The Dog Was the Mastermind



""The real killer was. . . the. After all, no one would have expected the, because he has nothing to do with this movie!"

- Confused Matthew, in his review of Saw.

You're getting close. The clues are fitting together, and everything is unraveling. You're this close to finding The Man Behind the Man. Your trail of clues finally ends, and the Big Bad is...

...the little kid that was always playing jacks in the park?!

Yes, that's right. The Man Behind the Man turned out to be about the least conspicuous person possible. The Hidden Villain was underneath your nose the whole time. The dog was the mastermind!

This trope is when, through a rather jarring plot twist, the true Big Bad or The Man Behind the Man turns out to be a seemingly completely inconspicuous character, the last person anyone would ever suspect, often as part of the villain's Evil Plan. You've seen him before. Maybe once, maybe a few times, maybe repeatedly throughout the story but you never suspected a thing up until The Reveal. Sucker.

Simply identifying the dog isn't enough to satisfy the requirements of this trope; The Reveal has to be a surprise both to the heroes and to the audience (and sometimes even to the villains)-- the Hidden Villain was in plain sight all along, either without any clues or hints as such or just very subtle ones. It's not really about the identity of the Big Bad but a case where the pivotal character who drove everything turns out to a random character you'd never suspect.

Beware, however, in certain types of fiction, such as when you are supposed to guess the identity of the villain, this can come off as an enormously crappy Deus Ex Machina.

Compare Beneath Notice, Beneath Suspicion, Chekhov's Gunman, Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Milkman Conspiracy, and True Final Boss.

Sometimes appears in a Clueless Mystery. Sometimes involves the Almighty Janitor or Beware the Nice Ones.

Keep in mind that this is a Reveal Trope, so beware of spoilers!

Anime and Manga

 * In the Medabots anime, the Big Bad turns out to be a (cybernetic) house cat using the body of a mad scientist as its puppet.
 * The (most probable) Big Bad in Naruto is neither Pain nor Orochimaru but
 * The more complicated part being that  is one of multiple assumed identities he uses. We still don't actually know who he is.
 * Shugo Chara has one. Who was the Man Behind The Man?
 * Quicker version: Who is the Claw in Gun X Sword?
 * Fullmetal Alchemist, manga version. The Homunculus Pride is . The biggest clue to his identity are his speech patterns in the original Japanese, which wouldn't get through to an American reader. One translator did pick up on this and correctly predicted his identity.
 * Used in Hayate the Combat Butler, Santa in Hayate's 'imaginations' from the first chapter is revealed to be . Although the reveal doesn't really unnerve Hayate, since he's already been unnerved by this point in the plot.
 * Tantei Gakuen Q has an epic "Whaaaat!?" moment when the high priest behind five murder cases in the Kamaikakushi village is revealed to be the cute and innocent Fuuma Mio, who later turns out to be a Anti-Villain thanks to More Than Mind Control that Broke the Cutie. Result? Eventual redemption and Tears of Remorse.
 * Hardly anyone could have expected Aji Tae, the Big Bad of Shin Angyo Onshi, Diabolical Mastermind who had already brought down an entire country before the series began and is stated to be an Evil Sorcerer of the highest order to be  All exactly as planned by him, of course. The fact that he completely changes his appearance between flashbacks and actual story helps to mislead readers.
 * In Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, this is done so well that even if the Big Bad had a creepy moment or two, you wouldn't have known who it was until The Reveal. The Big Bad has been shown in every single arc, and as far as the viewer was concerned, had no chance of being the villain. After all, it is extremely difficult to suspect a character that . Even with the very few creepy moments before The Reveal, who would suspect that  ?
 * Even though now it falls into It Was His Sled territory now, originally, Aizen from Bleach is an example of this. There was a great deal of focus on how evil Gin was, so no one was expecting friendly captain that all the characters liked. Not to mention the fact that Aizen died while hints were still being dropped that Gin would be the Big Bad.
 * In Eden of the East, the mastermind behind the Selecao organization, Mr. Outside, is really
 * In Code Geass no one could have possibly guessed that the co-Big Bad of the story was actually.
 * In Domu, the psychic menace terrorising the apartment block turns out to be.
 * In Steins;Gate, it turns out that the SERN spy is none other than

