Hidden Agenda Villain

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"You'll never get away with this! By the way, just what exactly are you trying to get away with?"

—Totally Spies!

The inverse of He Who Must Not Be Seen. In fact, the Hidden Agenda Villain‍'‍s appearance may be the only thing about him or her that is seen. His agenda, his goal, his target, his motives—all secret. We're shown his face, we know his name, we see what he does and how he operates, but we're never told why. He's after the MacGuffin, but what's he planning to use it for? He consistently sends Mons and Mooks out to kill the hero, but why? It's rarely ever as simple as taking over the world (rarely, but one shouldn't say never).

Note that this does not apply to the occasional episode-long secret plan. True Hidden Agenda Villains have a hidden agenda for an entire series or arc. If he ever "discusses" it with his minions or partners, expect The Omniscient Council of Vagueness.

Don't bother trying to decipher his hidden agenda; sometimes even the writers don't know. They're playing it safe until they come up with something good without having to Retcon. If and when an explanation is revealed, it may involve a Luke, I Am Your Father. Note, no matter what happens, it's probably exactly as planned.

Compare with the Enigmatic Minion, which is a just as mysterious underling or lesser villain working for - or possibly against - a more comprehensible Big Bad. Or perhaps not. If the agenda is so hidden that the other characters don't even know there is a villain, or if they do have no idea who it is, see Hidden Villain. See also Outside Context Villain, whose hidden agenda is only part of the menace. Compare Motive Misidentification. Contrast with Ambiguously Evil.

Examples of Hidden Agenda Villain include:

