All the surprise entrants at WWE Royal Rumble 2020

The Royal Rumble pay-per-view has become synonymous with big returns, big surprises and big moments and WWE's Royal Rumble 2020 certainly didn't fall short on delivering the surprise returns that we've come to expect.

The Women's Royal Rumble had many opportunities for surprising us as only seven of the thirty entrants were announced beforehand. What we got were a few returning legends from the past, a whole bunch of NXT stars and a main roster star receiving a huge pop after returning from a lengthy time out.

There were fewer opportunities for surprises in the Men's Royal Rumble Match with only three free spots as the Royal Rumble pay-per-view started. But as the night went on WWE announced that Rusev and Bobby Lashley would no longer be part of the match opening up some more surprise spots!

So, without further ado, let's take a look at all of the surprise returns we were treated to at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view.

#7 NXT Women

NXT has been a part of the Royal Rumble matches for a couple of years now and this year certainly wasn't any different as many of NXT's female Superstars made appearances in this year's Royal Rumble match with there being so many slots available for them.

In fact, exactly one-third of the competitors in this year's Women's Royal Rumble Match were from NXT or NXT UK and many of them had very impressive showings.

Bianca Belair entered at number two and had many eliminations lasting for an incredibly long amount of time. Shayna Baszler entered late but made a huge impact by eliminating seven Superstars in a very short period of time.

Whilst those two were the standouts, we also saw Toni Storm, Dakota Kai, Candice LeRae, Mia Yim, Xia Li, Mercedes Martinez, Shotzi Blackheart, Tegan Nox, and Chelsea Green all appear throughout the match to varying degrees of success.