Hidden Villain

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"At last, the masks had fallen away. The strings of the puppets had become visible, and the hands of the prime mover exposed." —Legacy of Kain

A situation where a Big Bad exists in the Story Arc, but his identity is not known until much later. This Hidden Villain could be a result of the heroes going against The Faceless, requiring only a look under the mask to understand everything. In most cases, this is an inversion of the Hidden Agenda Villain, where we know that something bad is happening and the Driving Question is the identity of the one behind it all.

Usually a Magnificent Bastard post-reveal. Compare Man Behind the Man, except without the first man. It can only overlap if the first man is obviously a Disc One Final Boss.

If the Hidden Villain turns out to be a previously known antagonist, see Hijacked by Ganon. If it was someone who was never suspected at all, then the trope is The Dog Was the Mastermind.

Examples of Hidden Villain include:

Anime and Manga

• 20th Century Boys^[context?]
• Bleach (It Was His Sled. Even so, this particular Reveal was quite the Wham! Episode.)^[context?]
• While Fullmetal Alchemist introduced its main antagonist quite early on, the 2003 anime plays this straight.
• Lord Baan/Vearn from Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken. Of course, when he is revealed, he's pretty unimposing. Until much, much later, when you learn that he's really inhabiting the body of a lesser Dragon who attempts Grand Theft Me on Hyunkeru to transfer to a younger, stronger body. Both the body-snatcher & the intended victim also are White-Haired Pretty Boys.
• Trigun appears to have an obvious big bad at first: a fatalistic killer named Legato Bluesummers, who has seemingly assembled a private army just to destroy Vash. Midway through the Legato arc, we're given a flashback episode that reveals the existence of Vash's brother, Knives. A few episodes later, we finally learn that Legato has been acting under Knives' orders all along, and his true objective isn't to kill Vash, but to force Vash to kill Legato.
• One Piece:
  • Dr. Vegapunk, maybe. The brains behind most of the technology used by the World Government (such as artificial Devil Fruit, Seastone, and the Pacifistas), he has yet to appear in the flesh. However, while he works for the tyrannical World Government, his personal motivations and moral stance are unknown.
    • He finally appears in the Egghead Arc, where it is revealed that, for the most part, not a villain, being a close ally of Dragon and the Resistance Army. His reason for being in the Marines is that they can provide far more funding and resources than he would have if he joined the Resistance proper.
  • Also, the mysterious Im, a being who appears to be the true leader of the World Government. As yet, almost nothing is known about this being whom the Gorosei answer to, and they have only been seen in shadow.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! examples:
  • In the original series, the Dark Spirit of the Ring makes his presence known in the first season; however, its true identity of Zorc Necrophades remains unknown to anyone until the final act.
    • Also, during the Virtual Nightmare Arc, Noah is a Dragon-in-Chief until the true Big Bad and orchestrator of the plot - Gozaburo - makes himself known in the final two episodes.
  • Similarly, in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Darkness/Nightshroud's influence is felt throughout the whole series, but he only actually appears in the final arc.
    • Also, in Season 1, Kagemaru's role as Arc Villain and leader of the Seven Stars remains concealed until the final two episodes of the arc.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, the true big bad and orchestrator of the dimensional war is Z-ARC, something that remains a secret until the final arc.
• All For One from My Hero Academia. While his dark shadow falls on the whole series, he doesn't officially makes an appearance until the end of Season 2.
• In-universe, this is true for Giovanni in Pokémon. While it is obvious to the viewers he is The Man Behind The Man for Team Rocket, he and Ash have not after 18 seasons, gotten a proper introduction. In fact, whether Ash and Giovanni could even be called enemies is debatable.

