Important Characters That Didn't Get to Do Much

[Sniper Team 4]

Sakura from naruto,for crying out loud she's supposed to be the lead heroine in the show yet the only important thing she's done is help kill sasori of the red sand and that's it T_T

Yeah, she doesn't seem to get to do much now except heal people. Of course, this hopefully means that Hinata will be taking over as the lead female because she's been getting a lot of time in the current manga. She's certainly done, and doing, more for Naruto than Sakura has. Yay!

Exactly I mean Sakura manipulated, hurt and insulted Naruto while Hinata has supported Naruto and stood by him,I mean just look up Chapter 615 to see how far and how important Hinata has become,now if only Naruto would reply to her love confession >_<

You're the one with the Naruto avatar. Get on that, now!
I kind of took Naruto jumping down and holding Hinata's hand, telling her she's important, and helping her first out of EVERYONE on the battlefield as his way of replying to her confession. And all those things, to me, pointed to Naruto going, "You know, this could work..." But you're right. A straight up, "Hinata, we need to talk" moment (or better, a kiss!) would be greatly appreciated. For the longest time, my friend and I joked that the confession never happened, that Hinata just imagined it, because Naruto never acknowledges Hinata after that event. And then the war started and my friend and I went nuts.
Anyway, better stop, or we're going to completely derail this thread.

 

[Il_Exile_lI]

Benny was kind of a failure in all respects (including voice acting, even though I think the guy doing it was supposed to be a professional) in New Vegas.

The problem was that he was a professional ACTOR, not VOICE-ACTOR. Actors should leave voice-acting to the professionals. (It was Matthew Perry, AKA Chandler from Friends FYI).

OT: I'm going to go with Fink and Songbird from Bioshcok Infinite

Spoiler

I just felt like Fink would be Bioshock Infinite's equivalent to Sander Cohen, a guy who leads you through a certain area whom you get to know. Instead he's just a generic evil businessman, and is killed behind a glass window by Fitzroy. You have one fight with a bunch of regular enemies with him talking to you, but you never really get to meet him or see what he does. And as for Songbird, the trailers and promotional stuff were hyping him to be a massive part of the game, as big as Atlus or Ryan from Bioshock. Instead we just get a few scripted sequences, no boss-fight or any sort of big in-game encounter with him (massive missed opportunity) and they essentially make him a destroy button at the end. His death meant nothing to me, I was more interested in seeing how accurate they had made Rapture.

That's almost certainly because Ken Levine has a big problem with consistency between drafts. The plot of Infinite (and the original Bioshock for that matter) was revised over and over during development, which is why in the finished product most characters seem underdeveloped or irrelevant. Don't know if you ever saw the trailers, but basically none of the trailers apart from the most recent one actually represents the game that was released, with Elizabeth having completely different abilities, an important character named Saltonstall who never appeared in the game and a greater emphasis on the war with the Vox.

Spoiler

It's also why the multiverse stuff and ending was so confusing. Elizabeth was telekinetic well into development; the entire concept of the multiverse wasn't a part of the story until relatively late in development.

.

You're right about the plot of the game changing drastically over the course of development, but the multiverse stuff was always a major aspect of the game (it's in the title after all), and only the original gameplay demo from 2010 showed Elizabeth with telekinetic powers, all the ones after that only showed her interacting with tears (remember the dead horse?)

 

[knight steel]

Sakura from naruto,for crying out loud she's supposed to be the lead heroine in the show yet the only important thing she's done is help kill sasori of the red sand and that's it T_T

Yeah, she doesn't seem to get to do much now except heal people. Of course, this hopefully means that Hinata will be taking over as the lead female because she's been getting a lot of time in the current manga. She's certainly done, and doing, more for Naruto than Sakura has. Yay!

Exactly I mean Sakura manipulated, hurt and insulted Naruto while Hinata has supported Naruto and stood by him,I mean just look up Chapter 615 to see how far and how important Hinata has become,now if only Naruto would reply to her love confession >_<

You're the one with the Naruto avatar. Get on that, now!
I kind of took Naruto jumping down and holding Hinata's hand, telling her she's important, and helping her first out of EVERYONE on the battlefield as his way of replying to her confession. And all those things, to me, pointed to Naruto going, "You know, this could work..." But you're right. A straight up, "Hinata, we need to talk" moment (or better, a kiss!) would be greatly appreciated. For the longest time, my friend and I joked that the confession never happened, that Hinata just imagined it, because Naruto never acknowledges Hinata after that event. And then the war started and my friend and I went nuts.
Anyway, better stop, or we're going to completely derail this thread.

