Spotlight-Stealing Squad - TV Tropes

"[A]s the series goes on and Sasuke tests better with audiences, Sasuke and his shitty family become the driving force behind the bulk of the plot. Everything becomes 'Uchiha' this and 'Sharingan' that — even though, last I checked, the show is still called Naruto."

• During the 2000's Progressive car insurance company introduced a plucky woman agent named Flo, who loved to tell potential costumers about the benefits of having progressive. She became a mainstay in the commercials for many years. During the 2010s, the public was introduced to Flo's equally goofy work colleagues who would appear in the commercials with her from that point onward. During this time, one of the members known as Jamie (Jim Cashman) would eventually take over in popularity, slowly getting more lines during the commercials with Flo getting less. And as of the 2020s, most commercials feature Jamie with Flo being a background character with a couple of lines at most.

• Liz and Anthony in For Better or for Worse: Look upon their blandly wholesome love and despair. This was only the case since mid-to-late 2005, mind you.
• Bloom County:
  • The character of Opus is not present when the strip started. Later he is introduced as Binkley's pet. He takes over the strip to such an extent that important original characters like Cutter John and the eponymous Milo Bloom disappeared before the end. Although its Sunday-only sequel, Outland, wasn't originally conceived to include the Bloom County regulars, Opus showed up in the third week, and although others came back as well, Opus had again become the primary focus. Years later, when Berke Breathed decided to resume the series again, he simply named it Opus and the rest of the original cast were Demoted to Extra.
  • New character Abby Fillerup has become this in Bloom County 2015. Since her introduction, she's been in nearly every comic, and most of the new storylines have her as the primary focus (leading to diminished roles for the rest of the cast). The only thing that stops her from becoming a full-on Creator's Pet is the fact that the fandom won't stop raving about her. Though, as of 2018, the focus has shifted back to Opus, with Abby appearing less frequently.
• In the later years of FoxTrot, Jason Fox often got a disproportionate amount of screen time compared to the rest of his family, sometimes being in at least every arc. This can be annoying to readers that don't get nerdy jokes. Or even people who do get them, but don't think they're very funny.
• E.C. Sieger's Thimble Theatre was a well-regarded strip recounting the adventures of one Castor Oyl, his family, and his best friend Ham Gravy, until one day they needed to hire a sailor to captain a ship for them. The sailor, like most of TT's cast, was intended to be a throw-away character, never to return after the story arc ended, but fan response was so overwhelmingly positive that he joined the main cast, and eventually the strip was re-named after him. You might have read it; it's called Popeye.
• When Bo and Lanolin were first introduced in U.S. Acres, it resulted in weeks worth of nothing but strips heavily featuring Bo and Lanolin. Eventually, focus balance went back to normal.
• After 2001, the comic strip Luann became "Brad". However, in the process, Brad became responsible and grew up. In the early strips, he was a Jerk Ass Big Brother. Lampshaded in a forum where an arc about Luann's prom and subsequent college was met with a comment of "... Who's this 'Luann' girl? When did the strip shift from Brad to her?" Eventually Brad got put on the receiving end of this as well, once he married Toni and ended their Will They or Won't They?. At that point his character development ground to a halt; now he and Toni exist mainly as an excuse to feature Toni's niece Shannon. Then, in 2015, it became "Bernice".
• Dick Tracy: Chester Gould always wanted to do a 'big-foot style' humour strip. As a result, he would sometimes bring the action in Dick Tracy to a screeching halt to focus on the antics of hillbilly couple B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie.
• Peanuts: Due to the comics long run and many changes from its original existence most of the cast fits this trope in one way or another.
  • Charlie Brown can be considered this, while he was one of the main characters from the get go it took a few months for him to be solidified as the focus character of the strip.
  • Lucy and Linus were both introduced a couple years into the run. Lucy almost immediately became the second most important character, and while Linus took a few years once he had aged enough he was just as important as his big sister by the end of the comics first decade.
  • Snoopy is the biggest example, he started off as the least important character in the original cast. While he was pretty important within a few years he was definitely supporting compared to Charlie Brown and even Linus and Lucy, but at the end of the sixties as he became a merchandising juggernaut he became more important than everyone else, gaining several major characters who were supporting to him. It wasn't until the late 80s where Charlie Brown started being the main character again, and even then it was always shared with Snoopy.
  • Rerun Van Pelt became this towards the end, by the final year he was appearing more frequently than anyone besides Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
• Comic strip Drabble was originally focused on Norman, a college student, just like the strip's creator when it began. However, as he got older, he began to identify with Norman's father, Ralph, more, so the strip began to focus on his more and more. Norman still appears as a regular, however.
• Comic strip Overboard! shifted to a heavy focus on the mice aboard the ship during the 2000's. Practically to the point where the strip became about the mice, and the pirate characters became accessories to the mice.
• Dilbert occasionally suffers from this, perhaps intentionally since Dilbert is The Everyman contrasted with a more colorful supporting cast. In particular, the office strips tend to focus on Wally, Alice or the Pointy-Haired Boss, with Dilbert often just along for the ride. Even outside the office, Dogbert frequently dominates the storylines.

• Jeff Dunham allows Achmed the Dead Terrorist to be the focus of almost all of his shows. The Christmas Special may as well have been called the "Achmed the Dead Terrorist show, guest starring Jeff Dunham & Other personalities". One special expands Achmed's role even further (both solo and with his half-dead long-lost son.) He takes up roughly 60% of the show, forcing Peanut and Jose Jalapeno-on-a-stick to be introduced at the same time to make room. If anything, the puppets like Melvin and Sweet Daddy D managed to suffer this the most; even Bubba because in a 2010 performance, the audience knew his routine better than Jeff did. Bubba didn't let Jeff get away with it, though....

• On The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test, several of the questions ask whether the character for whom you're taking the test plays a central role in the story arc; answering yes adds to the number of points they have to determine how Sueiful they are.
• The Pokémon Squad: In later seasons, despite generally being better, there are some good examples in both the mansion and the Yaoi House:
  • Out of the mansion, we have Ash, June, Henry and Brock.
  • Out of the Yaoi House, we have Barney, Rudy, Snap, and to a lesser extent, Elmo.
• FreezeFlame22:
  • Lemmy and Morton practically stole the show in Bowser's Koopalings. They are featured prominently in almost every episode, with only Larry getting more screen time and dialogue. They are actually the only Koopalings to appear in every episode of the show, which is something not even Larry could say.
  • Carl was sidelined around the fifth season of his own show in favor of Roxxane and Blooper, who were given increased focus.
  • Meanwhile, King K. Rool isn't even the Deuteragonist of Donkey Kong Island, yet he is essentially on par with DK and Diddy. And even then, he arguably rivals Diddy in importance as well.
• A Crown of Stars: Defied. The Avalon characters are Original Characters of an original universe created by Strypgia. When he decided crossing it over with the Evangelion universe, Strypgia realized that they might steal the spotlight, so that he restricted the point of view to Shinji and Asuka and other Evangelion characters, and he kept the story firmly focused on Shinji and Asuka learning to overcome their traumas, repairing their relationship and saving their world.

  Strypgia: "The introduction of Avalon is a product of how this story began as a 'I'm just writing to kill time for my own amusement' project. So it was an opportunity to take out an OU I'd been knocking around in my head and play with the bits. But to keep it from overwhelming things, I restricted it to only using Asuka or Shinji as POV characters except for very rare, brief spots, I think just 5 others in the whole thing, for only a page or two each. And two of those are other NERV survivors. Come to think of it, we only have an Avaloni character as POV once, and that's back on Eva-Earth."

