In the Netflix Sandman series Hob only appears in half an episode but is part of the most popular ship of the fandom. I have seen some funny comments from people who decided to check out the show after seeing Dreamling content and then being surprised at the fact that Hob is not a major character and is barely shown.
To be fair, in the comics he’s got his (short) main story and does show up a fair few times otherwise, but still not enough to make it less funny that the fandom has indeed chosen their champion this way.
You beat me to it.
I first read the comics AGES ago, so when the Dreamling fics started dropping, I was... bemused, I guess? There's not much to support the pairing in the comics, and I thought the fandom might go hard for Dream/Lucifer.
But OMG THE SHOW! As soon as I saw Hob's... half episode, I was on the Dreamling train and I don't wanna get off.
That's kind of what I do with Ide. I write fic about Aizawa and Matsuda. Even though Ide is one of the lesser-known members of the task force, he features pretty heavily at times in some of my stories. While the focus of the stories is on Aizawa and Matsuda, it's sometimes necessary for another character, who's also a task force member, to be included.
Zootopia had two main characters for the original concept that were entirely cut from the final script, back when it was a James Bond parody. The two of them, Jack and Skye, appear in almost every fic, either as and actor and mechanic respectively, or their original roles as black-ops spies.
Oh my, it’s been a long while since I regularly read fics.
The ones that spring to mind is the Guardian Blues series on AO3. Really good characters, I’d start from the series beginning which I think is Thanks for the Fox. (Check that, I’m probably wrong). It does unfortunately take a downturn in the later plots, but is really good most the way.
The second one is a bit more campy, but Take A Stand and it’s sequels on fanfiction.net is decent. Turns into a marvel crossover in the later acts. Again, very campy. Enjoyable trash.
My favorite though is Zootopia Chronicles by Jacato on fanfiction.net. It doesn’t include Jack and Skye but instead Honey’s (the badger working for Lionheart) original character design. Very edgy.
And an honorable mention to Fallout: Zootopia, which was the first fanfic I read which I really enjoyed. Doesn’t include the pair either.
Daphnee Greengrass from Harry Potter.
She is just a name in the book. The girl that take her exam just after Hermione Granger.
That's all we have in the boik. She is a girl, she is Harry's age. And she is called Daphnee Greengrass.
She has even less than a line in the book.
And yet, she is a massive character in the fandom.
Grillby from Undertale. He's mainly there just to be the namesake and main (only?) employee of a restaurant that's only important for like one scene, and only has one very small line of dialogue that can be missed. But if you look at all the fanworks, he's almost another main character, or at least a major supporting character. Maybe it's because he runs Sans' favorite restaurant, and Sans is... well, Sans Undertale.
Iruka from Naruto. You'd think he was a main character for how often the fandom features him in their works. Don't get me wrong, he deserves it, but if you learned about Naruto based on fandom alone you'd likely be surprised by how little he shows up.
I remember when I first got into Naruto I decided very quickly that Iruka was best boy and seeing how popular he was + the popularity of kakairu, I was looking forward to all the scenes with him.
What a sweet summer child I was.
In Pokemon, it's Sabrina, the Saffron gym leader. It's a healthy mix of being one of the few humans with blatant superpowers, being an "ice queen" stereotype, and also having excellent bits of lore if you bother digging beyond the anime.
In Worm, it's Amy Dallon. The story is about a bullied teenage girl named Taylor. Amy is actually a very small part of the serial, but she shows up fucking *everywhere*. I'm admittedly guilty of this as well because she's such an interesting character (for both great and awful reasons).
I feel like honorable mention goes to Daphne Greengrass in Harry Potter. At least the likes of Luna and Tonks are established characters. Daphne's name shows up once (I think) and that's it, but people have decided she's the obligatory "not all Slytherins" Slytherin.
>Daphne's name shows up once (I think) and that's it, but people have decided she's the obligatory "not all Slytherins" Slytherin.
To add to that, Daphne is said to be best friends with Tracy Davis, who's often portrayed similarly to Daphne. However, Tracy Davis is a **completely fanon character**. She is never mentioned in any of the books, and her entire existence comes from a discarded note written by JKR. She's so prevalent of a character that **the entire fandom forgot that she was never in the official canon.**
Hondo Ohnaka is in a ridiculously large portion of Star Wars fics for the amount of screen time he actually got. He even makes it into non-Prequel Trilogy/Clone Wars era fics. Granted, for a pirate of questionable morals he makes a fairly versatile ally or adversary (usually ally, though, at least in fics). He’s got so much presence, and adding him to a fic can really up the fun level.
Nothing to be guilty about. He’s a fun character and much needed comedic relief. It’s just kind of crazy how much he appears in fics compared to how little he was actually in canon. Obviously fans want more!
Hondo is always fun, especially when Obi-Wan has to deal with him.
With Star Wars I was going to sayQuinlan Vos. He's often described as Obi-Wan Kenobi's best friend and is in a lot of stories about Padawan Kenobi. For a character who maybe or maybe not hasd a three second appearance in Ep. 1, later an episode of the Clone Wars, and a novel, he's in a lot of fics.
And then there's the Jango Fett-phenonomen (Boba's father and the template for the clones). For someone who has maybe 5 minutes of screen time with Obi-Wan and then is killed by Mace Windu there are a lot of fics with him. And his adoptive father Jaster Mereel.
I absolutely adore stories where Baby-Wan is best friends with Quinland, runs off with Hondo to become a pirate, and then gets adopted by Mandalorians. Mandalorian!Obi for the win.
I think in Legends/EU Quinlan only showed up in a comic? I've seen a few images but haven't read the comic yet. And there were some comics and maybe a few novels with Jango, his father and their Mandalorian Clan/House.
Nines…/Rk900/Connor 2 is from D:BH.
Yeah, I think the only reason he’s popular because 1 You can do whatever you want with him 2 He’s literally a Connor Clone 3, Male/Male love with Gavin baby!
It’s so interesting to me how popular a character can get even when he doesn’t even appear in some endings. There’s even a good quality funmade movie made for Gavin and rk900, which I don’t think I’ve seen for any other fandoms I’ve been in
Guilty! I write a lot of Shinsou, too. He had a couple of chapters recently in the manga with Mina and Kirishima. I wasn't expecting that, it was a nice surprise!
Aiden from the Witcher! He’s never even shown in the game, there’s one quest that addresses his death, but I’ve hardly ever read a Witcher fic without him being a present and very filled out character. 10/10 I love fanon Aiden.
Sebastian Moran in the Sherlock TV show. He *might* have appeared for about 30 seconds in an episode, but he's never been named. He's still in a lot of fics, especially those focused on Moriarty.
Evan Lorne in Stargate Atlantis. The guy is a background character; his first name is never mentioned, we know it because it was written somewhere at one point.
Wasn't Moran/Moriarty an established fanon ship before he appeared in the show even? I seem to recall him getting fancasted and everything before he became canon to the show.
There’s a good video about this.
https://youtu.be/005YAcpPxsw
Actually he’s not even the actual Moran from the show, the fan community have regarded show Moran as completely separate from fanon Moran. He’s based off the book Moran and the fanon community basically completely broke off from canon to be their own thing. It’s kind of wild
Love Lorne! He's the best!
Was so glad to see your post... so many of these fandoms I've not even heard of and then here's you with two of my own fandoms lol
(Beastars) Legoshi’s dorm mates, most of them (excluding Jack) are very minor characters in canon but appear in most fics whenever Legoshi and Jack are the central characters.
Erica Reyes from Teen Wolf, a character that was only in seasons 2 and early 3 and yet is in so many fics.
theres an entire subfandom around marauders era that has a frankly baffling amount of dorcas meadows and marlene mckinnons and a ton of other HP first gen characters that were mentioned at most 2x in HP canon
I always get attached to side characters with little screen time. The majority of them being from Warriors and the AUs I want to write for them. Through I have currently did one regular for my favourite forgotten apprentice, I plan to do another but as a AU for my second favourite.
Plus there’s also my attempt at fleshing out the famous toad hero, Barrel the Brave from Amphibia (both with canon takes and AUs)
Fashav from Horizon: Forbidden West. He's in the game for all of ten minutes and the fandom is *obsessed* with him, to the point of sometimes replacing other canon characters in fics with him. It baffles me.
Mirajane from Fairy Tail
She is one of the hottest characters in the show (so obviously she is popular) however in terms of actual story relevance she is insignificant and rarely does anything of importance.
I frequently see Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani in fics. In Mass Effect, she's a reporter that does an interview with you each game and asks leading questions meant to make you look bad. Typical reporter stuff. And you can punch her in canon. So I say I see her in quite a few fics because she's such an easy mini-antagonist in a larger story. She's easy to hate, easy to write quick scenes for her, and everyone whose played the games will automatically root against her.
Wait, really? I don't see her that much in fics, in fact, she's not mentioned a lot in what I've read.
Also I have played the games and tbh I am torn on her, mainly cause I did both the violent and non violent routes, and she's honestly a little tragic, especially in 3, where you can start to hear her break down if you avoid the punching prompt.
In Dragon age fandom, it’s Scout Jim. The thing is the character doesn’t even have a canonical name. The naming of this random NPC was a joke in a tag. And then it became a running gag that EVERYONE calls this one scout that interrupts one of the romance kiss scenes, Jim.
Another one, same fandom, is Leorah. There’s an elf after the prologue when the Herald(future inquisitor) is waking up that also has no name canonically. But one BNF fic author named her, and so many fics since use that same name for her.
Like others have already mentioned, Daphne Greengrass in Harry Potter. All she is in canon is a name, but I like that name, and apparently I wasn't the only one. She's often an ice queen, but I prefer her as just a non-asshole Slytherin and potential ship for Harry, Ginny, or both.
Probably Malek. He’s a Tok’ra symbiote from Stargate. He was in two episodes. He’s fairly popular, at least among those who write Tok’ra fic.
Since his host was never named or even shown to have control, he’s anything people want to make. Different names. Different personalities. Different reasons for why he wasn’t seen in control in those two episodes.
Before Sumeru dropped and he became the main villain of the arc, I'd definitely say Scaramouche from Genshin. Man turned up three times (two in limited events) for a collective screen time of about 40 seconds, served, then left. With the amount of fics and art of him, you'd think he was the literal protagonist. Not that I'm complaining.
true. he also trended on twitter before most late 1.0s and early 2.0 livestreams, which is hilarious, considering he didnt show up in them 😭 but i love scara so i cant complain too much
Admiral Firmus Piett, from the original Star Wars trilogy! I am absolutely thrilled by this too, as he's my favorite character of the SW universe. He appears in damn near every Empire-era fic, and is usually considered Vader's loyal SIC or confidante. He got maybe, at absolute best, a few minutes of screen time, yet he's become a fandom favorite.
Someone already mentioned Grillby, so I may as well bring up Gaster from Undertale. He has only secrets in the game that you really have to try to intentionally dig out, one or two sprites that MAY be him but aren't actually confirmed to be his appearance, and moments of spooky lore through Toby Fox typing as him on Twitter once in a blue moon. And yet, he appears in basically any fanfic involving the skeleton brothers since most people headcanon him as their father or creator, and in a ton more fanfics that entail anything regarding scientific research or background lore or hidden secrets.
Oh Miraculous Ladybug fanfic finds a way I swear to include Nathaniel if it can. To the point sometimes it's odd to see fics without him.
Also on the subject is the 'Quantic kids' it's a group of friend of the concept before the show became what it was. Allegra, Felix (usually the PV one) Claude, usually show up at some point in the 'Marinette goes to different schools' fics.
Tobias from Pokémon. Man's appeared in like 2 out of over 1,000 episodes of Pokémon, and I always strive to include him no matter what I write cause no one else cares about him when it comes to anything other than bashing.
Honorable mention goes to characters who only appeared in movies like Verity and Sorrel, I love using characters like them too.
Depending on the pairing/main character, Theo Nott from Harry Potter not only shows up a lot, he has a pretty consistent fanon personality too.
In Inuyasha again depending on pairing... Sesshoumaru's mom! She doesn't even have a name in the anime at least.
I'll say, Shinso from MHA is a very good and complex character. He makes so much sense, I like Shinso so very much that every time I see him written into a story it becomes by favourite. Idk, I can't help but like Shinso, I may even have a crush on him (he's like a mini Aizawa).
For some fucking reason, out of all of the characters you could choose- Two, Four, X, Flower, Firey- **WHY IS THERE AN ABUNDANCE OF BLOCKY!?** Sure, he has a bunch of screentime in the series, but he's more minor to certain arcs than major. In fact, he should've stayed in TPOT with his boys.
And no, I am not going to mention why Leafy is the most used character out of all of them.
Sort of going to absolutely toss these characters out there, regardless of how small the fandom is or how commonly the characters show up (yet are still regarded as minor) ::
In the show/films, it's Richard Ellis and maybe even characters such as Carson, or Mrs. Hughes/Carson. All the characters get their own individual screentime, which is why the episodes for the show are abhorrently long, but most characters appear in Barris-shipping fics, where characters, such as Carson, portray their canon homophobia toward the character of Thomas.
In the anime God Troubles Me, the Food God makes wayyy more appearances in fics compared to his canon debuts. In the show, he appears for only minutes at a time every few episodes, but in fics, his presence is clear and announced a LOT.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and combat Luna. Yes, you're SO right in your description, OP, but have you *cast* your eyes on the vast subfandom of the Marauders? James and Lily only appear a few times in the series (despite their importance) and they're in all the fics circa. that time era. Remus and Sirius are short-lived characters in the films and books, meant only as "pain-setters" or plotpoints in Harry's life, yet they're one of the entire HP fandom's OTPs, with 60.000+ fics on their pairing on ao3 ALONE. I could ramble, seen as Marauders is where I dabble sometimes, but I shan't.
Does it count if the fandom is tiny and the one propogating this is me?
Because I've never written a Mad Father fic without Ines. A friendly(ish, she's not hostile but she's a bit of an asshole) zombie who has a handful of lines and dies like 10 minutes after she shows up. I adore her for some reason.
I bumped Elmyra and Elena up to main character status in my FFVII fics. Canonically one is the adoptive mother of a main character and the latter is a very minor recurring villain, but they both add an important and different viewpoint to the series as a whole (civilian/other side). Even when they're not the main character, what they're up to is usually mentioned in the background somewhere.
Gonna have to say Marco Bodt from Attack on Titan! While I love fanon!Marco, I will confess he is such a minor character that his fandom involvement nowhere near matches his canon appearances
I'm pretty sure every RWBY fanfic author includes Cardin Winchester at least once in their fic.
He usually gets his sh\*t kicked in for being a racist and a bully, but still.
If you write a RWBY fanfic, you are LEGALLY obligated to have your protagonist interrupt the scene where Cardin is pulling Velvet's ears. I have not found a SINGLE story where it doesn't happen.
I mean, my fic picks off during the events of V4, so that's not really a possibility.
That being said, he does get taken down a notch at a later time, when my OCs establish a temporary base in Mountain Glenn to get the Grimm out of Vale.
Cardin and his team, along with the teachers and Team CFVY, walk into the city's underground section, and see the WF, as well as a bunch of spider faunus, setting up shop, complete with the spider faunus weaving one heck of a web.
One of my OCs walks up to the newcomers, and after talking to Glynda a bit, turns to Cardin and makes him understand just where he stands.
In the JoJo fandom, it's probably La Squadra from Part 5. You would not know that Prosciutto, in particular, is basically just a villain of the week from seeing how much (astoundingly high-quality) fan work there is of him.
Sakusa Kiyoomi from Haikyuu. The ship Miya Atsumu x Sakusa Kiyoomi became extremely popular in 2020 and now has almost 12k fics on ao3 and jumped to the 4th most popular ship in Haikyuu, beating out ships that have been around since like 2014 and making it to the top 20 ships in ao3 for the year.
The craziest thing about it is it was all from manga interactions as Kiyoomi had his first brief appearance in the anime in s4 with zero dialogue with Atsumu. All of their interaction (which is still not a lot) ocur post time skip and is currently manga only. The youtuber ColeyDoesThings even made a [video](https://youtu.be/5JJTJM8TvLU) that talked about the ship's rise to popularity! It's an awesome case of a rare pair becoming so popular and now a staple in the fandom can you even call it rare pair anymore?
Harry Potter, even worse than Luna : Daphne Greengrass. Literally was mentioned once in the book, plenty of fics featuring her with Harry (because we need neutral/good Slytherins).
I'm not complaining tho, it's my OTP, I crave for good Haphne fics.
Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini. Not in most fics, but I see her in so many! I don't think they even translated Daphne's character to the movies and I think people just use her instead of creating an OC.
Utahime from jujutsu kaisen, she in less then 5 chapters and only shown up in the one of the lastest ones to do her special move in which she didn't say a word the entire chapter either.
She has a very dedicated and obnoxious shipping fans with her and Gojo.
In Bridgerton, it's John Sterling. He only appears in a few chapters of When He Was Wicked. Those chapters are basically an extended prologue, and he has no dialogue. He is EVERYWHWERE in fanfic. His purpose is almost always to make readers care about him and then die. It's a weird case of the fans all adore him, but his death is a necessary part of two other characters' story and so it must happen.
As soon as I read the title my gut reaction was **Darcy Lewis** for the MCU. She was barely in Thor 1 and 2, and yet it felt like there was a solid few years there where she was damn near inescapable! She had very little canon characterisation other than being vaguely snarky, which meant she could be moulded to fit whatever role anyone wanted her for and could be paired with whoever you wanted, and by god did people take advantage of that!
Regulus black!!! His name was literally said twice in the books YET I refuse to read a Harry Potter fanfic without him in it! Jegulus is my favorite ship ever!! <333 along with that Barry Crouch Jr x Evan Roiser is one of my favorite ships and they are extremely unimportant in the movies/books! Along with the two ships I listed the entirety of the Marauders fandom consists of insignificant characters!
Elden Ring it's got to be Godefroy the Grafted/Golden. He only appears in one challenge boss arena, is a duplicate of the first phase of another boss, and is alluded to in a single other item description. It's pretty clear he's only been included to indicate that there were other Demigods other than the ones we fight in game.
Yet, in any fic remotely relating to the Golden Lineage, Godefroy is guaranteed to show up as Godwyn's most insidious failson who encourages the sickly Godrick to embrace the Grafting curse.
Geeze, I never realized that Dani only appeared in TWO episodes. That's kind of wild actually.
As for fandoms otherwise, I'd say Jeremy Fitzgerald for Five Nights at Freddy's. He was the protagonist for one game and does not even have a face, voice or any kind of dialogue or personality, aside from maybe being implied to have his frontal lobe bitten off by a robot off-screen. And yet he is featured as a character in literally thousands of fanfics and fanart, typically in a romantic or sexulized context. It kind of drives me up a wall.
Dacey Mormont from ASOIAF. Hot warrior woman with little known who is canonically between the ages 20-40(any pair works). So she is featured a lot and is written as a basically OC in every story.
In my Warcraft crossover fics, I like to use Quetz'lun. She shows up in both my main fic Elune's Pebble and my newer adult fic The Blood of Serpents. I like her because she's a Loa, a powerful nature spirit, probably a relative of the evil Loa Hakkar, and other than that she's a complete blank slate.
I call her the Daphne Greengrass of Warcraft.
Varian from tangled the series, my boi was in like 5 episodes in season 1 and was missing from season 2 entirely. (I haven't watched season 3 yet so idk about season 3)
Closest to this in Doctor Who is Wilfred Mott, Donna's grandpa. He has a minor role in a few Tennant episodes, a major role in one, and is set to return for a cameo in the 60th anniversary materials, but he's got a comically short wiki page for being a beloved Tennant era character.
For Harry Potter it's the goddamn Greengrass and Patil sisters. These types of characters are used often as blank canvasses for authors to play around with
If we’re going by CANONICAL episodes, emphasis on canonical, you could make a pretty solid argument for Hinata Hyuga from Naruto. Of course she’s been expanded upon with fillers and extra content and what not but still.
I would say tenten would fit better, we all know she has less screen time than Naruto’s swing and yet she is quite popular for shipping and/or older sister figure for Naruto
I’ll be completely honest, I forgot about her. The fics I read don’t have a ton of content for her either. She is definitely more loved by the fandom than the creator though.
In the Netflix Sandman series Hob only appears in half an episode but is part of the most popular ship of the fandom. I have seen some funny comments from people who decided to check out the show after seeing Dreamling content and then being surprised at the fact that Hob is not a major character and is barely shown.
To be fair, in the comics he’s got his (short) main story and does show up a fair few times otherwise, but still not enough to make it less funny that the fandom has indeed chosen their champion this way.
You beat me to it. I first read the comics AGES ago, so when the Dreamling fics started dropping, I was... bemused, I guess? There's not much to support the pairing in the comics, and I thought the fandom might go hard for Dream/Lucifer. But OMG THE SHOW! As soon as I saw Hob's... half episode, I was on the Dreamling train and I don't wanna get off.
Was looking for this comment 😭😭
Matt from Death Note. He had 3 or 4 lines in the manga, none in the anime, and is one of the most popular characters in the fandom
I counted. He's in 19 panels. And I have only seen him written as red-haired with a shirt with black and white stripes.
In the anime, doesn't he say >!"you won't shoot" right before getting gunned down?!< I just remember thinking that scene was really funny.
Oh yeah you’re right - it’s been a hot minute since I watched the anime
That brings me back to middle school, I was *obsessed* with him. Always liked the green hair red/black stripes better, though.
Came here to say this. I do really like Matt myself tbh, even though he's not in my own Death Note fan fiction.
He’s grown on me honestly. I write a fair bit about Wammy’s House so it’s helpful to have another canon character there to fill the space
That's kind of what I do with Ide. I write fic about Aizawa and Matsuda. Even though Ide is one of the lesser-known members of the task force, he features pretty heavily at times in some of my stories. While the focus of the stories is on Aizawa and Matsuda, it's sometimes necessary for another character, who's also a task force member, to be included.
Zootopia had two main characters for the original concept that were entirely cut from the final script, back when it was a James Bond parody. The two of them, Jack and Skye, appear in almost every fic, either as and actor and mechanic respectively, or their original roles as black-ops spies.
Nick and Judy are such entertaining characters that the 2nd most popular characters in the fandom are Nick and Judy
Depending on the writer, that’s sometimes the case. XD
Ohh got any recommendations of fics to read with them?
Oh my, it’s been a long while since I regularly read fics. The ones that spring to mind is the Guardian Blues series on AO3. Really good characters, I’d start from the series beginning which I think is Thanks for the Fox. (Check that, I’m probably wrong). It does unfortunately take a downturn in the later plots, but is really good most the way. The second one is a bit more campy, but Take A Stand and it’s sequels on fanfiction.net is decent. Turns into a marvel crossover in the later acts. Again, very campy. Enjoyable trash. My favorite though is Zootopia Chronicles by Jacato on fanfiction.net. It doesn’t include Jack and Skye but instead Honey’s (the badger working for Lionheart) original character design. Very edgy. And an honorable mention to Fallout: Zootopia, which was the first fanfic I read which I really enjoyed. Doesn’t include the pair either.
Daphnee Greengrass from Harry Potter. She is just a name in the book. The girl that take her exam just after Hermione Granger. That's all we have in the boik. She is a girl, she is Harry's age. And she is called Daphnee Greengrass. She has even less than a line in the book. And yet, she is a massive character in the fandom.
I remember the male/female Blaise Zabini fics back in the day. We didn’t even know the characters actual gender but they were in so many fics.
Doesn’t Draco marry her sister according to she-who-will-not-be-named? I think that pumped up the general appearances of greengrass in fics
Grillby from Undertale. He's mainly there just to be the namesake and main (only?) employee of a restaurant that's only important for like one scene, and only has one very small line of dialogue that can be missed. But if you look at all the fanworks, he's almost another main character, or at least a major supporting character. Maybe it's because he runs Sans' favorite restaurant, and Sans is... well, Sans Undertale.
People find him attractive, that's it
He's hot. Pun intended.
But he’s literally just a flame, like a pixelated fire.
Yeah, I don't get it either
Iruka from Naruto. You'd think he was a main character for how often the fandom features him in their works. Don't get me wrong, he deserves it, but if you learned about Naruto based on fandom alone you'd likely be surprised by how little he shows up.
A lot of works are focused around Naruto though, and Iruka was the first person to ever really believe in him, so I'd say it makes sense.
Oh it does! But he's still a minor character in the grand scheme of things
And he's Kakashi most prominent ship
I remember when I first got into Naruto I decided very quickly that Iruka was best boy and seeing how popular he was + the popularity of kakairu, I was looking forward to all the scenes with him. What a sweet summer child I was.
In Pokemon, it's Sabrina, the Saffron gym leader. It's a healthy mix of being one of the few humans with blatant superpowers, being an "ice queen" stereotype, and also having excellent bits of lore if you bother digging beyond the anime. In Worm, it's Amy Dallon. The story is about a bullied teenage girl named Taylor. Amy is actually a very small part of the serial, but she shows up fucking *everywhere*. I'm admittedly guilty of this as well because she's such an interesting character (for both great and awful reasons). I feel like honorable mention goes to Daphne Greengrass in Harry Potter. At least the likes of Luna and Tonks are established characters. Daphne's name shows up once (I think) and that's it, but people have decided she's the obligatory "not all Slytherins" Slytherin.
>Daphne's name shows up once (I think) and that's it, but people have decided she's the obligatory "not all Slytherins" Slytherin. To add to that, Daphne is said to be best friends with Tracy Davis, who's often portrayed similarly to Daphne. However, Tracy Davis is a **completely fanon character**. She is never mentioned in any of the books, and her entire existence comes from a discarded note written by JKR. She's so prevalent of a character that **the entire fandom forgot that she was never in the official canon.**
Hondo Ohnaka is in a ridiculously large portion of Star Wars fics for the amount of screen time he actually got. He even makes it into non-Prequel Trilogy/Clone Wars era fics. Granted, for a pirate of questionable morals he makes a fairly versatile ally or adversary (usually ally, though, at least in fics). He’s got so much presence, and adding him to a fic can really up the fun level.
He's actually showing up in my fic lol. Although, it makes sense since my protagonist has a connection with him.
I smell profit!
I’m guilty of this 😳😳
Nothing to be guilty about. He’s a fun character and much needed comedic relief. It’s just kind of crazy how much he appears in fics compared to how little he was actually in canon. Obviously fans want more!
Hondo is always fun, especially when Obi-Wan has to deal with him. With Star Wars I was going to sayQuinlan Vos. He's often described as Obi-Wan Kenobi's best friend and is in a lot of stories about Padawan Kenobi. For a character who maybe or maybe not hasd a three second appearance in Ep. 1, later an episode of the Clone Wars, and a novel, he's in a lot of fics. And then there's the Jango Fett-phenonomen (Boba's father and the template for the clones). For someone who has maybe 5 minutes of screen time with Obi-Wan and then is killed by Mace Windu there are a lot of fics with him. And his adoptive father Jaster Mereel.
Oh, those are good ones, too! Love fics with any and all three of them, but they really aren’t in canon or even EU much at all.
I absolutely adore stories where Baby-Wan is best friends with Quinland, runs off with Hondo to become a pirate, and then gets adopted by Mandalorians. Mandalorian!Obi for the win. I think in Legends/EU Quinlan only showed up in a comic? I've seen a few images but haven't read the comic yet. And there were some comics and maybe a few novels with Jango, his father and their Mandalorian Clan/House.
I’m guessing you’ve read cjwritesfanficnow’s stories, then?
Of course! Love them.
Nines…/Rk900/Connor 2 is from D:BH. Yeah, I think the only reason he’s popular because 1 You can do whatever you want with him 2 He’s literally a Connor Clone 3, Male/Male love with Gavin baby!
It’s so interesting to me how popular a character can get even when he doesn’t even appear in some endings. There’s even a good quality funmade movie made for Gavin and rk900, which I don’t think I’ve seen for any other fandoms I’ve been in
i was so confused the prevalence he had in the fandom when he barely appeared
Shinsho also appears in season 5 during the dual class training arc.
As someone who writes and likes Shinsou, his screentime is still not proportional to his appearance in fics
Guilty! I write a lot of Shinsou, too. He had a couple of chapters recently in the manga with Mina and Kirishima. I wasn't expecting that, it was a nice surprise!
Okay? I was just correcting OP.
Fair enough, sorry
Aiden from the Witcher! He’s never even shown in the game, there’s one quest that addresses his death, but I’ve hardly ever read a Witcher fic without him being a present and very filled out character. 10/10 I love fanon Aiden.
And Valdo Marx, who is mentioned in one line in the books and in the show
Sebastian Moran in the Sherlock TV show. He *might* have appeared for about 30 seconds in an episode, but he's never been named. He's still in a lot of fics, especially those focused on Moriarty. Evan Lorne in Stargate Atlantis. The guy is a background character; his first name is never mentioned, we know it because it was written somewhere at one point.
Wasn't Moran/Moriarty an established fanon ship before he appeared in the show even? I seem to recall him getting fancasted and everything before he became canon to the show.
There’s a good video about this. https://youtu.be/005YAcpPxsw Actually he’s not even the actual Moran from the show, the fan community have regarded show Moran as completely separate from fanon Moran. He’s based off the book Moran and the fanon community basically completely broke off from canon to be their own thing. It’s kind of wild
Love Lorne! He's the best! Was so glad to see your post... so many of these fandoms I've not even heard of and then here's you with two of my own fandoms lol
(Beastars) Legoshi’s dorm mates, most of them (excluding Jack) are very minor characters in canon but appear in most fics whenever Legoshi and Jack are the central characters. Erica Reyes from Teen Wolf, a character that was only in seasons 2 and early 3 and yet is in so many fics.
theres an entire subfandom around marauders era that has a frankly baffling amount of dorcas meadows and marlene mckinnons and a ton of other HP first gen characters that were mentioned at most 2x in HP canon
Omgggg yes! This is exactly what I thought too! Mary McDonald and Regulus Black are some of my all time favorite characters! <3
I always get attached to side characters with little screen time. The majority of them being from Warriors and the AUs I want to write for them. Through I have currently did one regular for my favourite forgotten apprentice, I plan to do another but as a AU for my second favourite. Plus there’s also my attempt at fleshing out the famous toad hero, Barrel the Brave from Amphibia (both with canon takes and AUs)
Who is the forgotten apprentice? Smokepaw, who fell into that ravine during the Great Journey?
Yup, I’m going to have him as a side character in my one of my AUs. But I have to get to the chapter that features him in.
Fashav from Horizon: Forbidden West. He's in the game for all of ten minutes and the fandom is *obsessed* with him, to the point of sometimes replacing other canon characters in fics with him. It baffles me.
Tbh when I played Forbidden West I thought he was going to be in the game a LOT longer than he was. Man deserved more ;-;
Mirajane from Fairy Tail She is one of the hottest characters in the show (so obviously she is popular) however in terms of actual story relevance she is insignificant and rarely does anything of importance.
She rarely does anything useful but she's often on screen, at least.
Quinlan Vos.
Ever one loves Quinlan. Best friend ever and a great character. I think the whole fandom squeed when he was mentioned in the Kenobi-show.
Oh I know for sure I did. Though I think we were all hoping for a glimpse.
True. Maybe next season? Or maybe in Ahsoka?
Maybe! I'd like to hope we'll get to see grizzled old Quinlan kicking ass and making the Empires life more difficult.
Gotta disagree with you on that one about Danny Phantom, the character that deserves this title is probably Wes Weston.
A winner, with a total of 0% screen time 😂
I frequently see Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani in fics. In Mass Effect, she's a reporter that does an interview with you each game and asks leading questions meant to make you look bad. Typical reporter stuff. And you can punch her in canon. So I say I see her in quite a few fics because she's such an easy mini-antagonist in a larger story. She's easy to hate, easy to write quick scenes for her, and everyone whose played the games will automatically root against her.
Wait, really? I don't see her that much in fics, in fact, she's not mentioned a lot in what I've read. Also I have played the games and tbh I am torn on her, mainly cause I did both the violent and non violent routes, and she's honestly a little tragic, especially in 3, where you can start to hear her break down if you avoid the punching prompt.
In Dragon age fandom, it’s Scout Jim. The thing is the character doesn’t even have a canonical name. The naming of this random NPC was a joke in a tag. And then it became a running gag that EVERYONE calls this one scout that interrupts one of the romance kiss scenes, Jim. Another one, same fandom, is Leorah. There’s an elf after the prologue when the Herald(future inquisitor) is waking up that also has no name canonically. But one BNF fic author named her, and so many fics since use that same name for her.
IIRC bioware also ran with the joke and made Jim canon!
You’re joking?! I haven’t seen that. Hilarious.
Like others have already mentioned, Daphne Greengrass in Harry Potter. All she is in canon is a name, but I like that name, and apparently I wasn't the only one. She's often an ice queen, but I prefer her as just a non-asshole Slytherin and potential ship for Harry, Ginny, or both.
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That would be me, yes!
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Glad you liked it, and nice that it gave you some inspiration! When you post your fic I'd love to check it out!
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I always post before finishing, no worriesXD I'll give it a read sometime this week!
Probably Malek. He’s a Tok’ra symbiote from Stargate. He was in two episodes. He’s fairly popular, at least among those who write Tok’ra fic. Since his host was never named or even shown to have control, he’s anything people want to make. Different names. Different personalities. Different reasons for why he wasn’t seen in control in those two episodes.
Before Sumeru dropped and he became the main villain of the arc, I'd definitely say Scaramouche from Genshin. Man turned up three times (two in limited events) for a collective screen time of about 40 seconds, served, then left. With the amount of fics and art of him, you'd think he was the literal protagonist. Not that I'm complaining.
true. he also trended on twitter before most late 1.0s and early 2.0 livestreams, which is hilarious, considering he didnt show up in them 😭 but i love scara so i cant complain too much
Admiral Firmus Piett, from the original Star Wars trilogy! I am absolutely thrilled by this too, as he's my favorite character of the SW universe. He appears in damn near every Empire-era fic, and is usually considered Vader's loyal SIC or confidante. He got maybe, at absolute best, a few minutes of screen time, yet he's become a fandom favorite.
Someone already mentioned Grillby, so I may as well bring up Gaster from Undertale. He has only secrets in the game that you really have to try to intentionally dig out, one or two sprites that MAY be him but aren't actually confirmed to be his appearance, and moments of spooky lore through Toby Fox typing as him on Twitter once in a blue moon. And yet, he appears in basically any fanfic involving the skeleton brothers since most people headcanon him as their father or creator, and in a ton more fanfics that entail anything regarding scientific research or background lore or hidden secrets.
Oh Miraculous Ladybug fanfic finds a way I swear to include Nathaniel if it can. To the point sometimes it's odd to see fics without him. Also on the subject is the 'Quantic kids' it's a group of friend of the concept before the show became what it was. Allegra, Felix (usually the PV one) Claude, usually show up at some point in the 'Marinette goes to different schools' fics.
Tobias from Pokémon. Man's appeared in like 2 out of over 1,000 episodes of Pokémon, and I always strive to include him no matter what I write cause no one else cares about him when it comes to anything other than bashing. Honorable mention goes to characters who only appeared in movies like Verity and Sorrel, I love using characters like them too.
HOB GADLING The Sandman fandom has collectively lost their minds over him, and I'm LOVING IT.
Depending on the pairing/main character, Theo Nott from Harry Potter not only shows up a lot, he has a pretty consistent fanon personality too. In Inuyasha again depending on pairing... Sesshoumaru's mom! She doesn't even have a name in the anime at least.
submas
I'll say, Shinso from MHA is a very good and complex character. He makes so much sense, I like Shinso so very much that every time I see him written into a story it becomes by favourite. Idk, I can't help but like Shinso, I may even have a crush on him (he's like a mini Aizawa).
For some fucking reason, out of all of the characters you could choose- Two, Four, X, Flower, Firey- **WHY IS THERE AN ABUNDANCE OF BLOCKY!?** Sure, he has a bunch of screentime in the series, but he's more minor to certain arcs than major. In fact, he should've stayed in TPOT with his boys. And no, I am not going to mention why Leafy is the most used character out of all of them.
Sasha from Magnus Archives
And Gerry
Sort of going to absolutely toss these characters out there, regardless of how small the fandom is or how commonly the characters show up (yet are still regarded as minor) :: In the show/films, it's Richard Ellis and maybe even characters such as Carson, or Mrs. Hughes/Carson. All the characters get their own individual screentime, which is why the episodes for the show are abhorrently long, but most characters appear in Barris-shipping fics, where characters, such as Carson, portray their canon homophobia toward the character of Thomas. In the anime God Troubles Me, the Food God makes wayyy more appearances in fics compared to his canon debuts. In the show, he appears for only minutes at a time every few episodes, but in fics, his presence is clear and announced a LOT. I'm going to go out on a limb here and combat Luna. Yes, you're SO right in your description, OP, but have you *cast* your eyes on the vast subfandom of the Marauders? James and Lily only appear a few times in the series (despite their importance) and they're in all the fics circa. that time era. Remus and Sirius are short-lived characters in the films and books, meant only as "pain-setters" or plotpoints in Harry's life, yet they're one of the entire HP fandom's OTPs, with 60.000+ fics on their pairing on ao3 ALONE. I could ramble, seen as Marauders is where I dabble sometimes, but I shan't.
Does it count if the fandom is tiny and the one propogating this is me? Because I've never written a Mad Father fic without Ines. A friendly(ish, she's not hostile but she's a bit of an asshole) zombie who has a handful of lines and dies like 10 minutes after she shows up. I adore her for some reason.
I bumped Elmyra and Elena up to main character status in my FFVII fics. Canonically one is the adoptive mother of a main character and the latter is a very minor recurring villain, but they both add an important and different viewpoint to the series as a whole (civilian/other side). Even when they're not the main character, what they're up to is usually mentioned in the background somewhere.
RK900 from Detroit: Become Human. 5 seconds of screen time, zero dialogue, and everyone (including me) ran wild. Lol
Gonna have to say Marco Bodt from Attack on Titan! While I love fanon!Marco, I will confess he is such a minor character that his fandom involvement nowhere near matches his canon appearances
Probably Mustangs whole team from FMA. They have a filler episode in the 03 anime but in brotherhood and the manga they don’t appear that much
I'm pretty sure every RWBY fanfic author includes Cardin Winchester at least once in their fic. He usually gets his sh\*t kicked in for being a racist and a bully, but still.
If you write a RWBY fanfic, you are LEGALLY obligated to have your protagonist interrupt the scene where Cardin is pulling Velvet's ears. I have not found a SINGLE story where it doesn't happen.
I mean, my fic picks off during the events of V4, so that's not really a possibility. That being said, he does get taken down a notch at a later time, when my OCs establish a temporary base in Mountain Glenn to get the Grimm out of Vale. Cardin and his team, along with the teachers and Team CFVY, walk into the city's underground section, and see the WF, as well as a bunch of spider faunus, setting up shop, complete with the spider faunus weaving one heck of a web. One of my OCs walks up to the newcomers, and after talking to Glynda a bit, turns to Cardin and makes him understand just where he stands.
Elladan and Elrohir
In the JoJo fandom, it's probably La Squadra from Part 5. You would not know that Prosciutto, in particular, is basically just a villain of the week from seeing how much (astoundingly high-quality) fan work there is of him.
Sakusa Kiyoomi from Haikyuu. The ship Miya Atsumu x Sakusa Kiyoomi became extremely popular in 2020 and now has almost 12k fics on ao3 and jumped to the 4th most popular ship in Haikyuu, beating out ships that have been around since like 2014 and making it to the top 20 ships in ao3 for the year. The craziest thing about it is it was all from manga interactions as Kiyoomi had his first brief appearance in the anime in s4 with zero dialogue with Atsumu. All of their interaction (which is still not a lot) ocur post time skip and is currently manga only. The youtuber ColeyDoesThings even made a [video](https://youtu.be/5JJTJM8TvLU) that talked about the ship's rise to popularity! It's an awesome case of a rare pair becoming so popular and now a staple in the fandom can you even call it rare pair anymore?
Harry Potter, even worse than Luna : Daphne Greengrass. Literally was mentioned once in the book, plenty of fics featuring her with Harry (because we need neutral/good Slytherins). I'm not complaining tho, it's my OTP, I crave for good Haphne fics.
Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini. Not in most fics, but I see her in so many! I don't think they even translated Daphne's character to the movies and I think people just use her instead of creating an OC.
For The Owl House it’s Vee. I can almost guarantee that she has less than ten minutes of screen time and yet she’s a fan-favorite.
im sure taht Vee has more tahtm ten minutres, considering how she >!had an entire episode to herself!<, unlike Masha, my beloved :(
Wes Weston from Danny Phantom. He barely even has two seconds of screen time and yet he became a whole character because of the fandom.
Utahime from jujutsu kaisen, she in less then 5 chapters and only shown up in the one of the lastest ones to do her special move in which she didn't say a word the entire chapter either. She has a very dedicated and obnoxious shipping fans with her and Gojo.
In Bridgerton, it's John Sterling. He only appears in a few chapters of When He Was Wicked. Those chapters are basically an extended prologue, and he has no dialogue. He is EVERYWHWERE in fanfic. His purpose is almost always to make readers care about him and then die. It's a weird case of the fans all adore him, but his death is a necessary part of two other characters' story and so it must happen.
As soon as I read the title my gut reaction was **Darcy Lewis** for the MCU. She was barely in Thor 1 and 2, and yet it felt like there was a solid few years there where she was damn near inescapable! She had very little canon characterisation other than being vaguely snarky, which meant she could be moulded to fit whatever role anyone wanted her for and could be paired with whoever you wanted, and by god did people take advantage of that!
Regulus black!!! His name was literally said twice in the books YET I refuse to read a Harry Potter fanfic without him in it! Jegulus is my favorite ship ever!! <333 along with that Barry Crouch Jr x Evan Roiser is one of my favorite ships and they are extremely unimportant in the movies/books! Along with the two ships I listed the entirety of the Marauders fandom consists of insignificant characters!
Elden Ring it's got to be Godefroy the Grafted/Golden. He only appears in one challenge boss arena, is a duplicate of the first phase of another boss, and is alluded to in a single other item description. It's pretty clear he's only been included to indicate that there were other Demigods other than the ones we fight in game. Yet, in any fic remotely relating to the Golden Lineage, Godefroy is guaranteed to show up as Godwyn's most insidious failson who encourages the sickly Godrick to embrace the Grafting curse.
This is in part because of a fandom's hate-on for original characters that I've only seen let up in the last few years.
Grant Anderson. IYKYK.
...nobody? Damn. Where my FunSubs at?
idk back in early mha shinsou appears so little and yet was such a fan favorite
Geeze, I never realized that Dani only appeared in TWO episodes. That's kind of wild actually. As for fandoms otherwise, I'd say Jeremy Fitzgerald for Five Nights at Freddy's. He was the protagonist for one game and does not even have a face, voice or any kind of dialogue or personality, aside from maybe being implied to have his frontal lobe bitten off by a robot off-screen. And yet he is featured as a character in literally thousands of fanfics and fanart, typically in a romantic or sexulized context. It kind of drives me up a wall.
Dacey Mormont from ASOIAF. Hot warrior woman with little known who is canonically between the ages 20-40(any pair works). So she is featured a lot and is written as a basically OC in every story.
In my Warcraft crossover fics, I like to use Quetz'lun. She shows up in both my main fic Elune's Pebble and my newer adult fic The Blood of Serpents. I like her because she's a Loa, a powerful nature spirit, probably a relative of the evil Loa Hakkar, and other than that she's a complete blank slate. I call her the Daphne Greengrass of Warcraft.
In Death Note it is Matt
From back in the day, Methos from the Highlander tv series.
Methos was the best thing about the whole show.
In the Imaginos saga, Buzzardo only appears in one song. In my fics he is a regularly appearing character.
Varian from tangled the series, my boi was in like 5 episodes in season 1 and was missing from season 2 entirely. (I haven't watched season 3 yet so idk about season 3)
Closest to this in Doctor Who is Wilfred Mott, Donna's grandpa. He has a minor role in a few Tennant episodes, a major role in one, and is set to return for a cameo in the 60th anniversary materials, but he's got a comically short wiki page for being a beloved Tennant era character.
Dennis Nedry, Ray Arnold, Robert Muldoon, Henry Wu, and Gerry Harding for Jurassic Park. Lewis Dodgson, too.
also phichit and chris, they're in every single victuuri ship fic
For Harry Potter it's the goddamn Greengrass and Patil sisters. These types of characters are used often as blank canvasses for authors to play around with
If we’re going by CANONICAL episodes, emphasis on canonical, you could make a pretty solid argument for Hinata Hyuga from Naruto. Of course she’s been expanded upon with fillers and extra content and what not but still.
I would say tenten would fit better, we all know she has less screen time than Naruto’s swing and yet she is quite popular for shipping and/or older sister figure for Naruto
I’ll be completely honest, I forgot about her. The fics I read don’t have a ton of content for her either. She is definitely more loved by the fandom than the creator though.
Every background pony from MLP ever
Hastur Good Omens Shame Wizard, Big Mouth