10 Movie Characters Who Debuted Much Earlier Than You Think

Peter Parker was there all along.

By Jack Pooley /

Marvel Studios

One of the toughest tasks facing any filmmaker is giving audiences a character they can relate to and remember fondly, whether frontline A-listers or more modest yet equally unforgettable supporting players.

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Developing a character for audiences to latch onto takes time, and often, directors will workshop their characters by subtly testing them out in a prior movie, long before audiences have any idea what they're looking at.

As such, these 10 movie characters, from beloved heroes to iconic sidekicks and small-yet-distinctive bit-part players, were all sneakily introduced to audiences years before they showed up in their more familiar form.

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From secret debuts cleverly hidden in plain sight, to characters whose histories were retroactively altered by subsequent movies, these characters were all around far longer than even eagled-eyed viewers ever expected.

Quite what it says about these franchise's respective continuities is a whole tougher question and one generally left open for debate. For inquisitive fans, though, that's no bad thing...

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