The old 70s sitcom, Happy Days, is a mine of tropes. It's where we get the phrase “Jump the Shark” as there was an episode where The Fonz water-skied over a shark for some reason. Happy Days was also a spin-off generator, giving us Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy, Joanie Loves Chachi, two animated shows, and the short lived Out of the Blue. 
You could even argue that Spinal Tap is a spin-off from a Happy Days spinoff, as the the side characters Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley form a band, Lenny and the Squigtones, that played on the show. They then made an album and even performed live on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The guitar player for Lenny and the Squigtones is none other than Nigel Tufnel from Swindon, England (played by Christopher Guest). Nigel is listed as such on the album, and introduced himself to Dick Clark on American Bandstand. Of course, Lenny was played by Michael McKean, who became David St. Hubbins. Together with Derek Smalls (Hary Shearer) they would form the core of Spinal Tap.
However, it is Chuck Cunningham Syndrome that I wanted to write about today. The older brother of Richie, Chuck didn't get many lines or plot points, and halfway through the first season the actor playing Chuck asked to be released from his contract. Chuck briefly appeared in two second season episodes portrayed by a different actor, but then just disappeared. Supposedly creator Gary Marshall liked to say, when asked, that Chuck was on a ten-year basketball scholarship to Outer Mongolia.
So Chuck Cunningham Syndrome is whenever a character just goes away, usually unexplained, and is maybe ever retconned out of existence later. What are some examples in comics?
In the Garfield comic strip there was Lyman, Odie's owner, who appeared in some early strips. By early, I mean the ones where Garfield is a very large, fat cat, rather than the cutified version of later years. Lyman disappears rather quickly, but Odie remains. Jon is usually assumed to be Odie's owner ever since. Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt, a flash adventure that was on the offical Garfield website, leaned into the disappearance of Lyman by having the character Lyman trapped in a dungeon in the game.
Charles Schulz's Peanut's had a number of early characters that just quietly went away. One of them, the strangely named ‘5’,or even ‘555 95472’, can even be seen in the famous dance scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas. He's the “guy moving his head from side to side”. What a way to be remembered.
In long running comics books new writers often sweep away old storylines and the characters that went with them. Like when Mark Waid took over Flash from William Messner-Loebs (who wrote two of my favourite Graphic Novels; the two
Epicurus the Sage books). Waid threw out a huge cast of characters and installed his own some would argue very successfully, but it was still jarring. 
Spiderman's long comic run has resulted in a number of character cullings, usually when Peter Parker's life goes through major changes, such as graduating high school, or changing jobs. Even Peter Porker: The Spectacular Spider-Ham vanished the short-lived Mary Jane Waterbuffalo. 
In the Dragon Ball manga the character of Launch, a woman who changes personality when she sneezes, went missing for a large number of issues because, so the creator, Akira Toriyama, claimed, he simply forgot about her. At least she returns, unlike poor Chuck.
Are there any characters in your own comics that have just quietly disappeared? Are there characters you wish you'd never included in the first place? And since I mentioned spin-offs, are there characters you feel you could spin-off?
— Gunwallace
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Chuck Cunningham Syndrome in Comics
Gunwallace at 12:00AM, May 15, 2025
4 likes!
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Ozoneocean at 7:49PM, May 15, 2025
So... was Lyman removed because it gave the impression John was gay?
Ozoneocean at 7:46PM, May 15, 2025
Yes there are in Pinky TA but it's quiet so I can't tell you who. We prefer to forget these characters FOR A REASON! Hahaha!
usedbooks at 4:35PM, May 15, 2025
I can't even let go of minor characters I intended to be one-offs. I once invented a super likeable almost Mary Sue for the sole purpose of killing off. He's still around and has been in a bunch of stories. One of my MAIN ENSEMBLE characters was just random thug #2 in an early story. I even hated his design. But he's one of my favorite characters and integral to the plot now. I guess I'm guilty of the opposite of Chuck Cunninghaming. Would that be Steve Urkeling? -- I did kill off a lot of early antagonists because I didn't like their design and found them weak. A couple minor protagonists too. Just didn't like them. I didn't forget them though. I made them dead, and they also became a LOT more useful to the story by being dead.
Furwerk studio at 4:16PM, May 15, 2025
Going to be honest I tried to avoid this but as the storylines piled and choosing what and who to focus on I left I few Chucks here and there in Nakamura Rex. I try to have them pop up eventually but... No promises.
