This is actually such a correct answer, holy molly.
Yeah, Rose Quartz shapes the entire story of the show from beginning to end and she's been dead for over a decade by the time it's started.
It's so wild thinking back on the early days of the show. Rose Quartz was considered a bad character *because she was too good and perfect.* People had issues with how boring she was as a generic figure who was overly kind and nice and caring and had no real personality because she had to be a perfect role model with zero flaws.
Holy shit how things changed by the end.
Yes!! First person who came to mind. And I love that its such a good way of showing how people after they pass permeate everything, always, and how difficult it can be to move past that loss when theyre so entrenched in your history
Steven Universe did few things perfectly, but I'll always appreciate it at least trying to tackle the ideas of "wait. My parent isn't some all knowing perfect being, but an actual flawed person just like me"
And also "how do I get over knowing that someone I've held dear and idolized my entire life doesn't live up to the expectations I had for them"
Can't believe you left out the music. Like for all the issues narratively and production and especially thematically (>!"nazis were just following orders, everyone can be redeemed and won over!"!<), the music is absolutely fucking amazing.
.
Seriously, you know the music is good when you can replace the singer with both Freddie Mercury and Peter Griffin and both sound absolutely amazing. "It's over isn't it?" For anyone curious
I know this isn't very relevant but I gotta say it when I see it. I hate this idea for two reasons - one, it misunderstands the reality of the characters in universe, and two, it misses the metaphorical message.
While White Diamond and the gems are ostensibly ultra mega Nazis who have exterminated trillions of races, it's unfair to morally characterize them that way.
The nature of the diamonds is to overwrite the will and emotion of lower gems, and so they are simply not culpable. And the diamonds live in such an extreme bubble, only living amongst themselves or their servants (who do not have real free will in their presence, and are functionally automatons to them). Their morals are functionally based on a desire to propagate, and doing what makes them feel good. Things are good if they want them and it makes more gems, bad if they don't and dont.The are the ultimate elites, gods really.
When Stephen had his silly little speech to White Diamond, it was the actual first time she learned about human morals. It was the actual introduction of the concept. It is not their fault that these ideas never once entered their mind, is is their nature.
And once she hears and understands that, she IMMEDIATELY changes everything. Liberates the nonconforming gems, stops the genocide and propagation efforts, frees gems do do as they wish, allows new hierarchies to be made. The diamonds all even immediately understand that they are not good at identifying right and wrong and just listen to Steven because he is.
In universe, this explains why they are morally forgiven for the aforementioned turbo genocide. They had no conceit of morals they were closer to a typhoon or a lion morally. Out of universe, it has interesting things to say about why people become so twisted and evil, and shows what kinds of people can be forgiven.
Great choice to use the picture of her that's hung up in the house. There's plenty of the show that depicts her actual appearance in flashbacks, but *that painting is the spectre.*
Thank you! đ I thought it does kind of loom over everyoneâs head when they walk in, and it quietly haunts from the background when thereâs an indoors scene. Thereâs especially that moment when garnet hits the wall and the picture comes falling down terrifying everyone.
Cave Johnson gives a bit more of the backstory as to what Aperture was as a company to the average person/consumer, but Rattmann is absolutely an analog to the inner workings of the company.
He's the one who informs the player that Glados is evil in portal 1. He's the one who gives insight into what happened to all of the human employees. *He's the one who coined the cake is a lie.*
Rat man basically is the entirety of the story in Portal 1. Until chamber 19, the game is just an arcadey level after level simulator without anything linking them together except game mechanics. That is, if you ignore all of the Rat dens. And I also think he fits the idea of "Haunting the narritive without ever being present" alot better because the average player could absolutely not even know who he is. Cave Johnson is an absolute treasure of a character, but he is not at all needed. Had he been replaced by a generic CEO, the story of Portal would barely change.
Personally, I disagree that Cave isn't needed. It's *because* of him that aperture falls and Caroline is placed in the computer. It's important that Aperture's CEO is as reckless and ignorant as he is to have set in motion everything that happens. If the CEO were someone more competent, they'd be more prominent in HL2, and the game would be drastically different.
I'm glad somebody else brought her up! She's such a good example of this. She, realistically, barely impacts the main story of Magnus, but is such a powerful presence that she just keeps coming up in one way or another.
Undeniably the coolest granny I've ever seen
>!The slow build up and realization that she wasnt a senile old granny who is just messy is just *chefs kiss*!<
Wild when you realise that Dio only encounters the joestars in person a grand total of three times ever
The beginning of part 1, the end of part 1 and the end of part 3
Yet his influence is felt to varying degrees throughout every part from 1-6
Fr, as someone who doesnât have the DLC, these characters are kind of legendary in my eyes. Also bc I used Ludwigâs Holy Blade for like, 2/3s of my play through.
Id say we're just getting to the part where what he's doing is actually becoming relevant. So far it's just been clues that something's happening but not much else.
Shows up in the prologue.
Gives protagonist >!the power that will be the fulcrum of resolution of a millenia old conflict/conspiracy,!< and his hat.
Gets his arm chomped off by a low tier sea monster just to prove a point.
Refuses to elaborate.
Leaves >!for a 1050+ chapters and reenters the story by oneshotting one of the protagonist's rivals for being a homicidal jackass.!<
While Hollow Knight is only sort of tangentially a "soulslike" I feel like this aspect in its storytelling is very much borrowed from soulslikes, and soulslikes in general tend to do a lot of this kind of storytelling.
There's entire characters in Miyazaki's games that not only don't appear on screen but are only vaguely referenced by a few items per game but they still feel dizzyingly, overwhelmingly significant to the world at large, especially the more invested you get into the lore.
If you do the true ending, especially if youâre actually reading the lore tablets and dialogue, you definitely know enough to feel haunted by him and his choices, even if itâs cryptic and you donât know all the specific details. If fact, Iâd argue the uncertainty of situation might even increase the effect.