Anime and Manga

  • Bleach has Shukuro Tsukishima in the Lost Agent arc. He was so enigmatic that there fans kept debating about the mechanics behind his ability.
  • Chevalier from Kiddy Grade, but its played with for the whole show. Is he the secret Big Bad? Is he a good guy all along? Well, it's kinda both. His ultimate goal is to avenge Eclair, who raised him as a child, but to get into a position where he could do that, he had to join the puppy kicking bastards he hated and rise high enough in the ranks (by being a puppy kicking bastard himself) to get his revenge plans set up. In the end, though, he is definitely a good guy.
  • Choji Suitengu of Speed Grapher is perhaps a variant of this. At first glance, he seems to have an obvious agenda; to control the world by both becoming the man on the throne of the world's greatest Mega Corp and by enticing as many wealthy, powerful figures into his ultra-depraved fetish club as possible. Even the members of the Roppongi Club recognize this as his plan. But it turns out his real plan is to kill off all of the powerful and wealthy sick enough to get involved in the Roppongi Club in the first place and to devastate the economy of Japan, striking a considerable injury to the world economy, by arranging for the destruction of 600 trillion yen in cash.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Noa, the Big Bad of the Virtual Nightmare Arc, didn't reveal the reason for his grudge against Seto Kaiba or his relationship to Seto and Gozaburo until near the end.
    • In addition, Anubis from The Movie, whose motivations are never revealed at all.
      • The Japan-only novel finally comes clean with Anubis' motive; Akhenaden made him into a mummy while he was still alive in the ancient past and infused him with dark magic so that Anubis would make Seto into the ruler of the world in a future reincarnation. At first Anubis goes with it, but eventually he decides to get revenge on Kaiba and Yugi both and become Pharaoh himself.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The demonic Duel Monster Yubel hid its villainous actions under the guise of revenge for being abandoned by Judai and a generic want to have him all to itself for most of the season, its intense love for Judai and need to be loved back by him in the same sadistic manner unrevealed until almost the end. Also, Kagemaru's plans for the Sangenma in Season 1 aren't revealed until the final duel.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: Rex Godwin, whose true agenda is so well hidden that the both the viewer and the other characters are constantly forced to revise their opinions of whether or not he's actually a villain. At first, he looks like a fairly standard Affably Evil Chessmaster type of character. Then it turns out that he's actually a Stealth Mentor to the protagonists, using questionable or outright reprehensible methods but with the ultimate end of helping them save the world from the Earthbound Gods. Then the situation is complicated by the revelation that he's the better half of a Cain and Abel situation with his brother Rudger, leader of the Dark Signers, and both of them worked with Yusei's father in the past and may have had a hand in causing the huge disaster seventeen years ago that led to the current conflict. And then, finally, it turns out that rather than trying to seal away the Earthbound Gods, he was actually using the protagonists as pawns in his Gambit Roulette to gain their power, become a god, and Screw Destiny by destroying the world and creating a better one.
  • SEELE in Neon Genesis Evangelion is one example where the secret plan did turn out to be destroying the world.
    • Well, in the broadest sense perhaps, since every human, alive or dead, was turned into LCL by Instrumentality, they wouldn't need the world anyway. So, you could say the destruction of the world was just a secondary, unimportant effect of Instrumentality and never something SEELE planned specifically to do or prevent.
  • Noa from the Galaxy Angel gameverse. Her first incarnation more so.
  • Fei Wong Reed in the manga of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle was so tight-lipped about what he was doing that the Anime kept getting it wrong when they Overtook the Manga and the series had to go back and Retcon.
  • Common trait of anti villains such as Fate Testarossa and Wolkenritter in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. After or during the penultimate battle their agenda is revealed and they are promtly befriended. After which they all beat up a really evil Big Bad.
