Audience Surrogate

Nikki Reed (Rosalie Hale): So, Kristen, there must be something really special about you for Robert to take such a liking to you and risk the lives of his entire family. Tell us about yourself.
Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan): Me? Oh, no. I'm just a hollow placeholder for all of the teenage girls in the audience to project their personalities onto. I have none of my own whatsoever.

— Twilight: The Abridged Script

There are three things that can be referred to as an Audience Surrogate:

1. The viewpoint character; See Point of View.
2. A character who asks questions the audience would ask and says things the audience would say.
3. A character who the audience (or the children in the audience) doesn't just sympathize with, but are supposed to actively see themselves as — by desire, by default, or by author inference.

This trope is about the third one, as the other two have tropes of their own.

See also Creator-Viewer Reactions Index, which covers opinions the creator can have about the audience, as well as adjacent concepts.

Video Games usually use a variant of this, the Featureless Protagonist. This Loser Is You is an Audience Surrogate by definition. Super-Trope for Ascended Fanboy, The Everyman, Greek Chorus, Naïve Newcomer and Unfazed Everyman (See Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions for an explanation of the difference), and related to Escapist Character and Otaku Surrogate. Parent of Lead You Can Relate To (see parent/child relationships page). Supertrope to Reader-Insert Fic, where the protagonist is reader. Examples below should not cover these.

In visual media, the subject doing a "Back to Camera" Pose is usually invited to be the placeholder for the audience.

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Examples:

Art

• Caspar David Friedrich's paintings often have figures in the foreground facing away from the viewpoint, admiring the landscapes that are painted.
  The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
• Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's Conversion of Saint Paul depicts three things: the future apostle Paul and his travelling companions to Damascus in the middle of the picture, Paul's vision of Jesus Christ shrouded in blinding light above, and a small dog curiously and somewhat sceptically looking at all of the events as an audience surrogate in the lower corner.