• Gory Toons:
  • Pop from Happy Tree Friends became this as time went on, to the point where he is featured in almost every episode. He even seems to have dethroned the core group as the main character, especially due to Kirby becoming Out of Focus and Cuddles being Demoted to Extra. SpongeBob SquarePants is this as well, although that has been the case since the first episode.
  • Kenny to some extent. He had received much focus in later episodes, such as “Moose With Loose Screws”, “Dieseling Derby”, “Good Fright!”, “Skate Park”, “Late Parody Toons”, and so fourth.
  • Around Season 3, the show was largely focused on King Dedede and Kenny McCormick. Even SpongeBob was overshadowed to some extent.
• The Supetastic 6 in Super Milestone Wars, so much that they became the main protagonists in the sequel, Super Milestone Wars 2.
• Tends to happen in any fanfic, as the author will often put their favorite character(s) to the forefront, at times leaving the main character in the background or not even in the story at all.
• In Bart the General, which, despite the title, appears to be mainly about how Omarn deals with Marge having an affair, Barton dominates the second part of the last episode and the third episode, which is longer than episodes 1, 2 and 4 combined.
• In Fuck the Jesus Beam, O.B.A.M.A. takes over the plot from his debut in the third chapter as the Big Bad, despite Lordguckles having been set up as the main antagonist in the second chapter, and proceeds to have two chapters devoted almost exclusively to him (Including the now-deleted "CHAPTER RAGE"). Kaminic gets Brainwashed and hardly does anything until releasing himself from O.B.A.M.A.'s control in "CHAPTER NEO JESUS".
• Total Drama Comeback mocks the tendency of Duncan and Owen to approach this in canon, while simultaneously making Ezekiel, Bridgette, and Izzy this within the actual fic and its sequel Total Drama Battlegrounds. His World Tour Fix Fic TDWT Reducks Redux demotes the canon season's spotlight-stealers (Heather, Alejandro, Cody, and Sierra) in favour of instead giving the spotlight mainly to Ezekiel, Bridgette, Izzy, and Harold (ironically, all but Izzy were the first ones eliminated in the canon season).
• A Hero is supposed to be a Puella Magi Madoka Magica/Doctor Who crossover. Reading it, however, one can't help but notice how prominent the Doctor Who side of the story has become in comparison to the PMMM side. Especially in the case of Dalek Sec, who the author has admitted steals every scene he's in.
• In Decks Fall Everyone Dies, Tristan is overshadowed by Bakura, Duke, and all three Kaiba brothers, even though he was supposed to be the main character.
• Torchwood fandom will often do this to Ianto Jones. For example, in stories that take place in the Year That Never Was, Ianto will suddenly show up and defeat the Master often by himself. In canon, Ianto was a genuinely badass character, but so were Jack, Martha and The Doctor.
• Ultra Fast Pony references the accusations of spotlight stealing in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: the episode that introduces the Cutie Mark Crusaders is titled "Out with the Old Characters".
• Teen Wolf fandom and fanfiction focus so overwhelmingly on Stiles and Derek and pairing them up together that several people who watched the show after reading Stiles/Derek fic were shocked to learn that Scott, not Stiles or Derek, is the actual main character of the show and Stiles and Derek get relatively few interactions with each other compared to other characters.
• Gravity Falls fanfiction tends to focus on Stan and his twin Ford instead of protagonists Dipper and Mabel. Justified both because much of their lives are Fanfic Fuel and because they’re adults, it’s easier to write Dark Fic.
• In The Wizards of Waverly Place fanfic "Good Luck with That, Sis." Alex's girlfriend Ashley slowly starts to draw focus away from Justine, where the last two chapters are basically all about her.
• Pokémon Crossing: Both Frank and Apollo Hawkwind take up the spotlight in later chapters, with one chapter not including the main protagonists (Benedict, Kidd, and Tank) at all.

• In the last quarter of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer rejoins the story and immediately dominates the scenery, pushing Huck close to First-Person Peripheral Narrator levels for the rest of the book.
• The Legend of Drizzt: Drizzt Do'Urden in R.A. Salvatore's later books stops giving the other cast members breathing room. Even before that, he was originally intended as a mentor figure for Wulfgar, to be phased out and only show up occasionally. Instead he stole the entire series for himself.
• Tasslehoff becomes rather close to becoming one in the Dragonlance Trilogies of the War of the Lance and The Twins.
• In some books of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, unimportant characters like Galina can get more page time than the hero, Rand; due to the large cast and the length of the series, every main character has books in which they barely appear.
• Terry Pratchett has stated this as an explicit problem of writing the Discworld at times — it's difficult to write a story set in Ankh-Morpork without the Watch getting involved, at which point it is inevitably a Watch story, regardless of the former plot outline. In fact, this trope was the primary reason for the creation of the protagonist character Moist von Lipwig (of Going Postal and Making Money); as a con artist and known criminal, Moist would naturally wish to avoid interaction with the Watch whenever possible. Even this ultimately failed, and his third book Raising Steam ended up being a crossover featuring a team-up. This is, it has to be said, a tradition going back to the very start of the Watch books, which were originally meant to star Carrot and not Sam Vimes. The Wee Free Men was originally set in Lancre; one of the reasons for the change was that it would be too darn hard to keep the Ramtops witches from taking over. The two series ended up merging anyway, but at least by then Tiffany had developed somewhat on her own.
• Take a look at the Honor Harringtons Crowning Moment Of Awesome listing, and you'd be forgiven for thinking the series was entirely about Victor Cachat rather than, you know, Honor Harrington.
• Magic Attic Club: The Continuity Reboot had the first (and only) book, The Adventure Begins, focus on Megan to the POV exclusion of anyone else; she's given the magic key to hang around her neck, it's her eccentric aunt Maggie that now owns the place with the attic (instead of it being an unrelated and kind older lady all the girls get to know), and she has all of the internal monologue in the story in contrast to the older introduction book The Secret of the Attic which had internal thoughts for all the characters. She was also the only one on the cover where the prior group adventures showed all four or five girls, and had a whole new face mold designed for her.
• The Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: As the series goes on, more attention becomes devoted to Jack Emery, Harry Wong, Bert Navarro, Ted Robinson, and Joe Espinosa (not to mention a few other characters). Some reviewers noticed this and complained that this series is about the Sisterhood, not the Brotherhood!
• The Railway Series didn't really have a single "Main character", instead being an ensemble based anthology series. Thomas the Tank Engine didn't even appear until the second book, but it didn't stop people from referring to the series as "The Thomas Books" (possibly because he was the sole focus of two of the first four books in the series). As a result of the television series, Christopher Awdry was constantly being pressured into writing more Thomas-focus stories and books.
• Sandokan: Yanez had a role as big if not bigger than Sandokan from The King of the Sea to An Empire Crumbles, with The Brahman and An Empire Crumbles actually having him as the declared protagonist. Ironically, Yanez's Revenge is the novel in which Sandokan takes back the spotlight.