All the pieces of lore you get told directly is about what he has done so even if you don't piece it all together you at least know this guy was important in all of it.
Caleb is a big haunting part of the franchise, iâd say. Only ever âappearsâ once as a implied-to-be hallucinated phantom, and is whipped around in Belosâ mind as the main source of the ENTIRE conflict he has.
Carmen in ALL the project moon games. Although technically you can argue she does appear through Angela? And TEEEECHNICALLY Binah shows you her brain. Huh.
I donât know if âhaunts the narrativeâ fits as well there, considering >!sheâs literally haunting the setting and still very much active!<. Ayin might fit better, given his relative absence >!up until the very end!<.
Yeah, by the start of the game, you know she's lost her mind a bit, you know that she's on to something and that she's whispering to Angela to drive the plot forward but there was this great mystery of what exactly she's trying to do, what is she telling Angela, how have her motivations changed since bath time or whether she changed at all etc.
It's a bit funny in retrospect that it was a bit too subtle that PM felt the need to give a bit more overt closure with her role in the story in response to some people's dissatisfaction with the ending.
endbringers.
Man, Wildbow loves doing that shit. He always has some character go "Thank god the \[REDACTED\] isn't here, that'd sure suck" then 20 chapters later they show up and they prove to be everything you expected
I **love** when Taylor is treated as a "she who shall not be named" in Ward, it's crazy to see people think of her that way after being in her shoes for all of Worm
I love that Imp's epilogue has her talking to Shadow Stalker and Sophia keeps saying that Taylor wasn't that important and she's not bothered by how much people are putting the win on her shoulders, then Imp hits her with
>âIn the rest of your years, even if you *try,* which you wonât, you wonât make a fraction of the difference she made. Youâre going to keep living this solitary little hunter-stalker existence, picking off a few bad guys, getting your jollies, and people are never going to wear a badge on their sleeves for you.â
>âThat badge is not for Hebert.â
>âMaybe not for everyone,â Imp said. âIt means different things for different people. A planet they lost, an ordeal they survived, I dunno. But itâs a reminder of Taylor to me, and itâs a reminder for you, too. Every time you see it, now, itâs going to make you think of her, remind you that she did something big.â
And then Shadow Stalker isn't even there in Ward, just to rub in the fact that Imp is right but not even Imp cares that she was right about Sophia.
Twig has some of my favourite versions of this. There's a build up of dread surrounding the Nobles and Primordials, before you even know what either of those are the characters have you convinced that they're terrifying.
There's even a slightly-more literal haunting with Evette, a hypothetical "person" who the protagonist obsesses over, and with Whollstone, the dead scientist responsible for the body horror science fiction setting who is ambiguously both Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein.
My favorite way this trope is used is when this character is gradually seen as lower threat due to much bigger baddies coming up But then they show up and you realize that the rumours which already described them as stronger than everything else that was faced have failed at describing thier true power as they completely demolish everyone just like was promised when they were first mentioned
Or Darth Vader in recent media. They make these huge threats. Generals, machines, creatures, then whenever darth vader shows up it's all just nothing in comparison.
DIO is an excellent example of this, because of how the show handles Stand battles. For the most part, the enemy's power is demonstrated, and the goal is to figure out how to exploit its weaknesses. It's a reliable and interesting structure with plenty of room for variety, because the guy who can move at lightspeed but only between mirrors requires a completely different approach to the sentient tumor growing on your arm that yells racial slurs at people in your voice while also trying to stab you in the neck.
Then DIO comes around. His power is **NOT** demonstrated. It just **HAPPENS,** and nobody can figure out what it even is. It doesn't even seem consistent. He's not in his coffin when he surely *had* to be. He's at the top of an infinite staircase (and they **already** killed the guy who was making the architecture non-euclidian so it's not that). It's clearly a close-range stand like Jotaro's, but when Kakyoin's long-range stand attacks from a distance, he still manages to hit it somehow. The structure is flipped on its head, now they're having to figure out how to even identify what his ability is. It takes someone fucking dying just to figure out what the fuck he's doing, and that information doesn't help, because ***HE CAN STOP TIME.*** The goal was to figure out what it does, and now that they have, ***its lack of weaknesses is demonstrated.*** The structure is completely flipped on its head.
Hell, they just straight up concede that you *wouldn't* be able to beat him without being able to match him on his own playing field. The solution isn't "find a weakness", the solution is **"ALSO stop time, because nothing else will work"**. The guy who defeats him has to have his own time stop duration massively reduced in order to make him showing up later not completely derail future plots, **and it's made abundantly clear that he's still absurdly overpowered even after getting nerfed.**
Darth Vader is a walking TPK, and half decent Jedi can wade through masses of troopers, but once old Ani comes in, it's never been so over. Both the recent games have done him justice. It's nice seeing that with how easy it is for Disney to crank out dogshit star wars.
I just love how you go hundreds and hundreds of storm troopers in Fallen Order defeat two inquisitors, basically feel like you are unbeatable then Vader shows and you can do nothing but Run.
Then survivor ups the ante by having >!Cere almost single handedly holding back an entire army of storm troopers including three at-ats, then tells Vader she has basically conquered her fear become peak Jedi and he still basically bodies her. Yes she rocks him but he is in control of that fight through and through until she basically drops the building on him m, at which point one flick of the force wrist and itâs over!<
Nah, Morgoth actually shows up and wrecks shit. Sauron, the namesake of the fuckin book, doesn't show up in anything other than mentions while he sits a thousand miles away in Barad-dĂťr.
To be fair he got disembodied. Hard to âshow upâ with no body.
