Star Wars: 7 Live-Action Characters Who Debuted In Animation
5. General Grievous
General Grievous, the secondary antagonist of Revenge of the Sith, has a very similar story as Commander Cody. While the Separatist Droid Army's Supreme Commander made his first live-action appearance in the May 2005 film, he actually appeared on Genndy Tartakovsky's Star Wars: Clone Wars beforehand.
The key difference here is that whereas Cody first appeared on the animated series two months before Revenge of the Sith, Grievous' Clone Wars debut came when the film's theatrical premiere was still over one whole year away.
General Grievous made his presence felt in "Chapter 20," the final episode of Clone Wars Volume One, which aired on 8 April 2004. Grievous would dominate the series from then on out, with much of Volume Two revolving around the Republic's efforts to hunt him down.
Tartakovsky's Clone Wars established multiple plot points from Revenge of the Sith, such as Grievous being trained in lightsaber combat by Count Dooku. In its final episode, the series even offered an explanation as to how the cyborg got his signature cough, with Mace Windu using the Force to crush Grievous' chest while the latter was "kidnapping" Chancellor Palpatine during the Battle of Coruscant.