• Vocaloid:
  • As a literal squad, all six of the Crypton Vocaloids qualify for this trope over the 70-something others (and often Gumi and Gackpo (though even he started slipping in popularity in the late 2010s), who are often treated as Sixth Rangers to the Cryptonloids, and somewhat less often Kiyoteru, IA, and Yukari (the latter two of which started growing in popularity in the late 2010s), but that's usually it). This has a lot to do with Crypton/Piapro's huge marketing campaigns for its Vocaloids, compared to the more subdued efforts of other companies. First Installment Wins also probably has to do with it as well, as they are the first line of Japanese Vocaloids to be released.
  • Within the Cryptons, most people prefer and even more people know of Hatsune Miku over all the other seventy-three Vocaloids (and over 100+ if you count the fan made ones), with the other Cryptons being her backup or side acts during concerts or supporting characters in other material. Many would probably be surprised to know that Vocaloids other than Miku exist. The fans themselves even put a lampshade on it by creating her Woobie counterpart, Haku Yowane, who's always drinking because she knows she'll never be as good or popular as Miku.
  • Haku Yowane has fallen into this trope! She's actually one of the "Voyakiloids", "failure" variants which are supposed to represent songs made with the program that sound terrible. Initially, she was like that. However, as the backlash against Miku's popularity grew, Haku, as the anti-Miku (think Wario/Mario), became more popular as well. (That she looked like a goddess in most of her renderings certainly didn't hurt.) And then some composers decided that if she was really going to steal Miku's thunder, she needed better-sounding songs. It all snowballed from there and Haku has done everything from ride a motorcycle through a tricky course backwards to play a keyboard flawlessly one-fingered to shoot down a plane with a single bullet.
  • Meiko and Kaito serve as this for the V1 line, The Character Vocal series (Miku, Len, Rin, and Luka), Gumi, and Gackpo for the V2 line, IA and Yukari for the V3 line, and Otomachi Una and V4 flower for V4.
  • In terms of other languages, Oliver effectively serves as the face of not only the PowerFX line, but all of the English-speaking Vocaloids in general.
• Beyoncé from Destiny's Child is sometimes criticized for this, especially after her solo career took off. Parodied by MADtv here and here Perhaps not coincidentally, her character in Dreamgirls is a fictional spotlight stealer based on Diana Ross.
• The Doors and No Doubt are just two examples of bands of very talented musicians frequently overshadowed by their flamboyant lead singers. The fact that No Doubt is fronted by a woman whereas the rest of the band were all male just makes their situation worse. Neither Jim Morrison or Gwen Stefani were particularly happy about this. No Doubt's music video "Don't Speak" is about this very trope.
• Yes, Virginia, there really were Jacksons not named Michael and Janet. And it probably says something about them that Michael had to die before they got their own reality TV show.
• This is the main reason the rap group Leaders of the New School broke up after the release of their second studio album since Busta Rhymes was getting most of the spotlight on him while the rest of the members were pretty much forgotten. This also prompted Busta to pursue his solo career, which turns out successful for him.
• The Bangles started off having three lead singers (Susanna Hoffs and the Petterson sisters) and the first albums are relatively balanced in that department. However, as Hoffs started to gain media coverage, most of the singles (i.e. videos, i.e. hits, i.e. opening/closing live numbers and encores) had her on lead. For their reunion album, she sings more than the others.
• Eagles began as a quartet where lead vocals were relatively split (although Glenn Frey had a bit more input). Slowly, as Don Henley became the main lyricist and a fan favourite, he became, statistically, the band's most frequent lead singer.
• During The '80s, Genesis morphed into The Phil Collins Trio, to the point where radio DJs would introduce Genesis songs as "another one from Phil Collins". A one-man Spotlight Stealing Squad for sure. Contrast this with the earlier, progressive rock era, where Peter Gabriel and his flamboyant costumes, masks and makeup were the focal point of their image and marketing, to the point where his leaving the band led to early death knells in the press. It didn't help that the other members were media-shy and that Gabriel was the mouthpiece for the band until 1975. Gabriel's legend loomed large until Collins became an unexpected solo success in 1981.
• Did you know that Marilyn Manson is the name of an entire band? Their name was originally Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, but over time the lead singer stole more and more of the spotlight and became the only face of the band, to the point that they shortened the band's name to just his stage name.
• Pink Floyd post-Barrett started with songs from just about everyone in the band, including collaborations from the whole band. By The Wall, only four songs weren't fully written by Roger Waters. Then there was The Final Cut. It also affected the vocals. Waters, David Gilmour and Richard Wright (at first, Barrett/Waters/Wright) usually shared the singing duties. By the time Waters took over the band in Animals, only one song wasn't fully done by him.
• Perhaps this belongs in the Film folder, but Hans Zimmer gets a lot more recognition than James Newton Howard for composing for The Dark Knight Trilogy. And Howard didn't even do the third movie due to Zimmer forcing Howard out, in favor of his (multiple) proteges.
• Brian Cox combined this with Breakup Breakout to become Dream's Spotlight-Stealing Squad several years after the group split up. While they were together, he attracted no attention whatsoever, and had next to no input into the group's records (almost all the keyboard parts on the records are played by Peter Cunnah). Fast forward a few years, and he's vastly more famous than anyone else associated with the group.
• One example of spotlight stealing backfiring was with the well-known electric guitarist Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction. When the Red Hot Chili Peppers were close to breaking up because of John Frusciante's drug problems and infighting amongst the members, Dave Navarro — who's friends with the band members — stepped in to keep the band from ending. His presence and guitar playing style overshadowed the Peppers funky sound, making the band sound more like Jane's Addiction. This was made clearer on their album together One Hot Minute which was filled with Dave Navarro's guitar licks and was promoted by exotic music videos straight out of the Jane's Addiction playbook. The result was a huge backlash by fans, who still hold a grudge against Dave Navarro to this day. And the Peppers have officially declared that One Hot Minute was their worst album and hardly play tracks from it while on tour.
• Rev. from DVL was an indie Japanese Pop Music idol group from Fukuoka, Japan, who enjoyed minor success... until 2014, when fan-taken photos of Kanna Hashimoto went viral and took the entire nation by storm. Fortunately, for Rev. from DVL, this meant mainstream media attention, but unfortunately, the public cared about Hashimoto only. Hashimoto began getting acting and commercial roles and was also pushed to the center focus of their music videos. Rev. from DVL disbanded in 2017, and to this day, the only member most people remember is Hashimoto.

• Michael Jordan is prominently featured over all of the other characters in Space Jam, to the point of relegating Bugs Bunny to the background.
• Whoever was designing The Avengers (Stern) must've really liked Hulk, as almost all the focus goes toward him, making the other Avengers seem like mere cameos at best.

