Early Bird Cameo / Live-Action TV

• Arrow:
  • Barry Allen first appears in an episode called "The Scientist", and that's his thing; he's a scientist. The Flash isn't properly introduced until his own series.
  • Two other characters who end up becoming regulars in The Flash, Caitlin and Cisco (Killer Frost and Vibe in the comics), make cameos in the episode "The Man Under the Hood".
  • In both Arrow and The Flash (2014), a woman that Oliver impregnated keeps showing up. Comics fans initially assumed that the woman was Sandra "Moonday" Hawke, the mother of Oliver's illegitimate child Connor Hawke and the second Green Arrow, but it turned out that she's named Samantha Clayton and her son William.
• Babylon 5 did this with its TV movie In The Beginning. This prequel covers the apocalyptic events of the Earth-Minbari War ten years before the series. John Sheridan, the star of the series by this point, meets and interacts with many pivotal members of the cast. He goes on a peace mission with Dr. Franklin and G'Kar, and is interrogated by Delenn when the Minbari take them all prisoner. However, when Sheridan was introduced in Season 2, only Ivanova mentions having met him before— ironically, after the war was over and therefore not on camera for this movie. Bruce Boxleiter was the show's star, and it was unthinkable that a TV movie would place him in a supporting role. Showrunner JMS argued to fans that any reminiscences about the events in the movie must have happened off camera on the series.
• The Barrier: Pedro, one of the children detained to be used in a scientific experiment, is properly introduced when Marta, a former fellow detainee, recognizes him on some video footage. Two episodes before Marta watches the footage, she has a flash-back to sneaking into a room while a presentation about the experiment was being shown and noticing her photo and that of some of her fellow detainees in it. The first child photo shown in the presentation is Pedro's.
• Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul:
  • Mike Ehrmantraut was first introduced in the season 2 finale of Breaking Bad where he was the fixer Saul sent to clean up the scene of Jane's death. He then gets a larger and larger role in the events of seasons 3, 4 and 5A, and finally becomes the secondary lead in Better Call Saul.
  • In Saul Goodman's introductory episode in Breaking Bad, he shows up twice before he actually appears in person: an advertisement on the bus stop bench where Badger gets arrested selling drugs to an undercover cop, and an advertisement on Jesse's TV.
  • Gus Fring was introduced in the antepenultimate episode of season 2 of Breaking Bad. After appearing in that and the season 2 finale, he becomes a main cast member in seasons 3 and 4. Then a main cast member in season 3 of Better Call Saul.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The First appeared in the guise of a deceased formerly recurring character halfway through season 3 before becoming the show's ultimate Big Bad four seasons later.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation
  • Anya is a sort-of example. Samantha Munro appeared as an extra on the Lakehurst cheer squad in season 6, before Anya was even written as a character in season 7. Though this isn't her official first appearance, it doesn't have any conflicts with the timeline of the show and most fans consider it canon.
  • Wesley appears in one episode of season 9 as a guest at Clare's party, where she ends up biting his neck during Seven Minutes in heaven. He doesn't become a main character until the next season.
  • Tristan shows up during the midseason summer arc of season 11, four episodes before being officially introduced with the other new grade nine kids.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Aliens of London" has a retroactive example: The coroner who performs the autopsy on the pig-alien later appeared on spinoff Torchwood as one of the main characters, Toshiko Sato.
  • Bernard Cribbins appears as Wilfred Mott in "Voyage of the Damned", the 2007 Christmas special, before being introduced as Donna Noble's grandfather in Series 4. Reportedly, his appearance was originally intended as a one-off cameo (Cribbins having previously co-starred in one of the 1960s movies based on the series), but his character was retconned as her grandfather to replace what would have been Donna's father's role, whose actor had since passed away.
