"Everyone's the lead in their own story, Administrator. Some roles are bigger, some smaller, but none are more important, understand?"
— Glaistig Uaine, Worm
In works of fiction, it often seems like the world revolves around the Main Characters, that nothing interesting happens unless one of them is in the middle of it. And sometimes that's true; sometimes the main cast is so important that nothing big can happen without their involvement. But other times, it's not that the Main Characters are the only ones that stories happen to; it's that we only see the stories that happen to the Main Characters.
It turns out the supporting characters have their own adventures going on off-screen, where they're the stars and the Main Characters only make cameo appearances. These characters are the Heroes of Another Story: we may not see much of their adventures, but it adds something to the fictional world if we know these people continue to lead interesting lives even when the Main Characters aren't around or before they show up. May happen because the other story was Overshadowed by Bigger News.
On occasion, we'll see one of these characters get A Day in the Limelight and they'll become The Protagonist for an episode. This often makes the real cast the Hero of Another Story for the episode, as they'll be off on their own adventures in the meantime. Alternatively, a P.O.V. Sequel might be done to tell the same story from their perspective.
Another Side, Another Story is a Sub-Trope, where you actually get to play the other stories, but not before you unlock their heroes first. If the other heroes' adventures are established to have occurred in the past, this can overlap with Precursor Heroes.
Compare Supporting Leader. Naturally, this will result when someone encounters the main character(s) of another series via Crossover or a Poorly Disguised Pilot. See also Little Hero, Big War, for settings that often have a bunch of heroes of other stories. See also Superman Stays Out of Gotham for cases where the main characters have powerful allies who are busy dealing with problems of their own. Depending on how well written the character is they could become an Ensemble Dark Horse. When these sorts of characters are only hinted at, see Unknown Character. The villainous inverse would be Villain of Another Story.
Compare Lower-Deck Episode, where minor characters get a brief chance to shine, or Spin-Off, where the character gets an entire series devoted to them. See also Adaptational Protagonist, when either minor or major characters acquire the main lead role in an adaptation. These characters can sometimes provoke They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character, if the audience thinks they were underused.
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Advertising
- A commercial for an insurance company lampshades Star Trek's tendency to do avoid this, with a man on a spaceship in Starfleet uniform saying, "I'm just saying, why does Enterprise get all of the good missions?" The ship then shakes, and he says, "Finally," only for it to turn out to be an alien ship that hit him by accident.
Audio Play
- Jan Tenner: During their fight against the Heir's of Zweistein, Lara and Zeno act independently from the main group of heroes. With the exception of episode 18, the two only appear in the story when they cross paths with the main group of heroes.
Comic Books
- Asterix: The main characters aren't the only faction of indomitable barbarians who continue to hold out against the Roman Empire. There are equivalent villages in Hispania and Britannia, not to mention the entirety of Belgium and Corsica (the latter being so successful that the Romans have given up on it entirely, using it strictly as a dumping ground for their worst legionnaires). It's all the more impressive because they're managing to achieve the same results as Asterix's village without needing to rely on its magic potion.
- Astro City: It happens to every super-being at one time or another, since the stories typically take the big, planet-shaking battles of traditional superhero comics and reduce them to background color. Instead, the focus is usually on the ordinary citizens and peripheral characters of those events as they try to handle their own, comparatively minor issues.
- Birthright establishes the five mages as heroes born of Terrenos — except for Sameal, who was born on another world. This means he somehow developed mage powers, jumped worlds alone, became a top-ten mage in a magic-using world, volunteered to fight God King Lore for years, and led the five to seal Lore away from Earth.
- Blake and Mortimer: A few:
- Commander William Steele is to MI6 what Captain Francis Blake is to MI5: a star agent who eventually rises to become the director of his agency. What we see suggests that he has every bit as lively a career in intelligence as Blake does in counterintelligence. Occasionally, they end up working together when a mission overlaps between their jurisdictions or when one of them has expertise the other needs.
- Blake also has various foreign allies who do the same thing in their respective countries that he does in the U.K. The most notable ones are Commissioner Pradier of the DST in France, Colonel Mitsu of the KCK in Japan, Agent Calloway of the FBI in the United States, and most especially, Agent Nasir of the IB in India. The last one started out as a comrade-in-arms of Blake and Mortimer who disappeared after the first few novels; the revival stories explained this as him having gone back to India after decolonization to continue in the same line of work for his newly independent country.
- Buck Danny:
- Slim Holden is not a main character like the trio, but he crosses paths with them regularly, having a knack for ending up involved in the same shady and high-risk operations as them. This continues even after he leaves the Navy: in the latest story arc, he's become a civilian and started working for a private security contractor, but quickly discovers that it's involved in criminal activities (exactly the same thing that happened to the heroes the one time they left the military), at which point he covertly leaves clue for military investigators to follow and discover the conspiracy.
- The Blue Angels story arc also includes a cameo for a couple of other Ace Pilots from other countries, Dan Cooper (Canada), and Michael Tanguy and his wingman Ernest Laverdure (France). Both of these were the heroes of their own comic books, similar in theme to Buck Danny.
- Darth Vader : A montage in The Cry of Shadows features a group of four Jedi as part of a Rebel force that Vader defeats soon after Hock joins him, with their exact motives, organization, and how they survived Order 66 being unrevealed.
- Hellblazer: John Constantine started out this way, back when he was still just a supporting character in Swamp Thing. Once he got his own series, a few characters from other series' in the DC/Vertigo continuity appeared prior to his series gaining effectively its own continuity, most notably Morpheus from The Sandman (1989).
- DC Comics' Hero Hotline: The mysterious night shift.
- The Lone Ranger: Zorro exists in the same universe as the Lone Ranger. They crossed paths once when Reid, then a teenager, was driving a herd of cattle to be sold in California, only to be swindled by the cattle baron receiving them, a wrong Zorro managed to right. Many years later, Reid, now the Lone Ranger, returns to California to avenge the death of Zorro, and overthrow the posse of ex-Confederate soldiers who murdered him and were terrorizing the region. Zorro eventually got his own line of comics in this continuity showing his earlier adventures, much of it inspired by Isabel Allende's novel.
- Lucky Luke: Built into the very premise. The comic is an Affectionate Parody of the entire Classic Western genre and mythology: as such, any number of books will have the hero cross paths with another legend of the wild west, usually ending with the two parting ways amicably and going on their separate adventures. The other hero is usually a Historical Domain Character, like Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill, Bass Reeves, or Isaac Parker, but some of them will be parodies of fictional characters, like Zorro.
- Mary Marvel (1945): In #1, evil Dr. Sivana mentions Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. are out of town, and that is the only time the world's greatest heroes are mentioned in the whole series.
- MediEvil: Fate's Arrow: Kiya ended up back in ancient Egypt after her and Dan's separation, where she defeated a warlock bent on summoning Anubis before having her high priest return her to her eternal rest. Dan only finds this out upon returning to her tomb and finding a letter in her sarcophagus' hands.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW):
- While the mane six were dealing with the Changelings, Spike and Princess Celestia were fighting off a horde of giant, magic cockatrices in Canterlot. Also, Princess Luna makes a small cameo at the end holding a map of Manehatten, implying she may have been the one to deal with the giant magical marshmallow pony that Celestia mentioned (or tried to see how she's lost).
- After her Heel–Face Turn in the show, Trixie now wanders Equestria having adventures and helping others, occasionally meeting and teaming up with the Mane Six.