Anime & Manga

• Karane Inda is the least crazy character of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, and as such, echoes similar reactions to the readers at the insane events of the story.
• Moe Suzuya in Asteroid in Love serves this purpose for a series serialized in a magazine well-known for yuri subtexts, and has substantial Yuri Fan readership. Half of the time, she does that the stated readers do: squeeing over the other girls' cuteness, Shipping them, and more than often doing borderline indecent things to them.
• Black Lagoon: Rokuro Okajima, a.k.a. "Rock", is a white-collar Japanese salaryman who is literally kidnapped by the crew of the eponymous Black Lagoon. As such, he is the one to ask the questions and fill in the audience.
• In Bloom Into You, the nurse serves this purpose within the in-universe School Play, which is about an amnesiac girl hears three people's very different perspectives on her, and tries to decide which is the "real" her. Eventually, Yuu realizes that the audience doesn't know what the girl was like before she lost her memories, and concludes that it wouldn't make sense for her to choose one facet of herself, and discard the version of her that the audience saw in the play. As such, she convinces Koyomi to change the ending of the play, thus causing the protagonist to take the nurse's advice and stay the way she is, rather than "become" one of the versions of herself that she'd heard about.
• Saten Ruiko from A Certain Scientific Railgun is pretty much the only unambiguously normal person of the main cast.
• Ryuk, in Death Note, is the character who's in it for the same reason as the audience is: Gambit Pileups are fun to watch.
  • Aizawa also counts as this later in the series, by virtue of not being a super-genius but still being smart enough to suspect Light of being Kira.
  • Matsuda, who constantly questions who is right and who is wrong as Light and L engage in a battle of wits.
• Nobita Nobi from Doraemon is this type of character. This is especially evident in the 6 different versions of the first story; he is surprised to see Doraemon and Sewashi suddenly coming out of his desk drawer and questions their motives.
  • When the manga was serialized in multiple magazines simultaneously by Shogakukan, Nobita, Gian, Suneo, and Shizuka's ages would differ depending on the target audience of the magazines. For example, they are little kids in the stories serialized in Yoiko (a magazine aimed at little kids).
• Benio of Engaged to the Unidentified, beneath her straight-A student mask, has a Sister-sister Incest fantasy with a side dish of lolicon tendencies. This is from a seinen yonkoma manga, which means a large number of the readership are otaku, who stereotypically have these kinds of fantasies.
• In Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger, Shogo is a surrogate for the intended audience of the story: lifelong fans of Final Fantasy. Because of this, he's familiar with all of Final Fantasy's core concepts, though it works both for and against him, as his foreknowledge doesn't always mesh with the way things work in the world he finds himself in.
• Main character Homura Hinooka from the Type-Moon light novel series Fire Girl. It's through her that we get to witness her adventures and the grandeur and mechanics of the mysterious planet Imaginary Earth and why UNPIEP, the organization the Exploration Club is under, in-charge of exploring said planet, came to be in the first place.
• In the fist half of Fist of the North Star, Bat and Lin both seem to exist mainly to have someone for Kenshiro to provide exposition during a sudden plot development.
• One of the Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) OVAs used this, "filmed" in the first person from the perspective of an unnamed probationer alchemist who interacts with Fuhrer King Bradley and Roy Mustang before a giant alchemist vs. homunculus battle.
• In Guardian Fairy Michel, Kim often learns lessons that the people watching the show are supposed to learn. She's also introduced to the fairies and what they do.
• China in Gundam Build Fighters. She's not initially a fan of the Gundam franchise, and thus provides the writers with numerous excuses to have other characters hurl exposition at her. Sekai of Gundam Build Fighters Try and Momoka of Gundam Build Divers follow her example.
  • Deconstructed with Hinata of Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE as, while she once had an attachment to Gunpla and works in a Gundam-themed restaurant, she's the kind of person who just smiles and nods at everything. Thus, it leaves her Locked Out of the Loop when it comes to Hiroto's emotional problems concerning GBN.
• Naïve Newcomer Rakka serves as the audience surrogate in Haibane Renmei, as the other characters explain how the world of the show works and what the Haibane are to the audience through her.
• Kyon, the only Ordinary High-School Student in Haruhi Suzumiya. This is probably also the second reason why he is the most frequently shipped character in the fandom.
• Iga No Kabamaru: Mai is the only one who calls out everyone else at Kin'gyoku for being immature, selfish and cares for their welfare - reflecting how the audience feels about them.
• Koichi Hirose from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, the 4th part of the series, might not be The Hero and this time's "Jojo", with that role going to Josuke Higashkita, but he is suddenly thrust into the world of supernatural powers and fights. He lampshades this in the opening scene which is from his perspective, where he doesn't consider himself important and only dwells on school before running into the Joestar family and their battles against evil. Therefore, Koichi tends to ask questions and react the sameway an audience member would to various phoenomena.
• Kazuo from Kengan Ashura is an underachieving salesman, he sees himself immersed as a fighter manager in a secret society where powerful Businessmen organize fighting matches to settle their market disputes, Kazuo is constantly thinking about the ludicrousness of all but still admiring such a different world from his usual pathetic life, and the ridiculously strong fighters who are the very opposites of his weak self.
• Tiara of Lapis Re:LiGHTs serves this role by being a new student at Flora Girls' Academy who enrolled in the middle of the semester and was a Sheltered Aristocrat to boot. She frequently needs to be taught things like how classes work, the ranking and point system among the student body, and the exact mechanics of live performances called "Opera", which use Magic Music to power their cities and the performers both.
• Before Super was released, the Mashin Hero Wataru Series was produced as a family-friendly show in mind. Therefore, the main cast has one character to represent a specific age demographic to give the audience someone to see themselves and learn An Aesop from.
