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 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 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
• Bleach (It Was His Sled. Even so, this particular Reveal was quite the Wham! Episode.)
• While Fullmetal Alchemist introduced its main antagonist quite early on, the first 2003 anime version 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.
  • 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.

Comic Books

• Fables
• 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.
  • Slender Man?
• 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.

Film

• The Element of Crime, made worse by the fact that the elusive child killer may actually 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 volume 1, Bill himself (being the orchestrator of the attack on the Bride and initiating her revenge plan) is never fully seen, 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.

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.
• The Dark Tower (The Crimson King isn't mentioned till book 4. From that point on 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) but 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 the 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 revealed to be 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 that this 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.
  • Also Palpatine (AKA Darth Sidious AKA the Emperor) in the Star Wars prequels.
• 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.
• During the third series of Doctor Who, the subplots taking place in present day London throw around the name Mr. Saxon. 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.
  • The events of series 5 are caused by someone or something capable of making the TARDIS explode, accompanied by the Arc Words "silence will fall".
• 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 by half of the season the Bowzocks were believed to be the main bad guy's until Exhaus is shown to be the real Big Bad.
• 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, Hero Antagonist DEA Agent Hank Schrader.
• Bones did this with the serial killer Gormagon as well as the Gravedigger. Their identities were only revealed late or in the end of the 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").

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 nom 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 as far as gameplay is concerned. 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 original Edutainment games in the Carmen Sandiego franchise, 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 make her the actual protagonist.

Webcomics

• 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
• 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 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 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, it stays out of sight.
  • 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 owner, president, and/or CEO of a company or the company itself. There are many suspects, some actually believing Dr. Wondertainment is actually 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.
• The Hunter in Bambi - while many fans regard him as one of the darkest villains in Disney, he's never truly seen, only a very distinctive Leitmotif indicating that he's there.
• 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.