Comic Books

 * In the Doom Patrol comic, the would-be cosmos-destroyers in the Cult of the Unwritten book are led by the Archons of Nurnheim--i.e. a couple of Punch and Judy puppets. Why yes, as a matter of fact this was written by Grant Morrison.
 * In the Darkwing Duck comic book series, a recurring villain is a genetically engineered house cat who fakes his own kidnapping from a research laboratory. Yes, in the Darkwing Duck universe ducks can keep cats as pets.
 * In the original Silver Age Spider Man comic book, The Big Man -- a New York crimelord and leader of the Enforcers -- was revealed to be Frederick Foswell, a browbeatened reporter at The Daily Bugle.
 * This is something of a reoccuring theme among Spider-Man villains. The original Green Goblin was eventually revealed to be Norman Osborn, the father of his best friend (this being long before Norman established himself as the Lex Luthor of the Marvel Universe). The Jackal, better known as the villain who set up the Clone Saga, was Peter's nerdy science professor. The Hobgoblin, a villain modeled after the Green Goblin, had a two-for-one deal. He was originally revealed to be a Daily Bugle reporter and longtime minor supporting cast member Ned Leeds until a Retcon explained that he was yet another minor supporting character who had since faded into near-obscurity.
 * One particularly jarring example involves Spider-Man searching for the murderer of a scientist who had created a crime cataloguing supercomputer.
 * Asterix: The villain behind the sickle-trafficking gang in Asterix's second album, "Asterix and the Golden Sickle": He appeared time and again before the reveal? Check. Was he Beneath Suspicion? Check. It is a surprise both to the heroes and the audience?  Check. Does it make sense with the general theme of that album?  You bet, because this is the only way the not so bright members of the sickle-trafficking gang could get away with an operation like this for so much time.
 * In the third ever Justice Society of America story in All Star Comics #5, the JSA bust up a series of rackets headed by a mysterious figure known as Mr X. At the end of the story, an innocuous milquetoast who had appeared in each of the individual chapters turns up the police station. It turns out he is really Mr X and now, with all of his rackets smashed, he intends to turn himself in and live off the state in prison.
 * Rat-Man: one story has the eponymous "hero" meeting Graziello, a stick figure who annoys him by telling corny jokes and laughing in a monotonous way, and Rat-Man can't get rid of him. In the end we discover that everything that happened in the issue was Graziello's plan: as a failed comic book character who never got the chance to be published, he lured Rat-Man to the comic book school and in doing that he had appeared in a Rat-Man issue, thus finally being published and read by many people!
 * An Anti-Hero version of this trope happened in Watchmen. Rorschach's identity was mostly a secret until it is revealed he was
 * This happens twice in 52. The first time is a huge early reveal that In the very last issues  Said villain had only appeared in a few panels without ever saying a word in the early issues.

Fanfiction

 * The Harry Potter story Backward With Purpose involved Harry, Ginny, and Ron traveling back in time to fix a Bad Future. At the same time (relatively), someone else is also traveling from the future and tweaking things behind their backs. It is revealed to be . Perhaps most bizarrely, if you read the sequel it all makes sense.
 * In the Firefly fanfic Forward, it turns out that the mastermind behind the events of the "Charity" episode was.

Films -- Animated

 * The villain in Hoodwinked fits this to a T. Except instead of a dog it's . The fact that   may send up warning flags to the savvy viewer.
 * Used again in the sequel, where, are behind everything.
 * from Cars 2.
 * In Meet the Robinsons, the Big Bad turns out to be.
 * The Adventures of the American Rabbit has the title hero getting a big surprise when he tackles the Big Bad, only to have him suddenly deflate. It turns out that the human like figure was a decoy and the pet vulture who is usually perched on him is the real villain all along.