  • Jenna Coleman guest-starred as Oswin Oswald in "Asylum of the Daleks", the Series 7 premiere. This was months ahead of Coleman's announced first appearance as Clara Oswald in "The Snowmen", and was kept a secret until broadcast. Fans had to wait till the Series 7 finale, "The Name of the Doctor", in the spring of 2013 before they learned the connection between Oswin and Clara.
  • In the fiftieth anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor", as all known incarnations of the Doctor gather to save his home planet of Gallifrey, Peter Capaldi makes an early debut as the then-upcoming Twelfth Doctor, albeit only as shots of his hands manipulating the TARDIS controls and his eyes in extreme close-up; he would not debut in full until the following Christmas special, "The Time of the Doctor".
• Several years before he became famous as the host of Double Dare, Marc Summers was a page at CBS. At age 22 in 1973, he got to fill in as announcer on The Joker's Wild for one week.
• In the season one episode of The Drew Carey Show "Drewstock" we see Grant Shaud (most famous at the time as Miles from Murphy Brown) as an extra. A season later Shaud shows up as Kate's latest boyfriend Jack, who claims he's the devil.
• Troy Evans played an injured police officer in the pilot of ER, before becoming a regular as an ER desk clerk in season 7. Even though the characters shared a name and backstory, and fans generally assumed them to be one and the same, it wasn't until after the show ended that Word of God finally confirmed it.
• The Flash (2014):
  • Linda Park, the Love Interest of Wally West and Barry Allen's successor as The Flash, gets introduced as Barry Allen's Love Interest.
  • Tony Woodward/Girder is part of Wally West's Rogues Gallery. Here, he's reinvented as Barry's bully-turned-Villain of the Week.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Rast is among the rapists taken by First Ranger Benjen Stark to the Wall when Jon joins.
  • In "Breaker of Chains", Hizdahr zo Loraq is among the Great Masters gathered over the walls of Meereen. If you've read the books and seen fanart, it's easy to tell who he is, since the camera pans over him quite a few times.
  • Though only officially introduced in the Season 4 finale, the Three-Eyed Raven has appeared in his raven form since Season 1.
• Impulse (2018): The pizza delivery guy is casually shown during a Wild Teen Party where he asked Henry for the house owner. He gets properly introduced in a later episode when Henry starts working with him.
• The Kamen Rider franchise has a tradition of debuting the newest Rider in the movie starring the previous one after the end of the season, beginning with Kamen Rider Double debuting in Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker.
  • Kamen Rider Drive was the exception to this, as he didn't have any sort of cameo in the previous series, Kamen Rider Gaim, though Drive's successor,Kamen Rider Ghost, returned to the tradition with a cameo in Kamen Rider Drive: Surprise Future as well as featuring in the last two episodes of the series (and being the focus of the last episode). It should be noted that although it's ambigious as to exactly when in the story these cameos take place, they are all considered canon.
  • Secondary Riders also have a habit of making a cameo appearance in movies before being properly introduced in the series, often in The Stinger. Kamen Rider Gaim was kind of the exception to this, as all Armored Riders debuted in the series, though Kamen Rider Ryugen's Kiwi Arms first appeared in Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Gaim & Wizard: The Fateful Sengoku Movie Battle, which aired before he got the Lockseed in the actual series...and instead, it introduced the New Generations riders. Heisei Generations Final, a crossover between Kamen Rider Ex-Aid and Kamen Rider Build features a similar exception to Gaim, having the Tertiary Rider (Grease) make his debut in the film, and continues with Reiwa The First Generation, a crossover between Kamen Rider Zi-O and Kamen Rider Zero-One, that introduced Thouser as the Teritary Rider (Valkyrie) already appeared.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Sauron appears for a few seconds in a flashback from the introduction made by Galadriel. He makes his proper appearance starting with episode 2.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Netflix shows have often had it where one show is the launching ground for the protagonist of a different show.
  • Manhattan district attorney Samantha Reyes was introduced in the season 1 finale of Jessica Jones (2015), before going on to play a recurring role in season 2 of Daredevil (2015).