Comic Books

• Fables^[context?]
• The Comedian's murderer and the person responsible for the events of Watchmen. It turns out that Adrian Veidt AKA Ozymandias is behind it, all in the name of world peace. The picture at the top of the page is this hidden villain from the film adaptation.
• The first Sin City hid the Serial Killer Kevin until halfway through and hid Cardinal Roark until just before the end. Because of The Movie, most people realize who they are but it was a specific mystery at first.
• Spider-Man examples:
  • In the iconic Amazing Spider-Man #50, Spidey at first believes his foe - who has stolen medicine needed to cure Aunt May of radiation sickness - is "the Master Planner", a criminal mastermind who has been making a name for himself in New York; eventually, he learns that the Master Planner is none other than his old foe, Dr. Octopus.
  • It is not revealed until the finale of the Clone Saga that the Big Bad behind it all is long-thought-dead villain Norman Osborn.
• Back in The Golden Age of Comic Books, Captain Marvel's foe Mr. Mind was this in the storyline where he was introduced. For a full two years (real time) everyone believed this Evil Genius directing the actions of the Monster Society of Evil (and most of the Nazis, Adolf Hitler himself his Unwitting Pawn) was a human villain, when in fact, he was a super-intelligent alien worm. There's even one well-known hilarious scheme where the the hero shoos away a worm that landed on his shoulder, as it's distracting him from investigating the villain's scheme, not considering that the worm might be the villain himself.
• Requiem Vampire Knight, the protagonist is part of the army of Resurrection, which opposes another faction called Dystopia; the rulers of this other faction are never seen. They seem to be mostly British, though.
  • Also, Satan has yet to appear (even though the setting is in Hell) but he clearly does exist, seeing as Thurim was trying to find his Dark Hammer.

Film

• The Element of Crime, made worse by the fact that the elusive child killer may actually {{spoiler|have been dead even before the events portrayed in the movie}.} And the whole movie is a flashback.
• In The Usual Suspects, the mythical Keyser Soze is mentioned right from the beginning - yet his involvement in the events isn't at least somewhat understood until the climax, and only fully comprehensible at the very end.
  • It's pretty common knowledge by now, but... Verbal, the guy sitting there telling the story? Whenever he mentions Keyzer Soze, he's talking about himself.
• The film version of Sin City has a scene similar to the one pictured above.
• Robert in Mystery Team.
• In Kill Bill vol. 1, Bill himself (being the orchestrator of the attack on the Bride and initiating her revenge plan) is never fully seen, with scenes where he appears cropping out his head to avoid showing his face. He doesn't make a full appearance until the second movie.
• The Blair Witch from The Blair Witch Project, assuming she even exists at all. Few movies use the Nothing Is Scarier Trope better than this one.
• Palpatine (AKA Darth Sidious AKA the Emperor) in the Star Wars prequels.
• The villain in Duel is a driver of an old, rusty tanker truck who, for unknown reasons, relentlessly pursues the hapless protagonist. Director Steven Spielberg is clearly trying to keep the guy hidden, the viewers only seeing his arms and boots in a few brief scenes. In fact, the final scene goes so far as to add an Ambiguously Human angle to him, as the roar that comes from the truck when the protagonist tricks him into driving off a cliff could not have been made by an ordinary man...
• In Hereditary, the face behind the evil force plaguing the protagonists remains unseen, until the very end, where it is revealed the source was in plain sight the whole time.
• The Hunter in Bambi - while many fans regard him as one of the darkest villains in Disney, he's never truly seen, with only a very distinctive Leitmotif indicating that he's there.
• In Children of the Corn, the orchestrator behind the cult is a malevolent entity called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. While the mythology surrounding this demon is expanded surprisingly well in the sequels, nobody ever gets a good look at it. Fans believe it may be The Devil or even Pennywise.