  • Himiko and Toraoh: Children ages 6 to 8.
  • Wataru: Elementary kids to pre-teens.
  • Kurama Wataribe: Late-teens to young adults.
  • Shibaraku: Working adults and parental figures.
• Medaka Box: Zenkichi Hitoyoshi is quite literally, the Normal of the main cast. He's often left to comment on the absurdity of the cast, but isn't without his own quirks and moments of badassery.
• In Nisekoi, background characters from the protagonists' class will appear from time to time just to say things that the male audience may as well want to say, like expressing envy over Raku's harem or noticing how ridiculous at times is the fact that every single girl around him (except maybe Ruri) comes to like him romantically.
• Tsukasa fills this role in Plastic Memories. He has no idea what his job entails, and is only vaguely familiar with his corporation's work with androids. He is quickly filled in that his job is to collect Giftia who are nearing the end of their service life, though some people are reluctant and in some cases hostile to giving them back.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues: The Messiah Candidates accompanied by the titular characters react with confusion and surprised at being followed by scantily-clad Angels, even if they act impressively restrained and chaste around them.
• In Shirokuma Cafe one episode has a character named Mr. Necktie who (despite the series takes place in a world where humans and animals live as equals) is completely surprised by the talking, walking animals and constantly questions their lifestyles, and the world in comparison to ours, as if he literally crossed through the fourth wall.
• Chris Thorndyke of Sonic X was intended to be this sort of character, but due to his wealthy life and excessive screen time, he just comes off as an Escapist Character and a Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
• Spy X Family: Anya is the only character who is privy to all of the other characters' secrets, and her main motivation is to keep her fake family together for both entertainment value and sentimentality, which likely mirrors the audiences' reasons for reading/watching the source material.
• Kaji from Usogui starts the series as an everyman pulled off the streets, hopelessly out of his depth in the various Absurdly High Stakes Games and constantly amazed by the protagonist's increasingly crazy gambits. He steadily outgrows his role as a surrogate, however, as he becomes more efficient at gambling, to the point that he's replaced by Champ in the Protoporos Island Arc, who is amazed at the exploits of both the protagonist and Kaji.
• Underworld Academy Overload!!: As a New Transfer Student, Towa along with the readers get all the exposition about the academy.
• Kirie serves this purpose in Uzumaki: asking the necessary questions as well as witnessing all the strange goings on in her cursed town; and her love interest, Suichi, plays the role of Author Avatar, providing many of the answers that would have been difficult to provide otherwise.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has the main character Yugi Mutou. Jonouchi/Joey also had his moments that qualify for this trope.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Robin was introduced to the comic in order to appeal to the young audience who bought it. Even among the various Robins, Tim Drake (Robin III) is often cited as the easiest to relate to and identify with as he wasn't an orphan, acrobat, or street rat although he became the first one in Identity Crisis (2004). Just a regular kid who knew Batman needed a Robin.
  • This is also a big part of the reason why Stephanie Brown is so popular, especially among female readers. Like Tim, she's not an acrobat, an orphan, or a street rat, but unlike Tim, she's also not a super genius or particularly rich. She's not as poor as Jason Todd, but she comes from a working class background, and her skills are largely limited to what a teenager could actually do, making her a lot easier to identify with.
• Gotham City Garage: Kara Gordon is the viewpoint character who explains what to live in the city ruled by Lex Luthor is like and asks the rebel group questions about the life in the wastelands.
• The Incredible Hulk: Rick Jones is an audience surrogate originally created for young baby boomers. He's an ordinary, well-meaning teenager, but one who has more of an authority problem than previous teen comics characters.
• Infinite Crisis: Superboy-Prime is an interesting example. He's from Earth-Prime, which is portrayed as the "real" Earth, our Earth. He was a Kryptonian and the only super-powered person in a world without them, and everything he did in the Multiverse could be read in the comics. He is what happens when you give a bullied kid superpowers and take his world away from him, make him kill so much, then put him back in his world, a world where now, everyone hates him. And to think, he used to be a sweet little kid that read Superman comic books, dreaming that he could be like him....
• Ms. Marvel (2014): Kamala Khan is in many ways a modern version of Peter Parker. She's obsessed with The Avengers and superheroes in general, and partakes in a number of common nerd activities like reading Shōjo manga and writing fanfiction.
• Spider-Man:
  • Probably the most well known audience surrogate in comics is also one of the most popular characters, which is largely cited to be because of how much he qualifies: Peter Parker, The Amazing Spider-Man. His status as this is part of the reason he was created and why he sold so well.
  • Mary Jane Watson became one as well. She was intended by Lee to bring a more contemporary "teen spirit" (specifically The '60s or Lee's approximation thereof) to a setting whose portrayal of adolescence was Two Decades Behind and a little square. She was a little independent, had a more cavalier attitude to dating, and was far less angsty and obnoxious than Peter's supporting cast at the time (Harry, Gwen, Flash). Her more adventurous and spunky attitude, the fact that she liked Spider-Man and wanted to accompany Peter to see a supervillain rampage had her embody the attitude of many superhero fans in the pages.
• Superman:
  • Jimmy Olsen existed to be Superman's normal, youthful buddy.
  • Supergirl filled this role during her first adventures in the Silver Age: she was Superman's plucky, young sidekick who helped him out as she explored his world.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers introduces Ironfist, a hugely sympathetic Ascended Fanboy who has been chronicling the adventures of his heroes, the Wreckers. This image◊ (created by the author himself) makes it pretty explicit.
  TF Wiki caption, on a picture of Ironfist fanboying: Oh dear lord, he's us!
• X-Men: During the 1980s, Kitty Pryde is a teenager and a major geek just like most of the readers. There are even scenes where she's shown to be into comic books.