Unfortunately Kishi-sama doesn't answer my phone calls >_>
But yeah after the recent Chaps Naru-Hina is basically cannon ^_^
Now we should stop or this will become a Naruto thread
Although we could PM........

 

[Requia]

Half the characters in Game of Thrones. They get introduced, given a small backstory chekovs-gun style, and never mentioned again. It's like George R R Martin was just testing his random name generator the whole time.

It's so he can bring them back, make fans of the specific character happy, and then kill the character.

 

[Silvanus]

Half the characters in Game of Thrones. They get introduced, given a small backstory chekovs-gun style, and never mentioned again. It's like George R R Martin was just testing his random name generator the whole time.

Loads of such characters in the books, it seems to me. Oberyn Martell, Aeron Damphair, Arys Oakheart, & Aurane Waters to name four. Admittedly, Martin may bring such characters up again in a few hundred chapters' time

Spoiler

(as he did with Ser Barristan Selmy & Ser Beric Dondarrion)

I'm not complaining, though. Keeps me guessing.




In games, I'll go for Nolan Stross in Dead Space 2 (though he takes on a greater role in the films, you still expect him to play a far more important role in the game, with all the focus there is on him), Two-Face in Arkham City, Vizu and Nika in Guild Wars: Factions.

 

[cojo965]

Sakura from naruto,for crying out loud she's supposed to be the lead heroine in the show yet the only important thing she's done is help kill sasori of the red sand and that's it T_T

Yeah, she doesn't seem to get to do much now except heal people. Of course, this hopefully means that Hinata will be taking over as the lead female because she's been getting a lot of time in the current manga. She's certainly done, and doing, more for Naruto than Sakura has. Yay!

Exactly I mean Sakura manipulated, hurt and insulted Naruto while Hinata has supported Naruto and stood by him,I mean just look up Chapter 615 to see how far and how important Hinata has become,now if only Naruto would reply to her love confession >_<

You're the one with the Naruto avatar. Get on that, now!
I kind of took Naruto jumping down and holding Hinata's hand, telling her she's important, and helping her first out of EVERYONE on the battlefield as his way of replying to her confession. And all those things, to me, pointed to Naruto going, "You know, this could work..." But you're right. A straight up, "Hinata, we need to talk" moment (or better, a kiss!) would be greatly appreciated. For the longest time, my friend and I joked that the confession never happened, that Hinata just imagined it, because Naruto never acknowledges Hinata after that event. And then the war started and my friend and I went nuts.
Anyway, better stop, or we're going to completely derail this thread.

Too late

 

[hotsauceman]

Vaas from Farcry 3, He is ignored for entire sections of the games, when he does come up its very little.
I wanted to know more about him. Oh, and Dennis, HE Inks you up, gives you a gun and does nothing after that.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

OT: I'm going to go with Fink and Songbird from Bioshcok Infinite

I feel like Infinite lost out when it didn't have the intercom-thingy that Bioshock 1 had. It was more focused on developing Elizabeth and Hooker, and it kind of pushed every supporting character out.

Take Bioshock 1 with its intercoms. Remember how attached you got to Atlas? Or the mounting theme of megalomania in Andrew Ryan's quips? Or the regret in Tannebaum about the Little Sisters and her difficulty in Rapture? Or the coldness of Fontaine? Or the eccentric instability of Cohen? Or the perfectionist surgeon Steinman?

Well I do.

Spoiler: Infinite spoilers

But in Infinite, everyone just shows up and dies. Slate had some character, but he dies not (almost offscreen) not long after. Chen Lin says little despite the fuss that is made about him and completely goes on his way. Fitzroy shows up to send you away after twenty seconds, then shows up again to get killed. Comstock is seen twice outside of voxophones - once as a glimpse, the second when you murder him. Fink doesn't do anything but suddenly stop having influence after you resurrect Chen Lin and vanish.

And outside of voxophones, that's all they do. There's no bugging you about the futility of your job, or encouraging you to do dirty work, or going on weird rants that help portray the insanity of the world, or throwing in the occasional aid. They show up once, talk to you for maybe a minute, then reappear to die at another minute.

But with great exception to the Lutece twins. They spoke for themselves.

 

[soren7550]

Anko, Konan, and Mei in Naruto.

Anko is pretty much a really important person in Konoha, being one of the Chunin Exam head examiners, is very much trusted by the Hokages, and was once a subordinate of Orochimaru's, having been able to survive at least one of his experiments, and was (kinda) almost able to kill him. However, she was only around during the Chunin Exam arc (and even then her presence is sparse), and didn't show up again until a few hundred chapters later during the Fourth Shinobi World War, tracking down and doing battle with Kabuto (who's one of the two instigators of the war), she's promptly defeated and captured, using her to strengthen his own powers, and even being used to revive Orochimaru. She's then left in the cave and that's it. Her return role is very passive.