Literature

• Despite adaptations that show otherwise, Sherlock Holmes' arch-enemy Professor Moriarty appears only once in the original novels by Arthur Conan Doyle. He is mentioned by Holmes - reminiscently - in five stories, and plays a direct role in "The Valley of Fear", but never actually shows his face. His one appearance in person is at the end of the final (chronologically) story in the original franchise, "The Final Problem", during a final showdown with Holmes in which both of them, presumably, perish. Even then, Dr. Watson - who narrates the story - never encounters him at all.
• In The Dark Tower, the Crimson King isn't mentioned till book 4, from which point details are given bit by bit. However, readers familiar with King's greater universe (particularly those who have read The Stand) might be savvy enough to catch on a bit earlier.
• The dragon-snakes from The Death Gate Cycle are the collective Big Bad and the incarnation of evil in that multiverse, given form by magic gone awry. As such, they're technically the ultiamte villains all along, but are only introduced directly in the fourth book, Serpent Mage.
• For the first three-quarters of the first book of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, it's obvious that there is a Big Bad - Evil Sorcerer Pryrates is an obvious villain, but as he's getting his power through a Deal with the Devil, he's also obviously not the ultimate string puller. Still, none of the main characters know who he is. It turns out to be the vengeful Sithi prince Ineluki, resurrected as the undead entity called the Storm King, who had only been mentioned in scraps of legends prior to The Reveal.
• The Crippled God, Big Bad of Malazan Book of the Fallen, was only introduced in person in the third book, though in hindsight he'd been pretty heavily foreshadowed in the first two.
• In Warbreaker, the Big Bad is hidden for almost the entire novel, and the most obvious candidates are eliminated one by one - either by proving harmless, or being revealed as only a cog in the big machine. It turns out to be Bluefingers, the God King's kindly, timid secretary, who had been considered an ally of the heroes up to that point.
  • Also from a work by Brandon Sanderson, it was very obvious from the beginning of Mistborn that the Lord Ruler won his position by saving the world from something even worse. In the second book, it was revealed the entity was still around, and it was freed from its prison at the climax. In the third book, the entity was revealed as Ruin, primordial god of entropy and destruction.
• In Fate of the Jedi, from the very first book something had started to make various Jedi go crazy, but none of the already introduced villains (President Evil Daala and an isolated but ambitious cult of Sith) seemed to have the power to cause it. In the third book, readers are introduced to an enigmatic woman with tremendous Force powers named Abeloth. Turns out that she's the avatar of an Eldritch Abomination who has been subtly influencing galactic events for a while now - and by the end of the book, she's out of her can and ready to take the position of Big Bad full time.
• In the first of the Otherland books, the focus occasionally shifts to an Egyptian simulation ruled by someone using Osiris as an avatar, who gives out orders and makes commentary that bears suspicious relation to other events in the book, but these connections are never actually stated. Late in the volume, the user is revealed to be a man named Felix Jongleur, leader of the Grail Brotherhood and creator of the Otherland system.
• Most of the plotline of the Inda series is driven by Evil Sorcerer Erkric's scheming, as he's the one driving the Venn to be more warlike and expansionistic - but he's not directly introduced until the last third of the second book, and his central role doesn't become apparent until later. This is at least in part because the Venn are initially portrayed as a faceless military juggernaut, though - he's introduced at the same time as Prince Rajnir and Commander Durasnir, the other two main Venn characters.