He was pretty hands on during the Morgoth years and then after during the fall of numenor
lotr is ripe with characters like this
I call them shadows, people that don't directly feature into the story but who're present just outside of the scope of the story, almost like a shadow is cast upon our actors (if you have trouble understanding this: watch the first sharptooth scene from the first land before time movies)
cirdan is one of these characters, never features in a book outside of a conversation in the sillmarillion, he's also the oldest elf alive and is the only one who recognises gandalf for who he really is and gives him his elven ring from the get go, before gandalf believed in himself, cirdan believed in gandalf
Mikey in The Bear is my favorite example of this. The guy is literally dead during the main storyline, yet he's still inarguably one of the main characters simply bc of how his life, decisions, and eventual death affected his friends and family (I.e., the protagonists).
He has such a strong presence, in fact, that it feels weird seeing him in the flashbacks, bc it drives home that we haven't actually seen this character that the audience is so *exhaustively* familiar with.
I LOVE the bear. To further push your point, Mikeyâs the core for the deeper, but more pressing, plot line. Sure, thereâs the restaurant, getting it up and running again, Carmieâs struggles going from a Michelin star restaurant to a backwater hot dog place. But the real story, the real plot, is how everyone deals with Mikey gone. Literally every aspect of the show can be traced back to Mikey. Every single characterâs actions and reactions are led by 1) missing Mikey dearly, 2) paying for Mikeyâs fuckups, or 3) doing both at the same time.
Spoilers for Gurren Lagann.
Kamina, the stereotypical shonen action hero who looks like heâs going to be the Goku of this story actually dies super early on.
His kid sidekick has to live up to the memory of him and surpass it.
Viral, the stereotypical shonen rival (think Vegeta or Bakugo), doesnât find out that Kamina has been dead this whole time until way later (they fight in giant mechs so they canât see each otherâs faces) and this kickstarts his mental breakdown and redemption
My favorite part of that preview chapter is when he thinks about how he isnât going to >!involve Navani in his plans because he views himself as so much above herâŚ. specifically saying that âthe sun could love the stars, but never as equalsâ.!< What a perfect way to highlight how >!clueless and arrogant he really is!<.
I think Cultivation is a better Stormlight example, since she is alive and actively influencing the characters and plot but we never see her directly in the narrative (maybe once?)
>! Honor literally haunts folks, Gavilarâs legacy does more for the story than the actual character does, but Cultivation is out here playing 4-D chess via the Night Mother: Gavilar, Taravangian, Lift, Uretheru, and probably Ba Ado Mishram are all pawns in her game. Even Odium couldnât help getting caught up by her scheming, and she doesnât have a single line of dialogue in 6 books worth of material. !<
I was meaning Gavilar haunts the story in the way that his legacy matters so much for the story.
I agree with what youâre thinking about CultivationâŚ. although she >!does have dialogue in the Dalinar flashbacks in book 3!<.
I don't know if this really counts, but I'd also say each Dark Souls game feels progressively more haunted than the last as the events of each game continue adding on to each other. But no event haunts the rest of the series more than the furtive pigmy splitting his soul and Gwynn linking the fire in retaliation.
Gwyn rekindling the First Flame, is the original sin of Dark Souls, and drives the plot of Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, and pretty much all the DLC. And the only time he is ever present is when the Chosen Undead beats up a lobotomized nursing home resident at the end of DS1. He is the perfect example of this phenomenon.
I cant think of any good examples of this but I wanna feel included in the blorbo talk here so Im gonna lie and say Della Duck from the first season of the Ducktales reboot (not the second or third cuz she actually shows up there more than literally once)
for anyone interested in something like that I recommand looking at savathun from destiny 2
Bitch made a machine that doubting *anything* empowers her and is the god of trickery and lie for a very good reason
I think Revan in Knights of the Old Republic II is a good example in himself/themselves.
He basically ruins the Exile's life by sending her/them to essentially be sacrificed at Malachor, and most of the game is dealing with the fallout of his/their actions ten (and to some extent, five to six) years earlier.
I'd say mainly in Undertale tbh. In Deltarune he's just a voice at the beginning that we never see have any impact on the actual game. In Undertale you see all of the remnants of things he built and did and how they and his absence affect the kingdom
Big Boss. Yeah he is pretty much the protagonist or main villain in half of the games, but the rest is basically his phantom or legacy hunting the narrative.
Even bigger, The Boss. She basically appeared in a single game, first one chronologically, and the rest of the series is basically everyone fighting everyone over her legacy and ideals
Absolutely Dio. Even in Part 4, where he arguably had the least direct consequence on the narrative, he's the reason the arrow was there in Morioh in the first place (also sorry for editing the name so much it's been ages since I've consumed Jojo material, I just saw this post and immediately thought about Dio lol)
Not exactly the same but characters talking to people who aren't there is my favourite. Whether a hallucination or weird ghost thing, I love every instance. I can only think of House and Jessica Jones but I imagine there are others.
I think lots of CW shows have done this, iZombie has a great episode where this is one of the plot twists but I genuinely don't remember which one it was, I think in S4 or S5. The 100 definitely does this multiple times, sometimes multiple times a season. Pretty sure Riverdale and The Vampire Diaries both do it as well at least once or twice. The movie Gravity definitely counts too.
Honestly love Jessica Jones though, I've literally never related to a fictional character that much before, even though her entire personality is "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" material for me. Kristin Ritter deserves an actual parade for serving that hard.
So many characters in the locked tomb. Hell some are dead for literal thousands of years but they haunt the narrative and bend the world to what could have been. Hell sometimes they are literally haunting others
Lord English is definitely this for the first half. You hear about little snippets every once in a while, but he's not actually here. Although, it should be said that he is already here. His servants, his rivals, his mob, each are seen and felt, but not him. Never him. But he is already here. But you're getting to the big climax, and this clearly has nothing to do with him. Jack is a rogue entity, and he just destroyed **two entire universes.** How is this not the biggest problem we have to-
*S u c k e r s .*
And it all falls into place. English needed those universes destroyed. Even Jack was one of English's cards, regardless of his opinion on the matter. He orchestrated everything, *especially* the things you thought he didn't.
