The Background Characters We Need Entire Episodes About

Every great show has them. The coworker who is always at the next desk, the barista who pours the coffee, the band in the corner who keeps playing while the plot walks past. They get a line or a reaction shot, and then the story moves on. But once you start paying attention, you realize some of them have more going on than the leads do.

The idea of giving them the spotlight is older than most of us. In 1966, playwright Tom Stoppard staged Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, retelling Hamlet from the point of view of two minor courtiers. It won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1968 and became a 1990 film with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth. If two throwaway characters in Shakespeare can carry a whole evening, so can the folks in the back of our favorite shows. Here are the ones we are still waiting on, plus a few shows that proved it can work.

When a Show Finally Did It

Hitchcock and Scully Get Their Moment

For years, Brooklyn Nine Nine used its two veteran detectives as a running gag about laziness and food. We have long loved them for exactly that, which is why our own list of five times Hitchcock and Scully from Brooklyn Nine Nine were probably you was so much fun to write. Then, in a Season 6 episode that aired on January 17, 2019, the show gave them a full story. The cold open flashes back to 1986, when young Hitchcock and Scully took down a mafia boss with help from his wife, Marissa. In the present, Jake and Charles investigate a missing bag of cash, and the twist reveals that the pair took the money to help Marissa after their captain refused to place her in witness protection. The episode ends with the two of them shielding her using sauce tubs strapped to their bodies. Critics were positive, with the A.V. Club calling it a strange success, and Collider named the cold open one of the series’ best.

The lesson is simple. A character who has been a punchline for years has an audience that is ready to be surprised.

Lower Decks, Twice

Star Trek: The Next Generation gave its junior officers the spotlight in a Season 7 episode called Lower Decks, which aired on February 7, 1994. It follows four young officers, Sam Lavelle, Sito Jaxa, Alyssa Ogawa, and Taurik, as they compete for promotions and grow wary of one another while the senior crew carries on in the background. It is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series, and the ending is often listed among the saddest moments in all of Star Trek.

That episode later inspired a whole animated show. Star Trek: Lower Decks, created by Mike McMahan, premiered on August 6, 2020, and ended on December 19, 2024, after five seasons and 50 episodes. It follows the support crew of the USS Cerritos, one of Starfleet’s less important ships, with the senior officers mostly on the sidelines. Its final episode, The New Next Generation, won a Hugo Award in 2025. Sometimes the right answer to “can I get an episode about these people” is an entire series.

The Background Characters Who Are Owed One

Jerry Gergich, Parks and Recreation

Jerry, whose real first name turns out to be Garry, is the office punching bag of Pawnee’s Parks Department. Coworkers mock him and mangle his name into Larry and Terry. In Season 4, he admits under oath that his first name is Garry and that a high ranking city employee had called him Jerry, and he never thought it was polite to correct him.

What the show also shows, almost in passing, is that Jerry has a wonderful life. He is a gifted pianist and painter, he is married to Gayle, played by Christie Brinkley, and he has three daughters, Millicent, Miriam, and Gladys. Their affection puzzles his coworkers. He says he does not mind the jokes because he is close to retirement with a full pension. The finale then reveals that he is elected mayor of Pawnee multiple times and dies peacefully on his 100th birthday.

The episode we want is a Leap Day birthday story, since Jerry was born on February 29, with the camera following him home to the people who adore him. The show has already told us he wins. We deserve to see why.

Creed Bratton, The Office

Creed is the one character on The Office who might genuinely be a criminal. The quality assurance rep is shown stealing poker chips at Casino Night, tells wild stories that do not add up, and writes a blog that is really a Word document, set up by Ryan so that Creed’s thoughts never reach the internet. Season 5 reveals that his real name is William Schneider and that he took the Creed Bratton identity from a man who had stolen from him, a man who was implied to have been killed. Later he temporarily becomes acting manager, fakes his own death, and ends the series living in a closet at the office before being arrested.

