"Implied" cameos

[Koopa con Carne]

One of the items you find in "Hey! Pikmin" is a 3D rendered replica of a Donkey Kong Land cartridge, complete with the artwork plastered on the actual ROM cartridge. Naturally, this would imply that Hard Hat, Hogwash, Krusha and everyone else seen on that cartridge make a cameo in said game, which would warrant adding "Hey! Pikmin (2017)" as the latest of their appearances in their respective articles.

The catch here is that the artwork is rendered at such a low resolution that those characters appear as nothing more than clumps of pixels on a canvas. Visually, they're barely discernible. However, the context clearly dictates that they are present in the game, meaning that a passing mention of these appearances in their articles shouldn't be a stretch.

This is one case that, for a lack of a more specialised term, I would refer to as an "implied cameo": an appearance of someone or something that is both too minor to affect the course of the story/gameplay, and represented through a low-resolution picture that is only suggested by the context or environment to be said subject.

When such a situation arises, do we treat these implied cameos as valid appearances of a character? I would like to know your opinions.

 

[Bob Craples]

One of the items you find in "Hey! Pikmin" is a 3D rendered replica of a Donkey Kong Land cartridge, rendered with the artwork plastered on the actual ROM cartridge. Naturally, this would imply that Hard Hat, Hogwash, Krusha and everyone else seen on that cartridge make a cameo in said game, which would warrant adding "Hey! Pikmin (2017)" as the latest of their appearances in their respective articles.

The catch here is that the artwork is rendered at such a low resolution that those characters appear as nothing more than clumps of pixels on a canvas. Visually, they're barely discernible. However, the context clearly dictates that they are present in the game, meaning that a passing mention in their articles shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

This is one case that, for a lack of a more specialised term, I would refer to as an "implied cameo": an appearance of someone or something that is both too minor to affect the course of the story/gameplay, and represented through a low-resolution picture that is only suggested by the context or environment to be said subject.

When such a situation arises, do we treat these implied cameos as valid appearances of a character? I would like to know some of your opinions.

While on the subject of Pikmin, you can also get the original Super Mario Brothers cartridge, implying cameos from Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach and Bowser, right?

 

[zel]

personally i wouldnt count them significant enough to count, and especially to count as a latest appearance. i feel like, if anything, itd have to be a Very Minor little mention on the article at the end of the game appearances article, like "so and so appears on this item from this game as it depicts this other thing that has this character" or something like that, though that might not be that necessary either

 

[Glowsquid]

When such a situation arises, do we treat these implied cameos as valid appearances of a character? I would like to know your opinions.

I wouldn't, because they're just appearances by proxies. Even with low-effort stuff like Smash Ultimate's spirits, there was a concscious effort to take that character's PNG and put it into the game. There was no direct effort to represent Krusha and Hogwash in Hey! Pikmin - the developers wanted to include Donkey Kong Land's artwork in the game, they put it in the game and because Krusha and Hogwash were on the source art, they're loosely represented in Hey! Pikmin by extension - but that doesn't mean there was an active effort to include both characters.