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Once upon a time, there was a sitcom called "Rhoda." It was a spinoff of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and was an instant smash. How instant? Early in the first season, Rhoda got married, and the episode was watched by over 52 million television viewers. It was the highest-rated episode of television in the 1970s until the premiere of "Roots" in 1977, and served as a bit of a sitcom laboratory for James L. Brooks and Allan Burns. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was groundbreaking in its own right, but, at least early in the series, Brooks and his writers were a little looser on "Rhoda."

One of their most brilliant ideas was to introduce a regular character who is heard but never seen. "The Andy Griffith Show" had done this on occasion with Barney Fife's beloved Juanita Beasley, but "Rhoda" turned the alcoholic Carlton the Doorman into something of a sensation.

When a film or a television show is well-written, even characters who never appear on-screen can cast a long shadow. Think of all the titles where the titular character is nothing but a memory. There are also horror films where the frightening monster remains offscreen but terrifies the viewer nonetheless. In television sitcoms, the notion of the unseen character often becomes an amusing gag. Some viewers love this narrative trick for its hilarity or sinister abilities whereas others hate it.

By dangling these characters out of reach, film and television writers toy with our desire to see more -- forcing viewers to use their imaginations and envision what these individuals look like and who they are. Whether you love this trope or hate it, it's one you're bound to encounter now and then. To better understand how this practice has endured, here's a handy list of some of the most...

A long-running character from Frasier was almost very different, thanks to the creators' hopes of toying with Cheers' fans. The highly successful spin-off show, Frasier, followed the exploits of the titular psychiatrist following his departure from Cheers. Dr. Frasier Crane was played by Kelsey Grammer, who also voices Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons. Frasier's fellow psychiatrist and younger brother, Dr. Niles Crane, is introduced alongside his unseen wife, Marris. This was seemingly a reference to a Cheers character, Vera, the wife of bar-fly Norm. Neither Marris nor Vera are properly depicted on the screen, but this wasn't originally the intention.

Having two unseen characters straddled across two sitcoms seemed like one of the few connections between Cheers and Frasier, beyond the annual co-star guest appearances. This joke, however, was not originally intended to last as long in Frasier as it did in Cheers. Talking to Yahoo TV, co-creator David Lee...

Jason Sudeikis has been out in public for all of five minutes, and he’s already getting bum-rushed. We’re sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, watching a Thursday-afternoon crowd that’s perfectly, improbably New York – a cosmopolitan merry-go-round of giddy jazz guitarists, skateboard-tricking truants and hand-holding multi-culti couples. The hazy calm is interrupted when a shock-haired, hockey-toothed homeless gentleman descends upon Sudeikis and begins stomping his feet while hooting a Texas-football fight song.

“No, no, no,” says the Kansas-raised Sudeikis with total calm, as if this sort...