- It's heavily implied during the "Neigh Anything" arc that Sam Beckett (or an Equestrian counterpart) leaped into the body of Shining Armor's friend Gaffer to make sure Shining and Cadence got together; he's seen whispering to a pony-fied version of Al asking why he hasn't leaped yet.
- At one point in Nova volume 4, Richard encounters the Luminals, a team of alien superheroes stated to be their world's equivalent of the Avengers. They've come to the edge of the universe to get rid of their archenemy Abyss, who keeps coming back no matter how many times they defeat and imprison him. Unfortunately for them, Abyss gets out and turns them all into zombies, forcing Richard to deal with both Abyss and these undead Luminals.
- Pathfinder: Other characters of the Pathfinder Iconics routinely pass through the party's storyline amidst their own adventures, particularly in Origins: Valeros fought together with Iconic Barbarian Amiri once upon a time, while Kyra hunted vampires with Iconic Paladin Seelah, who later headed to Mendev to join the Crusades against the demons of the Worldwound.
- Sin City will do this to the point where actual stories will intersect. For instance, in Yellow Bastard we see Marv in the background in the scene where Nancy runs off with Hartigan. They go off and have their own adventure. In Just Another Saturday Night, we see this scene from Marv's viewpoint, lamenting that "Nancy ran off with some old guy" before going off to have his own adventure.
- In the short story "Blue Eyes," Jim is on the run from the mob (and shows a bit of resourcefulness in the process). It's never revealed why The Colonel and Manute are after him, and his narrative significance is merely to be killed by Delia for her Initiation Ceremony into the mob.
- In "The Babe Wore Red," Private Investigator Bernard G. Zimmer becomes a Posthumous Character due to being brave enough to investigate a drug ring that the mayor and district attorney are involved with.
- The Sandman (1989):
- Had appearances by John Constantine and Martian Manhunter in the first arc.
- There are also references to a few of the DC superheroes who carried the Sandman title while Morpheus was imprisoned, Hector Hall even attempts to fight Morpheus in one chapter.
- In one issue Morpheus grants an audience to a group of children on a cross-dimensional adventure to find their mother; they appear for half a page before the king of Dreams sends them on their way.
- In a The Simpsons Halloween story parodying Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Homer runs from the pod people and, a little outside Springfield, crosses paths with a man from Shelbyville who is fleeing a horde of zombies. The two chat for a while about their respective predicaments before the Shelbyvillean gets to his turn, saying it was nice to meet Homer; Homer returns the compliment, wishing him luck with the undead.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Many over the course of the comic, ranging from the Arctic Freedom Fighters all the way to the G.U.N. special forces.
- Spider-Man:
- Spider-Man's first encounter with the Sinister Six had Iron Man playing this role; also subverted, when he encounters the X-Men and they turn out to be android duplicates programmed to try and kill him.
- It was once a common occurrence that every time the Sinister Six showed up, Spider-Man would call the Avengers and Fantastic Four, only to find out that they were on other missions. Other superheroes would eventually come to his aid, however.
- The first Spider-Man Annual is full of this. He couldn't go two pages without crossing paths with another superhero who is off on his own adventure (while the narrator points out that you can follow said hero's adventures in his respective comic).
- Maximum Carnage shows this trope too, as both the Avengers and the Fantastic Four are specifically mentioned as being away. At one point, Spidey and Venom break into the FF's headquarters while they're away to steal a sonic weapon to fight Carnage. Later, Captain America shows up to lend a hand, and the rest of the Avengers finally return just in time to mop up after Carnage is defeated.
- Star Wars: Legacy: In addition to the many Mauve Shirt career soldiers and Force-sensitive knights on all three sides of the war, Bantha Rawk mainly appears in relation to Cade, but between leaving the Jedi Order for mysterious reasons in the middle of a war, becoming a Family Man who rescues one of his sons from slavers, learning his nephew Cade survived the latest Jedi Purge and giving him an occasional safe harbor (strained by how he once chased the group off after Cade's buddy Syn tried to seduce Rawk's stepdaughter), his own backstory is enough to fill a book or two.
- In Supergirl:
- In "The Super-Steed of Steel", Superman shows up as Supergirl and Comet are fighting some alien invaders. However, Superman leaves without one word since they seem to have everything under control and he has an urgent but unrevealed mission.
- Drang the Destroyer: As she has been depowered and captured by the titular villain, Supergirl regrets that Superman isn't here to help her out, but since her cousin is on a mission in another universe right now, she will have to get herself out of this trap, with or without powers.
- Superman:
- Superman in Kandor: At the start, Superman mentions that Supergirl is busy with another mission in a distant planet.
- In "All-Star Superman", the main character at one point mentions Batman and Robin, but we never actually see them in the series. Another issue sees him stranded on a planet of Bizarros, including Bizarro versions of his teammates in the Justice League, meaning they probably exist in this universe too, but just aren't shown.
- Superman & Batman: Generations:
- While Superman, Batman and their allies are the main focus, many other heroes of the DC Universe are acknowledged and most of them are implied to have their own adventures that go unmentioned by the main story.
- The Golden Age Atom Al Pratt and the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick appear as members of the Justice Society, but don't get nearly as much attention or prominence as Wonder Woman or Green Lantern Alan Scott, to the extent that we aren't informed if Al Pratt ever retired or died and had Ray Palmer continue his legacy while Jay Garrick is presumed to have retired after Barry Allen became the second Flash.
- A crossover in John Byrne's Doom Patrol run that began shortly after Generations III wrapped up, which occurred during an arc where Robotman shifted through various alternate timelines as the result of attempting to prevent his accident and his actions causing the timestream to become unstable, showed the Doom Patrol to exist in this continuity when they were never acknowledged in the original trilogy and hinted toward them having previous adventures with Batman. The only time we see them in action is when they team up with the Justice League to defeat their enemies the Brain and Monsieur Mallah, so one can assume their adventures happend off-screen during the original trilogy's events.
- Thunderclash is treated this way in the first season of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye. He is leading his own expedition to find the Knights of Cybertron and just happens to cross paths with the Lost Light. The two crews wind up joining up during season 2.
- Spider-Men II: In trying to solve the mystery of Miles Morales-616, Peter Parker reaches out to Jessica Jones at Alias Investigations. She quickly mentions she did an exhaustive search, while the art shows a few panels of what she's been up to: a team-up with Spider-Woman, a Dazzler concert, a battle with the Red Hulk, wrestling the Blob, interviewing Moon Girl, and running from what appear to be motorcycling ninjas.
- One Star Wars (Marvel 1977) story has recurring characters Rik Duel and Dani rescue their friend Chihdo after he's frozen in carbonite. This occurs at the same time as the main cast unsuccessfully attempting to intercept a carbonized Han Solo on his way to Jabba's Palace. The circumstances behind Chihdo getting frozen in carbonite are never revealed but are implied to be interesting.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures has the Mighty Mutanimals, a group of mutants (and an alien duo) from different walks of life that dedicated themselves to fighting crime and protecting the Earth. Any adventures that didn't concern the Turtles at all were even covered in their own (rather brief) spin-off title.
- The Tomb of Dracula: Dr. Mortte from the eighth issue has spent several years as a vampire, living off blood donations while clinging to his humanity and genuinely working for the welfare of his patients.
- The first issue of Touch (2004) briefly mentions an NYPD cop who got powers and became a superhero, but he never physically appears.