Fan Works

• General: Any reader-insert fanfiction, meaning the main character isn't often given a name and is addressed as "You" in the narrative, and "Your Name" in the dialogue. Amusingly, some of the reader-inserts have more personality than non-reader inserts.
• A Ballad of the Dragon and She-Wolf often gives Daenerys this role. Whenever Jon or Arya show her around Winterfell or other Northern locations they give her informal history lessons, which helps readers become familiar with obscure series lore.
• A Crown of Stars: Shinji and Asuka are this during their stay in Avalon, showing what it would be like visiting an alternate dimension ruled by a family of nice, benevolent gods, and where magic and sci-fi technology are a daily reality.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: This is one of main roles of Shinji, showing the reader what it would be like living with a super-heroine — Asuka, a. k. a., Supergirl — who you are in love with, witnessing her heroic deeds but also enduring all complications and trouble such a relationship entails (her being in danger constantly, her enemies breaking into your apartment or kidnapping you, being her confidant and support...)
• Zigzagged in Imaginary Seas. Percy is an Experienced Protagonist who has saved the world time and again and lived through Greek myth in the modern day, but he's also completely unaware of the gods' secret history as machines from another world or the notions of Servants or Lostbelts. Because of this, numerous pieces of information are introduced to the reader by others telling it to him.
• In ToyHammer, this role is passed between Michael, Alice and Vincent.
• The Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain: Elizabeth Quatermain was pretty much designed for this purpose, allowing the reader to get an idea of what it would be like to be an ordinary person among The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• In the 1983: Doomsday Stories, this role is largely taken up by Canon Immigrant Muggles from 1983: Doomsday in contrast to the Nations.
• In Saturday, Bob asks for lurid details about Harry's sex life, much to his embarrassment. Since the fic is a pornographic one, the author presumably saw the irony.
  ...like [Bob] saw my life as a soap opera of some kind with occasional sexy parts.
• Sudden Contact: Tychus Findlay had been sentenced to cryogenic imprisonment during the Confederacy era until waking up in the post-Great War era, where the Confederacy had fallen and humanity is interacting with aliens regularly.
• Evvy Trevelyan more or less holds this role during the first installment of Skyhold Academy Yearbook, since the reader learns the truth about the school as she does. She drops the role in the later stories.
• Reacting to The Loud House: Given a lot of the characters from both shows now serve as audience members watching episodes of those shows, this is to be expected.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: Danny serves the role of people unfamiliar with Kim Possible, Totally Spies!, Sailor Moon or any other works his 30 dates are from, getting to know them and what kind of lives they live.
• What the Cat Dragged In: Tony ends up serving as this for any MCU fans unfamiliar with Miraculous Ladybug, asking the questions non-fans would be expected to ask. Natasha and Clint serve as this to a lesser extent, as while they don't know everything they got a briefing on the Paris situation beforehand.

Films — Animation

• Played for Laughs in Frozen II with Mattias during Olaf’s recapping of the first film’s events. He is shown to be genuinely invested in the tale despite Olaf’s Bad "Bad Acting" and his reactions to the events ^note such as shedding Manly Tears at the part where Anna is frozen mimic those commonly seen in audiences during the first film itself.
• Yeardley Smith is this for the viewer in the commentary for The Simpsons Movie. She asks questions about shooting techniques and the like that other commentators mention. She very often does the same in DVD commentaries of the regular series.
• The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water:
  • The seagulls when they question Burger Beard's narration of the movie.
  • Other characters like Squidward and Plankton have minor instances of this. At one point Squidward is shocked that they can just tear off their apocalypse attire and the clothing they always wear is right underneath it. In another scene, Patrick is destroying his own house.
  SpongeBob: What are you doing?
  Patrick: "Vandalizing stuff.
  Plankton: "Isn't that your house?"
• Kenji from the movie Summer Wars has no real personality outside of being an Ordinary High-School Student audience surrogate.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Calhoun's game (Hero's Duty) was only plugged into the arcade recently, so she, like the audience, doesn't know too much about the arcade's lore.
• In Encanto, the trio of children who follow Mirabel around react to events more or less as the audience would: they don't know who all the Madrigals are and what their "gifts" are (in this movie's universe, a "gift" is a magical ability that each Madrigal family member is granted after passing a ceremony), so Mirabel has to explain things to them, they want to know what Mirabel's gift is when she conspicuously leaves herself out of the "La Familia Madrigal" song, they express amazement that Antonio's new gift room is "bigger on the inside", they're upset when the family can't find Mirabel after Casita finally falls, and they're overjoyed when Mirabel comes back after she and Alma have made up.

Films — Live-Action

• Lambert was meant to represent the voice and thoughts of the viewing audience in the original Alien. "Get out of there, Dallas! NOW!"
• Father Vogler in Amadeus, provides someone for old Salieri to tell his story to, making what would otherwise be huge InfoDumps fit seamlessly into the narrative, sometimes with really beautiful cuts to the action.
• Jake Sully in Avatar, who starts as an average Joe Everyman and ends as an Escapist Character.
• In the film version of Hair, Claude was turned into a relatable, conservative audience surrogate, as opposed to his radical, obnoxious stage-version counterpart.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 1 hints at this when Katniss's personal make-up stylist tells her:
  Effie: "Everyone out there will either want to kiss you, kill you, or be you."
• Jesse Stone: Sea Change. Jesse is investigating a bank robbery case with an injured suspect. He asks the veterinarian if people bleed when they are shot. The vet tells him not always. As a 30 year veteran of the LAPD involved in many shootouts, Jesse would know the answer already. A young veterinarian in a small town might not know that. He's asking for the benefit of the audience.
• I.S.S.: Protagonist Kira is the team's newest recruit and is introduced to the setting and character dynamics along with the audience.
• The boy in the Lone Ranger costume who is listening to an aged Tonto tell the story.
• Max Rockatansky has served this role ever since Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. He usually says very little and, while he does have his own character arc in each film, none of them are his stories. He mostly wanders onto other peoples' situations, allowing him to act as the eyes for the audience to see and experience different parts and stories of the post-apocalyptic Wasteland.
• Agent Phil Coulson from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ended up being this trope by default. Originally created in Iron Man 1 for the purpose of saying S.H.I.E.L.D.'s full name and being told it was too long, he caused such an impression with his little time on air that he scored a role on the following movies of the MCU and became a Canon Immigrant to the comics, probably because of his characteristics that allow him to represent the aging comic book fan, and at the same time do awesome things like hanging out with his favorite superheroes despite having no superpowers himself and fire a laser gun at the Big Bad. He even gets to acts a little like an Ascended Fanboy in The Avengers without losing his charm.
  • Deputy Task Force Commander Everett Kenneth Ross has become something of a successor to Coulson following the latter largely being confined to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after The Avengers as the normal guy who is the link between the authorities and superheroes. He especially fills this role in Black Panther once he's brought to Wakanda, as the Westerner who discovers a world that was totally unknown to him, and marveling at the technological wonders there. Ironically, Coulson is a creation for the MCU while Ross had existed in the comics for decades.
  • Hawkeye could also qualify as this in the Avengers films. He is the most normal person on the team and often points out the absurdity of the situations they are in.
  • Kat Dennings stated in this interview that the character of Darcy Lewis in Thor: The Dark World qualifies.
  • Jack Russel in Werewolf by Night (2022) acts in awe and curiosity to the monster hunters and their rituals, acting casual and asking others what certain things do. Despite being sent into a catacombs to hunt a monster, he acts more like he's going on a stroll to search for his pet cat. It turns out he's not a monster hunter at all, but he had to lie about it so he could get inside so he can find his friend. Said friend is the monster everyone is hunting for, Man-Thing.
• Joe Black in Meet Joe Black, particularly at the beginning (when he serves as the exploratory vehicle within Bill Parrish's estate), and the end, when he tears up watching the party-farewells and acts as the receptacle for Bill's summary reflections — essentially parroting the anticipated reaction of the audience watching the end of the movie.
• Star Wars:
  • A New Hope: Luke Skywalker starts as a simple farmboy with no knowledge of the Empire, and he finds out about the Empire just as the audience does.
  • The Last Jedi: Finn fulfills this role on Canto Bight; prior to the film he has only lived in military environments under First Order control, and spent short bursts of time in other locations. As a result, he starts off bowled over by the opulence of the place, and needs Rose to explain the full picture.
• Director Bruce Robinson used this trope so literally that the second half of his title duo in Withnail and I doesn't even get a name. Paul McGann's character (credited as "...& I" in the credits, but revealed to be named "Marwood" in the script) is never named in the course of the film, allowing the audience to more easily identify with his misfortunes.
• In the mid-credits scene of SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods, when Billy is asked by Emilia Harcourt and John Economos to join the Justice Society of America, Billy lampshades the confusion between the Justice League and the Justice Society.