Live-Action TV

• Lost, in which the fact that there even is a Big Bad is not immediately stated. After several possible major antagonists are introduced over the first five seasons, the true Big Bad is not revealed until the season five finale.
• Desperate Housewives used this several times. The identity of the aggressor in season 6 was hidden this way until the reveal that he was a serial killer and actually one of Porter's friends.
• Doctor Who:
  • During the third series, the subplots taking place in present day London throw around the name Mr. Saxon. All that is known about him is, he is someone or something capable of making the TARDIS explode, accompanied by the Arc Words "silence will fall". In the three-parter that ends the season, he is revealed to be none other than the Doctor's arch nemesis, the Master, who stole the Doctor's TARDIS and traveled 18 months before Martha was introduced, and in that time became the the Minister of Defence.
  • One of the most iconic (and scariest) one-shot villains in the franchise was the Midnight Entity (as it is called) in the episode “Midnight”. Nothing is known about this creature, except that it is native to a planet called Midnight, is malevolent and able to control humans, speaking through their mouths as it does so, but whether the victim is brainwashed or possessed is not clear. It is very intelligent, at least, using this power on the Doctor himself in an attempt to convince the rest of the cast that he is insane. The entity is never seen by the viewers - Claude claims he briefly sees it, describing it as a living, formless shadow, but this is all we have to go on.
  • The monster in “Listen”, assuming there even was one. This is an odd example, as there is no proof the monster even existed, and that is what makes it scary. The episode starts with the Doctor pondering the existence of a “perfect hider” - after all, he’s encountered perfect predators and perfect survivors, could there not be a being who is perfect at hiding? Such a monster might be impossible to combat, as it could be anywhere, it could be right next to you as you are, say, reading an article on a webpage, and you wouldn’t know it until it was too late. “What would you do?” he asks out loud. And then he sees that something has - without him noticing - scrawled the word “LISTEN” on his blackboard with the chalk he had been holding a moment ago. This leads to an encounter with… something, but whether this was indeed the monster he was thinking of or just a kid playing a trick is never explained. Possibly it is an embodiment of Primal Fear. One thing is certain - this was one of the few times in the entire franchise where the Doctor himself is known to genuinely be afraid of something.
• The reveal of just who was really behind the Dollhouse and the Rossum Corporation had a very high HSQ when it was revealed in season 2.
• Happened in Gekisou Sentai Carranger: halfway through the season, the Bowzocks were believed to be the Big Bads until Exhaus finally shows his hand.
• A really bizarre example comes from Breaking Bad, where the main character, Walter White, is the Hidden Villain Protagonist to his own brother-in-law, DEA Agent Hank Schrader.
• Bones did this with the serial killer Gormagon as well as the Gravedigger, whose identities were only revealed late or in the end of their story arcs.
• At least two members of the Person of Interest Rogues Gallery finally appeared onscreen, after several episodes of Foreshadowing and references, as that week's person of interest in disguise. Namely, Elias (in "Witness") and Root (in "Firewall").
• The Reavers in Firefly. While the protagonists frequently found their infernal technology and the aftermath of their atrocities, these alien abominations were never shown on screen. The closest they came to an actual appearance was a victim turning into one after getting A Face Full of Reaver Wing Wong. Not that it mattered, as the Reavers were pretty terrifying without being seen, especially given what Zoey said would happen to them should they actually encounter them:

Zoey: If they take the ship, they’ll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing, and if we’re very, very lucky, they’ll do it in that order.

• They did, however, appear in Serenity, the follow-up movie.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
  • The Mayor is The Man Behind The Man for most of what happens in seasons one and two, but he doesn't actually appear until season 3, where he is the Big Bad proper.
  • Assuming he is indeed a villain, the Immortal may count, a vampire mentioned both in this series and Angel. An old rival of both Spike and Angel, he is known to be something of a lady's man and has done a lot in his time, including climb Mt. Everest more than once, authored a novel that was "a life-changer", and bested Spike, Angelus, and Drusilla numerous times (despite the notoriety of all three). He has only appeared onscreen as a cameo in the Angel episode "The Girl in Question", but his face is not shown.

Newspaper Comics

• In Peanuts, the mean cat next door that Snoopy trolls (and always regrets doing so) is never seen on-panel. Also, while Snoopy often fights the Red Baron in his Power Fantasies as the World War I Flying Ace, the Baron himself is always offscreen.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In the iconic Advanced Dungeons and Dragons module series Against the Giants, it is hinted in the first part, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, that there is a "secret force, some motivational power behind this unusual banding of different races of giants." Part two The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, mentions this again in the prologue. The third part, Hall of the Fire Giant King, specifies that the PCs goal is to find this hidden orchestrator, which is in fact the Drow (making their first appearance in a D&D adventure). This leads to the Sequel Series where the mastermind is shown to be Enclava, high priestess of the Spider Goddess Lolth, who is, the actual Big Bad of the whole campaign.
  • Zariul, the original Lord of Avernus the first Layer of Hell was first mentioned in 2nd Edition Planescape, but never seen for that Edition and the next two; according to lore, she had been overthrown and imprisoned by her second-in-command, the Warlord Bel, and her rage in her attempts to escape turning Avernus more dangerous and hostile. It wasn't until 5th Edition where she escaped and was finally seen (in Mordenkainen’s Tome Of Foes) in all her diabolical glory.
  • Also in Planescape, the General of Gehenna. Supposedly the first yugoloth to become an ultroloth, he rules the yugoloth race from a hidden fortress where he directs the Blood War as some sort of grand experiment to determine what type of Evil is better. Or so they say. It's rare to find even another ultroloth who has actually seen him.