• This tends to happen in Professional Wrestling pretty much any time a wrestler gains any degree of power over booking events. For example, in WCW from 1998 to 1999, the show heavily on Kevin Nash. See also Triple H on WWE's Raw brand from 2002 to 2005, Jeff Jarrett in TNA from its founding in 2002 to the end of 2006, and Kurt Angle and his then-wife, Karen, also in TNA since 2006. If the latter three are any indication, they eventually do get it out of their system. As a group, the Main Event Mafia in particular, Kurt Angle specifically. Worst of all, it's basically a rehash of the nWo storyline from WCW, complete with Big Poochie.
• During both of WWE's brand extension era, Raw tend to be in the main event of any dual brand PPV even if the match doesn't feature Raw's World Champion. However since SmackDown moved to FOX in the fall of 2019 and started getting WWE's top stars (including Roman Reigns), SmackDown now fills the main event spot of a dual-branded PPV while RAW is now viewed as the B-Show.
• In British wrestling's Joint Promotions, Big Daddy became this from the late '70s onwards. Whilst a firm favourite with fans and pretty much saving the franchise, some people considered his popularity to be a case of jumping the shark.
• In the really old school, see: Hulk Hogan in the WWF and WCW, and Dusty Rhodes in Jim Crockett Promotions/NWA. Ironically, Pro Wrestling NOAH could use more of this instead of the booker-wrestler devaluing himself to get over a young guy... who then fails to get over due to weak early title defenses, drops the belt to an "old guard" guy and promptly drops back to midcard hell. And Hogan did it again to TNA. Luckily, as time went on it got significantly better.
• The New World Order; they became so overpushed in 1996-1999 (thanks to the creative control wielded by Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, as well as the overindulgence of Eric Bischoff) that it drove the entire storyline into the ground. The main problem was that, despite being the bad guys, they never, ever lost.
• Defied Trope: Vince McMahon came out to take credit for the actions of Wade Barrett and The Nexus, much like how his daughter Stephanie had arisen as the mastermind behind the ECW revival in 2001. Barrett and his men proceeded to beat Vince senseless in response. (We guess that'll teach him not to ride other heels' coattails, especially since he's retired from wrestling now... or so we thought.)
• For a long stretch between 2007 and 2009, almost every main event at every PPV was some combination of Randy Orton, Triple H, and John Cena. Since Triple H was injured, and Cena was busy with the Nexus, it became Orton and Sheamus more often than not. For several years after 2006, John Cena stole the main event spot at WrestleMania from that year's Royal Rumble winner (with the exception of the 2009 winner). Ironically, when Cena himself won the 2008 Rumble, Edge and The Undertaker headlined Mania that year. Hell, Cena was stealing the spotlight from the WWE Championship for quite some time. The first few months of 2012 it was understandable - he was headlining WrestleMania with The Rock in the latter's first 'Mania match in years. After that, however, it was unjustifiable. He stole the spotlight from CM Punk, who is the WWE Champion, at Extreme Rules, which took place in Punk's hometown of Chicago, while Punk was in a nicely dubbed Chicago Street Fight with Arch-Enemy Chris Jericho, all because he was in a match with Brock Lesnar, who doesn't have nearly as much star power as The Rock does. Then his match with John Laurinaitis headlined Over the Limit over CM Punk vs Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship. That last one is why Punk's fan base didn't diminish at all when he turned heel - when a match like that goes after you, even though you're the WWE Champion, you have a legitimate reason to be angry.
• In 2009, the group calling themselves The Beautiful People basically overtook TNA's Knockout Division, which had previously centered around some combination of Gail Kim, ODB, Awesome Kong, Taylor Wilde or someone involved with one of the four. As none of the previous spotlight holders had any direct affiliation it allowed some other names to slip in while the group shift made "Knockout" segments a lot more homogenous.
• After Michael Cole's Face–Heel Turn. He's been on every show since as a commentator: WWE Raw, NXT, WWE Superstars, and after WWE Smackdown moved to Syfy he became a third color commentator. Eventually Cole stopped announcing on NXT and WWE Superstars. His positions on those shows was taken over by fellow commentators Todd Grisham, Jack Korpela, and Scott Stanford. With his face turn in 2012 he only announced on Raw and Main Event; John "Bradshaw" Layfield initially took over his Smackdown spot alongside Josh Mathews but he was later put back in the commentating booth for that show.
• Triple H in 2011 since he became COO, which could be summed up as this: We went from the "Summer of Punk" to the "Autumn of HHH." Though the focus on The Game eventually died down after October, when he was ousted as the Raw General Manager and replaced with John Laurinaitis. Trips would then be injured by Kevin Nash and actually didn't show up until December to exact his revenge.
• Team Hell NO (Daniel Bryan and Kane) often had segments that were nearly 30-40 minutes in length, usually consisting of one having a singles match with the other on commentary, then a long promo segment, and then the other partner having a match while the first member went on commentary; not to mention any pre-taped segments...
• Listening to the ring announcers lately have shown this has gotten out of hand. In the past, the announcers were fairly good at staying on point and trying to talk about the current match and storyline, whether it was a main event, midcard, or women's match. Nowadays, the current match is usually treated as an annoying distraction from whoever the Spotlight Stealer is at the time.
• After Daniel Bryan became WWE Champion, Triple H and The Authority quickly rolled in to take the belt away from him and absorb the spotlight.
• WWECW:
  • After Bobby Lashley started feuding with Vince and lost the ECW Title, eventually moving to RAW, CM Punk practically dominated the show.
  • After Punk left, a more varied roster became the focus of the show for a while. But then said roster started to get depleted and the place essentially became Christian's playground when he returned in 2009.
  • Note that this wasn't a bad thing. It'd be a gross overstatement of WWECW's importance to call it a B Show. It was mainly used as a launching pad for younger stars to establish themselves on TV. The two aforementioned superstars were by far and away the most popular wrestlers on that show's roster — if it hadn't been for them, no one would be watching the show at all. WWECW was considered to be a bastardization of the original ECW by much of the latter's fan base — coincidentally, Punk and Christian wouldn't have been out of place in the original, which probably played a part into their popularity.
• Late 2015, WWE's main event scene got depleted. Cena was taking time off, partly for injuries and also for his acting career, Orton got injured again, and Seth Rollins was forced to vacate the world title due to injury. You'd think WWE would use this time to elevate some younger talent in preparation for when Cena and Orton hung up the boots for good, right? Well, they did. They made Roman Reigns the main focus of the show a la John Cena, and Monday Night RAW became Monday Night Roman. Fans did not react well to this, and the quality of the programming having tanked around this time did not help matters.
• Dean Ambrose got the spotlight for the majority of the build between Fastlane and WrestleMania 32 after Reigns had to get facial reconstruction surgery for a deviated septum. This happened for two reasons:
  1. Ambrose had been on fire ever since he won the Intercontinental Title back in December 2015 at TLC, having a stellar program with Kevin Owens, becoming the MVP of the Royal Rumble PPV that year by beating Owens in a brutal Last Man Standing match and then entering the titular match and lasting to the final two (outlasting several other prominent stars such as Brock Lesnar, The Wyatt Family, Chris Jericho, and even his best friend Roman Reigns), and then carrying the build to Fastlane with his interactions with Brock Lesnar, resulting in him getting the plans for WrestleMania changed and landing the Lesnar match that was originally slated for Bray Wyatt.
  2. By that point, Ambrose was the only full-time main event talent that was active. A massive injury epidemic hit the company on every level, taking out several stars in every part of the card, up to and including John Cena. He and Triple H were left having to carry RAW by themselves because Hunter, despite being a part-timer, was the only other main event talent still on the show that even showed up regularly. For that matter, this was the same reason why Hunter won the world title for the fourteenth time — there was no other credible heel left on the roster for Reigns to face at Mania that Reigns could conceivably be cheered against. ^note 
• Speaking of Reigns, he and the Bloodline have dominated SmackDown, often taking up half the show on a few occasions. As a result, there are generally three or four matches on nearly every episode of SmackDown whenever a Bloodline segment or match is scheduled for the show.
• Among the Four Horsewomen of NXT, Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks have received the most focus, with the former having won all titles available to the women's division with the sole exception of the original Women's Championship, each reigns lasted for months, rarely getting pinned or submitted even in tag team matches and even being the one who ended Asuka's undefeated streak. Sasha on the other hand also has multiple title runs (although all of her reigns are rather short) and had participated in the multiple match types that is a first to the women division, and was among the final participants in the 2018 Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber match, and WrestleMania XXXIV Women's Battle Royal. The other two Horsewomen, Becky Lynch and Bayley on the other hand had fewer title reigns during that time and were rarely focused on after losing the titles, especially Becky who is the only one who did not win the NXT Women's Championship.
  • Subverted as of 2019; Becky Lynch managed to organically gain fan support, beat Charlotte and Ronda Rousey in the main event of WrestleMania 35, became the first wrestler to hold both women's championships simultaneously and is now considered the biggest female star (and possibly the biggest star, period) in the company. Bayley, meanwhile, was repeatedly Screwed by the Network but remained a beloved Ensemble Dark Horse and eventually got A Day in the Limelight, winning and cashing in the women's MITB briefcase on the same night to become SmackDown Women's Champion, and she is currently one of the most talked-about acts in the company following a reunion with Sasha Banks and shock Heel turn.
• The NXT Women's Division has become this thanks in large part of Shawn Michaels who believes that gender doesn't matter as there have been some episodes of NXT with as many as five women's matches while the men would be lucky just to get a match on the show from time to time.