- Twig (2022): At the end, Twig places the red gem in a larger crystal, and then a Mushroom Man adds it to the hilt of his sword. Twig then reveals that placelings don't directly save the world; they place useful items so chosen heroes can find them. He describes himself as a "hero behind the hero".
- Usagi Yojimbo: Master Katsuichi became this trope for a time, as he wandered the countryside for a while and, according to several mentions once reunited, had his own share of exciting adventures and peril.
- X-Wing Rogue Squadron: Elscol Loro. When the heroes meet her, she's already a seasoned guerrilla leader, running her own insurgency to free her planet from the Empire without any assistance from the Alliance. She sticks with them for the next few stories, even flying with Rogue Squadron, but eventually parts ways with them to continue her own war against the Empire, now armed with a new warship stuffed with weapons and hard currency that she and the Rogues took from an Imperial Moff. (She eventually crosses paths with the Rogues again, when they themselves have resigned from the New Republic to pursue their own war against an Imperial spymaster, though not until the novels).
Fan Works
- The 75: All of the non-Career tributes in the 1st Hunger Games are teenage heroes of the rebellion who were sent into the Games through rigged reapings and feel like they've had enough adventures for a book series of their own prior to being subjected to that fate. While scanning the crowd, the eventual Victor immediately recognizes "Pilot Baltimore Anderlee from District Six. Cooper Greystorm from Twelve. Lt. Maldonado's little girl. The Lilliums. Even Agent Wozniak, Five's greatest spy, here in the flesh. The Capitol's Most Wanted." Others mentioned later in that chapter are Private Daytona Strauss (who is implied to be Baltimore's district partner and manages some good defensive strikes despite just being a trembling computer expert facing a loyalist former frontline soldier), a District 8 tribute who wounds a Career, a boy from Distroct 11 who kills himself rather than fight, the two District 3 tributes who try to escape, and the hulking, Hot-Blooded Officer Trellis Walker, who lost several cousins in the war, had his girlfriend lose an arm, and "could probably cut down all of District 7 in one go," from his logging skills.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Reluctant Mad Scientist Mariko and the mercenary Tejada slightly, after they pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here! on Alan Jonah and they hole up with other survivors against the onslaught of the Many.
- Along Came a Spider is mostly about how the well-prepared Federated Commonwealth holds off the Clan Invasion. On the other end of the Invasion, there's the Draconis Combine which didn't have advance warning but somehow struggle through the war.
- There is a Fandom-Specific Plot in the Amphibia and The Owl House fandoms where the Calamity Trio from the first show briefly meets the Hexsquad from the second. Usually, the Calamity Trio are potrayed as older, having already gone through their adventure in Amphibia while the hexsquad are still in the middle of theirs.
- Arai-san Mansion: Aside from Raccoon, many chapters are focused on the Otter Exploration Squad trying to chart the map of the place. Some of them are named Bottle, Mask and Map, depending on what they are in charge of, and appear to be expendable.
- In Avengers: Infinite Wars, this likely applies to Hope van Dyne, Natasha Romanoff and Matt Murdock in particular, as they spent some time operating solo before the other Avengers found them (of the rest of the displaced heroes, either their activities have been clearly documented or they didn’t do much more than meet new cultures before the others found them).
- A Certain Droll Hivemind:
- Throughout the fic, there are hints that Abe Eiko is more than she seems. Near the end, it's revealed she was a Dark Side assassin who got herself benched by pretending to flub a mission. She teams up with Misaka-11111 to fight off the armed assailants after them... only to find out that the men are after someone entirely different and it has nothing to do with them.
- Speaking of, Touma shows up during the incident with very little explanation and helps fend off the armed men. Abe Eiko also mentions having fought him before, and being annoyed that he got in the way of a "perfectly ordinary assassination."
- Misaka Mikoto and Shirai Kuroko show up because of the assailants as well. They both reference recent incidents that 11111 has nothing to do with. She's a little confused, and wishes they would use full names when speaking so that she knew who they were talking about.
- Idol Hooves, the changeling protagonist of The Changeling of the Guard, will eventually run into the Mane 6 during the events of A Canterlot Wedding while posing as one of Celestia's Royal Guards, according to the author.
- Recurring characters Dr. Kit Bennett, alias Kathy Watson and retired D.I. Michael Lestrade in Children Of Time (Wholmes Productions).
- The Crown of Neverwinter opens with Nodoka Saotome confessing she's actually a princess from another dimension. Tendo household learn this after a wizard knocked on their door — he searched for her in the whole multiverse over three decades.
- Doctor Whooves and Assistant works a lot like this. The Doctor and Ditzy Doo's adventures run side by side with those of the main cast of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. For example, while the mane cast was heading off to fight Nightmare Moon, the Doctor and Ditzy went that way before them and fought the Manticore first. The mane cast is seen at some points, but only from the view of the Doctor and Ditzy.
- The Resident Evil fic Epic: The Third Survivor, telling of Sherry Birkin's exploits prior to and during Resident Evil 2.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Starship Troopers crossover fic Garbed in Steel
, Johnny Rico himself, the hero of Starship Troopers is this to Sergeant Buffy Summers of the Mobile Infantry.
- A running gag in Glad Tidings is that Ulder Ravenguard's servants keep leaving to have their own Magic of Midwinter moments; i.e., holiday movie fodder. For example, his best butler had a midlife crisis and ran away to his small home town to sell Midwinter-themed books and catch the eye of a drow who runs a Midwinter-themed bakery. In one route, he even weaponizes this by urging an assassin to go chase her love instead of murdering his son.
- The Guardian is unfolding in the background of Identity Crisis, so the reader gets to see Jason and Dick having a road trip while Bruce is busy investigating a Serial Killer.
- Half Past Adventure: Cash Daniels, P.I. appears to be the hero of her own noir parody that occasionally intersects the main plot.
- Frisk Dreemurr trails Harry Potter by about two years in Harry Potter and the Underground's Saviour, but still has to deal with repercussions of the main plot, like Neville getting a Howler from his grandmother while already depressed.
- In The Hearth Series, Marcus, Ludovicus, Muhammad, Yao, Sadik, Nefertiti, and Helene serve as this. Throughout the stories of the shenanigans of the residents of Hearth, we get hints of their own adventures including how they all met in ancient times and lived for hundreds of years through their discovery of the secret of immortality, but the exact stories have yet to be told.
- Horseshoes and Hand Grenades has many adventures running parallel to the Kyoto Arc:
- Month of Sundays: A group of Amanogawa High students fight off against Foundation X and a strange serpent who can transform people into dolls.
- SplitxEnd: Yayoi Tokuda, a college student and former Zodiarts, teams up with Haruto Souma to uncover the truth about Gentaro's past.
- Wheel of Fortune: Mei Shirakawa tries to determine fate with her tarot cards while looking up the origins on Yamada Tatsumori.
- Quick to the Trigger is a fanfic regarding a comment Owner made way back in Horseshoes, telling on what Ryotaro, Kotaro, and Yuto are doing that has Power Rangers and Kamen Riders teaming up against a future threat.
- Hours 'Verse: During Patchwork Hearts, the Shadow Operatives are quietly picking off Jails and investigating potential incidents in the background while the Phantom Thieves do their thing, with only a passing conversation to tell us it's happening.
- Human Curiosity has a few, including Lukas (a man who comes from a long line of members of the Swiss Guard, and who rescues and temporarily protects Liechtenstein from the HCS) and several nations such as Russia, who were vital in helping everyone escape from the HCS facility. Among other things, sequel fic has several chapters telling their stories.