  • Kabuto of Naruto is a particularly interesting example of the trope, as his motivations and true plans are seemingly revealed several times over the course of the series, only for circumstances to change. At first, he was Orochimaru's Enigmatic Minion...who turned out to be completely loyal to him. Then, he turned out to be a Brainwashed Manchurian Agent of Sasori's...except that Orochimaru had broken his programming long ago, and his loyalty to Orochimaru is completely genuine. Now that Orochimaru is dead, he appears to be teaming up with Madara...except that he's also leaving a very obvious trail for the Leaf ninja assigned to track him straight into their secret lair. Is it a trap, or is he going for an Enemy Mine?
    • Akatsuki itself was much the same for a long time. They were attempting to gather the Bijuu, that was a given. But it wasn't until several years after their introduction that any solid plan was revealed, and even then the ultimate goal of said plan is in fact different between explanations.
      • In retrospect this makes sense as the members of Akatsuki all had wildly differing agendas from the start. The leader flat out acknowledged this early on and said he would tolerate it as long as their agendas didn't conflict with the stated goal of Akatsuki (to gather the Bjuu).
  • In Code Geass, protagonist Lelouch's Evil Overlord father, the Emperor of Britannia, is set up as the ultimate villain nearly from the get-go, but aside from vague hints and ominous foreshadowing, his motives aside from megalomania and promoting social Darwinism remain a mystery until nearly the end of the series. Likewise, Lelouch's apparent Evil Counterpart, Prince Schneizel el Britannia, isn't even clearly defined as being a villain or not until late in the series. His actual agenda remains hidden until three episodes prior to the end.
  • Despite being a central character for three out of four seasons, Xellos's true motives remain...a secret.
  • The majority of Chrono Crusade (particularly the manga version, although the anime definitely invokes this trope as well) hides Aion's motivations, with Chrono trying to avoid explaining why they have a conflict with each other and Aion knowing that he's enigmatic and loving every minute of it.
  • Fate Averruncus in Mahou Sensei Negima. Currently planning to save the world. And also destroy it. And also help war orphans. Huh? Plus something about Asuna's forgotten past and apparently disliking his name enough that Nodoka needs to die for it. Pick and choose your motives here, folks. And we still don't know what Chao really wanted. Which may be resolved soon.
    • Kurt Godel is even worse, as he actually explained himself to Negi, who still isn't sure what Kurt wants. Or whether Kurt is even actually a villain.
    • And now we know what Chao wanted: to prevent a horrific, century-long war between Earth and Mars.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist's Big Bad Father isn't even introduced until the sixth volume and even then technically nothing is revealed about him or his goals. Actually they only learn about his plan piece by piece throughout the series, and it is only in the end that his ultimate motive is uncovered.
  • The agenda of Gundam AGE's villains is so hidden that they are initially named as the "Unknown Enemy". They are attacking colonies in a somewhat predictable pattern, but why? It's because 150 years ago, the Earth Federation left human colonies on Mars for dead after a disease outbreak ruined the Mars Colonization plan. Those who survived never forgave the corrupt Earth Federation and declared their independence as the nation of Veigan. Once they established a functional army, Veigan declared war on Earth Federation and began to destroy Federation-owned colonies.
  • Johan Liebert in Monster. Even after the series ends, a lot of what he was actually trying to accomplish is still open for debate, and him being put in a coma and, therefore, rendered incapable of explaining any of it doesn't help things.
  • In an episode of Hell Girl, an innocent nurse is sent to Hell by a stranger. It is never revealed why he did this and why he's willing to pay the hefty price of going to Hell himself to damn a seemingly innocent woman.
  • In One Piece, the Five Elder Stars, the council that is the head of the World Government, seems to Zigzag this Trope. Their biggest goal seems to be to destroy all records of the Void Century and silence anyone suspected of having knowledge pertaining to it. Exactly why they consider this information so dangerous is as yet, a mystery. Eventually, it is revealed that they are following the orders of a mysterious being called Imu, the true ruler of the World Government, so it is possible not even they know the true reason. Imu, however, plays the Trope straight, the only clue seeming to be its odd fixation on Luffy, Blackbeard, and Shirahosh.