Literature

• In his introduction to The Book of Lost Tales, Christopher Tolkien supposes that the reason The Silmarillion was less popular than The Lord of the Rings is that it lacked one. In fact, the original draft of The Silmarillion (the Lost Tales) actually did have one — a Man named Ælfwine of England to whom the tales of the First Age were narrated by the Elves.
• Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is an ordinary, if virtuous and poor, kid, who — like everyone else in and out of story — is curious about what's in the mysterious titular factory, and it's through his perspective that the audience is introduced to all of the other major characters as he and his family follow news of the Golden Ticket contest. And then he finds the last ticket and gets a chance to visit it...
• Taran, the hero of The Chronicles of Prydain. The author never gives him a physical description, or an age, and his backstory isn't revealed until the final chapter of the final book. Although he is, ultimately, the true hero of the series, he's also something of an Everyman, making it easy for young readers to connect to him.
• The Divine Comedy indicates that Dante's Author Avatar stands in for the audience in the first line.
  "Midway through the journey of our life..."
• Ibn Fadlan in Easters of the Dead. It's noteworthy as Michael Crichton explicitly noted he required a cultural outsider for audience surrogacy purposes in his retelling of Beowulf. He also subverts it by putting footnotes in to outright explain the differences in both historical context and religious differences Ibn experiences in contrast to the target audience.
• Harry Potter is this, especially in the earlier books when he's just discovering the wizarding world. Even in the later books, after several years of spending time at Hogwarts and learning about magic, he doesn't develop extra knowledge about the wizarding world or magic, relying on others to give him, and the reader, the occasional Info Dump. Being The Boy Who Lived does not always agree with his deepest wish to settle down with a family and lead a normal (for a wizard) life.
• Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit was specifically stated by Tolkien to represent the everyman living in the more peaceful, rural English countryside.
• Italo Calvino's If on a winter’s night a traveler, written almost entirely in the second person, is centered around two readers: one as a stand-in for male readers, another for female.
• Firestorm in Less Than Three Comics' Brat Pack. Even though he should be the opposite, what with his family upbringing and all. Sometimes Mr Perfect will take this role.
• Light and Dark: The Awakening of the Mage Knight: Daniel Fife makes his target audience clear by stating in the narration that Danny is an Ordinary High-School Student and starting the book on the first day of school when the plot doesn't truly start until the following summer. Until then he's occupied with bullies and crushes.
• The four hobbits (Merry and Pippin in particular) in The Lord of the Rings are normal folks from a mundane town without the wild eccentricities and heroic virtues of characters like Aragorn or Gandalf, allowing ordinary people to see to Middle-Earth through their humble eyes.
• In Midnight's Children, Padma might be a type 2. Like the audience, she is hearing the Narrator's life story for the first time. Some of her wry and impassioned commentary is bound to resonate with at least some readers (especially her urging Saleem to hurry up).
• In Rama II, Nicole is the viewpoint character, and the character the reader is invited most to sympathise with, because we know better her feelings compared to everyone else's. She has an unusual upbringing (partly Senoufo and partly French), and has mystical aspects to her life, but she is the more levelheaded woman (compared to Francesca), and a more feminine woman (compared to Irina). She is as well the viewpoint character for the reader to get to know Wakefield (who is a strange and distant person in addition to having a sad upbringing himself), and the rest of the cosmonauts as she describes their personalities and reviews their files as the life sciences officer.
• Survivor Dogs:
  • The first book, The Empty City, the Leashed Dogs act as audience surrogates. Having until recently been in the care of longpaws, they don't know how to live on their own without Lucky's help. They act as gateways into how the world of dogs is in the series.
  • In A Hidden Enemy, the second book, Lucky himself becomes an audience surrogate when he's forced to join a rival pack as a spy. Lucky has lived his entire life on his own, so he doesn't know how formal packs work. He learns about pack hierarchy alongside the reader.
• Bella of The Twilight Saga has a very inconspicuous personality, her actions are often hard to interpret, her characterization is only implied and the story is told in the first person so the audience can project themselves onto her very easily by disregarding some elements of said characterization when they contradict their views. Stephenie Meyer has even said on her website that she deliberately avoided describing Bella's physical features so that it would be easier for the readers to picture her as themselves. This is averted some in the later books as Bella becomes more like Meyer herself (similar tastes and such) and even moreso averted in the companion book Midnight Sun, in which we learn minute details of Bella's personality through her conversations with Edward. For example, we learn all of her favorite films.
• Firestar in the first Warrior Cats arc is a Naïve Newcomer ex-kittypet who joins ThunderClan in the first book. Being raised a pet, he has no understanding of how Clans work and has to be taught alongside the reader.
• The author of Wings of Fire confirmed that choosing Clay as the protagonist of the first book was perfect for this reason. Clay has a poor memory for scrolls and details, meaning that he's always hearing information about the Wings of Fire world for the first time that he remembers clearly.

Live-Action TV

Networks:

• Disney Channel does this quite a bit:
  • Girl Meets World has Zay, Lucas's friend from Texas when he became the new kid in Season 2. Zay takes this role for the viewers who are unfamiliar with the show's first season and the cast's antics, because he's new to them. On top of that, he also helps viewers gain a better depth of what Riley and Maya go through, especially in serious episodes.
  • Likewise, Liv and Maddie introduces Josh Wilcox in Season 3, as he is a Naïve Newcomer. As the setting and dynamics have been more or less established by that point, he, like viewers attempts to understand the antics and plots that go on in the show. Whenever he appears, he is closest to the main plot and experiences it first hand. His second appearance is A Day in the Limelight for him, as if it were an attempt to introduce the audience to the show itself.