- Chapter 21 of Infinity (Lyrical Nanoha) features a brief appearance by Megane Alpine, whose squad is smack dab in the middle of their investigation into Jail Scaglietti's illegal combat cyborg research.
- Invaders of Irk:
- It's mentioned that Lard Nar's cell (the future Resisty) isn't the only one started by the Coalition, with another such group being said to have hijacked some Irken freighters and stolen their supplies.
- Brief snippets are shown throughout the series of different rebel cells fighting back against the Irken forces invading their homeworlds and there are other rebel groups mentioned but not seen yet.
- The King Nobody Wanted:
- In Braavos, Lyanna meets Zor Alexi of Sarnor and Lok of Far Ib, who appear to be traveling together to deal with problems involving the Dothraki, something she barely cares about.
- Drogo and his riders hear stories of a prophet in Lhazar who was exiled for preaching that his pacifistic society should rise up against their Dothraki oppressors. He returned to overthrow the council that exiled him and has his people preparing to defend themselves against the next attack. A later conversation by Stannis' Small Council reveals that this "Golden Ram" has successfully repelled a Dothraki attack and is now leading his people in building up larger fortified settlements and making new trade alliances.
- Tygett and Genna Lannister are trying to defend the Westerlands against Randyll Tarly and Balon Greyjoy, with many battles and sieges involved, but no POV characters have been present to observe their efforts for some time and few reports of the campaign reach King's Landing.
- The Arbiter in The Last Spartan has been investigating Cerberus at least a month before the story began, and even tells The Chief he went on several missions lifted directly from the game relating to them before they had met again.
- The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf: Mayor Lourdes got District 7 through a harsh winter by going against the Capitol and then managed to make it look like he was acting out of loyalty toward them. He's also a leader of the rebellion, but only has a handful of scenes.
- In The Manehattanverse, Twilight was sent to Manehattan instead of Ponyville; a lot of the events that occurred there still happened, but were resolved in different manners by the remaining members of the Mane Six offscreen.
- The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: Danny's blind dates, each one can become his girlfriend in different timelines, include but not limited to Kim Possible, Supergirl, Violet Parr, Sailor Jupiter and Starfire, all amazing heroines who have adventures and fight evil before being involved with him.
- In Mortality, Inspector Patterson is defined as this from his first appearance, introduced as the man who's been undercover in Professor Moriarty's criminal empire for the past several years.
- Pinkie Pie in My Little Animaniacs, who goes on a quest to cure herself and ends up getting possessed by a Body Snatcher somewhere along the way. Also, Chicken Boo, who becomes a famous DJ mixer offscreen.
- New Tamaran: During the events of Teen Titans, the Justice League was off-planet to aid in the war effort against Darkseid, while Supergirl and Wonder Girl had their own adventures as a Battle Couple, and Oracle kept tabs on Lex Corp. Also, Static and Shazam are both briefly mentioned as the defenders of Dakota City and Fawcett City respectively.
- "Nor Hell a Fury" is essentially a sequel to Christine set in the world of Supernatural, where Dennis Guilder has become a hunter while tracking Christine's reappearances across the country, dealing with other ghosts or monsters as he encounters them, although he notes in private that he doesn't consider himself a "lifetime" hunter as he would stop if he defeated Christine. After the Winchesters help him find a ritual to destroy the car for good, Dennis appears content with his plans to return home.
- One helluva time with Iruma kun:
- Chapter 42 is a crossover with Gravity Falls where I.M.P. gets hired to kill Stanley Pines, resulting in a fight against him, Dipper, and Mabel. The Pines twins and their great uncle are heroes who have battled monsters, the client being for the hit being a villain they previously defeated.
- Chapter 67-70 sees Iruma swap universes with his counterpart from his original manga. Both Irumas spend the story arc adjusting to the universe of their counterpart while the fanfic’s cast tries to find a way to return them home.
- Oogway's Little Owl: While Taylor and Oogway are sailing to Japan, the ship is suddenly attacked by a pirate gang whose captain is the estranged brother of the ferry ship's captain. The brothers proceed to have a fierce and very personal battle while Taylor and Oogway are left dealing with the mooks.
Taylor: I feel like we just wandered into someone else's story, Master.
Master Oogway: It happens. I’ve lost count of how many times it’s happened to me. - A now excised chapter of Origin Story featured how Power Girl's mind, inside Xander Harris's body, ends up in the Star Trek universe. The writer of the story received literally hundreds of requests for a story featuring that character.
- Luigi and his team of heroes get the spotlight in Paper Luigi X. While Team Mario is busy rescuing Team ZAP from the clutches of the X-Nauts, Team Luigi is busy rescuing Princess Eclair.
- The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Literal example with Reel the omake character - he originates from a fanfic that Anon e Mouse Jr. has in development, in which he ended up in an alternate version of Equestria that he now calls home. He now pops into A.R. versions of other universes from time to time.
- Pony POV Series:
- Minty Pie becomes this in the latter end of Dark World. She rushes after the new Elements of Harmony to help them fight Discord, but falls into a cavern network, where she has a series of adventures and a Big Bad of her own, which the reader only sees bits and pieces of. She finally joins up with the others just in time for the Final Battle with Nightmare Paradox.
- The "7 Dreams/Nightmares" collection has Logan, who shows up in Clover's and Bright Eyes' stories and saves both them and their families from monsters created by the disaster with the Yellow shard of the Rainbow of Light, during his quest to find his parents. Luna suggests to Twilight that he continued to do so for the rest of his life (help others, that is; he did eventually find his parents).
- The Shining Armor Arc has Commander Bond, who handles several espionage-related investigations while Shining and Cadence are busy with politics, and the anti-Hooviet rebels led by Dima and Mother Deer (who have been fighting Makarov a lot longer than Shining has).
- The Wedding Arc primarily focuses on the Mane Six and their friends fighting off the Changelings, but there's a side story focusing on Misfit Actual, Shining's command squad, as they perform covert operations against the Changeling occupation of Canterlot.
- The Wedding Arc also has a Noodle Incident version of this, where a few cutaway scenes show that Captive Audience (a member of Misfit) somehow got roped into an adventure with the Doctor and his companions in Neighpon, fighting Dracozilla and the Daleks.
- In the Finale Arc, the Cutie Mark Crusaders call out Phobia for constantly showing up just to give them cryptic advice and then ditching them. He lectures them on how while they have their own adventure to save the world, he's working behind the scenes to save individual lives and set up ways for them to win. He even mentions the trope Hero of Another Story by name and points out even if they don't know what the other heroes are doing, they are equally important. Later, the CMC just barely miss running into the Doctor, who cured Lickety Split of being a werewolf. Daring Do, Flash Sentry, and others also have individual adventures saving people.
- Prehistoric Park: Returned from Extinction: Tiberius Saurus is the official owner of the Park, and is implied to have gone on a few adventures of his own, but so far, he's only shown up once in the story, where he has a conversation with his son which ends with him watching dumbfoundedly as a Paracrax rams its head into a feeder to snatch a piece of meat. Unlike most examples, though, we actually get to see these adventures as more than just A Day in the Limelight - said chapter reveals he's actually Wyatt Arthur Thompson (full name Wyatt Arthur Tiberius Thompson Saurus), one of the protagonists of Primeval Paradox.
- The other mercenaries count in Racer And The Geek, especially Keffiyeh and Goggles.
