James Garner’s brother, Jack Garner, has played a number of bit parts in his brother’s shows. For instance, on different episodes of “The Rockford Files” Jack Garner played a cop, a bartender, an accountant, etc.
I’ve always thought it was very nice of brother Jim to get his brother Jack work like that.
In both TV series The Wild, Wild West and Batman the villian’s henchmen were generally the same people even though the villians would change from week to week. They would change costumes, but still be the same guys the next week.
Also, I seem to remember that on Colombo both William Shatner and Patrick McGoohan played two different villians each on different shows.
He’s not the only one - there’s also “Middle-Aged Sarcastic Guy” who seems to be different “characters.” He sold Homer a gun in one episode, worked at a store where Donkey Kong was appearing, and delivered Italian food, amongst other appearances.
Babylon 5 reused actors quite a bit. Wayne Alexander has already been mentioned, in at least three roles. Then there was Louis Turenne, who played Draal the first time he appeared. Later he played Brother Theo, and when Draal was needed again they got a different actor to play him, John Schuck. W. Morgan Shephard played the first Soul Hunter, and later on was a Narn pilot. Turhan Bey played the aging Centauri emperor and late was a Minbari instructor at the training academy for Rangers. There are others but I don’t have them all in memory.
The first year or two of the series JAG had some blonde officer (something Austin) playing the role of Harmon Rabb’s assistant. During that time, Catherine Bell had a guest shot as an officer that got killed. Later, Bell showed up as Sarah MacKenzie, Rabb’s new assistant, now his superior officer. When Rabb met MacKenzie for the first time, he did a double take, and said that she had a double, or something.
On L.A. Law, Richard Masur appeared at least twice - once as a con-man who bilked an old lady out of her life savings with a fake gold mine, and was ultimately cross-examined into a heart attack by Jonathan Rollins. Later he was a old friend of Stuart’s, on the run for years as a fugitive from a sixties radical event of some kind.
A Martinez starred as a childhood friend of Victor’s, for whom Victor unsuccessfully argues that the death penalty should be set aside; he later plays regular character Daniel Morales.
On the subject of the same character played by different actors, and Iyamity’s tale of Rabb’s double-take… I always remember an off-handed comment by Roseanne that after Becky moved back home, they hardly recognized her… a sly reference to the fact that actress Sarah Chalke had taken over the role of Becky Connor from Alicia (Lecy) Goranson.