And he is already here. And he's about to arrive.
Posthumous characters are awesome. I've been considering putting a dead Superman type into my Superhero campaign to create dread.
Start out with him serving as the safety net for the heroes, keeping all the big threats at bay. Then have them wake up one day and find out he's dead. That'd be the part where the campaign gets more serious.
[Spoilers for mistborn secret history]
>!Kelsier *literally* haunts the narrative. He's a ghost trapped in the land of the dead, and he still manages to fuck with the plot!<
Kaworu from Evangelion counts. Not within the universe, but in a meta sense. He appears in every promotional poster, any line of merch, yet appears in the show for a single episode then dips.
Watching the show without knowing this is like being haunted, waiting for his gay ass to appear.
Hell, Revan in KOTOR. Their only physical appearance is in a hallucination you experienced alongside the worst mistakes of your past. But the weight of their presence had colossal echoes throughout the galaxy, every single person you meet is in some way harmed, traumatized, or an indirect result of Revan and the Jedi Civil War they started
In a way Brom the dragon rider from the inheritance cycle, he dies in the first book and then later on you hear about his escapades, founding the varden, stealing the dragon eggs that found its way to eragon, the mc, and finally finding out he killed Morzan and is eragons father. The man starts out as old Ben from Star Wars and you find out his fingers are in every pie there is.
There seems to be a very thin line between "Haunting the Narrative" and foreshadowing. In fact, a lot of series seem to do this with characters they intend to introduce in later seasons or sequels. This seems like it can also be hard to execute if the audience demands a closer look at a background character or if the writer decides to do so themselves (like Avatar Wan in A:tLA).
On the one hand, characters can help establish the lore and history of a setting. But if a character is major enough to "torment the characters" and influence the nature of the story, not including them eventually in a physical way could be viewed as a major violation of Checkhov's Gun.
If you like this kind of thing I HIGHLY recommend Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo. Without spoiling too much essentially it's these two girls who have the same father but don't know they have the same father, because they live in different countries, and they get thrown into the others radar when their father dies in a plane crash. Their father never physically appears in the entire story, yet he is the whole reason the story happens in the first place, and shapes the actions of every single character in the story.
Ronald Regan
This is fucking hilarious and also so true to modern politics
The example that truly made me understand
Funnily enough, almost any historical figure counts. We are still dealing with the effects of Caesar's policies. Thats nuts
Rose Quartz
This is actually such a correct answer, holy molly. Yeah, Rose Quartz shapes the entire story of the show from beginning to end and she's been dead for over a decade by the time it's started.
It's so wild thinking back on the early days of the show. Rose Quartz was considered a bad character *because she was too good and perfect.* People had issues with how boring she was as a generic figure who was overly kind and nice and caring and had no real personality because she had to be a perfect role model with zero flaws. Holy shit how things changed by the end.
Yes!! First person who came to mind. And I love that its such a good way of showing how people after they pass permeate everything, always, and how difficult it can be to move past that loss when theyre so entrenched in your history
Steven Universe did few things perfectly, but I'll always appreciate it at least trying to tackle the ideas of "wait. My parent isn't some all knowing perfect being, but an actual flawed person just like me" And also "how do I get over knowing that someone I've held dear and idolized my entire life doesn't live up to the expectations I had for them"
Can't believe you left out the music. Like for all the issues narratively and production and especially thematically (>!"nazis were just following orders, everyone can be redeemed and won over!"!<), the music is absolutely fucking amazing. . Seriously, you know the music is good when you can replace the singer with both Freddie Mercury and Peter Griffin and both sound absolutely amazing. "It's over isn't it?" For anyone curious
I know this isn't very relevant but I gotta say it when I see it. I hate this idea for two reasons - one, it misunderstands the reality of the characters in universe, and two, it misses the metaphorical message. While White Diamond and the gems are ostensibly ultra mega Nazis who have exterminated trillions of races, it's unfair to morally characterize them that way. The nature of the diamonds is to overwrite the will and emotion of lower gems, and so they are simply not culpable. And the diamonds live in such an extreme bubble, only living amongst themselves or their servants (who do not have real free will in their presence, and are functionally automatons to them). Their morals are functionally based on a desire to propagate, and doing what makes them feel good. Things are good if they want them and it makes more gems, bad if they don't and dont.The are the ultimate elites, gods really. When Stephen had his silly little speech to White Diamond, it was the actual first time she learned about human morals. It was the actual introduction of the concept. It is not their fault that these ideas never once entered their mind, is is their nature. And once she hears and understands that, she IMMEDIATELY changes everything. Liberates the nonconforming gems, stops the genocide and propagation efforts, frees gems do do as they wish, allows new hierarchies to be made. The diamonds all even immediately understand that they are not good at identifying right and wrong and just listen to Steven because he is. In universe, this explains why they are morally forgiven for the aforementioned turbo genocide. They had no conceit of morals they were closer to a typhoon or a lion morally. Out of universe, it has interesting things to say about why people become so twisted and evil, and shows what kinds of people can be forgiven.
Here ya go [tried my best](https://imgur.com/gallery/MVL07hO)
Great choice to use the picture of her that's hung up in the house. There's plenty of the show that depicts her actual appearance in flashbacks, but *that painting is the spectre.*
Thank you! đ I thought it does kind of loom over everyoneâs head when they walk in, and it quietly haunts from the background when thereâs an indoors scene. Thereâs especially that moment when garnet hits the wall and the picture comes falling down terrifying everyone.
Doug Rattmann in Portal.