  • Jessica Jones (2015) introduces Luke Cage ahead of the debut of his own show.
  • Season 2 of Daredevil (2015) introduced the Punisher into the Marvel Netflix universe well before his solo series was greenlit.
  • The Iron Fist (2017) Netflix series has two supporting characters who appeared in previous Marvel Netflix programs: Simone Missick as Misty Knight (appearing in Luke Cage (2016)), and Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth (appeared in Jessica Jones (2015)).
• In Series 3 of Robot Wars, both of the eventual finalists - Chaos 2 and Hypno-Disc - received one. In Heat A, while Craig Charles is going over the judges' criteria, a brief clip from Heat E is shown with Chaos 2 flipping over The Big Cheese. Then, in Hypno-Disc's introductory heat, after one battle had finished, Philippa interviewed the winning team backstage— in the background, Hypno-Disc could be glimpsed on some monitors trashing its first opponent while a group of robotoeers look on in absolute horror.
  • Arguably inverted in the case of Crasha Gnasha, which was visible backstage in Heat A as Philippa showed the viewers around the pits. When it finally entered the war zone in Heat O, it was defeated in five seconds flat.
• The first episode of The Sandman opens with a long tracking shot through Dream's realm, which gives brief glimpses of several characters who are introduced properly in later episodes. These include Merv Pumpkinhead, who enters the story in episode 7, and Martin Tenbones, who enters the story in episode 8.
• Almost every DC Comics character on Smallville, most notably a proto-Justice League of America.
• Supernatural: Bobby's Alternate Self from Apocalypse World first appears at the end of Season 12, when the rift to the alternate reality first opens, and where he saves Castiel from a demon. He also serves as Mr. Exposition in order to let Sam, Dean, Cass, and the audience know how exactly this Alternate Universe became absolute hell.
• Similar to Kamen Rider, Super Sentai has had a tradition of future Sentai teams debuting in previous series' movies, beginning with Tensou Sentai Goseiger debuting in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger VS Go-onger GinmakuBang!!. Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger's cameo in Tensou Sentai Goseiger tai Shinkenger Epic on Ginmaku is given a Call-Back in-series when they go back to the past and essentially recreate their cameo scene.
• Alien Empera, Big Bad of Ultraman Mebius, originally appeared in an animated flashback in Ultraman Taro's 25th episode when viewers are given a brief history of the Ultras and M78. That's a 33 year gap between Early-Bird Cameo and actual debut!
• True Blood has done this with a number of characters and concepts, most notably Sophie-Anne, the vampire queen of Louisiana, who has a cameo in season two of the series but isn't introduced until the sixth book. The last episode of season two also raises the question of "what" Sookie is, something that isn't asked, much less answered, until the later books.
• Van Helsing (2016): The Oracle first appears in the Season 2 finale as a random vampire mystic, but returns in Season 3 as a member of the Big Bad Ensemble, ultimately revealed to be The Dragon to the Dark One, a role she keeps for the remainder of the series.
• The Wire:
  • In "Old Cases", one of the cops in the courtroom is played by Gbenga Akinnagbe, two seasons before he was cast as Chris Partlow.
  • Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin and Lt. Dennis Mello made one-off appearances in season 2's "Stray Rounds", then become full-time cast members for seasons 3 and 4.
  • Kenard appears in the second episode of Season 3 as one of the boys recreating Omar's stick up, saying "I'm the one who gets to be Omar", before being introduced formally in season 4. Kenard would ultimately murder Omar in season 5.
• Played with in Witchblade: Gabriel Bowman is first introduced in the third episode of season one (not counting the pilot movie); then, in the second season premiere, which is a same-but-different retread of the events of the pilot, he's shown to have been present at the shootout in the museum, and ends up meeting Sara a lot earlier than he did the first time. This would make him a kind of Destined Bystander as well.