Films -- Live-Action

 * In Blood Work, the serial killer turns out to be.
 * In The Bone Collector, the killer is.
 * An early cut of House of 1000 Corpses had the relatively harmless Grampa Hugo Firefly turn out to be Dr. Satan. Rob Zombie decided this would have been anti-climactic and changed it.
 * Parodied in the "Scooby-Doo Ending" of Waynes World, where it's revealed that Ben is really Old Man Withers, the amusement park owner who Wayne spoke to for five seconds near the beginning of the film.
 * And talking about Scooby Doo, the first live-action movie has a literal example, as it turns out that the mastermind is
 * In The Usual Suspects, diabolical Criminal Mastermind Keyser Soze is.
 * The first Saw movie (see page quote).
 * All of the movies in The Thin Man series operated this way. Start with a murder, present a colorful parade of suspects, end by revealing the killer to be someone the audience had no reason to suspect.
 * In Galaxy of Terror, Kore, the unassuming cook, turned out to be.
 * In the Hungarian film Kontroll, the masked killer is a welder who appears briefly in one scene. (Although that's not revealed in context; you can only find it out from behind-the-scenes information about the same actor playing both parts.)
 * Subverted in Phone Booth. At first, it looks as though the Caller was
 * Played straight, and somewhat deconstructed, in s German Film "Net of Steel - The witness" (Stahlnetz - die Zeugin). The murderer is
 * Played double in Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, when the leader of the Yakuza is revealed to be.
 * In Cube 2: Hypercube, the supposed superhacker and mastermind Alex Trusk turns out to be...
 * The entirety of Identity's plot consists of a massive build up to who the murderer will be.
 * Source Code: major suspicion is cast on every person in the hero's immediate area (including The Hero himself!), and then the Villain turns out to be a random background character who had literally 2 seconds of screen time before The Reveal.
 * Similar to the Source Code example above, Dream House throws suspicion over nearly every character introduced.
 * In Scary Movie, the Scream-esque serial killer is actually revealed to be
 * , is the killer in Scream 2..

Literature
"...Huh. Who's that?"
 * The Harry Potter series has its own page for Chekhov's Gun and its various Sub Tropes, so this comes up a few times.
 * Philosopher's Stone..
 * Chamber of Secrets, who gets double points for who he really is. Come now, reading the book for the first time, who ever seriously suspected   of doing anything? Let alone of.
 * Prisoner of Azkaban . Of course, he's actually.
 * Goblet of Fire can count, as the reveal that not only was he responsible for everything that happened in the book, but that he was also was rather sudden.
 * These became so expected that Rowling ended up adding a page to her website's FAQ where she asked readers not to assume that EVERY named character in the series had a world-exploding secret. In particular, fans had fixated on a random muggle kid who appears at the beginning of book five, with many emailing Rowling and saying they had "figured out" that he was the true key to the entire storyline. In reality, he was just a random muggle kid who was never seen again.
 * In the second book of the Foundation trilogy it is revealed that the Mule is.
 * In The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, the masterminds of Deep Thought's experiment were the lab mice that humans thought they were experimenting on.
 * In the Star Wars Expanded Universe series New Jedi Order, an evil alien race called the Yuuzhan Vong invades. Their leader is Supreme Overlord Shimrra, a God-King who truly looks the part. The last novel in the series reveals that, a being so far below Shimrra that he was considered as little more than a pet.
 * In the Star Trek New Frontier novel "Stone and Anvil", the Excalibur crew needs to find the man who created Janos' intelligence to help him extend it. To bad he doesn't exactly know how to do that...the real mastermind is his pet Gribble, a small animal no larger than a rat.
 * In Accelerando by Charles Stross, everything that happened turns out to have been masterminded by
 * Occurs in Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game -- the murderer is.
 * Quentin Makepeace (a foppish playwright in the prime minister's company) turns out to be the mastermind of all the events in The Bartimaeus Trilogy.
 * In Murder In Pastiche, the killer turns out to be.
 * In the first Norby book, Ing is.
 * In the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze", the murderer was.
 * In the book version of The Bone Collector, the main villain was, also seen only briefly at the beginning and end.
 * In Isaac Asimov's Lucky Star and the Moons of Jupiter, while there is a human villain, it turns out the real bad guy is
 * In Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones, we find out early on that the elusive Batu is the man behind the Diablerie, but the mystery remains: Who the hell is Batu?
 * In Bridge of Birds, . It actually makes perfect sense once Master Li explains it and there are many hints dropped throughout the novel, especially for the latter part, but it almost certainly stunned many first-time readers.
 * In The Dresden Files this is Molly's reaction when she  in Turn Coat.