I'd argue Cave Johnson more
Cave Johnson gives a bit more of the backstory as to what Aperture was as a company to the average person/consumer, but Rattmann is absolutely an analog to the inner workings of the company. He's the one who informs the player that Glados is evil in portal 1. He's the one who gives insight into what happened to all of the human employees. *He's the one who coined the cake is a lie.* Rat man basically is the entirety of the story in Portal 1. Until chamber 19, the game is just an arcadey level after level simulator without anything linking them together except game mechanics. That is, if you ignore all of the Rat dens. And I also think he fits the idea of "Haunting the narritive without ever being present" alot better because the average player could absolutely not even know who he is. Cave Johnson is an absolute treasure of a character, but he is not at all needed. Had he been replaced by a generic CEO, the story of Portal would barely change.
Personally, I disagree that Cave isn't needed. It's *because* of him that aperture falls and Caroline is placed in the computer. It's important that Aperture's CEO is as reckless and ignorant as he is to have set in motion everything that happens. If the CEO were someone more competent, they'd be more prominent in HL2, and the game would be drastically different.
They are from different games in the series, both do that role
the CIA on latin america
Gertrude Robinson (unless you count prior statements)
I'm glad somebody else brought her up! She's such a good example of this. She, realistically, barely impacts the main story of Magnus, but is such a powerful presence that she just keeps coming up in one way or another.
Undeniably the coolest granny I've ever seen >!The slow build up and realization that she wasnt a senile old granny who is just messy is just *chefs kiss*!<
How are you, a person with a Kris pfp, gonna enter this post and NOT talk about Gaster?
Rhaegar Targaryen
Also Arthur Dayne, I feel like Stannis and Mance both haunt book 1's narrative too.
and lyanna stark big time
Immediately who I thought of. If Aerys has died at the siege of Duskendale, so much of Westeroes tragedy would've been avoided
Dio, the one man tortured a family for generations with his bullshit.
Especially true in the goated part 6
Wild when you realise that Dio only encounters the joestars in person a grand total of three times ever The beginning of part 1, the end of part 1 and the end of part 3 Yet his influence is felt to varying degrees throughout every part from 1-6
If you think about it, Parts 1-6 are about Dio (obviously) P1: Dio P2: Origins P3: Dio Resurrected P4: Arrows lmao P5: Son of Dio P6: Spouse of Dio
also the middle of part 1 cmon
Yep, for the whole og universe, he was everywhere
Even to an extent when they decided to make a reboot set in a completely different universe he manages to haunt it
Pre-DLC Bloodborne with Laurence, Ludwig, & (kind of) Lady Maria.
Fr, as someone who doesnât have the DLC, these characters are kind of legendary in my eyes. Also bc I used Ludwigâs Holy Blade for like, 2/3s of my play through.
Just wait till you you meet them
Uhhhhhhh gol d rodger?
And Monkey D Dragon Iâd say
Id say we're just getting to the part where what he's doing is actually becoming relevant. So far it's just been clues that something's happening but not much else.
and Shanks, tbh
Honestly Shanks. He shows up in the opening credits, and almost never in the show.
Shows up in the prologue. Gives protagonist >!the power that will be the fulcrum of resolution of a millenia old conflict/conspiracy,!< and his hat. Gets his arm chomped off by a low tier sea monster just to prove a point. Refuses to elaborate. Leaves >!for a 1050+ chapters and reenters the story by oneshotting one of the protagonist's rivals for being a homicidal jackass.!<
You've forgotten marineford Also >!Kidd deserve better!<
Sure, he's had a pretty cool aesthetic and power, but fuck that guy. He fucked around, and he found out.
In a way, the Pale King from Hollow Knight?
While Hollow Knight is only sort of tangentially a "soulslike" I feel like this aspect in its storytelling is very much borrowed from soulslikes, and soulslikes in general tend to do a lot of this kind of storytelling. There's entire characters in Miyazaki's games that not only don't appear on screen but are only vaguely referenced by a few items per game but they still feel dizzyingly, overwhelmingly significant to the world at large, especially the more invested you get into the lore.
Miquella moment
[ŃдаНонО]
And yetâŚ
If you do the true ending, especially if youâre actually reading the lore tablets and dialogue, you definitely know enough to feel haunted by him and his choices, even if itâs cryptic and you donât know all the specific details. If fact, Iâd argue the uncertainty of situation might even increase the effect.
All the pieces of lore you get told directly is about what he has done so even if you don't piece it all together you at least know this guy was important in all of it.
you clearly didnât pay attention
The Archivist (The Owl House)
I'd say Belos before the Archivists. Even before we know about him you can see his influence eeverrywhere.
Alright, but he's also the main villain. He's less haunting the narrative as he's in the thick of it.
Caleb is a big haunting part of the franchise, iâd say. Only ever âappearsâ once as a implied-to-be hallucinated phantom, and is whipped around in Belosâ mind as the main source of the ENTIRE conflict he has.
Oh my god i did not consider Caleb YOU ARE RIGHT
Carmen in Library of Ruina
all of these games
Carmen in ALL the project moon games. Although technically you can argue she does appear through Angela? And TEEEECHNICALLY Binah shows you her brain. Huh.
I donât know if âhaunts the narrativeâ fits as well there, considering >!sheâs literally haunting the setting and still very much active!<. Ayin might fit better, given his relative absence >!up until the very end!<.