Comic Books

  • One Hundred Bullets has damn near everyone working for their own unknown goals. More often than not, when they talk about their plans for the future, they talk in inscrutable riddles that, if you're lucky, will make sense in the context of future issues. You'll have to read between the lines to fully grasp the implications of the plot.
  • Mr. Sinister from X-Men is often like this, with no one being aware of the goals behind his villainous plot of the week. For example one time he went through the trouble to get a sample of Rachael Summers DNA and then, did nothing with it.
  • A possible way to view The Joker. It is never made clear what his past and goals are as he constantly contradicts himself. This makes him even scarier.
  • Zigzagged with the unnamed villain in the giant-sized fiftieth issue of The Fantastic Four. On the surface, he was straightforward about his motive, he was some sort of scientist who had spent decades plotting revenge against Reed. As in only Reed - he clearly had nothing against the other members of the team. But why? He didn't say, and seeing as he sacrificed himself to save Reed after Becoming the Mask, fandom likely will never know.
  • Zigagged with Sabretooth. At a glance, his motivations seem obvious - he's a Professional Killer who really enjoys his job. The reason for his grudge against Wolverine, however, is harder to pin down. There have been rumors that the two were blood-related, and that their feud was a family issue, but those rumors have been debunked. Seeing as Sabretooth knows he can never kill Wolverine - given that he has the same mutant healing factor Wolvie does, so he's pretty familiar with how it works - it seems he's just antagonizing one person For the Evulz, which may in fact be true.

Film

  • Ernst Stavro Blofeld was this when first introduced. Despite being a rare case of a recurring villain in the James Bond flicks, very little is known about the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. In fact, more may be known about his cat. His past, motives, and most everything else about him remain a mystery. Although there was a backstory for him in Fleming's original Thunderball.
    • Answers were finally given in Spectre, where he's established as an estranged foster brother who despises 007 for being favored by his foster father Hannes Oberhauser when both were younger, causing Franz Oberhauser/Blofeld to commit Patricide out of pure malice and orchestrate the numerous tragedies Bond faced in later years.
  • Proteus IV from the sci-fi horror film Demon Seed. Obviously, the evil computer's immediate goal is to sire a child with Susan in order to gain a human body. While it succeeds, it never says what it intends to do once it has one, the movie ending in a cliffhanger.
  • Patrick from American Psycho; he seems to have no real motive at all for his atrocities, killing for no reason other than to prove he can, which may be the point. He seems to embody and exaggerate the greed and entitlement-themed behavior of the upper class, and that's really all that needs to be said.
  • Michael Meyers in Halloween. At least, the original film. Michael's ambiguity is a big part of what made him terrifying. Unfortunately, trying to give him more of a motive and backstory in the sequels are what caused him to die from incurable Sequelitis.
  • The Truck in Duel. Okay, obviously it has a driver, but he is never seen, nor is any reason given as to why he is so dead-set on killing poor David. Much like the case above with Michael, the ambiguity of the villain is what makes the film so terrifying.
  • Jean Jacket from the Sci-Fi horror comedy, Nope. At first it seems like this strange being is simply your average extraterrestrial predator, even though it's more like a living flying saucer than your typical alien invader. Although, the fact that it preys on both humans and horses is odd, and no explanation is given as to why it chose the small Midwestern town as its hunting ground. In fact, it's not even fully clear that this being is from outer space at all. Many fans theorized that the title of the film is a subtle acronym for "Not Of Planet Earth", but the director will not confirm nor deny that.