• Darwin's Soldiers:
  • In the first Furtopia RP, Dragore is consistently stealing the spotlight. Any time he appears, the other players focus exclusively on him and ignore the other characters.
  • Lupis from the rebooted Furtopia RP is even worse. Again, any time he appears, the other players focus exclusively on him and ignore the other characters. He even crosses over into Off the Rails territory since his character arc overshadows the main plotline of the RP.
• Dino Attack RPG:
  • For Atton Rand during the Adventurers' Island Story Arc, his NPC characters, especially Pierce, Kate, and Rotor, stole the spotlight from his primary character Zenna, to the point where she was eventually Demoted to Extra.
  • The squad of Buffy Captain Ersatzes, who were introduced late in the Final Battle and were expected to take the spotlight from Atton Rand's more important characters like Rotor and Cabin. When other players didn't like that they had stolen the spotlight, they were promptly shoved out of the spotlight.

• 49.5% of all baseball-related news will be about the New York Yankees. 49.5% will be about the Boston Red Sox. The other teams are evenly divided among the remaining 1%.
• In Chicago, there's the Cubs and that Black Sox Scandal team on the South Side. Even when the White Sox broke their lengthy drought first in 2005, and even with a famous fan in Barack Obama, the Southsiders were regularly overlooked in favor of the Cubbies, to the point where even Obama rooted for them to finally break their drought in 2016 (which they did).
• In Ireland, GAA news is divided 60% Dublin Gaelic football, 30% Cork hurling, 10% the rest. Neither is the best team, but they have the highest populations and can thus boost newspaper sales more.
• Notre Dame's football team last won a national championship when Ronald Reagan was president, yet they have enough clout that they're the only school (as opposed to conference) to have an exclusive deal with a major television network.
• The NFL's Dallas Cowboys have not won a Super Bowl — or have even made it to a conference championship for the right to play in the Super Bowl — since 1995, one of only seven teams (out of 32) to not do so in the interim. Yet their coverage and primetime game slots remain relentless solely due to their national prominence and popularity, and the influence of owner Jerry Jones, considered to be the most powerful man in the league, more so than the actual commissioner (something he once even touted to commissioner Roger Goodell during a heated argument).
• Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh has had a solid career, though plagued with Every Year They Fizzle Out syndrome, but his brash style, NFL experience and love of the spotlight make him easily the most-covered coach in college football.
  • At least until 2023, when Deion Sanders took all of the oxygen out of the room when he became head coach at Colorado. Essentially, "Coach Prime" is Harbaugh dialed up beyond eleven (though it remains to be seen how successful he'll be as an FBS coach).
• Hockey Night in Canada, due to various licensing agreements with teams and broadcast agreements, was widely seen as "The Toronto Maple Leafs Show" with the occasional spinoff "The Montreal Canadiens and Someone Else". This problem eased significantly when the show went to a two-game format, the later game finally allowing the western Canadian teams to get regular national airtime.
  • It's STILL the "Toronto Maple Leafs Show", not just on Hockey Night but on every Canadian-produced sports show/channel, because essentially all of Canada's English-language media is located in Toronto and they hammer that fact in every single moment they can.
  • A fun game is to take a shot for every time the Toronto Maple Leafs are mentioned during a game they are not even in! Even more irritating is during the playoffs in years they don't qualify, or are already eliminated (they haven't won a playoff series since before the 2004-05 lockout, and failed to qualify for seven years in a row and ten out of eleven afterward). That certainly does not stop HNiC from bringing them up.
• In the Philippines, most news about the NCAA/UAAP will involve men's basketball. I heard there were other sports, but...
• Coverage of football dominates sports news in the UK both in newspapers and on TV, even during the off season when no games are actually being played (transfer news makes up the difference). Only the Olympics and the Ashes stand a reasonable chance of displacing football off the back pages, and then only during the summer and if England/GBR are doing well.
• Brett Favre. He's undoubtedly one of the best quarterbacks to play the game, but the amount of media attention he received in what is ostensibly a team sport bordered on the insane. In 2009, he returned to Green Bay (his old team) to play as the QB of the Minnesota Vikings (their hated rival). Fox dedicated a camera to watch him for the entire game and fans could watch a webcast of that view exclusively. Even though he wasn't on the field for half the game! During one of Favre's retirements, ESPN interrupted Sports Center for live coverage of him getting off a plane en route to a press conference.
• After Favre's (final) retirement, the media fixated on Tim Tebow in the same way. Before his first snap with the Denver Broncos, he was dominating gobs of coverage on SportsCenter and other programs pretty much entirely because of his outspoken personal views... but networks took it to the point where every move Tebow made was being obsessively followed by cameramen, even when he wasn't saying a word to them. It got to the point where, during the 2011 season, pre-season starting QB Kyle Orton was eventually released by the Denver Broncos to allow Tebow to take over at quarterback — not necessarily because Tebow was better, but because the fans stole Orton's spotlight for Tebow.
  • Tebow's situation was actually pretty similar to Anna Kournikova's, of all people. A solid competitor but hampered by serious flaws (weak arm, can't handle speed of NFL/bad control, injury-prone), came along at exactly the right time (fans looking for a role model in troubled league/Internet just starting to really take off) became insanely popular among a certain section of the fanbase (evangelicals/horndogs), genuinely tried to improve, couldn't, finally hit rock bottom (0-7, 1 interception, 0.0 passer rating/clobbered in first round of US Open), and quickly faded into obscurity with little fanfare. There were other openly devoutly Christian QBs before (Kurt Warner and Jon Kitna), during (Philip Rivers) and since (Russell Wilson) Tebow's tenure. but none captured the imagination of the faithful on the basis of his faith like Tebow.
  • And just as Tebow's career flamed out, Johnny Manziel came onto the scene—essentially Tebow 2.0, as both QBs are known more for their ability to scramble than for their passing ability, played in the SEC in college, won a Heisman Trophy earlier in their college careers than anyone before ^*, and are white. While there are some differences (Tebow wasn't quite as undersized as Manziel, but had less arm strength), the similarities have been repeatedly lampshaded.
• Mention to someone not from the UK that you're from anywhere in the vicinity of Manchester and you'll get something along the lines of 'Oh, so you're a Manchester United fan?'. Tell them you're a Manchester City fan, who play in the same league and locally have almost the same level of support (different areas of the city), and they used look at you blankly. That's changed a bit in the 2010s and 2020s, after the Abu Dhabi oil barons replaced the sacked former Thai prime minister as owner at Man City.
• Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin interchangeably serve as the NHL's Brett Favre.
  • Most egregious example coming from Crosby's long injury status. He was out for over a full season, yet all news coverage about hockey still revolved around him. Jeremy Roenick even lampshades this by saying they ought to stop talking about Crosby until there are actual updates on his health. He gets blasted for it by his colleagues!
• In India, cricket manages to be an SSS to not only any and every other sport, but even billion-dollar corruption issues and state elections!
• Spain suffers from pretty much the same football obsession the UK does, except Real Madrid and Barcelona seem to be the only teams existing in the whole country.
  • Tell anybody that you live in Madrid. Despite the fact that there are six teams in La Liga and the Segunda División based in that Community and three in the city itself, you'll rarely find anybody who doesn't assume you support Real.
• Brazil has a football obsession to religious levels - though the Olympics and volleyball also get some love. And nationwide press basically just pays attention to the big 4 of both Rio and São Paulo (being the biggest two cities/states and the headquarters of the big media companies helps the other states being treated as a Flyover Country), getting even worse if one of those 8 hires a big name player or wins a major championship.
  • Things are a bit worse than that. There are 2 teams from that group that gets even more attention. Flamengo and Corinthians are really popular and won some titles but that turns every single national sports news into 45% to each of those teams and 10% to the other "Big Ones".
  • You're talking about Stealing Spotlight in Brazilian soccer without talking about Neymar?
• In the 2010–11 NBA season, the Miami Heat got to near Creator's Pet levels of coverage after LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined the team. Fortunately, the hoopla over the Heat was greatly reduced the following season, mainly because there were more intriguing stories to talk about (i.e., the lockout, the Knicks' extremely erratic season with coach shakeups and Jeremy Lin, injuries galore, Dwight Howard's will-he-or-won't-he stay in Orlando).
  • The Lakers, early favorites to three-peat, were a SSS in that same season, to the point that Fox Sports had a section on their website devoted to both the Lakers and the Heat called "Heat or 3Peat", essentially scheduling the NBA Finals before the season even started! Funnily enough, the NBA champions that year were not either of these teams, but the Dallas Mavericks, who beat both teams en route to the title.
• National soccer news in the Netherlands has a tendency to become "AFC Ajax and some other teams". Granted, AFC Ajax is the most successful team in the league, but it irks people when "their" team wins the league and then it's still about how Ajax didn't win it.
• With the return of the Winnipeg Jets to the NHL, the focus from all Canadian sports outlets seems to have shifted to the team formerly known as the Atlanta Thrashers.
• The Vegas Golden Knights stole the NHL's spotlight in their inaugural season of 2017-18, as they shattered the records for a first-year team and made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final with home-ice advantage over the Washington Capitals. The more experienced Caps won the Cup, but Vegas far exceeded expectations.
• The quarterback position in American football and the pitcher position in baseball are especially prone to this and will always get a greater share of the credit or blame than they deserve. The goalkeeper position in hockey and soccer/football are often this trope as well.
• In the tennis world from roughly 2004 to 2020, it wasn't a good idea to try watching an ATP match between two other players than Roger Federer in a tournament he was in and take a shot every time the commentators mention him. Or a tournament he was knocked out of. Hell, even a tournament he never entered in the first place. Or women's tournaments. Or wheelchair tennis. Or any article on men's tennis written during that time. You would have died.
• Michael "Air" Jordan stole the spotlight from Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry "Legend" Bird during the late 80s and into the 90s. Came back big time when he came back from baseball and the Bulls dominated, to the point commentary on other sports events were ignored to focus on Jordan, he was a bigger merchandise seller than all the other big names combined, and even Bill Clinton said he would kick start the economy and employment, his spotlight and popularity was that big.
• ESPN, especially its flagship program Sports Center, usually gets accused of basically just being "NFL Live", with the NBA (especially LeBron) getting the majority of the rest of the attention and everyone else being Demoted to Extra.
• F1 news in Italy is Ferrari-centric. It's fair enough when Ferrari are title contenders, but it was rather awkward during their dry spell during the early 90s, when they were the 3rd/4th best team and rarely won. Still, news only mentioned the race winner and the Ferrari drivers, often ignoring important details like who had finished in 2nd or 3rd (if they weren't driving a red car).
• In a double subversion, most football news in Norway are about the English Premier League! It's not uncommon spotting fans walking around Norwegian cities wearing Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal or Liverpool merchandise, while domestic sides barely get attention on matchday. Provided there isn't a fixture clash with the EPL. In the 2020s, this has been especially aided by probably the country's two highest-profile players, Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard, respectively playing for City and Arsenal.
• During the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, an unofficial mascot created by comedians HG Nelson and Roy Slaven, stole the spotlight from the games' official mascots.