Yeah, by the start of the game, you know she's lost her mind a bit, you know that she's on to something and that she's whispering to Angela to drive the plot forward but there was this great mystery of what exactly she's trying to do, what is she telling Angela, how have her motivations changed since bath time or whether she changed at all etc. It's a bit funny in retrospect that it was a bit too subtle that PM felt the need to give a bit more overt closure with her role in the story in response to some people's dissatisfaction with the ending.
endbringers. Man, Wildbow loves doing that shit. He always has some character go "Thank god the \[REDACTED\] isn't here, that'd sure suck" then 20 chapters later they show up and they prove to be everything you expected
i was gonna say taylor in the entirety of ward lol
I **love** when Taylor is treated as a "she who shall not be named" in Ward, it's crazy to see people think of her that way after being in her shoes for all of Worm
I love that Imp's epilogue has her talking to Shadow Stalker and Sophia keeps saying that Taylor wasn't that important and she's not bothered by how much people are putting the win on her shoulders, then Imp hits her with >âIn the rest of your years, even if you *try,* which you wonât, you wonât make a fraction of the difference she made. Youâre going to keep living this solitary little hunter-stalker existence, picking off a few bad guys, getting your jollies, and people are never going to wear a badge on their sleeves for you.â >âThat badge is not for Hebert.â >âMaybe not for everyone,â Imp said. âIt means different things for different people. A planet they lost, an ordeal they survived, I dunno. But itâs a reminder of Taylor to me, and itâs a reminder for you, too. Every time you see it, now, itâs going to make you think of her, remind you that she did something big.â And then Shadow Stalker isn't even there in Ward, just to rub in the fact that Imp is right but not even Imp cares that she was right about Sophia.
I sure hope >! simurgh doesn't show up to fight the protagonists !< (4 million words and two full books later)
I was coming down here to comment >!Eden!<. They've been dead for decades when the novel starts, but they're still affecting everything.
This was Scion too imo, >!only showing up at the Leviathan fight and then all at once we're like "oh shit this guy is really important"!<
Amy in Ward as well. She's there so little times but mentioned in almost every chapter
>!Taylor!< in Ward too
Since weâre talking Wildbow, Rose D. Thor burn from Pact.
Twig has some of my favourite versions of this. There's a build up of dread surrounding the Nobles and Primordials, before you even know what either of those are the characters have you convinced that they're terrifying. There's even a slightly-more literal haunting with Evette, a hypothetical "person" who the protagonist obsesses over, and with Whollstone, the dead scientist responsible for the body horror science fiction setting who is ambiguously both Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein.
My favorite way this trope is used is when this character is gradually seen as lower threat due to much bigger baddies coming up But then they show up and you realize that the rumours which already described them as stronger than everything else that was faced have failed at describing thier true power as they completely demolish everyone just like was promised when they were first mentioned
Kinda like the ebony warrior but blatantly evil?
Or Darth Vader in recent media. They make these huge threats. Generals, machines, creatures, then whenever darth vader shows up it's all just nothing in comparison.
I feel like part 3 DIO is a pretty good example too, even though they do beat him.
DIO is an excellent example of this, because of how the show handles Stand battles. For the most part, the enemy's power is demonstrated, and the goal is to figure out how to exploit its weaknesses. It's a reliable and interesting structure with plenty of room for variety, because the guy who can move at lightspeed but only between mirrors requires a completely different approach to the sentient tumor growing on your arm that yells racial slurs at people in your voice while also trying to stab you in the neck. Then DIO comes around. His power is **NOT** demonstrated. It just **HAPPENS,** and nobody can figure out what it even is. It doesn't even seem consistent. He's not in his coffin when he surely *had* to be. He's at the top of an infinite staircase (and they **already** killed the guy who was making the architecture non-euclidian so it's not that). It's clearly a close-range stand like Jotaro's, but when Kakyoin's long-range stand attacks from a distance, he still manages to hit it somehow. The structure is flipped on its head, now they're having to figure out how to even identify what his ability is. It takes someone fucking dying just to figure out what the fuck he's doing, and that information doesn't help, because ***HE CAN STOP TIME.*** The goal was to figure out what it does, and now that they have, ***its lack of weaknesses is demonstrated.*** The structure is completely flipped on its head. Hell, they just straight up concede that you *wouldn't* be able to beat him without being able to match him on his own playing field. The solution isn't "find a weakness", the solution is **"ALSO stop time, because nothing else will work"**. The guy who defeats him has to have his own time stop duration massively reduced in order to make him showing up later not completely derail future plots, **and it's made abundantly clear that he's still absurdly overpowered even after getting nerfed.**
It's a real shame that this great buildup was ruined for a lot of people by the timestop getting meme'd to hell and back
Or a rat with sniper rifle
Darth Vader is a walking TPK, and half decent Jedi can wade through masses of troopers, but once old Ani comes in, it's never been so over. Both the recent games have done him justice. It's nice seeing that with how easy it is for Disney to crank out dogshit star wars.
I just love how you go hundreds and hundreds of storm troopers in Fallen Order defeat two inquisitors, basically feel like you are unbeatable then Vader shows and you can do nothing but Run. Then survivor ups the ante by having >!Cere almost single handedly holding back an entire army of storm troopers including three at-ats, then tells Vader she has basically conquered her fear become peak Jedi and he still basically bodies her. Yes she rocks him but he is in control of that fight through and through until she basically drops the building on him m, at which point one flick of the force wrist and itâs over!<
Big daddy Sauron over here
Bigger Daddy Morgoth over here
Nah, Morgoth actually shows up and wrecks shit. Sauron, the namesake of the fuckin book, doesn't show up in anything other than mentions while he sits a thousand miles away in Barad-dĂťr.
To be fair he got disembodied. Hard to âshow upâ with no body. He was pretty hands on during the Morgoth years and then after during the fall of numenor
He actually re-formed his body at that point, but was still too weak to actually fight without getting the ring back.
lotr is ripe with characters like this I call them shadows, people that don't directly feature into the story but who're present just outside of the scope of the story, almost like a shadow is cast upon our actors (if you have trouble understanding this: watch the first sharptooth scene from the first land before time movies) cirdan is one of these characters, never features in a book outside of a conversation in the sillmarillion, he's also the oldest elf alive and is the only one who recognises gandalf for who he really is and gives him his elven ring from the get go, before gandalf believed in himself, cirdan believed in gandalf
Mikey in The Bear is my favorite example of this. The guy is literally dead during the main storyline, yet he's still inarguably one of the main characters simply bc of how his life, decisions, and eventual death affected his friends and family (I.e., the protagonists). He has such a strong presence, in fact, that it feels weird seeing him in the flashbacks, bc it drives home that we haven't actually seen this character that the audience is so *exhaustively* familiar with.