Konan was one of the founders of the Akatsuki, had a unique fighting style and power, and was probably the sole good person of the organization. She's shown to be very powerful, able to go toe-to-toe with Jiraiya... until he hits her with her pretty much only weakness, and she's out of the fight pretty quickly, leaving room for Pein to fight him instead. She then does about bugger all for the rest of the series (save for one bit, which I'll get to in a moment), even during the invasion of Konoha, she's just sits behind with Nagato and doesn't do anything. When she FINALLY gets to do something, she has a pretty epic battle with Tobi, but it's probably the shortest of the Akatsuki battles and she dies.

Mei is the Fifth Mizukage, is in possession of two rare and powerful abilities, and was able to take on Sasuke on her own for a time. However, of the five Kages, she's had the least development and page time, and outside of her battle with Sasuke, her abilities are almost never shown, not even when she's fighting with the other Kages against Madara!

This is what I hate about Kishimoto. He introduces these awesome female characters, and then goes nowhere and does nothing with them.

 

[Ljs1121]

Hannibal Lecter got about 16 minutes of screentime in Silence of the Lambs yet he's essentially synonymous with that movie.

To be fair, he did do some pretty cool stuff in those 16 minutes. It's just hard to believe that somebody gets so much acclaim for so little onscreen time.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

I've only read Dune so far but Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen didn't get to do a whole lot before being killed off despite being potentially very important to the plot and a damn sight more interesting than any of the Atreides featured so far.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I feel like Songbird didn't show up nearly as often as he should have in Bioshock Infinite.
Other than that, Boba Fett.
He has so much lore behind him that isn't shown in the movies. Granted, I don't know any of that lore but I'm aware that it exists.
So yeah, I'm saying Boba Fett is a badass but you wouldn't know that from watching the movies, or from a whole lot of other places for that matter.

 

[Casual Shinji]

More anime...

Totoro in My Neighbour Totoro. He's in the damned title and he only makes three appearances with about ten minutes of screen time, yet he's the best character... EVAR, to grace anime... >_> ...

More Totoro would've been overkill though. The whole point of the scenes with Totoro is that it feels special when he shows up, because he hardly ever does.

Kinda like Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.

 

[Zanderinfal]

Vaas from Far Cry 3 springs to mind. He only got 15 minutes of screen time in the actual game, despite his huge advertising before the release. Seems kind of odd, really. He was a massive character yet received very little time in the limelight. Disappointing.

 

[ABLb0y]

Naomi Misora from Death Note. Implied to be an important player in the plot, then BAM! Killed off about ten episodes in.

 

[Vausch]

What's a Chekov's Gun? I've heard of it but I've never heard the definition.

If a gun is on a wall, it must go off at some point. Basically everything in fiction must have a reason for existence. A Chekhov's Gun is an element that never realises its potential or is unutilised.

You got it backwards. Chekhov's Gun is an element that's established then IS used. It's an element of foreshadowing. What you're thinking is a Red Herring.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

What's a Chekov's Gun? I've heard of it but I've never heard the definition.

If a gun is on a wall, it must go off at some point. Basically everything in fiction must have a reason for existence. A Chekhov's Gun is an element that never realises its potential or is unutilised.

You got it backwards. Chekhov's Gun is an element that's established then IS used. It's an element of foreshadowing. What you're thinking is a Red Herring.

Well that's what I get for saying something from the top of my head when Google was a mere mouse click away. Excellent save, chap.

 

[bug_of_war]

OT: Legion in Mass Effect 2. Not that there's any real plot to speak of in ME2, but you'd think the implications of a Geth ally would be worth exploring a bit more. Instead he gets introduced near the end of the damn game.

Damn it, don't be that person. There was a plot, it was an easy to follow plot and it made sense and just because you didn't like it doesn't mean that the plot was non-existent...but yeah Legion needed more than just the last 3 missions.

OT: Most characters in Borderlands. I know they're just there to give side missions, but certain characters like Dr Zed, Marcus, Tiny Tina etc. just felt like they had so much more to give than what they did.

 

[Tom_green_day]

What's a Chekov's Gun? I've heard of it but I've never heard the definition.

It's a storytelling device- basically an object/person etc who is present at one point early on, and doesn't have much of an impact. Maybe part of the background set or something. Further on, however, it turns out that that person/object is in fact integral to the plot. It basically stops a deus ex machina (writer pulling event out of their arse, not thought of highly) being a deus ex machina.

I'm bad at explaining, this might do it better http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun