Demoted To Extra / The DCU

The DCU

Comic Books

Comic Books

• The Flash: Wally West started out as the original Kid Flash, before replacing Barry Allen as the Flash following Crisis on Infinite Earths. After that, Wally remained the main character in the Flash series until Infinite Crisis, when Bart Allen briefly took over the role for a year before Wally returned, at which point Wally took the series over again. Then Final Crisis brought Barry Allen Back from the Dead and he took the book back from Wally. And although they both remained active as the Flash, Wally only made two appearances in the series after that point and was effectively reduced to appearing in crowd shots, until DC launched New 52 and Wally was taken off the table, with his tenure as the Flash and Kid Flash completely retconned away, with Bart becoming the first Kid Flash. It took years before Wally was reintroduced, and the new version was so In Name Only that DC Rebirth eventually revealed him to be a cousin with the same first name.
• Reading Justice Society of America can be a bit jarring if you're a fan of Sandman Mystery Theatre. After the Golden Age Sandman spent years as the hero of his own cult classic series, he's reduced to a mere scene-filler in JSA and dies in the first issue of the Post-Crisis series.
• Superman:
  • It happens a lot to the Legion of Super-Heroes, given the sheer number of characters, frequent RetCons and all-out continuity reboots, generally convoluted continuity, and the fact that the team has been in existence since 1958, giving fans plenty of opportunity to start Running the Asylum. For example, Dyrk Magz aka Magno, spent all of ten issues as a member of the Legion before getting summarily depowered, was given just enough development to be interesting, and then mostly got relegated to the background before the 2001 Legion Worlds miniseries finally managed to abandon the character in a way that gave him no resolution but also left him in a position from which it would be hard to bring him back into play. And then the Legion's continuity was rebooted entirely a few years later anyhow.
  • The Legion was the cause of this for Superboy. They originally appeared as supporting characters in a 1958 Superboy story "The Legion of Super-Heroes!", then starting in 1962 they appeared as the backup feature in Adventure Comics where Superboy had been the star since 1946. Within a year they had taken over the comic, reducing Superboy to the back up in what had been his title, and not long after solo Superboy stories stopped appearing altogether (though he continued to appear as a member of the Legion.) A decade later they repeated the feat when they started appearing in Superboy (1949) as a backup feature, which was renamed Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and eventually just Legion Of Super Heroes 1980 as they again took over the comic and Superboy got Put on a Bus.
  • If you are a Superman secondary character and your name isn't Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Kara Zor-El, Krypto the Superdog or Lana Lang, you're out of luck. After a few years you'll be relegated to background or Comic-Book Limbo, no matter how prominent you might have been. And not even Superman's cousin, dog and childhood sweetheart are absolutely safe.
  • In the 60's, Kara Zor-El was treated as a prominent member of Superman's core cast, had her own backup strip, her own supporting cast and made frequent appearances across all books of the line. Then she was gradually pushed to the background during The Bronze Age of Comic Books and eventually killed off. She wouldn't be brought back until 18 years later in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), after half dozen of failed attempts to replace her with non-Kryptonian Supergirls.
  • Krypto was gradually phased out during the Bronze Age until disappearing altogether and getting killed off in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?. Leaving aside random cameos, Superman's trusty dog wouldn't be seen again until 2000 story arc "Return to Krypton", 14 years later.
  • Pre-Crisis Van-Zee "Nightwing" and his partner Ak-Var "Flamebird" were the Kryptonian equivalent to "Batman and Robin". They even had their own feature in the Superman Family magazine. They were limboed by Crisis on Infinite Earths and the 1986 reboot, and they haven't been seen since then.
  • Catherine Grant was a very prominent Daily Planet staff member from 1987 to 1993. Following her son's murder, she was put on a bus from which she didn't return until 2008 storyline Superman: Brainiac.
  • In Superman: Space Age, the main five Justice League members all get some highlights and character moments except for poor Aquaman, who isn't even seen participating in the final battle.
• The original Titans West from the '70s Teen Titans vanished when it came time for the New Teen Titans series, due to Marv Wolfman considering all of the characters (except Lilith and Beast Boy/Changeling) to be lame. Bumblebee and Mal Duncan (who were part of the original East Coast team towards the end of the '70s) were also Put on a Bus, and Duela Dent showed up once as a fat phony who revealed that she had lied about her origin of being Two-Face's daughter. After the Crisis, Wolfman seized the opportunity to retcon Bumblebee and Mal (now called "Herald") as having been part of Titans West, and attempted to erase Duela from continuity completely. Caveman G'narrk (who died in a Bus Crash Pre-Crisis) became a case of Death by Origin Story, while Bat-Girl (retconned to Flamebird) and Golden Eagle became even more shallow "joke" characters stuck in a rut of Can't Catch Up.
  • The earlier Titans all became demoted when it was time for Dan Jurgens' version of the Titans, partly due to Executive Meddling. Jurgens had originally planned to use Nightwing and the JSA member Wildcat as mentors for the team, but had to make do with using the de-aged Ray Palmer instead.
  • Characters like the second Wonder Girl suffered this in the change from Young Justice to the third volume of Teen Titans, as Geoff Johns decided to pay more attention to Robin and Superboy. After One Year Later, the focus then became Robin and Wonder Girl, which continued into Sean McKeever's run.
• Wonder Woman hasn't been able to keep a stable supporting cast together in decades.
  • In the Post-Crisis continuity Doctor Cyber went from major Bronze Age villain to a minor antagonist.
  • Pre-Crisis Gundra was a major enemy of the 1940s Wonder Woman. Post-Crisis she's appeared only once in the modern era, as part of Circe's vast collective of Wonder Woman villains.
  • Originally Aphrodite was the Amazon's Big Good and remained key to Wonder Woman's "birth" and the Amazon's protection, secrecy, creation and island home throughout subsequent retcons and Crises until the New 52 where she gets about five words to say in Wonder Woman (2011) no characterization and is essentially a disinterested background character who shows up in group shots of Olympians.
  • The The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) borrows most heavily from the Post-Crisis books for the history of their Amazons and Olympians, however Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter, Hestia and Hermes—the Olympian patrons who were responsible for the creation and protection of the Amazons and their island in that version—are left as background characters with no lines at best, with several of them not appearing at all since the Olympian focus is on the conflict between Ares and Zeus.
• Lots of Golden Age characters in The DCU have been relegated to the team's reserves. It's hard to imagine that the Red Bee once had his own backup series. Lampshaded in James Robinson's Starman, where the Red Bee is seriously off during a Thanksgiving with dead superheroes.

Films

Films

• Commissioner Gordon (played by Pat Hingle) in the Batman Film Series. He's the most competent non-costumed character in the first film, is barely in the second film, shows up in his pajamas in the third, and then is completely humiliated in the fourth (and yes, it was part of a major plot thread, but that's still no excuse).
• Combined with Decomposite Character, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight sees Jacob Packer, Bruce's Honorary Uncle in Gotham by Gaslight, reduced to a mere cameo as Bruce's lawyer and Commissioner Gordon take his role as Jack the Ripper.
• In the original comic version of Batman: Hush, a reformed Harvey Dent/Two-Face was a key player in the arc. The animated version sees Two-Face in a montage of Batman and Catwoman working together and that's it.
• Superman's best friend Jimmy Olsen is a minor character in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, being a CIA mole who's covering as a reporter with no real ties to him or Lois Lane before suffering Death by Adaptation. He's never even referred to by name, only confirmed to be Olsen through Word of God.
• Talia al Ghul is the Big Bad of Batman and Son in the comics, but her movie role in Son of Batman is quite smaller. Much of her original role is given to Deathstroke in the film.
• While not big players in Public Enemies (2004), Lois Lane, Starfire, and Katana did have lines. In its animated adaptation, they do appear, but don't speak, with Lois Lane only appearing in the end. It's especially notable in Katana's case since in the comic, she was allied with Superman, Batman, and Power Girl.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Crane goes from a major antagonist to a One-Scene Wonder between the first, second, and third films.
  • Alfred has very little screen time in The Dark Knight Rises. Though he does at least make the most of what he has, providing his usual insight, wisdom, and poignancy.
• Justice League: The New Frontier, the animated film adaptation of DC: The New Frontier, reduces the roles of several characters from the original comic to brief cameos or mentions, the most notable examples being the Justice Society (who are only briefly shown in the title sequence and mentioned by Superman), the Losers (who have their story from the beginning of the first issue omitted and are only shown briefly in a montage of imagery later in the film) and Thomas Kalmaku (who appears for a split-second as opposed to calling out Hal Jordan for calling him "Pieface").
• Lois Lane, usually a major character in Superman stories, plays a surprisingly small role in Superman III. She shows up in the beginning, says she's going to Bermuda and disappears for most of the movie. Then she comes back before the movie's over as if nothing happened! This was largely done in retaliation after Margot Kidder criticized the producers for their decision to dismiss director Richard Donner from the franchise. It's a testament to how iconic the Superman mythos is in general, and Lois Lane in particular, that it wasn't worse.
• Not to the extent that she was in Superman III, but Lois Lane still spends much of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace sidelined in favor of Lacy. However, this time round she does at least have a few important bits, most notably where she gives Superman back his cape, which had wound up at the Daily Planet after Mr. Warfield tried to use it for a cheap headline after Superman's defeat.
• In Superman Returns, rising star Kal Penn plays Stanford, one of Luthor's Mooks, and among them gets the lion's share of close-ups, but almost none of his lines whatsoever made it to final cut.
• Captain Metropolis in Watchmen. In the book, he's a hopelessly naive superhero who forms the Crimebusters in the 1960s and tries to convince them that they can solve all of the world's problems. In the movie, Ozymandias forms the team (re-named "The Watchmen"). Metropolis becomes an unspeaking character who briefly appears in a flashback.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor (Jr.) during the last leg of the CBS era, where he was made Diana's boss instead of field partner.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• The Batman: Virtually every villain (except for Joker, Penguin, and Hugo Strange) got hit with this in later seasons - some (like Killer Croc) being reduced to bit players right after their debut episodes. In "Rumors", the new Villain of the Week even captures the entire rogues gallery without much trouble, and when they later escape and attack Batman and Robin en masse, all of them are taken out in a matter of minutes.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series
    • The Riddler rarely appears, but what episodes he did get are generally agreed to put a refreshing spin on the character. When the sequel series The New Batman Adventures rolled over, however, ol' Eddie got the shaft, despite getting a new character design more faithful to Frank Gorshin's take on the character. You know things are bad when the new Riddler's biggest role was in a Superman episode. Paul Dini admitted in the "Art of..." book that they didn't use the Riddler often because his gimmick of using riddles was hard to pull off in an action cartoon like theirs. He did get to shine in The Batman Adventures, set in the same universe.
    • Summer Gleeson (Vicki Vale in everything but name) appears in a pretty large number of episodes in the first two seasons, as well as the Mask of the Phantasm and SubZero movies. In the show's final season, The New Batman Adventures, she makes only two appearances, one of which is a non-speaking cameo.
    • Dick Grayson as Nightwing only makes seven appearances in all of The New Batman Adventures, and only has a prominent role in three episodes ("You Scratch My Back", "Animal Act", and "Old Wounds").
  • Batman Beyond:
    • Dana Tan in the second and third seasons, with the introduction of Max. Went from being Terry's main "normal person" confidante and having a scene in almost every episode to mostly being a background presence who got tossed a few lines every now and then, except for the one episode where she got to be a Damsel in Distress. Notably, she was (and remained) the Official Love Interest.
    • Terry's little brother and mother, Matt and Mary McGinnis, while not as prominent as Dana, also had less and less screentime as the series continued.
  • Justice League Unlimited:
    • The Big 7 in some extent suffers of this in the last season. Despite being the main characters, they only appear in less than half of the final thirteen episodes, with some episodes ("Patriot Act," "Grudge Match" and "Alive!") focusing on recurring characters instead.
    • Aquaman himself counts. Despite being one of the founding members of the League in the comics, he was replaced by Hawkgirl in the show. He appeared only sporadically, but this gave writers a way to logically work him into plots without running into the This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman stigma. Then he outright vanished during the last season of Unlimited, thanks to his rights being tied up in a potential live-action series.
    • This befell Hal Jordan, too. In the comics, outside of a period mid-1990s to mid 2000s and some other brief periods, he's the main Green Lantern. Here, he's mostly limited to a few cameos with his major roles going to either Kyle Rayner (his origin in getting the ring from a dying Abin Sur) or John Stewart (helping found the Justice League and getting Sinestro booted from the GLC, with the resultant personal enmity between the two).
• Despite being a member of Titans East in Teen Titans (2003), Bumblebee is all but ignored in Teen Titans Go!. She didn't even appear until several years into the show (and in a non-speaking role at that).
• Frieda in Static Shock, especially in comparison to her role in the comic series. She starts the show as Virgil's primary love interest, and is actually the first "civilian" to speak to Static, but after Daisy is introduced, she quickly becomes superfluous to both the plot of the show and the relationships between the characters.
• In the comics of the same name that Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is based on, Lois Lane, Katana, and Starfire spoke, whereas their counterparts in its Animated Adaptation didn't.
• Superfriends: The Wonder Twins and Gleek were frequent recurring allies to the Super Friends starting with their debut in the second iteration The All-New Super Friends Hour, but only appeared in a handle of episodes in the penultimate iteration Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show before disappearing altogether by the final series The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians.
• Young Justice (2010)
  • The entire Justice League, since the series focuses on the sidekicks of the team. Cartoon Network even touted the show this way in early promos, counting on the audiences familiar with the earlier Justice League cartoon, which focused on the Justice League itself, to cause shock when the protagonists were revealed to instead be the children.
  • Red Tornado's conspicuously absent in the second season (likely because Nightwing and the others have replaced him in the mentor role), and has only had one non-speaking appearance in "War".
  • Secret, when compared to the comic. In that, she's a member of the team. In the show, she is present in only one episode and is limited to Pokémon Speak.
  • The third season, Outsiders, does this to the Team itself. Having been the focus and driving force of the entire series beforehand, the focus shifts to the titular Outsiders, consisting of former Team members with additional recruits. They make sporadic appearances throughout the first thirteen episodes, and only have one episode of focus to themselves, but even then it's more focused on Miss Martian.

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