• Warhammer 40,000 has a reputation for this, at least among its dedicated fans; it's generally agreed that the Imperium of Man in general, and the Space Marines especially are given preferential treatment compared to the other factions, both in terms of model-releases and the tie-in novels.
• The Munchkin would love to be this in any tabletop RPG game.
• A bad or inexperienced GM can bring this trope to any RPG. Either by bringing out the dreaded GM PC, overemphasizing an NPC (either canon or homemade) to the exclusion of the players, or even playing favorites within the players. This is one of the worst features of the otherwise pretty good Forgotten Realms setting: the canon NPCs are so prominent and so godlike that PCs faced with a tough (for them) problem are likely to find themselves thinking "You know, we could just go home and have a beer, and let Elminster snap his fingers and fix this." Greyhawk had some insanely powerful mages also, but they're treated mostly as being ancient history rather than still active in the world (some of them are still alive, but retired/gone mad/so focused on their own esoteric concerns that just getting their attention can be an adventure in itself).
• The Old World of Darkness had similar problems to the Forgotten Realms, in that far too many modules came down to watching the uberpowerful canon NPCs doing things. Even more so, though, were the Tremere, Salubri, and Tzimisce clans in Vampire: The Masquerade, who received far more emphasis than any other. The nadir of the line was the final supplement, Gehenna, which presented a "grand finale" option for the entire Old World of Darkness that amounted to the player characters surviving to be the last survivors of the Kindred so they can witness the Salubri kill the Tremere and then fight the Tzimisce.

• There's a little-known Affectionate Parody of Les Misérables out there that spoofs this trope. The character Eponine, typically somewhere between The Woobie and the Clingy Jealous Girl, here never outgrew her spoiled brat tendencies from when she was younger, and tries to get the audience's attention in every scene she's in. This may be an attempt to take a popular interpretation of her, that she's a proxy for the reader/audience, to its logical extreme.
• Despite being in the title, Othello gets less focus then Iago does.
• For another Shakespeare example, Henry IV is less about the titular king than his son, the future Henry V.
• Another one from the Bard: King Lear is more about Oswald the Fool rather than the king himself.
• Cirque du Soleil's Nouvelle Experience has The Everyman as its protagonist and primary clown and the Adipose Rex Madame Corporation as the ruler of the Magical Land he's swept into... but it's her right-hand man The Great Chamberlain who logs the most stage time of the individual characters. He appears in many of the transitional scenes, tries to keep the Korean plank act running smoothly, and is prominently in the background of two other acts (aerial straps and foot juggling). Finally, even though performer Brian Dewhurst was hired for the show just to do character work, his previously-established comedy wirewalking act was incorporated into the show during rehearsals, pretty much cementing the Chamberlain's status as a show-stealer. Dewhurst has performed a variety of onstage roles and behind the scenes duties in subsequent Cirque productions, and five years after Nouvelle Experience closed, The Great Chamberlain was even brought back to serve as the Mascot of Cirque's website for several years.
• The King and I was originally a starring vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence. However, Yul Brynner's performance as the King was such that Anna came to be viewed as the secondary focus of the show, despite the fact that the King sings exactly once and has much less stage time. More recent productions have often tried to put the main focus back on Anna, though sometimes the charisma of the King still makes it hard to do so.
• Wicked was originally meant to revolve just around Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, but once the scene-stealing Kristin Chenoweth was cast as Glinda, the show increasingly came to focus on Glinda as well, and on the two witches' relationship with each other. Tellingly, the musical's long, elaborate subtitle is changed from the original novel's The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West to The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz.

