Origin stories, in this day and age, are the creme de la creme of the storytelling process. We don't really care much what happens to our loveable characters once they're knee-deep in plot developments and rooted in an identity. We'd much rather see them form that identity...sometimes over and over again, depending on the number of reboots we're willing to tolerate. The origin stories of television characters can sometimes get a little murky, though, since the developmental stages of the format require a bit of shiftiness and the occasional backdoor pilot episode to really gauge viewers' interests in a particular character. (Remember the episode of The Office that focused entirely on Dwight's extended family? That was a pilot for a spin-off called The Farm which, thankfully, never made it past that one episode.) So it's not always easy to trace the lineage of our beloved TV characters. But if you follow the breadcrumbs far enough back, you might be surprised at where some of the most iconic fictional individuals got their start.