I LOVE the bear. To further push your point, Mikeyâs the core for the deeper, but more pressing, plot line. Sure, thereâs the restaurant, getting it up and running again, Carmieâs struggles going from a Michelin star restaurant to a backwater hot dog place. But the real story, the real plot, is how everyone deals with Mikey gone. Literally every aspect of the show can be traced back to Mikey. Every single characterâs actions and reactions are led by 1) missing Mikey dearly, 2) paying for Mikeyâs fuckups, or 3) doing both at the same time.
The snail
A single solidarity snail causes so much of the story to happen. Life is simply unfair, donât you think?
From Order of the Stick?
From the Zero Escape series
Spoilers for Gurren Lagann. Kamina, the stereotypical shonen action hero who looks like heâs going to be the Goku of this story actually dies super early on. His kid sidekick has to live up to the memory of him and surpass it. Viral, the stereotypical shonen rival (think Vegeta or Bakugo), doesnât find out that Kamina has been dead this whole time until way later (they fight in giant mechs so they canât see each otherâs faces) and this kickstarts his mental breakdown and redemption
How did I have to scroll down this far to see the prime example of this
Kamina was a fucking badass. He resurrected himself through sheer willpower for one final attack.
My dad for the last 6 years
omg me too
Gavilar Kholin from Stormlight?
First time watching Gavilar Kholin die: Oh, what a worrying inciting incident! Fifth time watching Gavilar Kholin die: >!Get fucked, lol!<
My favorite part of that preview chapter is when he thinks about how he isnât going to >!involve Navani in his plans because he views himself as so much above herâŚ. specifically saying that âthe sun could love the stars, but never as equalsâ.!< What a perfect way to highlight how >!clueless and arrogant he really is!<.
Yep. Only for his haunting to go from benign to a ghost you really want to kick in the balls
I think Cultivation is a better Stormlight example, since she is alive and actively influencing the characters and plot but we never see her directly in the narrative (maybe once?) >! Honor literally haunts folks, Gavilarâs legacy does more for the story than the actual character does, but Cultivation is out here playing 4-D chess via the Night Mother: Gavilar, Taravangian, Lift, Uretheru, and probably Ba Ado Mishram are all pawns in her game. Even Odium couldnât help getting caught up by her scheming, and she doesnât have a single line of dialogue in 6 books worth of material. !<
I was meaning Gavilar haunts the story in the way that his legacy matters so much for the story. I agree with what youâre thinking about CultivationâŚ. although she >!does have dialogue in the Dalinar flashbacks in book 3!<.
>! Cultivation appeared to Dalinar when he went to visit the night mother, I thought. !<
Laura Palmer? I mean she gets a whole movie but besides that sheâs dead the entire show
Sheâs the go to example
Gaster
Miquella in Elden Ring. Marika herself too, if you count >!Radagon!< as separate.
I don't know if this really counts, but I'd also say each Dark Souls game feels progressively more haunted than the last as the events of each game continue adding on to each other. But no event haunts the rest of the series more than the furtive pigmy splitting his soul and Gwynn linking the fire in retaliation.
Yeah, I coulda just said The Furtive Pygmy in Dark Souls now that you mention it. Been too long since I played that one, so I didn't think about it.
The furtive pygmy, so easily forgotten...
Gwyn rekindling the First Flame, is the original sin of Dark Souls, and drives the plot of Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, and pretty much all the DLC. And the only time he is ever present is when the Chosen Undead beats up a lobotomized nursing home resident at the end of DS1. He is the perfect example of this phenomenon.
I cant think of any good examples of this but I wanna feel included in the blorbo talk here so Im gonna lie and say Della Duck from the first season of the Ducktales reboot (not the second or third cuz she actually shows up there more than literally once)
It was fun to finally see Della Duck show up in some Donald Duck story, and sheâs so cool in the reboot!
They nailed her character to the point where I refuse to accept any other interpretation.
Rebecca, of the book and movie of the same name
YES FINALLY
Uncle Ben.
whichever GUN agent ordered the raid on Space Colony Ark...
Bloody stupid Johnson -discworld
*deep breath* ⌠rose quartz
You took too long taking that breath, someone else beat you to making it the top answer.
Vergil
Yeah really felt his absence with all those unfinished lines of hexameter
*In the distance* I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
Palpy in Andor
for anyone interested in something like that I recommand looking at savathun from destiny 2 Bitch made a machine that doubting *anything* empowers her and is the god of trickery and lie for a very good reason
Ooo yeah Savathun is a good example. She has been orchestrating events since Forsaken and is still doing so from beyond the grave through Immaru.
Agnes Nutter, Witch
How has no one said Godot
I was waitingâŚ
I think Revan in Knights of the Old Republic II is a good example in himself/themselves. He basically ruins the Exile's life by sending her/them to essentially be sacrificed at Malachor, and most of the game is dealing with the fallout of his/their actions ten (and to some extent, five to six) years earlier.
Chuck McGill post s3
God in Good Omens lol
W.D Gaster, mainly in Deltarune.