Video Games

• Planescape: Torment: It isn't revealed until the end that the Nameless One's foe is the Enemy Without.
• BlazBlue: The Big Bad isn't revealed until the console-only True Ending of Calamity Trigger, and isn't fought until Continuum Shift. And even then, that game's True Ending reveals him to be a Disc One Final Boss, and it goes straight into The Dog Was the Mastermind. And then the manual suggests that no, he was the Big Bad all along.
• In Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, we know that Hel is the Big Bad of the game having orchestrated all of the events for Wylfred to wreak as much sin as possible, and give Garm some fun. However, Hel is only mentioned, and when she talks, we never see her. She does show up in the first game when she is stopped by the Einherjar that have been sent to Valhalla. Easy to miss if you don't realize that each line of text in the review has a cutscene associated with it.
• The Big Bad/Murderer of the first Laura Bow game turns out to be Lilian, when very little evidence suggests this.
• Al Mualim and Prince Ahmet from Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed: Revelations, respectively.
• Deadly Premonition has this with George Woodman & Kaysen but alludes to the Raincoat Killer many times as being some unknown entity.
• World of Warcraft: In the "Deaths of Chromie" scenario, the player has to prevent no less than eight assassins from killing Chromie and attacking the Bronze Dragonshrine. While Chromie believes some mastermind is behind it all, this villain is never identified, even if the player is successful.
  • Also, the "Shadowy Figures" who seem to be behind the trouble in the various Pet Dungeons. Given their voices, we can assume this group is made up of a tauren, a night elf, a blood elf, a troll, and a gnome (quite a diverse group) - but they are always, naturally, seen in shadow, and nothing is yet known of their motives.
• In Don't Starve, Charlie is never actually seen in-game, because she can only attack the player in total darkness. No matter how fast the player is activating a light source, he will never see her in-game; in fact, Charlie has no game sprite, being more of an environmental hazard. She's only seen in the flesh in some cutscenes, including the trailer to the sequel when she tries - but fails - to reconcile with Wilson.
• In the Carmen Sandiego franchise's original Edutainment games, Carmen herself does not appear personally until you reach the Ace Detective rank. Television and animated adaptations avert this however, having her show up quite a lot if not making her the actual protagonist.
• The Big Bad of the Five Nights at Freddy's hidden for most of the run of the franchise, appearing as "the Purple Man" in some mini-games, appearing in person as Springtrap in the third game, albeit as a ghost haunting an animatronic. It isn't until the graphic novel The Silver Eyes that his name is revealed to be William Afton, the story also showing his true appearance and revealing much of his backstory.
• This was a major plot point of the original Danganronpa. It quickly became obvious that Monokuma was simply a mouthpiece being controlled by the true mastermind, who turned out to be Junko.

Web Comics

• MAG-ISA: Look at these guys with darkened faces sitting around a table planning nefarious schemes for you and me...
• The Enemy in Harkovast is mentioned on the first page, but has never been shown in the comic. Who he is has only been hinted at on the comics forum, where his full title (The King in the West) has been stated.