Literature

  • Littlefinger of A Song of Ice and Fire is clearly gunning for something, but as he's an absolutely pathological liar with a high-functioning but severe case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, it's not exactly easy to make out. The only fairly clear part of his agenda is the possible Fatal Flaw, and even that might be an act.
  • Lampshaded in the fifth book of The Banned and the Banished—the main characters didn't realize the villain had an agenda.
  • The hyper-advanced alien Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End arrive in Earth's orbit and, over a few decades, end all armed conflict and introduce technologies that increase living standards worldwide, all the while refusing to explain their motivations. It turns out that The final generation in humanity's evolution had just been born. The Overlords were sent to ensure that they succeed in becoming part of the Overmind, a universal hive-mind that the Overlords, for reasons unspecified, are unable to join. Whether or not the Overlords play a villainous role is perhaps a matter of opinion.
  • We don't find out until the last few CHAPTERS of the SEVENTH BOOK why the Trustees betrayed the Architect in Keys to the Kingdom. We also find out who precisely backstabbed the Piper, why the Will cursed the Trustees, whether or not it was the real Big Bad, what Sunday was up to this whole time, and in the last chapter (sans epilogue) why the Architect imprisoned the Old One. Now THAT'S a long set-up.
  • In Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History, the Wild Machines' true motive for wanting to destroy the world and erase future history isn't revealed until the final climax, and comes as a total shock to both Ash and the reader.
  • Iago's last line in Othello flaunts that he has a hidden agenda...and you will never know what it is.
  • The apparent current Big Bads of the Dresden Files universe are the Black Council. We've seen some of their members, we know some of their methods, and we've seen Dresden scuttle some of their plans. We still haven't the faintest idea what their overall agenda is, though it's hard to imagine what plan has "become a god" as an intermediate step.
  • Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter franchise, assuming she had any agendas at all. Yeah, she was a sadistic quisling who hated kids, but any motives she had for her evil acts were never explored.

Live-Action TV

  • The Cylons in the 2000s Battlestar Galactica were said in the title crawl to "have a plan", though whatever it might have been was nearly impossible to judge from their actions, which included various attempts to destroy the human race outright as well as an interbreeding program and one attempt at forming a bilateral government. That there were apparently multiple Cylon organizations with differing agendas working against each other only complicated it further. The series is now complete, and we never did find out what the hell they were after.
    • Though you can make a pretty good guess: It was Cavil all along. He wanted to prove to The Five that Humans Are the Real Monsters so they would abandon their old efforts to make peace with them and hand over Resurrection technology to Cavil.
  • Benjamin Linus from Lost. His love for playing mind-games with both his enemies and his allies clouds the issue still further, as do the varying levels of villainy with which he is depicted.
  • "The Company" from Heroes: Daniel Linderman, Bob Bishop, and Angela Petrelli make this look easy. Further complicated by the appearance of another Company (Pinehearst), apparently founded when Arthur Petrelli broke off from the previous one.
  • As was only recently[when?] revealed in Supernatural, we haven't even begun to learn what the Yellow Eyed Demon has planned for his "endgame." Not even Heaven itself knows what he's planning just yet.
    • As revealed in Season 4, virtually every major event that happened with the Winchester family was set up by Azazel and his minions to achieve his master plan, which is to release Lucifer himself from his cage. And boy,does it work. See Magnificent Bastard for Azazel's plan in depth
  • In Star Trek: Enterprise, "Future Guy" directed agents in the "present" to commit various acts in order to advance his goals in a "Temporal Cold War". Exactly what goals he was trying to advance was never explained. The writers admitted that they themselves had no idea who Future Guy really was or what he wanted.
  • The Silence from Doctor Who. They were apparently responsible for the events of series 5 without actually appearing until the series 6 opening, and we're no closer to learning why they'd want to end reality by blowing up the TARDIS, or how they pulled that off in the first place. Nor do we know what they want with a little girl who may be a Time Lord.
    • Assuming they did that first one at all. It does seem very beyond their technology, the methodology involved is very, very different. Of course, the Arc Words are Silence Will Fall.
    • It seems that their agenda has been revealed, more or less, by the end of series 6. There's a prophesy that "Silence will fall when the question is asked". "Silence" is the name of a religious order of some kind, made up in part of aliens with memory-altering powers, and "the question" is "Doctor who?" In other words, the organization called Silence will be destroyed when the Doctor reveals his name under certain circumstances. They want to prevent that, so they blew up the TARDIS and/or tried to imprison the Doctor in the Pandorica, and they tried to turn a little girl (Melody Pond, a.k.a. River Song) with Time Lord-like abilities into a Laser Guided Tykebomb to assassinate him. Whew.
  • Gatehouse of The Shadow Line. He's the series's main antagonist but who he works for isn't revealed until the penultimate episode, and even after this his true goals remain mysterious until the finale's last few scenes.
  • Agravaine from Merlin. He is trying to sabotage Arthur's reign, despite having genuinely fond memories of Igraine (his sister, Arthur's mother) as well as a prime position as #2 in Arthur's court. He scathingly calls Uther "old friend", suggesting a history that has not yet been revealed. He is working with Morgana, even though he seems to find magic distasteful. He also seems reluctant to harm Guinevere (and is in fact, rather creepily fascinated by her) when Morgana demands that they assassinate her. No one really knows what he's up to.
  • Moriarty on Sherlock apparently likes to blow people up, break into high-security places, and drive people to suicide simply because he's bored. That is, if we can trust what Moriarty says...
  • On Leverage the Italian is this in season three. She has a lot of behind-the-scenes power (she can keep Nate out of jail and in Boston after he has escaped a Massachusetts state prison), and has blackmailed the team into taking down the world's most powerful criminal banker. We know she wanted Moreau out of the way. What we still don't know is why. She could be anything from a Knight Templar looking to see him arrested to a rival Big Bad scheming to take his place.
  • In the Diagnosis: Murder episode "Rear Windows '98" we never learn what the killer's motive was.
  • Q was this initially in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sure, he's a Sufficiently Advanced Alien who wants to put Humanity on Trial, but he doesn't seem to have a reason to do so. (He does state in one episode that he's doing so on behalf of the Q-Continuum, but that only raises more questions.) Eventually, it's established that Q is simply bored out of his mind due to being immortal, and messes with humans because he thinks it's fun.
  • In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush", the Gentlemen are demons who seek human prey to collect their hearts. They need seven of them for some purpose known only to them. Since they don't speak and steal their victims' voices before attacking (as they can be killed by screams) it's impossible to ask them why.