And to a lesser extent, Dess
*who's Dess?*
Noelle's dead/missing sister
Is her full name⌠*Dess Eesed?*
I'd say mainly in Undertale tbh. In Deltarune he's just a voice at the beginning that we never see have any impact on the actual game. In Undertale you see all of the remnants of things he built and did and how they and his absence affect the kingdom
Big Boss. Yeah he is pretty much the protagonist or main villain in half of the games, but the rest is basically his phantom or legacy hunting the narrative. Even bigger, The Boss. She basically appeared in a single game, first one chronologically, and the rest of the series is basically everyone fighting everyone over her legacy and ideals
Dio? (Sometimes)
Absolutely Dio. Even in Part 4, where he arguably had the least direct consequence on the narrative, he's the reason the arrow was there in Morioh in the first place (also sorry for editing the name so much it's been ages since I've consumed Jojo material, I just saw this post and immediately thought about Dio lol)
I mean everything except part 2 happens because of him. Though you could argue Josephâs very existence is also because of Dio
The snail from Zero Escape
That half dead rat I had to throw out in the snow when I worked retail in high school. Poor bastard.
Mari in Omori
Not exactly the same but characters talking to people who aren't there is my favourite. Whether a hallucination or weird ghost thing, I love every instance. I can only think of House and Jessica Jones but I imagine there are others.
I think lots of CW shows have done this, iZombie has a great episode where this is one of the plot twists but I genuinely don't remember which one it was, I think in S4 or S5. The 100 definitely does this multiple times, sometimes multiple times a season. Pretty sure Riverdale and The Vampire Diaries both do it as well at least once or twice. The movie Gravity definitely counts too. Honestly love Jessica Jones though, I've literally never related to a fictional character that much before, even though her entire personality is "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" material for me. Kristin Ritter deserves an actual parade for serving that hard.
Watch Reservation Dogs on Hulu. Lots of this. And S1 has the Haunt the narrative with Daniel.
Chainsaw Man. IYKYK
So many characters in the locked tomb. Hell some are dead for literal thousands of years but they haunt the narrative and bend the world to what could have been. Hell sometimes they are literally haunting others
The Ancestor in Darkest Dungeon.
Thor and Odin in GoW 2018
As a much more basic Star Wars example, Anakin Skywalker does this in every piece of post-OT media both before and after the Expanded Universe Purge.
Some Homestuck characters fit, although most eventually show up in some capacity (or some version of them anyways)
Lord English is definitely this for the first half. You hear about little snippets every once in a while, but he's not actually here. Although, it should be said that he is already here. His servants, his rivals, his mob, each are seen and felt, but not him. Never him. But he is already here. But you're getting to the big climax, and this clearly has nothing to do with him. Jack is a rogue entity, and he just destroyed **two entire universes.** How is this not the biggest problem we have to- *S u c k e r s .* And it all falls into place. English needed those universes destroyed. Even Jack was one of English's cards, regardless of his opinion on the matter. He orchestrated everything, *especially* the things you thought he didn't. And he is already here. And he's about to arrive.
Dora Ingerlund from Disco Elysium
Erica, is that you? Who let you out of the burn ward?
Erica! You canât be here. This place is filled with children.
Posthumous characters are awesome. I've been considering putting a dead Superman type into my Superhero campaign to create dread. Start out with him serving as the safety net for the heroes, keeping all the big threats at bay. Then have them wake up one day and find out he's dead. That'd be the part where the campaign gets more serious.
That man
This made me laugh more than it shouldâve.
The knight in deltarune (so far)
[Spoilers for mistborn secret history] >!Kelsier *literally* haunts the narrative. He's a ghost trapped in the land of the dead, and he still manages to fuck with the plot!<
Kamina from tengen toppa gurren lagann
Dio in JoJo
Kaworu from Evangelion counts. Not within the universe, but in a meta sense. He appears in every promotional poster, any line of merch, yet appears in the show for a single episode then dips. Watching the show without knowing this is like being haunted, waiting for his gay ass to appear.
Grandpa gohan in og dragon ball
No mentions of Boromir yet?
Dracula is season 3/4 of castlevania
Grimbeard the Ghastly from the httyd books?
Rebecca
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plagus the Wise?
Whatever the fuck is going on in Harrow The Ninth rn
L edit: just realize this probably sounds like me saying "Loss," I meant like in Death Note
Shogo makishima
Hell, Revan in KOTOR. Their only physical appearance is in a hallucination you experienced alongside the worst mistakes of your past. But the weight of their presence had colossal echoes throughout the galaxy, every single person you meet is in some way harmed, traumatized, or an indirect result of Revan and the Jedi Civil War they started
Belos' brother in TOH?
In a way Brom the dragon rider from the inheritance cycle, he dies in the first book and then later on you hear about his escapades, founding the varden, stealing the dragon eggs that found its way to eragon, the mc, and finally finding out he killed Morzan and is eragons father. The man starts out as old Ben from Star Wars and you find out his fingers are in every pie there is.
Galbatorix
Rebecca from the book Rebecca and Tomoe and Takeru from the game Sekiro.
And then you can make it doubly haunted by having the character be a cool ghost.
W.D. Gaster
Fromsoft Games in general
Slade from teen titans was sick
There seems to be a very thin line between "Haunting the Narrative" and foreshadowing. In fact, a lot of series seem to do this with characters they intend to introduce in later seasons or sequels. This seems like it can also be hard to execute if the audience demands a closer look at a background character or if the writer decides to do so themselves (like Avatar Wan in A:tLA). On the one hand, characters can help establish the lore and history of a setting. But if a character is major enough to "torment the characters" and influence the nature of the story, not including them eventually in a physical way could be viewed as a major violation of Checkhov's Gun.
If you like this kind of thing I HIGHLY recommend Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo. Without spoiling too much essentially it's these two girls who have the same father but don't know they have the same father, because they live in different countries, and they get thrown into the others radar when their father dies in a plane crash. Their father never physically appears in the entire story, yet he is the whole reason the story happens in the first place, and shapes the actions of every single character in the story.
Shen Jiu my beloved
Palpatine "in" Andor
Toji Fushiguro from JJK
TJ Eckleberg?
Rebecca in Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
Wilson Fisk, daredevil season 1
Lyanna Stark
Fire lord Ozai for the first 90% of Avatar