10 Video Game Characters Who First Appeared Sooner Than You Think

5. Captain Price - Call Of Duty

For many, the Call of Duty franchise may as well not have existed until the release of 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where it enjoyed a major critical and commercial uptick due to its stylishly cinematic campaign and groundbreaking multiplayer suite.

Modern Warfare also popularised the heroic Captain Price, who has been a franchise mainstay pretty much ever since.

But Price actually made his series debut years prior in the original 2003 Call of Duty, being rescued by the player character Pvt. Martin during the Alps Chateau level.

In fact, Price ends up dying in a later mission, yet re-appears in 2005's Call of Duty 2 as the game is actually set prior to its predecessor.

Price was absent from Call of Duty 3 entirely, though was of course re-introduced for the quasi-reboot Modern Warfare.

Though logic dictates that Modern Warfare pressed the reset button on the active continuity, there's a delicious theory that we're actually hanging out with the original Price's grandson in the Modern Warfare games.

Whatever you believe, Price wasn't an entirely new creation for the Modern Warfare series: his distinctive mustache and plummy accent have been around a good few years longer.