• American Girl has done this in a meta sense several times.
  • With the move of American Girl to start releasing Girls of the Year in early fall starting in 2023 (instead of at the start of the year) Lila's release cut focus on the prior girl, Kavi, short. Social media promotion focusing on Lila lead to Kavi — who was still actively out — not even getting a birthday post on her day.
  • The release of the new redesign of the Truly Me line only a few weeks after Claudie's release meant that Claudie — a new historical — was overshadowed by the redesign. Claudie didn't get a catalog cover because of this.
  • The release of Tenney six weeks after Gabriela's release led to her getting more focus and Gabriela having to share the spotlight, and since Tenney had the first named male doll with Logan, she and Logan got tons of focus. Many physical stores readjusted their displays to spotlight Tenney in the same spot Gabriela had been in not even two months prior. Gabriela was also overshadowed by the rerelease of Felicity and the releases of Z and Nanea.
• Unavoidable in BIONICLE, as there had to be new toys on shelves every six months or so.
  • For the first two years, the main characters were the six Toa Mata, later named Toa Nuva. In 2001, a seemingly innocuous villager called Takua starred in two games, Quest for the Toa (still nameless at that point) and Mata Nui Online Game, while the Toa were set to be featured in the PC video game Legend of Mata Nui. As LOMN got canned shortly before release, Takua became a fan favorite, so the series' first Direct-to-Video movie had him and his friend Jaller as protagonists and the Toa in supporting roles. In the final scene, Takua becomes the Seventh Toa Takanuva and beats the villain by himself while the other Toa are reduced to non-speaking background characters.
  • The 2004-05 arc was about exploring the past before the Toa Mata's arrival, pushing them aside in favor of their mentors, the Turaga elders discussing their adventures as Toa Metru. The Toa Nuva and even Takanuva only showed up as minor characters during book prologues and epilogues. While all six Toa Metru got plenty of time to shine in printed media, the second movie mostly focused on the trio of Vakama, Matau and Nokama, while the third only on Vakama and Matau. Then the final book of the saga was mainly about Vakama and the Makuta.
  • The Nuva make a huge comeback in 2006, for the sole purpose of getting nearly killed in a Curb-Stomp Battle so that Jaller and his friends (now also upgraded to Toa status) could take over their roles. Takanuva was briefly important before also losing the spotlight. In both 2006 and 2007, numerous stories would also put the villains front and center, corresponding to toy release schedules. The six Toa Nuva and Takanuva would then finally return as the definitive protagonists for 2008.
  • Due to a Retool in setting, all previous characters were cast aside into side plots for much of 2009 and 2010. Toa Nuva team leader Tahu and Takanuva, arguably the franchise's two biggest central heroes in the present-timeline, did come back both in the story and as toys for 2010 (Tahu being devolved back into his Toa Mata state), pushing aside all the other Toa for the Grand Finale.

• Ace Attorney: In both Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, the new female assistant to Edgeworth, Kay Faraday claims to be the Phantom Thief Yatagarasu, but she's too nice to actually steal material things, so she mostly steals other people's screen time, especially from Detective Gumshoe, who is usually Edgeworth's sidekick in past games.
• Amnesia: Memories makes it appear like Shin is the 'True Route' of the game (actually, that would be Ukyo) and entire series because he gets featured prominently◊ or even solely◊ on the series' covers. Part of this might have to do with his being the Heart motif, and part of Ukyo having been a secret character. However, the latter only applies to the first game, as Ukyo is a well-known character in the other games.

• Thanks to Strong Bad Emails being the most popular segment on the site, Strong Bad tends to appear in more Homestar Runner toons than the title character. This is even lampshaded when Strong Bad tells Homestar that no one comes to HR.com site to see Homestar. For the 200th sbemail, however, it was revealed that Homestar had been running his own "hremail" show behind Strong Bad's back, and Homestar briefly took over the email show.
• The third "episode" of Funny Horsie attempted to introduce a new co-host, Socky the Sock Puppet. However, it was constantly interrupted by the narrator, who constantly reminded everyone that it was, in fact, "episode three".
• Happy Tree Friends:
  • Lumpy. While this wasn't much of an issue in the first two seasons where he was more of a supporting character, his status as a Creator's Pet really comes into light from the TV Series onwards, evidently from the fact that he appears in 37 of the 39 episodes of that season. He has at least 40 "starring roles"^note  overall while the average character has around 10, and he shows up in about 2/3rds of all the episodes in the entire show. Most of the episodes he appears in, following season 1, has him be the one who topples the Disaster Dominoes due to being The Ditz of the cast, which naturally led him to being the most Base-Breaking Character of the show.
  • Sniffles was hit to this to some extent. His rivalry with the Ant Family has had quite a lot of focus in the later episodes. He's even had some focus in episodes that weren't centered around his rivalry with the Ants ("I've Got You Under My Skin", "Wrath of Con" and "Dream Job", to name a few).
  • Pop and Cub as well. For instance, whenever the show gets reinstated from a hiatus, Pop and Cub are usually the first ones to star in an episode (e.g. Read 'em and Weep, Clause For Concern, and most recently, Too Much Scream Time). In the TV series alone, Pop & Cub were already given a starring role in the first episode and were featured prominently in the only two TV segments ("And The Kitchen Sink" and "Easy For You to Sleigh") where Lumpy himself doesn't appear.
• Helluva Boss: Stolas. In the pilot and episode 1, he was an Abhorrent Admirer to central character Blitz, with Blitz's assassination business being the central driver of the plot. As the first season went on, it was revealed Stolas' affair with Blitz had resulted in an assassin being hired to kill him by his wife, and by season two his decision to divorce said wife is given equal, if not more, screentime than Blitz, his business or any of Blitz's own backstory, which is now essentially alternating when it gets focus alongside the divorce plotline.
• hololive:
  • Axel Syrios and Altare Regis of holostars once collaborated together in their first 3D stream. Kobo Kanaeru of hololive Indonesia not only got involved, but also took over the stream and messed with the two guys.
  • Pekora Usada's mother, Pekora Mommy (better known as Pekomama), has become insanely popular since she was first introduced. She does not try to steal the spotlight, but Pekomama's charisma is so infectious that Pekora has to intervene and remind the Nousagis whose channel it is.
• One of the major criticisms of SMG4 videos after Kevin became the main writer in 2017 is that is that they give later characters and newer additions a lot of screen time (especially Meggy and Melony) while leaving many of the classic characters Out of Focus or Demoted to Extra (with the exception of Fishy Boopkins and Bob, who are not only the classic characters who haven't suffered of this, but the only classic characters to receive this kind of treatment), sometimes even overshadowing Mario himself to the point of leaving him as a Decoy Protagonist, if not as an Advertised Extra in many episodes such as in "Mario And the Experiment", where Mario only shows up in three scenes and the rest was about Meggy, Desti and Axol, or "War of Simps", where Mario only shows up in two scenes and all the protagonism is taken by Fishy Boopkins, Saiko and Whimpu, despite the fact that in both episodes Mario appears prominently in the thumbnails.
• Parodied in SPARKLE ON RAVEN with DrillGirl, a side character who immediately declares that she's "the real star of this show!" when she first appears. It's a Running Gag through the whole series: the show is subtitled The Life of DrillGirl, she's always listed first in the credits, and episode 3 is titled "DrillGirl Saves Santa Claus!" even though this happens entirely off-screen and the episode's plot is completely different.
• Jake is this in Disventure Camp. He is saved from numerous elimination ceremonies, particularly in All-Stars. The most infamous example is Alec's elimination episode where Connor plays his totem on Jake, nullifying any votes Jake got from the Villains Alliance. The fact Jake gets his own spinoff miniseries with Tom further cements Odd Nations Cartoons' favoritism towards Jake.

