Qbert is a recovering junkie. DigDug is a downsized oil rig worker looking to eke out a living. PacMan has to deal with multiple eating disorders. This is a franchise that could just go on and on until PlayStation and Xbox.
It's fascinating how some early video game characters became widespread while others did not. Jumpman had about as much backstory and popularity as frogger did, but he caught on for some reason.
"Jumpman" might not have had much of a backstory but the premise of the game, Mario trying to save a girl from a lovelorn gorilla, is still easier to pad out to 10-minute segments than the premise of Frogger, literally just a frog crossing a street and a river.
Of course, the Donkey Kong segments still had padding not suggested in the game, Mario, Pauline, and Donkey Kong eventually having to team up in each segment to stop the bad guy of the week, but at least the basic premise of the beginning of each segment was loosely connected to the game.
There have been a few attempts to reinvent Frogger for "modern" (re: 6th generation) consoles but they've all been mediocre at best.
Frogger was spared later animated adaptations that decided things like "we forgot to draw an one-time character's face for the entire cartoon segment, fuck it" and "here's a CGI cartoon for the kids of today but we don't want to spend a lot of money, now enjoy our musical numbers".
Frogger wasn't destined to be the YouTube Poop staple it could have been, but a Seinfeld episode was based around it, so it's not a total loss.