I know obviously that characters with the unique ring are indeed unique.... But what about characters that font have a ring but have the silver on their card? Ex. Runner and starter bane.

I believe that hey need a ring on the dial. No ring on the dial = not a Unique = play as many as you want (assuming your venue etc doesn't have a highlander rule in effect).

And here I thought it was going to a unique question, not one about the unique rule. :P

As W.I.T. said you generally go with the dial/base, but the In-Betweener, Champion and Gardener also had a silver background on their cards but no rings on their bases and they all got errata entries in the PG stating they have silver rings on their bases, so I would expect that the Runner will probably get one also. Not sure about starter Bane, though.