Radio

  • Dr. Blackgaard on Adventures in Odyssey was revealed to be plotting to get the land Whit's End was built on even back to the distant flashback when Whit saved the then-rec center from being torn down. Moreover, his ultimate goals were not revealed almost until the very end.

Tabletop Games

  • The Warhammer Fantasy and 40k god Tzeentch is supposedly working on some inscrutable endgame, to which he has innumerable GambitRoulettes running at all times, often seeming to work against each other. It has been suggested a few times that the plotting might be the objective itself, since as a god of chaos it wouldn't be much fun if he won and there was only his own will. Another suggestion is that his plotting has become so complex that it's self-defeating, and Tzeentch himself has lost control of his Gambit Roulette.
    • Newer material suggests that because Tzeentch is change, he can no more stop plotting than he can end his own existence, because that is precisely what would happen.
  • In Mage: The Awakening, while not all archmasters are necessarily villainous, hidden agendas are fairly par for the course, especially regarding their Imperium Rites. Not only does utilizing mysterious and circuitous methods of achieving them make them metaphysically easier, keeping the specific agenda hidden from other archmasters makes it less likely that they will employ retroactive sabotage with their own counter-rites.

Video Games

  • Metal Gear Solid: It takes four games and about eighty hours of play to finally understand what Ocelot was doing all the time. And he appears about one to two hours into the first game and apparently runs the entire show.
  • The heroes spent some time chasing after Exdeath / Exodus in Final Fantasy V without having the faintest clue what he was up to - and he even berates them for trying to stop him without knowing what he was planning. As it turns out, he was trying to re-fuse a sundered world into its original form. But since he wanted to do this so he could gain control of the Void and conquer / destroy everything, it wasn't that ambiguous after all.
  • Mercilessly parodied in No More Heroes, in which Jeane, a character given precious little foreshadowing except in the manual (and in the name of protagonist Travis Touchdown's cat), suddenly appears out of nowhere. After the supposed final opponent Dark Star makes a ridiculous Luke, I Am Your Father pronouncement, Jeane kills the man from behind before any fight takes place, and she does so by punching him through the crotch no less. As it turns out, Jeane has had a grudge against Travis all along, but unless you can capture video and play it back slowly (or have Internet access and see the clip on YouTube), you'll never know: she explains that the details are too gruesome and that they might drive the game's rating up even further ("What if it gets delayed? You don't want this to become No More Heroes Forever, do you?"), so she only agrees to divulge them through a brief fast-forward sequence where every revelation prompts a stunned reaction from Travis, but the revelations themselves are perfectly unintelligible (save for at the end, when Travis unhelpfully summarizes that Jeane is his half-sister).
    • Well, almost perfectly unintelligible...you can get hints of stuff, mostly involving serious Squick.
  • In Chrono Trigger, Magus is the villain for a good portion of the first half of the game, since the heroes are lead to believe it was he who created Lavos. After being defeated at his castle and accused of creating Lavos, he informs the heroes he was only summoning Lavos to the year 600 AD, not spawning the beast. Later on, it's revealed he wasn't even summoning Lavos so as to unleash the creature, he just wanted revenge on it for ruining his life.
  • What, exactly, Kun Lan is doing in Killer7 is never truly revealed. It is merely hinted that he and Harmon pass the centuries by one causing trouble and the other putting a stop to it. The games godlike entities play...
  • A strange example of what may be a Hidden Agenda Villain, or maybe a Hidden Agenda Hero can be found in the High Men race of strategy game Age of Wonders. They're listed as Pure Good-seems obvious. They're masters at fighting the Undead, and aggressively attack other evil races-fine. They're unusually friendly with the humans. Fair enough. They're so piously righteous that they make even the game's main good guys nervous-hmmm... and what, exactly, have they come to do? You only find out in the epilogue, and let's just say that a Keeper who leaves the dwarf-elf-halfling coalition to join the High Men will face a bittersweet ending at best...
  • The mysterious Man Behind The Beast in BlazBlue is apparently working toward The End of the World as We Know It, but no one knows why (or, indeed, if that's his aim at all). Guess we'll have to wait for now.
  • That the G-Man has avoided mention this long only goes to show how well his agenda is hidden.
    • Heck, we still have no idea if he's a villain, a hero, or something far removed from either.
  • Hel's plan in Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume gets no explication whatsoever. In one ending a character suggests she was just stirring up trouble For the Evulz, but this character has no way of knowing for sure. It is a reasonable theory that she wanted to get her hands on the Angel Slayer, but this is conclusively proven either.
  • Alex, in every game in which he has appeared. Yes, even that one.
  • Resident Evil: Albert Wesker managed to keep his true objective hidden for the first 4 and a half games. He was a special forces police officer and secretly a top researcher for Mega Corp Umbrella. When Umbrella collapses, it becomes apparent he has another motive. Soon, we discover he's gathering viral samples for Tricell, Umbrella's rival company. Soon, he manages to redefine Magnificent Bastard when he backstabs Tricell and reveals his true agenda: To release a virus across the planet to create a superior race of humans, wiping out almost the entire world in the process.
  • Kessler's motives only become apparent right at the end of Infamous. He's got control of a huge organization of soldiers, but doesn't aim to take over the world. He's been researching the Ray Sphere, but doesn't seek superpowers for himself, since he already has them, nor is he really trying to change the world, despite that unleashing that technology has certainly changed it. None of his lectures have the usual villainous rant; he says he's tired, and that he honestly hopes Cole will kick his ass when the time comes for them to confront one another. Kessler is Cole from an alternate future, where he fled from a giant monster called "The Beast", only for everyone, including his family, to die because of his inaction. He's traveled to the past to jump-start Cole's development of powers and to ensure that Cole is tough enough, physically and mentally, to face the Beast before the Beast kills everyone.
  • In the first Mass Effect, Saren is identified as the bad guy less than an hour into the game but the question of why he's working for the Reapers isn't explained for quite a while. As for his ultimate goal of acquiring the "Conduit", you don't find out what it is and what it does until the very end-game.
    • The Reapers themselves are much the same throughout both games. They come back every 50,000 years and wipe out all sapient organics. Why? It's not until the end of the second game that we get the answer that they're doing it to use our bodies to build more of themselves.
      • As of Mass Effect 3, it turns out there's even more to it than that. Turning organic beings into more reapers accomplishes two things. Making more reapers, and preserving that life in some way as opposed to completely wiping it from the galaxy. The reapers' true purpose is to keep organic life from creating, and then warring with, synthetic life. Because this kind of war has happened before, and tends to wreak havoc on inhabitable planets, meaning less places to support life. The reapers have been killing spacefaring races to preserve life itself as a whole.
    • The Illusive Man is also this. In Mass Effect: Retribution, he proves himself capable of lying to Aria's face. That is, of course, after he says this to the player:

The patterns are there, buried in the data.

