Originally Posted by
Sutekh
Someone mentioned Abin Sur, upthread, which got me thinking, there are quite a few people who served that narrative purpose and were kind of, storywise, meant to never be seen again, but turned out to draw enough interest to go past that.
Uncle Ben. Tony Stark's dad, Howard. Jor-El. Thomas Wayne. R.J. Brande. The 'man who came before' and 'the reason I am who I am today' is usually is shown in more of a departed fatherly light, than a previous Captain (then again, Chris Pike seems to have had a lot more to do with the kind of man Kirk turned out to be than his never-mentioned biological dad...), but it's a common trope. And most of them have gone on to spawn stories of their own, so it's not even an uncommon thing for there to be a series about Christopher Pike (or stories about Howard Stark or Thomas Wayne or Jor-El, either hypothetical or AU or set in the past or whatever).
And then there are franchise characters where this never comes up. We have no idea who was 007 *before* Bond, and, until recently, there was no mention in his parents or 'before.'