Series:

• In Adam Ruins Everything, anyone who is not host Adam Conover, from recurring characters to those that only appear in one episode, act as this whenever Adam debunks the myths and misconceptions surrounding the episode's subject.
  • Whenever Adam himself gets something wrong, another character will jump in, and use his Reality Warper powers to demonstrate what he got wrong.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Penny fills this role for non-geeky fans, particularly in the early seasons. Whenever one of the guys makes an obscure reference to something in geek culture, Penny's always there to sarcastically ask what the heck they're talking about, when many viewers were wondering the exact same thing.
  • For everyone else, it's Leonard, a generic geek without his friends' more overt flaws (Howard's lechery, Raj's gynophobia, and Sheldon's Jerkassery).
• Bones: Agent Booth responds to Bones and the other squints just like any non-anthropologist in the audience would, making them explain the more complicated concepts in laymen's terms and sometimes lampshading their Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  Dr. Hodgins: It's seventy percent amorphous silicon dioxide.
  Booth: What's that?
  Dr. Hodgins: It's a common domestic container.
  Booth: Oh, like a jar. Why can't we just say "a jar"?
• Code Lyoko: Evolution: Laura Gauthier is this for viewers who didn't see the first series. She's (potentially) a new member of the Lyoko Warriors who is unfamiliar with the world or XANA.
• In Cranford, Miss Mary Smith comes from Manchester, but the town is close to her heart and her sanctuary. She is a strong and fun female character, she is helpful to Dr Harrison and the Misses Jenkyns, she ships two ideal mates and her friends Sophy and Dr. Harrison, she investigates the incident with Valentine cards, and then as an guardian angel, she solves most problems by writing letters to appropriate places.
• Doctor Who: The companions pretty much exist for this role, when they aren't The Watson.
  • A particularly extreme case of this is in the first two TARDIS teams, which had four characters deliberately representing a different demographic of the "family" audience. There is a teenage girl (Susan or Vicki) representing the older child audience, mature adult male and female characters who work with children (Ian and Barbara) representing the dads and mums, and a grandfather-figure with eccentric Manchild qualities (the Doctor) who is a surrogate for the grandparents as well as for the younger child audience.
  • For the revival series, Rose Tyler and Martha Jones fill this role in their early episodes. Justified with Rose, as the first companion in the series, while "Smith & Jones" does this with Martha until the hospital is transported to the Moon, at which point the Doctor starts to have POV scenes of his own.
  • Clara takes the concept of companionship and the audience surrogate companion to extremes that become fantastical, representing the concept of the audience itself rather than just being a relatable character. She was born on November 23rd and constantly observed the Doctor throughout his life, even in his other bodies. She always dies at the age of 26, which was the age the Classic series was when it was finally cancelled. She's from Blackpool, which was where the Doctor Who museum used to be and the place where the Sixth Doctor was going to take Peri at the Cliffhanger after the Classic show's first cancellation. She serves an extremely important role in the 50th Anniversary special based around her interactions with past and future Doctors. The Doctor describes her once as "the not-me one, the ask-me-questions one".
  • "Praxeus" has a somewhat egregious example, wherein companions Graham and Ryan don't know the meaning of the word "pathogen" so the Doctor can explain to them, and by extension the audience, what it means. First off, pathogen is a relatively commonly-used word, even though many people are not likely to know its full scientific meaning. This is especially unbelievable in Graham's case, given that he is not only the oldest of the companions, he was married to a nurse and underwent treatment for cancer, which allows him to "know [his] way around an IV" bare moments later.
  • When it comes to the spin-offs, Torchwood had Gwen Cooper and The Sarah Jane Adventures had Mariah Jackson.
• ER: John Carter was apparently this, as his character was introduced as a 3rd-year medical student, new to the hospital, unlike the other, who were rapidly established as having worked at there for the past 1-5 years with considerable backstory. Once Carter qualified as a doctor, Lucy Knight was introduced as a new audience surrogate, marking a Jumping-On Point for new viewers.
• Friends: Rachel Green is CLEARLY this for some of the female fans of the show. She’s beautiful (but not TOO beautiful as to be threatening), she loves fashion, has five friends who would do anything for her, and has a very strong Will they or won’t they love of each other’s lives dynamic with one of them.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Gendry has the same reaction to Arya's Wasteful Wishing as many viewers.
  • This trope is pretty much the reason why House Tyrell—especially Margaery—were so popular with viewers. They're cunning enough to play the Game, but benevolent enough not to resort to unnecessary bloodshed, while also being relatively progressive regarding gender and sexuality. As such, they were easy to identify with and root for.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Daniel Molloy is a stand-in for the audience whenever he brings up the fact that Louis de Pointe du Lac is an Unreliable Narrator (the latter even acknowledges "And you can imagine what time's inevitable hammer does to the minute details"). Daniel has doubts about the veracity of Louis' second account in 2022 because it's so dissimilar to the first interview in 1973, so viewers must also ponder if Louis is indeed painting a "more nuanced portrait" of the past, if he is being deliberately dishonest and editorializing as accused, or if the additional 49 years have further muddled his memory.
• Kamen Rider Geats: The show actually has four such characters in the form of the Supporters, people from the future watching the Immoral Reality Show that the series centers around and each sponsors one of the four main contestants.
  • Ziin represents those among the Kamen Rider fanbase who they care about the storylines and drama, leading him to be a thrill-seeking Loony Fan who only intervened on the protagonists' behalf because he wants to stay entertained. He grows out of his flaws following Character Development and becomes a Promoted Fanboy by the series finale.
  • Kyuun represents the analytical part of the fanbase, with reviews that often come out as blunt criticism in short-form communication like speaking in person, but come through more clearly in writing where he has time to compose his thoughts.
  • Kekera and Beroba both double as a Take That, Audience! example. Kerkera embodies the series fanbase watching for the ideals of heroism, and is also an In-Universe example of expecting specific plots or characters to cater to them. He wants Keiwa to become an Ideal Hero, but the unethical methods he uses to ensure his ward becomes "real Kamen Rider" are increasing hypocritial as he becomes an Evil Mentor. Beroba represents the fanbase invested in the show's violence, being an apatheic Sadist Rooting for the Empire so she can enjoy others' suffering. But she gets a Villainous Breakdown when she ends up being on the receiving end of a Curbstomp Battle.
• Kirby Buckets: Kirby is meant to be an audience surrogate to most of Disney XD's core demographic of pre-teen boys, with active imagination, a fondness for typical interests of the demographic (like video games and action movies), and typical enemies like the bratty older sister and the stern school principal. Because Kirby is an aspiring animator, the show is written as if he had creative control over what happens on the show. The show thus delights in making Kirby's older sister Dawn a Cosmic Plaything.
• EC from Lift-Off was intended to be one, but instead they ended up being Accidental Nightmare Fuel.
• Lost: Did this a couple times to acknowledge fans' desire for answers. In Season 1, Hurley gets frustrated at one point with all the mysterious happenings on the Island, saying that he wants answers. Then, in the epilogue, "The New Man in Charge", Ben comes to visit the guys at the DHARMA packing plant. As he turns to go, one of them says "Wait! You can't just leave without giving us any answers!" which is exactly what the viewers were all thinking at that point.
• Mad Men: When Peggy Olson arrives for her first day of work in the pilot, not only is she our surrogate for the advertising agency, but for 1960 America. Through Peggy, we get a cultural tour of a world where a rotary phone and an electric typewriter are "complicated technology", and taking one's lunch break to get fitted for birth control is a job requirement.
• Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: When Fred Rogers is alone with the camera, he's a parental character. But when he's with a friend, they become the parental figure and Mr. Rogers becomes a child on behalf of the audience.
• The Office (US): Ryan serves as the surrogate for the first season, before his myriad changes of persona make him more of a "character".
  • Jim's mugging for the camera often reflects how the audience perceives the ridiculous events on screen.
• Revolution: Charlie Matheson is supposed to be a character that you could project your personality onto. The bad news is that a number of critics completely missed the point and hate the character for being bland, whiny, rude, weak, and confrontational. The good news is that she has gotten better by the first season finale.
• Sesame Street: In the debut episode, the wraparound has a young girl named Sally move to Sesame Street, and Gordon introduces her (and, by extension, the audience) to the setting and the other characters.
• Sherlock:
  • Sherlock also has an unusual variation of Type 2 in "The Empty Hearse". In the two years since Sherlock's (faked) suicide, Anderson and his group of followers have bee speculating on how Sherlock might've survived... just like the Sherlock fandom has been in Real Life. Cue Anderson's status as The Scrappy being revoked and instead being given darkhorse status.
• Supernatural:
  • In one episode towards the end of Season 7, it is Anviliciously clear that the showrunners really want us to see guest star Charlie as a Type 3, as they have her spend a huge chunk of time making sci-fi references, wondering what Hermione would do in a given situation, and talking about Comic Con (the fact that they cast Felicia Day in the role helps hammer in the point). It feels as if the entire opening sequence with Charlie is basically the writers saying "See, SPN fans? She's just like you! Root for her, dammit!" However, some in the audience felt like the show was trying way too hard to get the audience to like her. And the fact that she was an Anvilicious and strident mouthpiece for the writers' political viewpoints (and the fact that she takes illegal actions on behalf of the writers' viewpoints) meant that it was virtually guaranteed that there would be a chunk of the audience that would see her as annoying rather than as the sympathetic, plucky heroine the writers wanted the audience to see her as. Though her fridging in late Season 10 ended winning over a lot of her detractors by that point.
  • Lucifer, of all people, serves as this in the Season 11 episode "The Devil In Details", lecturing Sam about how morally grey and how stupid his and Dean's decisions have become since Season 8, as well as how unhealthy and codependent their relationship has regressed into, and their Badass Decay since they threw Lucifer in the Cage.
• Today's Special: In most of the earlier episodes, Jeff assumed this role. As a mannequin who just came to life and had a lot to learn about the world, he would learn about everyday objects alongside the viewer. In later episodes, when Jeff had somewhat outgrown his Naïve Newcomer ways and An Aesop became more common for episodes, the role shifted to Muffy, who was technically older and already knew more than Jeff but had always acted more childishly.
• Victorious: Tori seems to be this, being the Naïve Newcomer to Hollywood Arts and is more grounded compared to her more quirky classmates. She often reacts to the unique traditions at the school the way a typical person would.
• WandaVision: Darcy, Jimmy Woo, and the agents of S.W.O.R.D. take on this role when watching the titular sitcom in the fourth episode, asking some of the same questions the real-life audience asked (if Vision is alive, the significance of hexagons, why a sitcom, etc.). Though Darcy and Jimmy become the most emotionally invested in the series as it progresses.
• Donna in The West Wing acts as this, often asking the common-sense questions the other characters don't think of. This was more pronounced in the early seasons when she was new to governing and policy-making and often needed Josh Lyman to explain what he was working on. A large part of her character growth is her moving out of this role as she learns more about politics.