  • Flemeth saves the PC and Alistair from the bloodbath at Ostagar in the first Dragon Age and even sends her daughter with them. At first she claims that the Blight threats her too, but her real intentions aren't revealed until much later in the game, depending on what order you'll play certain regions. She's hoping that Morrigan will grow her magical powers during the quest so she can posses her later in the hope continuing her centuries long lifespan. And going even further in the game It becomes clear Flemeth set up the whole Take a Third Option setting in the hopes of getting her hands on to the demon-god-baby that the male PC, Alistair or Loghain can father.
  • In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Evil Vizier's plans are never revealed throughout the entire game until his last words ("I could have been... immortal."), and even then, it's not clear how he wanted to achieve that goal. Thanks to the Timey-Wimey Ball in Warrior Within, he's back in The Two Thrones, and achieves immortality quickly into the game.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: it's never been revealed what motive William Afton had for killing those six children, assuming he even had one.
  • In Super Paper Mario we have Dimentio. There is some lore in-game that hints he is a descendant of the ancient sorcerers who created the Pixels and wrote the Dark Prognosticus, but even if this were true, he seems to have no motive for the atrocities he commits.
  • In Skullgirls, the true main antagonists are the Trinity, three demon goddesses who were once members of an ancient race. Their goal seems clear at first - they created the Skull Heart in order to tempt residents of the Canopy Kingdom, turning them into Skullgirls, who would then destroy the world. Just why they desire this, however, is a mystery.

Web Comics

  • The still-unnamed ghost from A Girl and Her Fed - who we've seen, but is (probably intentionally) hard to identify due to the art style - was responsible for setting the Pocket President program in motion. It's been stated that the PP's purpose was to eventually spark another American Civil War... but the question of why - let alone how, given the PP's tendency to turn it's bearers into into depressed zombies or Ax-Crazy psychos - has left even the protagonists' ghostly allies baffled.
  • Hereti Corp from Sluggy Freelance. While they engage in a few bits of more explicable evil, their primary goal involves doing something with Oasis and Dr. Steve's base lab. Like most everything else surrounding Oasis, however, it's shrouded in mystery.
    • Almost. Their ultimate goal was almost certainly taking over the world, or at any rate to acquire power. They even gave the Aylee project priority over the Oasis project for a time. Dr. Schlock, however... He may have just got stuck in the role of head of Hereti-Corp, continuing with their schemes because he can't remain in that safe position otherwise, but many think there may be a more satisfying explanation for what he's been doing, making his an agenda hidden even from others within Hereti-Corp.
  • The Order of the Stick: The three directors of the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission; we know that they want to unite the fiend races, and that the (apparent) reason they made a deal with Vaarsuvius was to "knock Xykon out of his comfort zone" as part of their larger Gambit Roulette (which apparently also involves the Gates. Beyond that, we know nothing of their long-term goals).
    • Actually, one panel during their conversation with Vaarsuvius has them talking about their ultimate goal to conquer the Upper Planes, but it isn't clear if that's the plan they're working on now, and if so, how the Gates play into that.

Web Original

  • The Necromancer of the Whateley Universe. The heroes have tangled with him several times, but they still don't know what he's after, why he's gathering Plot Coupons, and what he wants to do with them. Given who he deals with, it'll be bad.
  • In Survival of the Fittest, Danya's agenda is so well hidden that even most of the handlers don't know what it is, let alone the characters. This is a bigger deal than it sounds when you take into account that the handlers are the ones who write the plot. After five years and (almost) three versions of the game, with a fourth on the way, only a few hints have been shown.
  • Slender Man. Maybe.
  • Mechakara, the first major villain of Atop the Fourth Wall. For months we watched him occasionally pop up at the end of a video with Linkara remaining oblivious, until the Wham! Episode that explained everything.
    • Invoked with the Gunslinger, who appears happy to talk about his motivation, but after defeating so many other supervillains, Linkara is in no mood to hear it and just shoots him until he runs away.
  • The Gungan Council has featured several enigmatic villains. Two high ranking Imperial, Xyra and Ayreon, are mysteries even to their own peers and both their ultimate goals are shrouded in mystery. What Darth Apparatus wants has always been assumed to be power, yet whether it's for power's sake or some other end goal has never been explained in detail.
  • In Marble Hornets, The Operator, the Masked Men, and totheark (who may or may not be one or more of the Masked Men) all have inscrutable goals. The Operator is generally considered to be an Eldritch Abomination, and may not have a goal that humans can comprehend. It's debatable whether some of them can even be called villains, as the biggest indication of their malevolence is acting incredibly creepy. The most unambiguously malevolent character turns out to be Alex, and even his goals, outside of murdering the rest of the cast are a mystery.
  • Adrien Rosiek, the true villain of the Reincarnation Fantasy web novel Tori Transmigrated by "Aila Aurie". He's shown right from the start to be the least trustworthy and greasiest of Alessa Hart's love interests, and as the story unwinds he's discovered to have more and more disturbingly dubious connections, resources, and justifications for his actions -- as well as a background that doesn't pass even a basic check. As the plot reaches its climax, the imperial intelligence forces with which the title character has been working are pretty sure what he's up to -- but it's not until he's setting his master stroke into motion that he reveals to Tori -- in a moment of Evil Gloating that he simply can't resist -- the full extend of his plans and intentions.