- Reimagined Enterprise (a fan prose remake of Star Trek: Enterprise) has all the ones of Enterprise (if at times heavily modified) as well as repeatedly showing that other (non-NX-class) UESPA starships do in fact get involved in important matters, as well. The episode "Of Another Story" takes it to the point of not even having the main characters appear for a cameo, being instead entirely about the Daedalus and a historic event the ship and her crew is involved in.
- In Rising of the Sleeping Soldier, when King Aultcray demands to know who he is when Alucard demands he sends him back, questioning how saving their world from the Waves is treated as trivial to him, Alucard gives a complete and comprehensive rundown as to why.
Alucard: I am Adrian Fahrenheit Tepés, Known to the Wallachians as Alucard, the sleeping soldier, and defender of humanity. Age 19. My world is already under constant threat from all manner of monsters and demons. They wish to snuff out the entire human race or turn what's left of them after mass slaughter into nothing but slaves. The people have no means to defend themselves as all those who could have fought back have long since passed except for me and my companions. We are the last line of defense for humanity and I know they cannot fight without me as I cannot without them. That is why I cannot fight for you. Without my presence, my world will suffer.
- In Robb Returns, there is a hint that something similar to what is going on beyond the Wall is going in the Grey Wastes and the Dothraki are being "called" East, just as the descendants of the First Men are being called North. And many people are also being pulled to the Isle of Faces, so as to help protect it from the threat of the resurgent Faith Militant.
- RWBY: Epic of Remnant: Gudako, Angra Mainyu, EMIYA Alter, Lancelot, and Hassan of the Cursed Arm become stranded in the world of Remnant. Though they are unable to contact Chaldea, they have faith that Ritsuka and Mash are still there fighting the good fight in the Singularities.
- "The Scarab" is a crossover between Stargate SG-1 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer when SG-1 come to Sunnydale to investigate reports of Goa'uld activity. When Teal'c hears Spike refer to Buffy as "Slayer", he recognises the name from a tale told to him by Bra'tac of the Tarith'na, the Slayer of Monsters. As he explains to Buffy later (told in a manner that avoids giving away that he's talking about events on another world), a Slayer manifested on Chulak some years ago among the Jaffa, and when Bra'tac was assigned to kill this Slayer, she told him about her chosen destiny to slay the creatures of darkness such as the false god Apophis. This was particularly significant as her prim'ta had been sealed up after she was Chosen, taking away everything that made her a Jaffa but creating a warrior even more powerful. Although Bra'tac killed the Tarith'na anyway, Teal'c notes that Bra'tac attributes this encounter to the inspiration for his own lack of faith in the Goa'uld as gods.
- The various Shadowchasers Series fanfics have these a lot. The series features an organization that is spread out globally, and members of the local group featured in one story often show up in another, from time to time.
- Yu-Gi-Oh The Thousand Year Door: Redux by the same author also features Hyde Vayne from Shadowchasers: Risen Nemesis and Rave from Shadowchasers: Backwater.
- Sixes and Sevens: While Emily and Michael were dealing with their own adventure in the story's opening, Edith Harker had cut off all contact with her and the class of '38 to deal with her own villains. She gives sparse details to Emily, only telling her that she lost a man she loved and had to give up the child they had together.
- Strangers From Different Worlds sees the main characters of the Spider-Man Trilogy, the X-Men Film Series, the Fantastic Four Duology and the Blade Trilogy play prominent roles in the story as they get involved in the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
- The Sun Soul has a few of these. Ash Ketchum leads his core party of intrepid heroes all over the place, but along they meet up with a number of recurring individuals who work towards similarly heroic ends off-screen. So far, not many of these have been Killed Off for Real, but given the author's willingness to kill anyone...
- There's No Rule That Says A Wolf Can't Be A Jedi: Swift runs into Anakin several times, enough that they consider each other friends, and they're even deployed together at one point, but it's clear that while Swift is investigating archaeological sites and keeping his clone soldiers alive and training a Padawan, most of the canonical Star Wars plot is happening off-screen. With a few adjustments due to Swift's presence...
- In One Piece Self-Insert Fic This Bites!, it seems that some of the anime filler-arc adventures that this story is skipping over are still happening, just to other crews. For example, Bartolomeo has Apis from the Warship Island arc as a member of his crew. Just about all of the Super Rookies have their own battles during the Straw Hats' assault on Enies Lobby.
- This also applies to some of the movie adventures, as the Kid Pirates are the ones who get involved in the Dead End race and Hawkins' crew are the ones who go to Asuka Island.
- Tiberium Wars features this in the form of several officers and commanders fighting other battles. As with the main characters of the story, though, Anyone Can Die is in full force.
- Michael is stated (and somewhat shown) to be this to Ash in Traveler.
- This later becomes literal: Michael is revealed to be the protagonist of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness.
- In Trouble (Rustypaperclip), Harkness encounters the Lone Wanderer, the protagonist of the game, who goes through in-game quests off-screen while the story takes place.
- True Potential is a Naruto What If? fanfic where Naruto himself, Hinata, and Shikamaru are put on the same team instead of any of their respective canonical teams, with Anko serving as their sensei. As a result of this major change, certain adventures that Naruto went through in the manga, the anime filler episodes, or the movies still happened, but without his involvement and are only mentioned.
- Team 7 (with Kiba replacing Naruto) still end up doing the Land of Waves mission. One major change from canon is that both Zabuza and Haku survive those events.
- The omake from Chapter 55 show Sasuke and Kakashi returning to Konoha after taking care of the Land of Snow mission from the first movie. The fanfic barely says anything about said mission other than the fact that said land will now apparently be called the Land of Spring.
- In Chapter 109, Hinata and Shikamaru have a conversation with Dosu. The latter reveals to them that, two months prior, Team 10 and Sakura worked together to apprehend Kazuma (who attempted to overthrow Konoha and assassinate the Hokage), meaning that they went through the events of the Twelve Guardians filler arc from Shippūden. Unlike in the anime, Kazuma is still alive because Shino (who replaces Shikamaru on Team 10) apparently convinced Asuma to take him back to Konoha so he can be interrogated.
- Also in Chapter 109, except during a conversation between five of the jinchūriki and Hotaru, it's revealed that Utakata and Hotaru ended up replacing the Konoha ninjas as the protagonists of the mission from the fourth movie.
- Vapors repeatedly shows that during the times they are doing different things, Naruto is continuing to have his own missions and adventures off-screen while Aiko has hers.
- The Victors Project: Boudicca was once approached by a girl who wanted to take the Tribute Trials without any prior training in order to get away from her abusive father. The girl made it to the final trial, the Trial of Blood, (something less than half of the kids who spend a full eight years of Training from Hell accomplish) before being unable to kill her assigned victim. An impressed Boudicca gives her a job working at the Institute.
- The Hunter is one of these in With Strings Attached. The four are unfortunately sucked into some of his adventures... and he is fortunately sucked into theirs.
Gamebooks
- In the Choose Your Own Adventure books by Edward Packard, one gets the impression that recurring guest character Dr. Nera Vivaldi doesn't just show up only in adventures that happen to involve you.
- The Fighting Fantasy book The Crimson Tide tells the story of a child who was orphaned in the war that drives the plot of Black Vein Prophecy.
- Lone Wolf:
- Banedon the wizard pops up to help the main character at several points in the series and gains power and prestige at the same rate as Lone Wolf. He's a more prominent character in the Legend of Lone Wolf novelizations.
- In the Mongoose Publishing remakes, each book has a 100-page mini-story about one of the characters who shaped the plot of that book, either taking place before or after said book. One character, the Noble Zombie Dire from Captives of Kaag, is also the mini-story character in The Legacy of Vashna and Wolf's Bane.