Radio

• Journey into Space: Lemmy does not possess very much scientific or engineering knowledge. As such, he often needs things explained to him by Jet, Mitch and, to a lesser extent, Doc.

Theatre

• Dr. Lyman Hall in 1776. As the newly-arrived delegate from Georgia, he has to meet the Congress, which is a handy way to introduce the audience to the various state delegations — and be a little taken aback by them. The Founding Fathers were a lot of bickering real people rather than wise marble statues. (Hall also serves as Chekhov's Gunman, but that's another story.)
• The purpose of Jared in Dear Evan Hansen is to provide a voice for how the audience feels about Evan. He frequently calls Evan out for doing anything that would make the audience question whether they should root for him.
• In the other theatrical production about the American founding fathers, Hamilton, Madison is seen crying after the events of "It's Quiet Uptown."
• In The Insect Play, the Tramp (known as the Vagrant in some translations) is the only human character present for most of the play. He mostly serves to draw analogies between human societies and insect societies.
• "Interviewer," in Autistic License. In some variations, he spends the entire time on stage! Kudos to any actors with that level of stamina. Unless the variation is just him sitting the entire time, which only hammers the point home.

Video Games

• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: The players are meant to identify with either Michael McNeil in the GDI campaign or Anton Slavik in the Nod campaign, negating the Non-Entity General approach of the other games.
• The main protagonist of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Byleth, is the game's Heroic Mime and customizable avatar^note Though Byleth's customizability is downplayed in comparison to their predecessors; previous Avatars had fully customizable appearances and voices, while only Byleth's birthday and gender are selectable, a feature used in previous games in the series as a self-insert for the player. They grow up living an incredibly sheltered mercenary life, having little knowledge of the world outside of battle. Byleth does not know many historical or political details about the game's setting, the continent of Fódlan, so the other characters will sometimes explain parts of the setting and lore to Byleth (and thus to the players).
• In Final Fantasy X, one of Tidus's major roles in the plot is so people who've lived within the society of Spira all their lives have to explain it to somebody.
• Ethan Mars in Heavy Rain. There are four main characters in the story, but it's clear right from the beginning that Ethan's the one the player is supposed to empathize with the most.
• Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart The Player just arrived in Lastation, seeking a job at the same time as Noire's fiddling around with the Sharicite, you end up helping Noire out at a very critical juncture, and get hired as her personal secretary.
• James Vega of Mass Effect 3 performs this role for people new to the trilogy. He is literally the only crewman (or significant character for that matter) that Shepard hasn't met in either of the first two games.
• Metal Gear:
  • Raiden is pretty much this in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Like the player he has experience from the previous game based on "virtual reality" and the game is not subtle at all in later parts when Raiden is told to "Turn the game console off." It is also worth noting that Raiden has dogtags written by the player in the game's beginning and he throws them away in the end, having decided to find his own identity.
  • In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the player writes in information such as name and birth date, and also gets to design a new face, which is all presented as part of Big Boss's plan to hide his identity, with the facial customization being for a planned plastic surgery. As it turns out, Venom Snake is not actually Big Boss, but a body double instead, with the player-designed identity (and by extension the player themselves) being Venom's original self; in contrast to Raiden in MGS2, Venom continues to play the role of Big Boss even after regaining his original memories in the true ending. The implication is that the player is just as responsible for Big Boss's legend as the man himself; adding to this, it's also revealed that the player-customized identity did end up being temporarily assumed by the real Big Boss.
• Red Dead Redemption 2: Arthur Morgan. As the protagonist and playable character of the story, he is more or less the personification of what the player would be if he were living a western adventure with his companions, especially considering that Dutch is not a very eloquent leader. In fact, part of the reason for Arthur Morgan's popularity is that he actually reflects the average mindset of the players if they were in his situation: he's cynical, conflicted in his decisions, realistically thinks about the future, among other things . If that is not enough, Clark wanted to portray a character that was complex enough for the player to choose his path and still make sense. He initially faced difficulty with this concept, as the high honor performance was different to the low honor, but he reminded himself that Arthur was a complex character who could easily contradict himself.
• Phil from the Riddle School series is confirmed to be this via Word of God.
• Martin Walker from Spec Ops: The Line is played for every negative connotation this trope provides. He treats the events of the story the way your average modern military shooter player would: As a power fantasy and a chance to feel like a hero. In the process, he does a number of horrible things, and every single one of them is your fault.
• The Talking Flowers from Super Mario Bros. Wonder tend to react to the surreal Wonder Effects by giving surprised reactions that the players likely would.
  Talking Flower: [after a few Piranha Plants start singing out of nowhere] Are they... singing? [Beat] They're singing.
• Touhou Project: In Strange Creators of Outer World, series creator ZUN explicitly refers to Deuteragonist Marisa Kirisame as "the player/reader stand-in character" since her presence allows him to explain things that he couldn't/wouldn't if Reimu Hakurei were the sole protagonist. He credits this to her straightforward nature, saying it makes her easy to understand but at the same time occasionally makes her "un-Touhou-like".
• The Turing Test: Despite her name, Ava Turing is not a computer expert, which gives TOM plenty of opportunities to bring her up to snuff on the Turing Test and other intricacies of AI sciences that the average gamer may not necessarily be familiar with.
• Undertale has two, but they're not who you might think.
  • The first one is Flowey. For a substantial portion of any run, he projects on Frisk, believing them to be his friend the Fallen Child when they've never actually met; in the True Pacifist run, as Asriel, he plans to reset the entire timeline so he can keep having fun with his "friends;" and in the Genocide run, he talks about how his own genocidal actions were motivated, in part, by the repetitiveness of helping everyone and the realization that they were all scripted actors. All of this is set up to directly parallel the player's own motivations and actions, especially if they took the anticipated path of doing a True Pacifist run and resetting for the Genocide run.
  • The second one is the Fallen Child who, as an embodiment of completionism and powergaming during the Genocide run, acts similarly to the player. Through the Fallen Child's actions, the player is shown just who they've been acting like: a crazed killer whom the lesser monsters fear and the more powerful ones die fighting heroically. As a bonus, if you decide to go against the Fallen Child, essentially who you were, at the last moment, you will be greeted by the same familiar determination, just on the other end of the stick.
• Magma in the first X-Men Legends game, who is a mutant saved and taken in by the X-Men. We go through her first days in training all the way to becoming the newest member of the team, though the first few missions don't even have her as a playable character.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction has your character, who gets to hang out with Yugi and Katsuya Jonouchi / Joey Wheeler and save the world.

Visual Novels

• Amnesia: Memories puts Orion into this role much more than the mostly-silent heroine. He serves as not only the one explaining what is going on, but points out reasons for the boyfriends' behaviors or asking what is going on. The fandiscs put this role back onto the heroine, as Orion is no longer merged with her.
• In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, K1-B0 is literally described as this by Tsumugi at the end of the final trial, since his "inner voice" is controlled by an audience poll.
• Slay the Princess has the Hero and the Contratrian, two voices in the Player's head that influence your choices. The two are foils of each other - the Hero being a fence sitter who follows the game's rules with caution while the Contratrian initially was a rebel who acts against the game's script in a reckless manner.

Web Animation

• Rookie from Batty Battalion is the only character who seems like he is from the real world, not the crazy video game respawning one Batty Battalion is set in.
• Raimi Matthews of Broken Saints fame fits this pretty well, especially for American audiences (even though he's actually Canadian-American...)
• In DC Super Hero Girls, Jessica Cruz knows nothing about the Green Lantern Corps, hence Principal Waller has to explain all about the Green Lantern mythos to her and the audience.
• A very popular Llamas with Hats theory is that Paul is supposed to be this.
• Jaune Arc from RWBY is what most real life people would be in a World of Action Girls given that he is the most "normal" of all the main characters. Namely, he serves primarily as the guy who prompts exposition since, like the audience, he's new to the setting's world of combat.

Webcomics

• The unnamed heroine in The Bully's Bully.
• Dorkly.com has a literal example in If the Audience Were a Character on Game of Thrones. Heavily overlaps Meta Guy.
• El Goonish Shive, The Rant explicitly spells out that the points Magus made in this comic are based on the criticism of the "creation of Ellen" arc, more than 15 years ago.
• Muko from Furry Fight Chronicles represents the viewers who are into furry fighting because of the fanservice but ultimately developed a genuine admiration for the sport because of the impressive fights.
• Zeetha of Girl Genius is a downplayed version. She's unfamiliar with the weird world of Europa but is conditioned to it's oddities making her reactions similar to those of the audience.
• The Glass Scientists has Jasper, an overeager Mad Scientist-turned-werewolf through whom we meet Dr Jekyll and the Society.
• Head over Heels: Joon-Hyuk. He is the Morality Pet and best friend of The Sociopath. He asks him questions which the audience is thinking and gets honest answers.
• Caliborn and Calliope are these in Homestuck, with one acting as a Hate Dumb He-Man Woman Hater and the other acting as Shipper on Deck Ms. Exposition.
• Sarah Jones from Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, though she turns out to have a surprisingly useful collection of abandoned hobbies.
• Amity Vii of Miamaska. Seen clearing up plot holes here and here! She clears up pronunciation problems for the audience as well.
• Scully takes on this role in Monster of the Week, asking questions and getting thoroughly frustrated with absurd premises or Fridge Logic-induced Plot Holes. She's also an Author Avatar, despite there being one already (author herself).
• The MSPA Reader represent the entirety of MS Paint Adventures readers, their sole purpose in-universe is to react to the sheer weirdness of the story.
• The unnamed "protagonist" of PHD is the default representative of a typical grad student and is not given any distinctive characterization.
• Prequel has a literal version. The comic features suggestions from the audience in each of its updates. For side-stories (which are written in advance), stand-ins are used, with nicknames such as adventuregamer, FakelyMcSuggestor, ColorfulHorse6, ItalianArgonian, Horrible_Roleplayer_ or ObviousCommandgiver.
• The Redacverse's retroactive introduction starts with two Readers sitting in armchairs with floating pages everywhere. They even get an explanation of the story directly from the Narrator.
• Natalie from The Senkari is just a normal High School student who gets caught up in the adventures.