Western Animation

  • Beast Wars has several:
    • Tarantulas first and foremost. His origins, goals, and even whether or not he's sane are all open for interpretation. Any more explanation would be meaningless out of context, but a good example would be an instance in which he returns to the other Predacons after what's implied to be a decent period of lurking in the shadows on his own, and in the same breath, both defects from Megatron's crew and offers his assistance in dealing with an alien structure that's central to the episode's plot. When the incongruity of this is brought up by Megatron, Tarantulas's explanation is simply: "I have my reasons!"
    • Megatron plays this role somewhat, with his true intentions carefully masked by a series of other plans, any one of which could take priority... It's often unclear how much he had planned from the start, how much was backup plans, and how much was simply improvisation. It takes a cunning villain indeed to play mind games with Tarantulas and come out on top.
    • Ravage, Blackarachnia, and even Quickstrike dabble in this, to boot.
  • The writers of Teen Titans confessed they at first had no idea what they would make Slade's plan in Season 1, explaining why the viewers, let alone Robin, had no idea either. Come to think of it, what Robin was meant to DO was never really specified either. The one thing he stole was meant for him anyway. And how Terra's running everyone out of town benefits him is never mentioned either.
  • In the original season of Jackie Chan Adventures the main protagonists know that Valmont and the Dark Hand are after the talismans, but they don't know that said talismans are meant to bring Big Bad Shendu back to life. In this case, the audience knows the intentions of the villains but the protagonists don't.
  • Grodd in the third season of Justice League Unlimited. He brought together the supervillains of the DCAU into one combined force, came up with a plan for granting invulnerability to all of them, blackmailed Lex Luthor... and what was his ultimate plan? Turning the entire planet into apes!? Needless to say, it ended with Luthor shooting him in the face[.
  • Vlad Masters often does this in Danny Phantom. The first major instance is the Skeleton Key, with neither the heroes nor the audiences knowing why he wanted it until a later episode.[context?] The same episode has another hidden agenda of his concerning the Fenton Ecto Suit, The Fright Knight, the Ring of Rage (which he didn't get), and the Crown of Fire - unfortunately, this one is never explained due to the show being cancelled.
    • Youngblood in "Pirate Radio". He pops out for the first half of the episode, doing various villainous tasks that makes absolutely no sense and doesn't seem to connect. The second half of the episode shows how it all ties together.
  • Nerissa from the first half of the second season of WITCH. It's later revealed she's a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wanted to end all war and suffering- by making herself goddess of all reality. Before she got anywhere close to attaining this, though, her plot was Hijacked by Phobos, a much more straightforward Evil Overlord.
  • Rick and Morty:
    • Evil Morty. He was the true mastermind behind a scheme involving the murders of several Ricks, and was later shown to be behind the inner circle who orchestrated most actions of the Council of Ricks. However, his actual goals were not revealed until the end of Season 5: accessing a wormhole called the Central Finite Curve so he can escape to an alternate multiverse where Rick is not the smartest man, meaning his atrocities were all committed because he's tired of Rick's insufferable ego.
    • Season six has introduced a new contender for the role of main antagonist in Rick Prime the arch-enemy of Rick C-137. It seems Rick Prime (who is the biological grandfather of the Morty who is Rick C-137's sidekick) murdered Rick C-137's wife and daughter, causing Rick C-137's to start his multiverse-jaunting career out of revenge. However, whatever reason Rick Prime had for this act and his true goals are, as of the beginning of season 6 (the first time he appears in the flesh) remain unknown. Indeed, when the Jerry of the Cronenberged Dimension asked why he was there, Rick Prime said (before killing him) "You know, sometimes I wonder that myself."
  • Tiamat in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. While Obviously Evil, she doesn't seem to be behind any of the threats the heroes deal with, and doesn't consider them to be anything but pests. She also never seems interested in conquering the realms or subjugating its citizenry like Venger is, although it does seem like eliminating her is a big part of Venger's overall goal. Possibly one might assume most of her evil deeds occur in some other place.
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