- Grey Star the Wizard had his own adventure saving Southern Magnamund (Lone Wolf's adventures mostly take place in Northern Magnamund).
Music
- Variation in The Megas, where once Proto Man learns to let go of his anger and pulls a Heel–Face Turn, he decides to become this, looking on Mega Man as The Hero but setting out to find his own path.
Though my fate is broken, my path I cannot see
Though you are the chosen, I'll make my own history - Taylor Swift album evermore deconstructed this trope with "marjorie", which is a Grief Song tribute to her grandmother Marjorie Finley and how Taylor moans that she, despite all of the good memories mentioned earlier in the song, will never fully know what an incredible person her grandmother was, all the while expressing heavy guilt and regret for not asking more questions because of her own young age:
I should've asked you questions
I should've asked you how to be
Asked you to write it down for me
Should've kept every grocery store receipt
'Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me
Watched as you signed your name Marjorie
All your closets of backlogged dreams
And how you left them all to me.
Myths & Religion
- The Qur'an has a couple of important stories that focus on Ishmael, Abraham's first son, and while Isaac is still mentioned as an honorable prophet he is seen as less important in Islam as compared to Ishmael, who is considered an ancestor of the Arabs. In The Bible it's the opposite; Isaac is an important patriarch while Ishmael is quickly shunted away from the story (although God does promise that he will father "many great nations").
- The Thebaid: The narrator admits he'd rather tell about noble Emperor Domitian. The narrator mentions Domitian was so noble that he stayed on Earth to help Rome when he could have left to become a god in Heaven. Problem is, that story is really hard to tell, so the narrator settles on talking about Thebes.
Podcasts
- The Adventure Zone: Balance has the Hogsbottom Three, who have adventures in the same world as Tres Horny Boys but never meet them beyond passing familiarity with each others' careers and a cameo for The Hogsbottom Three in Barry and Lup's army in the penultimate episode.
- Mom Can't Cook!: A Running Gag is that in the films under review, side characters often seem to have far more interesting (or, at least, worrying) home lives than the main characters.
- The Storage Papers:
- Ron Hammond, the Ambiguously Evil Occult Detective who wrote the titular papers. He's still around and dealing with various supernatural phenomena, but it never comes into focus unless he needs Jeremy for it since he's generally very secretive.
- Jeremy is a rare example of the main character also being the Hero of Another Story. He's a paranormal investigator who only recently started running the podcast, and he occasionally makes reference to having prior experience in dealing with various supernatural creatures, including demons and ghosts, but the podcast generally focuses more on his investigations into the titular papers and not on his unrelated paranormal investigations.
- Welcome to Night Vale has various examples, the most memorable being Dana, who gets lost in the Dog Park, and Tamika Flynn, child leader of the revolution against Strexcorp.
Pro Wrestling
- Jerry Lawler continued to wrestle in the territories, outlaw promotions and later the independent circuit even after his time as an active WWF competitor ended, and usually was received as a baby face away from the WWF.
- El Hijo Del Santo's infamous turn to rudo only took hold in CMLL. Everywhere else he went in Mexico he was received and thus booked as a tecnico. Eventually CMLL's fans started cheering for him again to, so he turned back and became the hero of everyone's story again.
- Glamour Boy Shane is one of the most popular baby face wrestlers in the Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico. He merely serves as a referee for TNA, albeit, a referee few wrestlers dare to mess with. Shane was supposed to be part of a champion vs champion match when TNA became part of the World Wrestling League but it didn't pan out due to then TNA World Champion Bobby Roode's flight being canceled.
Roleplay
- Fire Emblem on Forums:
- Wonderful Blessing: Kazuto's adventuring group, Great Grandee, is comprised of these. They have brief segments in the epilogue of each chapter catching up with them, painting them as barely a step behind (or ahead) of Team F, the protagonists. They begin to avert this later on when they end up joining Team F on their journey, however.
- JoJo's OC Tournament:
- Shining Sandstorm:
- The Cleaners have centuries worth of history where they, well, cleaned up the aftermath of battles between Stand users and made sure humanity at large never learned of their existence. Even their current incarnation, refounded after the originals were wiped down to a single man, have been operating for a few decades by the time they come into conflict with the Blues Brothers.
- The Blues Brothers started off as mere regulars of a chatroom for Stand users before an outrageous stunt from the chatroom's programmer, Ana Khan, lead to them becoming a Speedwagon Foundation taskforce. They've gone on missions before coming into conflict with the Cleaners, and some of them have gone on adventures of their own beforehand.
- Worldwind Tour:
- Chris Carlisle has explored the world and been on plenty of expeditions before learning of Once In A Lifetime; this is the first time she sets up and leads an expedition team of her own.
- Nermin Reeds has been carefully building up a network of connections to overthrow the dictatorship ruling his home country for years by the time he and Carlisle casually cross paths.
- Urban Uprising: Gioia Arancini, Schioppo Fucile, and their group of friends back in San Battista found themselves fighting against an evil Stand user and their accomplices in their hometown over the summer prior to the ARG, something brought up at times but never shown in full detail.
- Shining Sandstorm:
- As Lords Among the Ashes is composed of two quests run on separate sites, both Jaune and Ruby are this to each other. While Jaune is conquering the Dark Continent, discovering Lost Technology, and fighting Titans, Ruby is clearing the seas of piracy, becoming an economic superpower, and inventing Mechashift weapons hundreds of years ahead of schedule. Their stories rarely intersect with each other even though they are both rather important.
- Ruby Quest:
- The Stinger implies that Daisy, who Ruby meets once rather early on in the quest, will be the heroine of the next attempt to escape the Metal Glen.
- And then there's Red, who, prior to the game's beginning, managed to pierce together what happened in the Metal Glen (despite suffering from amnesia after being resurrected) enough to realize that he could kill himself off for real (thus escaping the Metal Glen) if he survived long enough for his body to rid itself of the Cure. He then managed to put his plan into action, avoiding death by his horribly mutated coworkers and patients and hiding from Ace long enough to become truly clean. Ruby only gets to see the tail end of his plan, when he builds a bomb with materials he scrounged (including two coins from her), kills himself with sharpened stakes, and uses the bomb to obliterate his body beyond the possibility of resurrection. The only hint she gets of his plan (other than the bit she saw) was his secret Room Full of Crazy above the monitor room presumably where he hid from Ace and the box of cereal inside showing that he, unlike people on the Cure, needed to eat.
Tabletop Games
- This is how most Tabletop RPGs based on media properties work: the Enterprise, or Luke Skywalker, or Peter Venkman, or the Doctor is out there somewhere, but in this particular place and time you are the starship crew/Rebel base/Ghostbusters franchise/renegade Time Lord on the scene.
- Every character in Arkham Horror starts this way. They all have detailed backgrounds with them ranging from escaping cultists, hunting monsters, looking for lost loved ones, etc. The only thing they have in common once the game starts is that they ultimately have the same endgame.
Theater
- Hamlet has Fortinbras, the prince of Norway who is on a quest to avenge his father's death and reclaim the landed ceded to Denmark. By the time he gets to Denmark, the entire royal family has killed each other, clearing the way for him to take the Danish throne.
- In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Anthony Hope spends the vast majority of the play essentially under the assumption that he is the lead in a romantic story. It isn't until the closing moments of the show that he discovers he's really been in a thriller/horror story the whole time, and on top of that indirectly helped drive the Villain Protagonist mad enough to decide the whole world deserves to die.