 * In Doorways in The Sand,.
 * In Harry Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, the race of Big Bads, who were mentioned throughout the book turn out to be.
 * In William Tenn's 1955 short story The Servant Problem, the ruler of a future Dystopia is a Smug Snake subconsciously controlled by, an Out-Gambitted Magnificent Bastard subconsciously controlled by a Magnificent Bastard , who in turn was Out-Gambitted and controlled by . Things go pear-shaped for this Man Behind The Man Behind The Man Behind The Man when it turns out that.
 * In one of the Agaton Sax kids' detective books, someone who appears to be an average-looking member of the crew of crooks turns out to be the criminal mastermind boss himself.
 * In Hush, Hush, it turns out that the person trying to murder Nora was . Given how he was virtually nonexistent in the story, it was rather...jarring.

Live-Action TV

 * Good guy version: In the Get Smart episode "The Mysterious Dr. T", it turned out the genius inventor Dr. T was a
 * Sherlock has already pulled it twice. In "A Study in Pink", the serial killer turns out to be  In "The Great Game", Moriarty is revealed to be   (Though this last  )
 * The second example also incorporated a subversion--for a minute or two, before the real mastermind appeared, the audience is led to believe that  is Moriarty.
 * Many made for TV cop shows have this but it was especially noticeable in Murphy. The killer is the bloke who is in the background of scenes. If most of the suspects are interviewed in a club it's the barman - also expect him to be a long lost relative of victim or chief suspect.
 * Mr. Yang in Psych is revealed as this through flashbacks when Shawn meets
 * An episode of Community has the study group trying to discover who among them stole Annie's pen. It turns out
 * In an episode of Pushing Daisies the killer was, . It was an accident, so the characters promptly
 * One episode of Bones has the killer turn out to be the father of a friend of the victim, who was seen once in the beginning of the episode and had no lines whatsoever.
 * in an episode of Married With Children when the Bundys are arrested for harboring fugitive Steve Rhoades. They all accuse each other of ratting Steve out to the police, but the true mastermind was
 * Another example occurs in the Star Trek the Next Generation episode "Aquiel," where the crew finds out that a shape-shifting organism is behind the Mystery of the Week. Two people, a Klingon and the eponymous Aquiel, are suspected of being the monster, but.
 * On the Angel episode "Harm's Way," Harmony wakes up after a one-night stand to find the guy dead, and though she doesn't quite remember what happened, she eventually realizes that she was set up for the murder. It turns out the real killer was...some random other vampire chick named Tamika working at Wolfram and Hart, whom Harmony had bumped into earlier. It turns out that Tamika was upset that Harmony was on "the fast track" just from knowing Angel and his friends, and framed her so that she could take her job.
 * In The Sarah Jane Adventures:

Newspaper Comics

 * Parodied in The Far Side when (what else?) a cow suddenly stands up in court and says, "All right, I confess! I did it! That's right! The cow! Ha ha! And I feel great!"
 * Played With and Subverted in Luann. In the arc where two of the teachers (acting as chaperones) ended up dancing with each other, and getting recorded by an anonymous student via cell phone and posted on the internet and getting in trouble with the principal, one of the teachers thinks Luann did it, while another felt it was more likely that Tiffany did it. The male teacher's reason was because of this trope, to which the female teacher pointed out that he would also qualify for that exact trope to prove that it shouldn't be used. It turns out Tiffany really did do it, after Luann tricked her into revealing to her deed by claiming credit as being between her and herself, although she ultimately wasn't able to reveal it after Tiffany recorded her changing and then used her old cell phone as a decoy in case Luann did attempt to tell her.