Web Original

• CollegeHumor: The main character in "The Six..." videos (played by Josh Ruben, later replaced by Emily Axford) is supposed to be a completely ordinary guy. Every one of them starts with some form of "This is you [representation]".
• Gameboys — Pearl for the two romantic leaves. You'll often find yourself gushing with her when something romantic or exciting is happening.
• The Gumdrops has Pete — who in the first episode is introduced to the madness of the main cast along with the audience.
• Sophie in KateModern, a minor character who is a fan of Kate's videos. On her Bebo profile, she would often break the Fourth Wall to directly communicate with "other" fans.
• "Make Them Look and Sound Like the Audience, Against All Logic" is #4 of Cracked's 6 Tricks Movies Use to Make Sure You Root for the Right Guy.
• Noob starts with the player behind Gaea buying the game in which the story is set and starting playing to find out only one guild will take low-level players. The role quickly shifts to Sparadrap, who has been playing longer but has so little understanding of it and such lousy memory the he ends up being the one to which everything needs to be explained. Gaea becomes one of the expositors due to being MMORPG-savvy despite being new to Horizon.
• Discussed in Mr. Plinkett's review of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, where he argues that a major weakness of the prequel trilogy is that it forgot to put a character in this role (unlike the originals). Between the stern-faced Obi-Wan and the emotionally volatile Anakin, it's never quite made clear just who the audience is meant to identify with, and the fact that the main characters are all either experienced politicians or veteran Jedi means that we always see the Clone Wars from the perspective of professionals who understand the situation far better than we do.

Western Animation

• Word of God is that The Falcon is this in Avengers Assemble. He eventually grows out of it, and Ms. Marvel seems to be taking over this role in Season 3.
• Diane Nguyen fills this role from time to time on BoJack Horseman, particularly in the finale, when she tells BoJack she's grateful to have known him, knowing this is their last moment together.
• Huey Freeman in The Boondocks passively observes the antics and idiosyncrasies of the other characters, sometimes as the Only Sane Man.
• Kyle plays this trope nicely in Fanboy and Chum Chum being the Only Sane Man in a world of wacky and over-the-top characters.
• Fry in the first season of Futurama, although he started to move away from this role once he became more accustomed to life in the 31st century.
• Kaeloo:
  • Any time something happens that the audience doesn't understand, Stumpy will ask Kaeloo what is happening so she can explain it to him (and by proxy the audience).
  • In the fifth season, a lot of changes were made to the show, including Character Development for various characters. In Episode 225, Mr. Cat and Rules note that the series has changed a lot, and thanks to the lack of a fourth wall Rules outright says things like "how do we keep loving you all if you stop being the way we've always known you?" and describes the changes as "violating the rules of the series", which reflects how longtime viewers may feel scared in the face of changes being made to the show.
• The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Arnold in Episode 1 is similar to the fans of the old series, trying to adjust to the class now being led by Fiona instead of Valerie. He, and hopefully the audience, learn that the change isn't really bad at all.
• Milo Murphy's Law: The first episode introduces Zack, a new student who isn't familiar with Milo and his jinx, and can thus have the reactions and ask the questions you would expect of a normal person (in contrast to most of the rest of the cast, who have grown accustomed to the weirdness).
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
  • Twilight Sparkle, the main protagonist, especially in the beginning when she's the one arriving at the new place and getting to know the people.
    • At least in hindsight, the first two-part story has her go through an analogy to the viewer surprised to like the show (similar to the Rainbow Dash example below), where she goes from "What am I doing here, this is stupid, it's not my kind of thing" to "These ponies are awesome."
  • Spike seems to be a surrogate for the male Periphery Demographic, being The One Guy and all. Apparently, a lot of the guys watching an ostensible girls' show with a varied cast of formidable and well-liked female protagonists still want to identify with The One Guy because he's the guy.
    • "The Ticket Master" in particular has him claim to not have an interest in the Grand Galloping Gala, saying it's too girly. Yet when Princess Celestia sends him a ticket, he's ecstatic. This is essentially how older fans felt about the show.
  • Rainbow Dash in "Read It and Weep". She passes off reading a popular book series as uncool, until she picks up a copy and discovers that she likes it, and then tries to hide the fact from her friends. Yet another example of older fans' feelings about loving this show.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders represent the children who aren't sure what they're good at and what they want to do with their lives.
  • In the Grand Finale, after Lord Tirek, Queen Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow use the Bewitching Bell on "Grogar", they express the audience's shock when it's revealed that he was actually a certain draconequus in disguise, something nobody In-Universe or out was expecting. The other heroes, meanwhile, express the utter disgust with Hasbro that followed.
• For the most part, Tommy Cadle from Pet Alien is an ordinary kid who acts as the Only Sane Man by reacting to the aliens' antics as a normal person would.
• Gus in Recess can be considered one, as he is the newest kid at school and seems the most confused about the ways the school is set up, causing the other kids to explain them to him — and the audience.
• The Simpsons: Frank Grimes in the infamous eighth season episode "Homer's Enemy". The character's sole purpose was to represent a realistic person from our universe — accustomed to toil, pressures and hardship with little, if anything, to show for it — transplanted into a universe that caters to and rewards the lazy and stupid, and how it would understandably drive him/her absolutely insane. Granted, his childhood was pretty exaggerated and far from being realistic so perhaps more of a caricature of a real person.
• Star Trek: Prodigy: The crew are this by design. Like the target demographic, they have no familiarity with the Federation or Starfleet until Holo Janeway brings them up to speed.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • Ahsoka Tano is a child, not having learned yet all she needs in order to survive in the universe, suddenly thrust into a life of excitement and adventure (and, more importantly, authority [at least, in her own mind] over more experienced adults). Isn't that what lots of kids fantasize about?
  • In the final arc of the show, Darth Maul of all people assumes this role. Maul is the only person in the cast who knows what's truly coming for the galaxy and everyone in it, and is absolutely dreading it. Given that the final episodes happen concurrently with Revenge of the Sith, the audience knows exactly what he's terrified of.
• Steven Quartz Universe himself is this in Steven Universe. The audience never knows about or sees something he doesn't. When there are shifts in POV, it's usually a story being told to Steven. The only time in the entire series where there's arguably an actual POV shift is Garnet's fight against Jasper in "Jail Break", and even then, Word of God says Steven was viewing all of it through security cameras.
• Trollz: Amethyst is this for the first main arc, showing how she returns from summer vacation and learns how to use magic after her gem has recently got its glow.
• Beast Boy acts as this sometimes in Teen Titans. As the youngest, and the least smart, he sometimes has the science-y stuff explained to him by his more educated teammates (e.g. the Chronoton Detonator in "Apprentice: Part One", Xenothium in "X").
• Jubilee is this in the beginning of X-Men: The Animated Series. It's through her eyes that we're introduced to the REAL main characters and the mutant world at large.
• Kid Flash in Young Justice (2010). He is the only member of the team with a remotely normal childhood, as well as the only one who lives in a two-parent household and attends public school. Rocket takes on this role later in the series, where other characters summarize the events of past episodes for her.

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