Toys
- BIONICLE had several examples:
- The six Turaga elders at the end of the 2001-'03 saga were revealed to have been Toa warriors of the ancient past, called Toa Metru. 2004 and 2005 was about exploring their adventures in depth.
- Despite being a flashback set a thousand years in the past, the '04-'05 duology constantly referenced characters and events from much further back, primarily the Toa Metru's forerunners, the Toa Mangai. Of note was the last surviving Mangai, Lhikan and his former "brother", the traitor Toa-turned-monster Nidhiki. Some standout events of their lives were detailed in various short stories and books in later years. Lhikan was released as a toy in his Toa state and Nidhiki in his mutated state.
- In the Direct-to-Video film Legends of Metru Nui, Lhikan's accuses Makuta of going against his oath as a protector. This was meant to set up yet another flashback movie explaining Makuta's turn to evil and presumably Lhikan's past, but that film was not made. Makuta's backstory was told in later books but his affiliation to Lhikan was only alluded to.
- The six Rahaga of 2005 were likewise a former Toa team, named Toa Hagah, on a quest to undo their mutations when they came across the Metru team. Their past exploits heavily intertwined with the previous stories but were only briefly shown in a comic. Short stories from 2008 however brought the Rahaga back, restored to their Toa selves and showcased more of their side-quests. Two of them, Norik and Iruini were sold as toys in both their Toa and mutated Rahaga forms, but in 2022, Toa versions of the other four were created via a fan contest.
- Lesovikk from 2007 was a guilt-ridden wandering Toa with ~90,000 years' worth of stories to tell. He only showed up in a pair of side plots as a supporting character, not even meeting any of the main characters in his first appearance.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Miles Edgeworth does engage in interesting adventures and cases on his own — it's just that the main games of the franchise focus on Phoenix's and Apollo's point of view. Fortunately, you get to see some of Edgeworth's cases in his own two games.
- You don't get to see much of what Athena does on her own in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, but Case 4 shows that yes, she takes cases to trial when Apollo or Phoenix aren't around.
- Artificial Nexus: While Akemi initially just seems to be another member of the programming team, The Reveal in The Stinger that he's The Mole makes him into this, as he seems to be the only character with at least some knowledge of the sketchy things that COEUS have been getting up to.
- The Coven in Monster Prom are a group of three witches called Joy, Faith and Hope. The majority of the cast is in a quirky dating sim, while they're the stars of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style TV show with No Fourth Wall. They are widely hated by the main characters, but spend their time fighting a large number of world ending Big Bads.
- Paper Perjury: The epilogue implies that Fie, an adventurous child who's served as a helpful witness in several cases, someday she will become one of the cops keeping Azure City safe.
- In Spirit Hunter: NG, the D-Cards chronicle D-Man's adventures in spirit hunting that the player is otherwise not privy to, aided along by the characters from the previous game Spirit Hunter: Death Mark.
Web Animation
- Anon: Dani and Mia were originally the main characters in another series by the creator, called Faux, before crossing over to the main show.
- Pokémon Golder is a parody series that focuses on the male Pokémon Gold and Silver protagonist, Gold. In Part 2, Kris, the female Gen II protagonist, shows up for one short scene to catch Suicune, talk shit, and leave, continuing her own adventure (that seems even cooler than Gold's) offscreen.
- Red vs. Blue is primarily about the soldiers that were assigned to Blood Gulch, but we get an occasional glimpse of other teams stationed elsewhere. Or, as Vic put it in the opening to episode 6 of season 14...
Vic: Y'know, when most people talk about the Reds and Blues, they're talking about my boys at Blood Gulch. But, lotsa dudes forget that there's a bunch more primary colored commandos all over the galaxy. And they're all idiots.
- A good chunk of the time, when main characters are Put on a Bus, they'll be shown to be having their own adventures before they come back. Tucker and Junior were serving as ambassadors for the Covenant and the UNSC, with Tucker eventually being forced to battle Insurrectionists to defend the excavation of a Forerunner temple, Church and Carolina were fighting Charon Industries, and Donut began Walking the Universe after leaving the Reds and Blues at the end of Season 17.
- While "hero" isn't the right word, there's implied to be a ton of Freelancers operating all across the galaxy.
- Locus, after his Heel–Face Turn. He's only really seen when his adventures intersect with the Reds and Blues, but he's been going on his own quest for the alien sword and bringing justice and order to various colonies out of the UNSC's reach.
Webcomics
- All of us are dead: While the main survivor group hide in the rooftop, Ha-ri spots 2 groups of 3 survivors trying to sneak their way out of school grounds using the rainy weather and fog, she and the others are able to help the group flee the school, though their ultimate fates are left unknown.
- Bugged Run follows the plot of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen by about 15 minutes, with the main character routinely arriving at locations from the game just in time to deal with the fallout of the game's player character's actions.
- Played for Laughs in Clown Corps. A brief gag reveals Recurring Extra Princess Clown is legitimately a princess of a small country, and joined the Clown College while on the run from some group of international assassins. Naturally, since this doesn't change her position as a Recurring Extra, it also doesn't factor into the main plot at all, something that gets Lampshaded by the Alt Text.
Princess Clown is the most interesting person in the comic, we should have been following her the entire time. Oh well too late now.
- Murai in Digger. She is A Hero and The Chosen One. She has a Great, Heroic Destiny in front of her. She is also a mentally broken teenager, and not the hero; the story of Digger is not her story. As a result, her future heroic destiny and chosen-ness is not at all related to solving the issues of the story at all, and Murai spends much of it vacillating between feeling like The Load towards their current goals and feeling crushed by her future destiny. Digger at one point opines that she hopes Murai just ran away because it would be good for her to leave all that Destiny behind. Murai does end up aiding Digger in a small but vital way near the end, and the Statue of Ganesh implies the events of the comic formed a vital part of her Character Development for when it is her turn to become The Hero.
- Exterminatus Now occasionally features Inquisitor Damien's hyper-competent B-Team and Inquisitor Deket's hyper-destructive C-Team. Inquisitor Brisbane also appears in numerous background and flashback shots and Schaefer was shown having his own adventures once.
- Girl Genius:
- Othar Trygvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!) for much of the comic (as chronicled on his Twitter feed) until his story crosses with the main plot. And in his mind, he's still The Hero even when it does.
- Jiminez Hoffmann apparently spends a large chunk of his time getting into various adventures in order to complete extra credit projects to improve his grade.
- Trelawney Thorpe, Britain's "Spark of the Realm", has a whole book series chronicling her adventures.
- Goblins has two groups of main characters in a RPG setting, one as if it were a real world (the titular Goblins) and another who act like a group of RPG players, making meta comments all the time. Then there's another RPG player group that fares poorly and seems only to show up to complain about their previous characters dying before dying again, yet reference adventures that aren't shown.
- Homestuck:
- The kids' guardians, who, though often ignored or avoided by the main characters, show up all over the place, occasionally helping the kids from the background while engaging in their own adventures.
- Not to mention fedorafreak, who only ever appears on a Twitter expy for three frames, and provides regular updates about, respectively, his choice of hats, his house burning down, The End of the World as We Know It, his own journey through another session of Sburb and, finally, his death, possibly on a Quest Bed (which would allow his ascension to God Tier). The forums make him a Memetic Badass.
- The trolls' ancestors played an unsuccessful session that resulting in the Scratch, resetting their universe so our trolls could have another chance.
