10 Movie Characters That Sequels Totally Forgot

Back in 2001 the first Harry Potter film went to a great deal of time and effort to establish our hero's miserable home life, confined to a cupboard under the stairs by his domineering, grotesque aunt and uncle. Portrayed with gleeful petty malice by Richard Griffiths and Fiona Shaw, Vernon and Petunia Dursley had a major role in establishing the background to the Harry Potter story.

From there the formula of each movie beginning with a reminder of Harry's horrific home life and the self-centred nastiness of the Dursleys was established. Well, for the first three movies at least. After that the series kind of forgot about the only family its hero had left.

Fourth episode Order Of The Phoenix had to condense a book of roughly 800 pages into a manageable movie and, while Harry saving Dudley Dursley from a dementor remained, it was with only the most cursory appearance from Griffiths and Shaw as Dudley's parents before the plot leaped into a different direction.

And that was about it for their appearances in the series, bar one final brief cameo in the first film of the two-part finale, which kind of handwaves the idea that the people who kept Harry in a cupboard for all those years maybe weren't all bad underneath it all.