Radio

 * Almost parodied in at least two episodes of The Goon Show- The Spanish Suitcase and The Phantom Head-Shaver, where is the villain, in much this style. For which reason it's also

Video Games

 * In the game Art of Murder: FBI Confidential, the killer turned out to be  Although this is minorly subverted due to the fact that
 * In Portal 2's co-op campaign, the robots are sent to kill what turns out to be
 * In this case its played both both metaphorically and literally. In Deadly Premonition
 * The Dog ending from Silent Hill 2 is a literal example, although it's really a parody. Said dog (named Mira) makes cameos in future joke endings.
 * Sam and Max: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls plays this to excellent effect; the true mastermind turns out to be.
 * In the beginning of the series finale, The Narrator of the series so far shows you a wall of pictures showing characters from the series, and proclaims that "one of the characters you see before you will betray Sam and Max." This sounds like an unnecessarily leading Reveal, until it's shown that
 * As well as the Season 2 finale What's New, Beelzebub?, where it turns out that  have taken over Hell itself and have masterminded the events of the season in an attempt to make Hell more efficient (even going so far as to kick out Satan).
 * Subverted, though, in that Telltale thought they were playing this trope straight, because they thought were quite popular little schlubs, when in fact much of the fandom considered them The Scrappy, and thus thought The Reveal that they were the villains behind the entire last season was only too appropriate.
 * Subverted in MARDEK Chapter 3, as the mastermind is a major villain that everyone suspects, but he's disguised as a "dog",, an enigmatic but inconspicuous character. The persona was actually made up by the villain in order to.
 * In Neverwinter Nights The Bastard of Kosigan, the real mastermind behind the whole plot happens to be.
 * Persona 4 practically runs on this trope, in keeping with its theme of not letting first impressions or outward appearances deceive you.
 * Tomator at the end of The Lost Vikings 2 turns out to be the Bratty Half-Pint that sometimes appeared in the middle of the levels to be annoying.
 * The head of the evil organization, H.A.R.M., in No One Lives Forever turns out to be
 * The player is given one hint:
 * In endings of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines where the Ankaran Sarcophagus is opened, the whole affair is revealed to be a massive practical joke orchestrated by Jack and the cab driver (who may or may not be ).
 * In Heavenly Sword it's revealed that
 * In Heavy Rain, the Origami Killer being  is a big surprise even to
 * The creators did kind of cheat though by secretly inserting a time skip. During one of the murders, he was only offscreen for around 30 seconds, while the actual murder took much longer.
 * In Taz: Wanted,  is the mastermind behind it all. This is especially mind-numbing when you consider that
 * In Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, it turns out the traitor is the one person everyone suspected least:.
 * At the very end of Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift, it is revealed that the Imperator of the NOL is
 * Until the reveal from a Drama CD revealing that
 * One that's really only known in Japan is the culprit in the old mystery game The Portopia Serial Murder Case (although some may have heard about its Shout-Out in Haruhi-chan). The culprit is quite literally the one you'd least suspect, since not only is he your assistant, he's also (since the main character is an unseen Heroic Mime) the guy executing the player's commands and speaking for the main character. The revelation was so out of left field that the phrase "Yasu is the culprit" is something of a minor Japanese meme for this sort of trope.
 * This meme gets used in Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, when we find out name is Yasu.
 * In Wild Arms 3, you'll occasionally notice a purple-haired little girl. She might just walk by for a second as you enter a town or dungeon, or show up standing near a plot-important character as he begins conspicuously talking to himself. She is, of course,
 * In the open-world First-Person Shooter Boiling Point: Road to Hell, a patron in the bar at the beginning of the game turns out to be the game's Big Bad.
 * Played with in the "Killerman" event in Illbleed. Midway through, you're asked to finger a suspect for the role of Killerman (if you're right, you win more money). Besides the proper suspects you've encountered, the choices for who may be the murderous Killerman includes... Killerman, and the player. The latter is explained that playing Illbleed drove you insane and made you go on a killing spree. (This being Illbleed, this is at least somewhat plausible.)
 * In Ghost Trick, it turns out that the course of the entire game was orchestrated by
 * Played very straight in Discworld Noir. The serial killer who has been ritually murdering the citizens of Ankh Morpork (including the main character Lewton) is revealed to be the god Anu-Anu. When his worshipers are all gathered in church praying to him, his power grows and he transforms into a large bestial monster... but the rest of the time, he's trapped in the form of a small dog, which Lewton sees outside the Guild of Tomb Evacuators shortly before he is killed.
 * This might count as a subversion, though, since Anu-Anu himself is manipulated by some members of his cult.
 * In Pokémon Colosseum the diabolical Evice is none other than
 * In the first Laura Bow game, turns out to be the Big Bad. You would have easily suspected anybody else but especially  since they all had motive. However; it turns out that
 * In The Last Express, it turns out the thing that killed the main character's best friend, Tyler, was the very MacGuffin he was hiding: a gorgeous golden egg covered in gems. When a certain sequence is entered and a whistle is blown, it turns into a mechanical falcon that comes to life and kills everyone present.
 * The first case of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 involves the attempted assassination of a visiting president. It ultimately turns out to have been orchestrated by.
 * In the Stylistic Suck "movie" Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective, which is an episode of Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People, after a plot involving Dangeresque's nemesis Perducci and Uzi Bazooka, the true identity of Dangeresque Too, the Big Bad is
 * On the Homicide Desk in LA Noire, you are tasked with solving a string of murders, all seeming connected to the real-life Black Dahlia case. At the end, you discover the killer...
 * DS Visual Novel Time Hollow posits the notion, in an optional extended ending, that
 * The World Ends With You: Okay, on the one hand, something was seriously wrong with Joshua. On the other hand, I don't think anyone was expecting him to be.
 * The World Ends With You: Okay, on the one hand, something was seriously wrong with Joshua. On the other hand, I don't think anyone was expecting him to be.