PaulEberhardt at 12:14PM, May 15, 2025
When I read this, I thought this sounds just like the kind of thing I'd unconsciously do all the time... but no, I've never forgotten a character of mine. They always reappear. Some take more than a decade to do so, but they always come back. Btw., I've never regretted including myself in the cast, possibly either because I usually limit the fictional me to incidental small guest appearances or because the comic in question is a loose random collection of silliness where basically anything goes.
Banes at 11:59AM, May 15, 2025
This article is awesome, and made me slap my forehead at the realization that a character called "Chuck Duck" should have appeared by now in Continuity Falls. Noted! Time to work out that arrival—and removal, asap!
Banes at 11:52AM, May 15, 2025
This article is awesome, and made me slap my forehead at the realization that a character called "Chuck Duck" should have appeared by now in Continuity Falls. Noted! Look for that arrival and then disappearance, coming asap!
Banes at 11:50AM, May 15, 2025
I don't think I've Chuck Cunninghammed any characters yet. There are some guests who've shown up and then not been seen again - they just don't play an ongoing role in the characters lives. I've had the suggestion that my character Penelope could have her own spinoff. Maybe, but I think she's better playing off the characters she's already with...granted, I'm way too slow with the updating to worry about adding a spinoff anyway!
dragonsong12 at 11:31AM, May 15, 2025
I've definitely had several characters I designed for specific roles in a story. But after the story actually got going and it started to evolve and develop, those roles just weren't needed anymore and so those characters quietly went disused. This happened a bunch in Twisted Mirrors: Rift, there are several characters visible in early chapter cover art who never really have any impact on the story. It just...didn't work out that way. ...I've also had the opposite happen where a character who was meant to be a one-off just ended up being useful to solve an on-going issue. That's always fun. XD
KAM at 11:24AM, May 15, 2025
Characters I wish I'd never included? Yes. Me for one. Creators should NEVER use themselves as a 'character'. An awful mistake I wish I'd never made. The SMOG characters were an interesting idea, I thought, but my readers hated them. After a couple of strips and negative reactions I wanted to delete what I'd put up and pretended I had never posted anything.
J_Scarbrough at 8:48AM, May 15, 2025
Oh, and then I remember in the early 2000s when BEETLE BAILEY was going to ad an IT officer to its cast, and held a contest to get him a name (I submitted Tech Nol Gee), which eventually became Chip Gizmo. To the best of my memory, Chip made a handful of appearances after his name was chosen, and then just . . . never heard from again. Which I find strange. Why go through all that trouble having a contest to name a character that otherwise just disappears after being debuted like that?
J_Scarbrough at 8:46AM, May 15, 2025
5 also had twin sisters, I believe they were 3 and 4. They were the ones doing "the concussion" dance in A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. Another comic example I can think of is Joe from GET FUZZY, who was seem prominently in the very early years of the strip since he was Rob's both friend and co-worker, who was just eventually never seen again (though the supposed reason given for this was he was reassigned to work in France). But what about the flip side though, when comics randomly just toss in new characters who are then featured prominently among the main cast as though they have been there forever? Again, GET FUZZY did this with Bucky's British cousin Mac Manc McManx, who ended up squatting at the Wilcos' apartment. MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM also brought in a wall-eyed black and white English bulldog whose name I've never known, but seems to have been used to turn Grimm and Atilla into a threesome.
InkyMoondrop at 7:09AM, May 15, 2025
I have a lot of characters who had the potential to become mains for more than a chapter and I just put them aside, life goes on style or their circumstances changed and switched jobs, etc. They usually had appearances later on, but nothing too significant. Sometimes I used a character just to ease the reader into me introducing another one or an alter-ego of that character with changes / developments, especially in Blessed Days Ch. 3. Most of these still appear or have mentions later on, but not as much. I think the ones who are dead by the end of the story could make a decent spinoff, which in a way: the Christmas Special was. But there are lots of possibilities, most of the Novas and their abilities for example were never really introduced, just like most fields and their effects in Jumanji.
bravo1102 at 4:05AM, May 15, 2025
I had a character I killed off twice because I featured them in a second battle even though they had been killed earlier. No one noticed except me.
lothar at 3:36AM, May 15, 2025
That's funny. The story I'm currently working on, I'm trying to tie in all the characters from my different random stories. It's kinda the opposite thing.