• Achewood:
  • The comic used to focus on Teodor, Philipp, Cornelius and Lyle living in the Onstad house, with a fairly large and diverse supporting cast. Now the strip focuses mostly on Roast Beef and to a lesser extent Ray.
  • It used to be the other way around, with Ray getting most of the spotlight and Roast Beef as first runner-up. Lampshaded here, where an "Achewood generator" lists five or six different possibilities for a strip's subject matter, supporting cast, plot elements, etc, but the only option for "Primary Character" is Ray.
• Cheer! may have a four-girl main cast, but Alex and Lita have been focused on so much that the other two (Jo and Sam) fall by the wayside.
• Concession has managed to shift the focus more towards characters who had little to do with the movie theatre and more with about Joel's ambitions and college life rather than stupid customers and the stuff at the concession stand... admittedly Immelmann knew of this, and has actually put an arc that takes place at the concession stand back in, while still putting emphasis on Joel's revenge scheme as well. He also admits that most characters won't get arcs, and even made fun of it a few time. (It even says so in the "About" section to show you how aware of the spotlight stealing Plot Tumor)
• Homestuck:
  • Vriska Serket is an intentional example (her character class title is literally the Thief of Light). She's not one of the initial trolls introduced, but she quickly gains more panel time and becomes very important to the plot. It's actually part of her personality to force herself into the story; she even thinks she's the one who is going to kill the Disc-One Final Boss, and later the Big Bad.
  • The trolls in general. The series is about four kids playing a game. Then a few trolls pop up and start having conversations with the kids in Act 3. Then they have more conversations in Act 4. The first subact of Act 5 is solely about the troll's group and the narrative keeps going back to them even after that.
• N Fans The Series, a comic that actually played the Self Insert cast rather well was rather notorious for this, consisting mostly of Webster Swenson and Pchan (Both the main author and the best friend OF said main author respectively). This wasn't as apparent in the comic's early days (Even when the cast consisted only of about 6 people), but when the cast expanded, it became highly evident that at least half of the cast was going to be just shown as being in a crowd or fall almost completely to the wayside in favour of Webster Swenson and Pchan. Team Lalala was literally standing in the exact same place for about a year, while the plot fixated on Webster Swenson and Pchan, with occasional sidestories about tech support or the other teams. At least half the cast was Put on a Bus.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Ellen and Nanase can veer here pretty often. They get most of the more eventful plots, and while other characters tend to slide to the background during given storylines the two of them have played a major role in every multi-chapter story to date, arguably the central role in everything but the original Sister. Even then, its climax and falling act revolved around the two of them. The most egregious case is Painted Black, which centered around Elliot being kidnapped and Grace's backstory coming out and they still likely got over half the screen time. The two are also used front and center in a disproportionately large amount of fillers in relation to the rest of the cast.
  • The storylines have exploded in length. According to the once-kept stats page, Elliot and Grace are still far and above in the most strips and central characters in the most storylines, but you'd never know because you've spent the last four or so years in Tedd's living room and the girl's bathroom at school. And of course, out of those last four years, we've gotten eighteen month's worth of actual comic.
  • After the Ellen/Nanase arc ended, Dan took his fandom's advice and is keeping them very much in the background, focusing on the characters he's been neglecting. It helps that one of the most interesting parts of Nanase's character, her magic, has been lost for a few months AND Elliot has enough to keep the fans happy.
• While the author of Skin Deep has stated that it was about everyone and not just Michelle, the comic arcs since 2009 have pretty much seemingly aborted the arc that was being built up in the comic's early days, since now it's pretty much randomness and transformation in England. However; as of late 2011, the focus has gone back to Michelle.
• Checking the Bios page of The Foxfire Chronicles would make one quite confused as to the current story arc. Not only does the current arc take place in an entirely different setting with only one of the cast members shown on the page (With maybe another who shows up for a little while) having any role, but back when the other cast members did show up, the focus was almost entirely on Luke with Liegh and Mary maybe getting a few lines or focus every now and then. And General William Orville, the supposed antagonist, seems to have been Put on a Bus in the meantime... along with the other four supposed main characters. And once more, it doesn't help that we're lucky to get even two comics a month nowadays.
• In Triangle and Robert, not only are the Sentries spotlight-stealers, and not only do the title characters start pointing it out around year 4, but due to the nature of the strip, they can make actual efforts to distract the cartoonist and keep the Sentries off-panel. This sometimes works, though never for too long. (It can also backfire: at one point the Sentries are gone for quite a while, and when they return, each one has to take a couple of weeks explaining the plot-important stuff he's been up to.)
• Jordan and Bush from Exploitation Now. The author even lampshades it in the comic with the former two characters who started the series.
• Looking for Group. Richard tends to steal the show whenever he is on panel, even if it's just one small line. The authors have claimed they could rename the comic "Richard Kills Stuff" and double the readerbase.
• Intentionally averted with Hannelore and Marigold in Questionable Content. Jeph once noted that he has to work very hard to not turn the comic into "Bad Things Happen to Hanners and Marigold Daily".
• Xanthe/"Trike Girl" from Sinfest, starting around September of 2011, has quickly taken over the strip - either she herself or the effects of her actions. She has since disappeared, but starting in 2022 the Zombie Handmaiden picked up her slack, being in five times as many strips (at minimum) as any other character.
• Sonichu: Christine Weston Chandler is a strange Author Avatar version of this. She started as a background character playing the role of (somehow) both Sonichu's biological mother and his creator. She quickly became the hero of the story, shoving Sonichu into the background. However, in response to feedback from her "fans", she wrote herself out of the story to focus on Sonichu again, but then brought herself back. The final issue of the comic doesn't feature Chris-Chan at all, but the trope goes to Sonichu's children instead.
• Dragon Ball Multiverse: As the different universes were progressively being revealed, there was surprise, but not an agreement about the unofficial name for U3 (such as U13 being "the Super Saiyans universe"). That is, until Bardock appeared. U3 is now essentially "Bardock's universe with those two guys from the OVAs".
• Sticky Dilly Buns was apparently created as a spinoff from Ménage à 3 because the creators liked the character of Dillon O'Brien and didn't feel able to do enough with him in a comic where he was a somewhat fan-disliked supporting character to the titular trio. So they made him the title character and turned the spotlight on the apartment which he shared with ex-porn star Amber Larose, giving him a chance to shine. But then Amber's potentially Annoying Younger Sibling, the short-tempered Ingenue/nerd Ruby Larose, came through the door in an ill-chosen ra-ra skirt, and stole the spotlight for many, many subsequent strips.

• SuperMarioLogan:
  • Ever since his introduction, Bowser Junior has been taking over other characters in first place, including Mario himself. Come 2014, Joseph and Cody are introduced and become main characters as well.
  • Meanwhile, Mario's friends are recently becoming dropped in favor of Jeffy. In fact, Shrek has not appeared since "Mario's Hobo Problem!" and Black Yoshi did not appear since "The Purge!" yet came back in "Black Yoshi's Blank Check!", a span of two months and nine days total.
  • Brooklyn has outdone everyone else in this regard, becoming the most frequent character as well as the essential 4th protagonist with many episodes revolving around him.
• The Mark Remark: Refers to shows as "The John Cena Show." The lesser stars are even called "Not-John Cena."
• What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?: Nash and Tara have joked that they could easily stop reading weird news stories and just spend a half-hour talking about their cats: Nash's Grady and Tara's Bridget (technically her nephew's cat) and Miracle, or more recently, Peggy, Dottie and Simba.
• In-Universe with Daisy Brown. In "Hateful Thoughts" it's revealed that Daisy views Alan as this. In reality it appears to be the other way around, as fans seem to like Daisy much more than Alan, who used to be the focus of the series.
• In-Universe, Sam the mail-man becomes one on The Cry of Mann and the parody after-show "Tanking Mann". He gave himself an unscripted monologue on Cry Of Mann just knowing that the cast couldn't stop him, and forced himself on "Tanking Mann" episodes, even when not booked, just to talk more about himself.
• in “Vester And Friends”, barring Shrruieto and Mario (who are the protagonist and deuteragonist respectively) several characters get more focus then others such as Toad who has been experiencing an uptick in “Plush Gaming” appearances, Link who has been the main source of slapstick for a long time now, Audie & Isabelle whos couple status has given them an entire arc and several “Plush Gaming” appearances, Waluigi who often appears without Wario when the episode needs a Butt-Monkey to a point where he often makes an appearance in the main series just as much Link, Daisy who , as of January 2024 been added to the theme song as a main character (replacing Bowser Junior, Dry Bones and Nabbit), been appearing in several videos a month and sometimes appears a guest in the creator's friends YouTube channels and finally…SpongeBob RectanglePants of all characters, who recently appeared in “Total Drama Plush” and made it to the final four and became the shows main “Stupid character” a term for Plucky Comic Relief. Outshining King Dedede and Woody in this regard.