Web Comics
"Eikre: "Galgarion is ?! This is gonna be the coolest boss fight ever!""
 * The Adventures of Dr. McNinja story has one such reveal in the story
 * In RPG World, after Galgarion disguises himself to infiltrate the heroes, we get an extremely elaborate Red Herring Mole in the form of Eikre. Galgarion's actual disguise?


 * One Electric Wonderland story detailed Trawn's attempts to report on the bombing of the Nettropolis Mall. Lululu helps her find the man she suspected of causing the explosion, but he turns out to be a decoy. Who really led the attack? Anyone can take on any form in Cyberspace, after all.
 * Homestuck has

Web Originals
"Linkara: You! You're the secret manipulator behind everything! *pulls out a stuffed bear* BEARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"
 * The identity of the butcher in There Will Be Brawl turns out to be . This was so effective that nobody in Wild Mass Guessing correctly guessed it. Word of God near-explicitly denied the possibility beforehand, claiming that  While not technically false,   this was a highly misleading statement that helped to divert suspicion from the culprit(s).
 * In episode 86 of Bonus Stage it was revealed the second version of Evil was.
 * Occasionally happens in Shadow Unit--due to the nature of the anomaly, the gamma could be anybody, including the sweet little old lady, the shy teenager, ...
 * Used/Parodied by Linkara in a "previously" that had nothing to do with the comic.