- Lovely Lovecraft: Randolph Carter. Armitage briefly touches on Carter's investigations with Warren as per "The Statement of Randolph Carter" and Iranon summarizes portions of Carter's adventures from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. However, Carter does not physically appeared in the main storyline of Lovely Lovecraft.
- Magick Chicks inverts the trope with Melissa Hellrune. She was originally from Eerie Cuties, where she was an antagonist to Layla Delacroix. But her popularity with the readers lead to her being given her own Spin-Off comic, where she became the protagonist, who's gradually being reformed into a heroine — though she's reluctant to change her ways.
- Ménage à 3 did the same with Dillon and Sandra, who were both given starring roles in their own spin-off comics: Sticky Dilly Buns (which shows Dillon's life in his own apartment in Montreal, and actually ends up spending a lot of time on his roommates) and Sandra on the Rocks (which follows Sandra's misadventures as a model in Paris, again with a fair amount of digression onto the rest of the cast).
- The Order of the Stick:
- It is heavily implied that adventuring parties and Player Characters in the world are this. Nale and his adventuring party (the Linear Guild) tries to pretend they are this, claiming they are in the same dungeon on a completely different quest (although later turns out to be a lie).
- Inverted at one point when the Order run into a pair of villains from another story, a dwarf and a Ninja who are trying to murder The King of Nowhere (don't ask).
- Julio Scoundrél was one of the most prolific heroes of his day (in more ways than one) and serves as Elan's mentor as well as The Cavalry. He considers Tarquin to be one of his B-List villains.
- Parodied with the gag character Frudu Biggens, who is on a completely unrelated quest to destroy a Ming vase with his friend Samwose.
- Characters who individual party members have had assorted interactions with include Eugene Greenhilt (Roy's dad, who was an adventurer in his heyday) and Sir François (the guy Elan was Heralding before he ditched him after screwing up another one of their adventures).
- One chapter depicts the formation of a party of Heroes of Another Story — at the end of the arc, various miscellaneous characters with no real connection to each other (including Haley's father, a soldier from a conquered city, and two bounty hunters that started a fight with Roy and Belkar) form a group to overthrow The Empire.
- From the backstory, the Order of the Scribble were a groups of adventurers whose adventures set the foundation for the current plot.
- Vaarsuvius, although a protagonist, ends up being the Hero(ine?) of Another Story while stuck on the Semi-Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing. V won't speak of it to anyone, though, and the readers only see the aftermath.
- Isaac from Paranatural is a shounen protagonist who in between adventures is a side character in a affectionate parody of shounen. The other characters sometimes walk in on the end of his adventures.
- On the cast page of Precocious, Kaitlyn is described as "the central character in another strip". She literally became the Hero of Another Story later, with the introduction of the Precocious spinoff strip, Copper Road.
- Rain (2010):
- Rain meets a girl named Carmen Jimenez when she's visiting therapy. Carmen is one of the main protagonists of upcoming webcomic Magical.
- Later on, she meets Chiaki Koizumi, author of Black Wings Kaminari and protagonist of My Impossible Soulmate, whilst attending an anime convention.
- The Walkyverse, spanning as it does at least half a dozen different authors, is a tangled, continuity-challenged rat's nest of this trope.
Web Originals
- In Chrono Hustle there are several TRD agents who are briefly shown or mentioned, who are often dealing with other issues than the main cast. Special mention goes to Elliot Bishop who joins up with the main characters at one point, and then later goes back to his previous mission. In addition there are the characters in the various time periods who have their own things going on, such as the crew of the Space Station Oracle in 2347, or the Neanderthal tribe in the stone age.
- Not an example in and of itself, but Cracked lists Six Movie/Tv Universes That Overlap.
- In Pay Me, Bug!, there's some kind of coup in progress against Baron Minerva Tyrelos. Grif stumbles into the middle of it, and nearly gets himself killed. We never find out who's behind it, what their ultimate plan is, or whether the Baron's plan to have her brother publicly take the blame ever worked.
- SF Debris gives us "Lieutenant Nobody" from Star Trek: First Contact; his take on the unseen original chief of security of the Enterprise-E before Worf, who repeatedly demonstrates he's the Hyper-Competent Sidekick developing new tactics to fight the Borg on the fly, keeps his team fighting against impossible odds, and who of course, is completely ignored by the Enterprise crew.
- The Tales of Paul Twister has two examples:
- Aylwyn is always off on Paladin business doing important things for the kingdom; her path just tends to cross with Paul's from time to time.
- In the second book, towards the end of the story Sarah leaves the narrative to lead a party of her own, to rescue the captive princess from a dragon's agents. In the third book, we find out she was successful, but no details. In his narration, Paul says that it's not his story to tell and he'll leave it to Sarah to maybe explain what happened some day.
- Void Domain has something of an Ensemble Cast. Tons of characters who all get their own chapters, each doing their own thing. Even with that, some characters never get a chapter but can still be seen doing things in the background.
- In the Whateley Universe, there are several. Lady Astarte, the greatest superheroine of the era, is hovering around in the background, because she's the headmistress of the Superhero School the main characters go to. At Halloween, when Deathlist attacks, she takes him on single-handed and wins. There are lots of references to former battles she has fought and former superheroes she has known, because she has been superheroing since World War II. Skyhawk, one of the main superheroes of Boston, probably counts as well.
- Worm:
- While the adventures of the Undersiders are the main focus, Faultine's crew, a group of superpowered mercenaries, crops up from time to time pursuing their own goals, and interludes focusing on them tell of their investigation into Cauldron independent of the main plotline.
- Likewise, the Travelers. To the point of getting an entire arc devoted to them.
- Word of God has stated that the Las Vegas Protectorate and the Thanda regularly battle S-Class threats whose abilities are either too subtle or potentially panic-inducing to be publicized.
Web Videos
- Former Atop the Fourth Wall character Iron Liz was shown to be this when Linkara's Mirror Universe double came looking for her.
Linkara: She's around, just doing her own thing.
- Critical Role: After Tary leaves Vox Machina, he returns to Wildemount and starts his own adventuring party, the Darrington Brigade. Background references imply that the Darrington Brigade is still active twenty years later during the Mighty Nein campaign. Additionally, most of the guest characters are going on adventures in their own right, and Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein detour to help them with their adventures about as often as they help the party with their ongoing goals.
- During the Crossover between Dark Harvest and Tribe Twelve, Alex and Chris (the former) are this to Noah Maxwell (the latter), and vice versa.
- Similarly, Everyman HYBRID meets Jeff, Alex and Chris, as well as Noah Maxwell, in their Crossover episodes.
- The Perfect Castlevania Timeline: Even though the series mostly focuses on the heroic exploits of the Belmont clan and their successors against Dracula, brief portions of the episodes are dedicated to those who fought the night in their own way, ranging from allies such as Grant DaNasty and Maria Renard, to wayward Belmonts such as Victor and, of all people, Kokoro.
- Twitch Plays Pokémon:
- Kris "The Girl Who Never Was" of Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal. We'll likely never know what her journey would've been like.
- Twitch Plays Pokémon Emerald introduces the 7 or so kids chosen by the Mob before finally settling on Camilla A. Slash, who may or may not be inhabiting her by the time the plot kicks in.
- The Red of the Reset universe in Twitch Plays Pokémon Red. Later installments such as Crystal and Anniversary Red turn our Red into this, since he is encountered by AJ in the post-game and is mentioned by Abe in the latter's plot.