That is a feature length crime caper hiding in the cubicle farm. We would love a mockumentary episode in which each coworker tells a different, confident version of Creed’s past, and Creed’s own version contradicts every one of them. For what it is worth, Stanley Hudson actor Leslie David Baker launched a Kickstarter in July 2020 to fund a pilot for Uncle Stan, a proposed spin off about Stanley helping his nephew in Los Angeles. When a cast member starts crowdfunding the spin off himself, the demand is real.

Gunther, Friends

Gunther began as an authentic touch. An assistant director noticed that actor James Michael Tyler worked as a barista in real life and suggested putting him behind the Central Perk counter. He then appeared in 148 of Friends’ 236 episodes between 1994 and 2004, more than any other recurring actor on the show, and carried a long unrequited crush on Rachel. Tyler passed away in October 2021, and the character remains one of the show’s most affectionate presences.

The episode writes itself: one long shift at Central Perk, told from behind the counter. Six friends occupy the same couch for hours, everyone has a drama, and Gunther keeps working. We want to see what he makes of their breakups and their jokes.

Kirk Gleason, Gilmore Girls

Kirk is the reason Stars Hollow feels like a real, slightly strange town. Sean Gunn first appeared in the series as a DSL installer named Mick and as an unnamed swan deliverer before settling into Kirk, whose many jobs became a running joke. By Season 5, he claims to have held about fifteen thousand jobs and saved nearly a quarter million dollars. He lives with his overbearing mother, who will not give him a key, and he eventually finds love with Lulu, a cheerful elementary school teacher who supports every one of his bizarre ventures. When the couple talks about starting a family, the town gives them a piglet.

Kirk deserves a day in the life episode. We follow him through job number 15,001, cheer him through an impossible interview, and see how the town quietly keeps him afloat.

Miss Patty, Gilmore Girls

Miss Patty runs the dance studio, where the town holds its meetings, and she has been married more than once. She drops hints about a past as a dancer and singer, but how much of it is true is never clear. We would love an episode that brings all of her ex husbands together for one terrible, hilarious reunion, with the whole town watching from the studio.

Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, Star Wars

The band in the Mos Eisley cantina is one of the most recognizable groups of background characters in movie history. Composer John Williams wrote the music after George Lucas asked him to imagine how alien creatures in a future century might interpret 1930s swing by Benny Goodman, and he blended jazz instruments with instruments associated with Afro Caribbean music. On set, Industrial Light & Magic crew members including Phil Tippett, Jon Berg, and Rick Baker played the aliens, miming to Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing. The band was later named Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes in Expanded Universe stories, which also identified the players as Bith, and the main number was retitled Mad About Me.

A cantina night told entirely through the band’s set list would be a perfect anthology episode. Every song cue would match a customer walking in, from smugglers to bounty hunters, with the musicians watching it all from the stage.

Kass, Breath of the Wild

Kass is a Rito minstrel who wanders Hyrule playing the bandoneon and singing regional legends, and his songs hide riddles that point Link toward secrets nearby. It is easy to treat him as a helpful signpost. But his story has more to it. His teacher was a Sheikah poet who served as court poet to the royal family before the Calamity, and who had an unrequited love for Princess Zelda.

That is a ready made story about a lovesick poet at the edge of a kingdom’s final days. The episode we want follows the teacher, with Kass’s songs carrying the flashbacks.

What Makes a Background Character Worth an Episode

Look across the list and a few reasons keep coming up. Some of them carry a mystery the show raised and never answered, like Creed’s past or Miss Patty’s marriages. Some are treated one way by everyone around them while the audience sees another, like Jerry. Some give us the best view of the main cast, like Gunther and the cantina band. And some are running gags with room to become something real, like Kirk. Hitchcock and Scully proved that a character with years of audience goodwill can handle a surprise, and Lower Decks proved that the world is bigger than the bridge crew.

Which background character do you most want a full episode about, and what would you want that episode to be? Let us know in the comments.