"Lamp: NO ONE EVER SUSPECTS THE LAAAAMP!"
 * The "DNA Evidence" arc of Homestar Runner. After being Arc Words in a number of otherwise unrelated shorts, we get a story about a vial of green DNA Evidence that keeps changing hands and getting stolen. Turns out that it was from.
 * In Becoming Human, it turns out the killer is  A second more minor example is
 * In Greek Ninja, the one behind the attacks at Ariadnio and the danger unlike any the world had ever faced before, turned out to be . Really really past life....
 * The Twist Ending of this one-off My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fancomic.
 * Phelous has some fun with trope while reviewing The Amityville Horror 4. Why? The big villain is a demon possessed lamp. No, really.

Western Animation
"Gibson: You want me to replace the villain with a dog? I mean nobody will know what's going on.
 * The trope name comes from an episode of The Simpsons, where Homer produces a remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in which the villain is replaced by a dog, made obvious (to Homer) because "the dog has shifty eyes". The exchange is below, courtesy of SNPP:

Homer: They will if you set up that the dog is evil. All you do is have to show him doing this. [lowers eyelids and glances around in shifty-eyed fashion] The people will suspect the dog."


 * As a Brick Joke, a dog with shifty eyes appears at the end of the episode.
 * The two-part episode Who Shot Mr. Burns?.
 * "Nobody suspects the butterfly..."
 * In the South Park episode "About Last Night...", Kyle's toddler brother Ike was the key player in Obama and McCain's Oceans Eleven-style heist.
 * A variation occurs in the Mysterion Trilogy (Coon 2: Coon and Friends, Mysterion Rises, and Coon vs. Coon and Friends) when Kenny as Mysterion tries to find out the origin of his immortality, learning it has something to do with the Cult of C'tulu. When a Jor-El type man in a glowing ball appears to explain everything completely out of nowhere, it turns out
 * In the Powerpuff Girls episode "Cat Man Do", the girls defeat a villain and adopt his Right-Hand-Cat -- only the cat was the real criminal, using hypnosis to make his "master" do his bidding.
 * Invader Zim: It was me! I was the turkey all along! MEEE!!
 * In Ed, Edd n Eddy, one episode has the Eds track down someone who went to great lengths to frame them for various crimes.
 * Scooby Doo Mystery Inc uses this a fair bit - usually, of the named characters, the culprit is the one who seems secondary, is introduced completely outside the course of the mystery, and doesn't seem to have anything to do with it at all.
 * Appears in an episode of What's New Scooby Doo? that took place in Greece involving a series of centaur attacks. At the end of the episode, Velma explains all the evidence that suggested that the criminal was the archaeologist, then unmasks it to reveal... a woman that she doesn't know. The mastermind was
 * Lampshaded when Velma complains that this should not count as her being wrong because she'd never seen the woman before and begins to sulk.
 * The biggest examples from Mystery Inc. are probably from "Revenge of the Man Crab", who only appeared for 10 seconds, and  from "Battle of the Humongonauts", who didn't appear at all before the unmasking and were only mentioned in radio ads and one scene on a billboard.
 * And then A Pup Named Scooby Doo once had the monster be an unidentified man,
 * Older Than They Think. In the original series episode "A Clue For Scooby Doo" no-one recognizes the unmasked monster at first, until Shaggy of all people puts a beard on him. The ghost of the dead Captain Cutler was actually...a very much alive Captain Cutler.
 * And in the Scooby-Doo movie Camp Scare The culprit ended up being who was really  and Velma actually said "I did not see that coming."
 * The Big Bad of Mucha Lucha's movie is
 * The three-parter "Brainwashed" of Pinky and The Brain has several false leads behind the mastermind heading the plot to dumb down the world. Turns out it's the cat belonging to the scientist responsible for genetically modifying the eponymous mice.
 * in the Adventure Time episode "No One Can Hear You".
 * The climax of the Futurama movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder, involved Fry trying to figure out the identity of the Dark One, who was the only individual whose mind Fry wouldn't be able to read. After he's able to read the mind of seemingly everyone else there, he comes to the conclusion that he himself has to be the Dark One. He isn't. The Dark One is.
 * At the end of Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood, it turns out the mastermind behind the whole evil plot was.

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