitly aimed at lesbians. It's all either broad appealing stuff from magazines aimed at boys and girls (Sailor Moon, MariMite) or series specifically aimed at straight men (Maria Holic, Yuru Yuri famous for flipping the biggest Yuri magazine towards a male majority, ).

It's stuff like this that leads Steins;Gate Ruka to be a trans icon when the original isn't particularly explicit with their identity (the original anime more than the dub, the VN much more than either).

I used to read/watch harem series when I was younger and try to pretend the bland male MCs didn't exist. It's amazing how often people claim cardboard MCs are for self inserting, but they take me out because they usually have no agency or goals, not to mention you can never understand why all the girls are even into him. Also...I preferred shipping the girls with each other...

What really tickles my funny bone is that they could have removed the MC and made the story into a fluff piece that's there to sell you titties and coasted along comfortably at least for a year or two.Though rarer in gacha nowadays,they could have it both ways with the girls having queerbait moments in the main storyline and ML content being exclusive to bond stories. Love Live did it,for example.

Magical girl gachas still have a place in the market,both niche ecchi franchises(Yuki Yuuna is a Hero) and succesful yuri series(Madoka Magica) hag games that lasted years.Also Symphogear too I guess. No idea why that one lasted so long

Now, why did he go to space?

To escape Capitalism?

First: Huh??

Second: This has always bothered me, Liko does not sound like a name. Riko and Loy would've made more sense to me. And apparently Loy IS a name?!

side note: are the UK and US versions different or is Netflix just... randomly 11 episodes behind?

Ngl that really doesn’t sound that far fetched for pokemon, maybe I’m missing some context but I don’t understand why people would react so strongly to this.

I don't follow the anime, but that seems pretty cute and not too out of line with something like the Delta chapter of ORAS- which, I understand a lot of people didn't like, but still. The series isn't without its flights of fantastical.