You’re watching a movie with your family and in the movie the main character has a little brother. The little brother is not the main character but you can see him in a lot of the shots with little to no attention focused on him. You know he is in the background and know that nothing is changing.. so why would they even put him there?

He is there because he is known as a stock character. A stock character is a character thats actions are for the most part predictable. In this case, we know that this little brother has been in the background not doing much for most of the movie so he probably is going to not be doing  much in the background for the rest of the movie. There are many subtopics that stock characters fit into as well. This type  of stock character would be known as a “spear carrier”.  A spear carrier is a minor character who appears in several scenes, but mostly in the background.

One very popular spear carrier would be Momo, the little winged lemur from the series Avatar. Momo is constantly in the backgrounds either flying or messing around with background objects, or simply just trying to figure out what his own purpose is. Momo is the type of character that would ruin a family get together for getting too intoxicated and talking about his prison stories..except in lemur form. He is very clumsy but very active.

Heres a shot with Momo as a spear carrier hidden behind a rock being clueless as to whats happening.