Web Original

• Broken Saints^[context?]
• Given the general aura of mystery surrounding the SCP Foundation, it has many:
  • The 05 Council combines this with Mysterious Backer and Evil Mentor; seeing how even rank and file members of the Foundation itself admit to being a Necessary Evil, it is likely its leaders feel the same. The 05 Council is composed of thirteen (probably) individuals who head the Foundation from the shadows, their very existence hidden to all but members with Clearance Level 2 or higher. The website itself gives at least three contradictory files for each member, suggesting all but one (at most) is a Red Herring, and whenever they appear in an adaptation, they are shrouded by dark silhouettes. Some are likely not even human, being SCPs themselves.
    • The same can be said of "the Administrator", who is mentioned in some stories. He (or she, or they or it) may be the 05 Council's superior, a pseudonym used by one of them, or just a fiction they created to distract anyone who might try to uncover their secrets. If the Administrator is real, they stay out of sight.
    • There's also the Ethics Committee, which may be less "villain" than the rest of the Foundation but still of the Well-Intentioned Extremist type; while they recognize the need for cruelty and torture on occasion to prevent greater evils, their job is to assure the Foundation doesn't go too far. Should the Foundation's "necessary evils" become "unnecessary", they act to correct that and punish the member(s) responsible (via reprimanding, demoting, or in some cases, executing the offender.) As such, they have access to data and information even the 05 Council does not. (As in, they know all the info that's been [REDACTED] and [DATA EXPUNGED] in the documentation of each and every SCP.) As might be assumed, their identities are completely unknown (lacking even the deceptive files of the 05 Council), and while most other members of the Foundation regard them as a joke, this quickly changes for members who are actually brought before them for disciplinary actions...
  • Dr. Wondertainment (a toymaker who has created many SCPs) is this - if he is a villain - although it's not clear if the name refers to the owner, president, and/or CEO of a company or the company itself. There are many suspects, with some actually believing Dr. Wondertainment is a member of the Foundation.
  • And there are many minor examples, such as whoever built SCP-1678, aka "Under London". The Foundation believes the creator of this underground city (who violated many crimes against humanity by doing so) is a member of British Parliament, but until solid proof is obtained, accusing any of them of such would be unwise. SCP-3999 is some sort of sadistic demon who tortured an unfortunate researcher for millions of years (to his point of view) until that researcher made a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy it; nothing more than that is known about the monster, although the victim's notes claim it is "indescribable".
• The very existence of Salem in RWBY was hidden from the audience until the final minutes of Volume 3 -- and even then, exactly who she was and what she was planning was left for future episodes. And her existence remained a secret to the vast majority of the people of Remnant until the middle of Volume 8 -- some five years later.

Western Animation

• Slade in Teen Titans starts out like this, being introduced in the first episode as a shadowy Chessmaster, but not even named or revealed to the heroes until later (and it's even longer before they meet him face-to-face and learn of his plans). He's also a Hidden Agenda Villain, ironically - meaning that for his first few appearances, all we know about him is that he exists and is up to no good.
• In Wolverine and the X-Men, pretty much the whole first season was masterminded by the Inner Circle, who wanted to get their hands on the Phoenix. They're not introduced until just before the Grand Finale, and aren't truly The Man Behind the Man because the only character they were directly controlling was one of the heroes.
• During the third season of Ben 10, horror monster-themed aliens show up performing seemingly random tasks through several episodes. During the season finale, they are revealed to have been building a superweapon to allow Ghostfreak to achieve world domination.
• In Darkwing Duck, F.O.W.L (the Fiendish Organization for World Larceny) is headed by three shadowy figures that are never named, and only one of them has ever been heard to speak. For the most part, Darkwing only deals with underlings like Steelbeak.
• In Miraculous Ladybug, the identity of Hawk Moth was a mystery until the premiere of Season 2; while many fans did suspect he was, in fact, Gabriel Agreste, this (along with Nathalie being his accomplice) - was confirmed here.
• The true Big Bad of Rick and Morty may be Rick Prime, the sworn enemy of Rick C-137 (the Rick who is usually in the protagonist position on the series), and the biological grandfather of the Morty who usually accompanies him. Rick C-137 started his multiverse-jaunting career out of revenge against Rick Prime, who murdered his reality's versions of his wife and daughter. While referenced to in flashbacks, he does not appear in the flesh until The Stinger of the season 6 premiere where he murders the Cronenberged Dimension of Jerry; in his defense though, this version of Jerry was very much asking for it.
• Mr. Big, the Big Bad of the "Upsidasium" arc of Rocky and Bullwinkle, whom Boris and Natasha were working under. He did make his presance known, appearing as a scary, towering, looming shadow, but when finally actually seen, this turned out to be a trick of lights. He wasn't very big at all, being even smaller than Rocky, which makes him the Trope Namer for such villains.