The Character We Never Get To See In A Single Seinfeld Episode
Over an uproarious nine seasons, "Seinfeld" redefined the sitcom forevermore with its merry band of miserable New Yorkers. To this day, the "show about nothing" remains so popular that it has wound up at the center of half-billion-dollar bidding wars between the major streaming sites (per Time) and Netflix has plastered the greater New York City area with billboards for a show that first debuted in 1989.
"Seinfeld" had a knack for coming up with the kinds of running gags audiences never forgot, including Art Vandelay — alter ego of George Costanza (Jason Alexander) — and the strange holiday of Festivus. But some of the show's jokes build up more subtly over time. See: Elaine's increasingly aggressive shoving of people who break bad news to her, or Jerry's simmering feud with Newman, the mailman.
Nonetheless, eagle-eyed fans of the show know that it's often not what you do see, but what you don't see, that makes "Seinfeld" one of the truly great shows of all time. There's no better example than the character to whom "Seinfeld" devotes an entire story arc without his ever appearing on-screen.
Kramer's erstwhile friend, Bob Sacamano, never appears
Across multiple episodes and seasons, Kramer (Michael Richards) tells Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), George, and Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) about a friend of his named Bob Sacamano.
Despite the abundance of information about the character, Bob never makes an appearance in any episode of "Seinfeld." Bob Sacamano is first referenced in the Season 2 episode, "The Heart Attack," in which George ends up in the hospital. He hasn't suffered a heart attack, but it turns out he needs his tonsils extracted, to which Kramer objects, citing his friend, Bob Scamano. "He came in here for a hernia operation...Now he's sitting around by a window, in a chair, going" — and here, Kramer launches into a whiny, high pitched voice — "'My name is Bob!'"
After that, the Bob Sacamano references appear nine more times across the show's run, with the last mention appearing all the way in Episode 20 of the final season. During the course of the show, we hear that Bob's synapses were too large for shock therapy to have an effect on him, that he's working in a condom factory, and that he has rabies. Truly a renaissance man, this Bob.
Eventually, Jerry attends one of Bob's parties and becomes friends with him, making it all the funnier that we never get to see him. The last we hear of Bob is that he made his fortune by inventing the rubber strings on paddleballs. For the show about nothing, it feels fitting that one of its most memorable characters is nowhere to be seen.