History Main / TheDogWasTheMastermind

->''"Franchise/ScoobyDoo -- it's always that character who had one scene you forgot about."''
-->-- '''Doctor Hack''', ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''

* In ''Series/HawaiiFiveO'', in the second-season episode "Most Likely to Murder" from 1970, Creator/TomSkerritt plays Lew Morgan, an HPD cop whose wife was just murdered. Over the course of the episode, several suspects are questioned and eliminated as the murderer; Lew himself is then revealed as being the actual killer when he kills one of the suspects, Gary Oliver (Sam Melville), and when he calls Five-O to report it, McGarrett becomes incredibly angry with him, and delivers a blistering takedown that is Main/TranquilFury for most of it, before ending in a "Book him!" to Danno. At the end of the episode, McGarrett tells Lew that the single count of murder two that Lew was facing will now become two counts of murder one (because Lew not only killed Gary Oliver, but also his [Lew's] own wife when he found her in an affair with Gary). This also counts as Main/BeneathSuspicion, because in the beginning, everybody thought Lew was truly a grieving widower cop who just happened to find his wife; Danno even took Lew into his (Danno's) apartment for the night, not realizing that he (Danno) would be talking to the cop who actually committed the murders.

** Similarly, in their short-lived ''Bartman'' comic, the true villain behind the crime wave that's taken siege of Springfield? ''Lenny'', thanks to the fact that a faulty leak had dropped minor radioactive waste on his head resulting in him going temporarily insane, a moment that's briefly seen early on in the first chapter as a FunnyBackgroundEvent while Mr. Burns and Smithers were talking.

* The BigBad of ''VideoGame/{{LISA}}'' (and the GreaterScopeVillain of the first two games) is eventually revealed to be a recurring NPC who can be seen playing his trumpet in the Area Crossroads ("God's Call"). He's Dr. Yado, and at first glance, he seems like a simple EasterEgg music gag-character, until one of the encounters with him pieces together the various clues lying around the game.

* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'', the SpiritualSuccessor to ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'', does this as well, but even more so. Airy was at least a character who played a more-or-less prominent role; The Witch, who orchestrated the events of the separate storylines, is revealed to be Lyblac, a ''sidequest character'' who Alphas was in love with.

* In ''Film/Victim1961'', the man behind the blackmail ring is...Miss Benham, Doe's secretary who was innocuously introduced early on. Sandy Youth acts as her dragon.

* Comedic example: The villains of the first arc of ''LightNovel/HumanityHasDeclined'' are the headless, skinless chickens that had appeared earlier but did not even show evidence of intelligence. This should tell you [[WidgetSeries everything you need to know about the series]].

* In ''Manga/TomodachiGame'', it's revealed early on that there's a traitor within the friend group that forced them all into the SadisticGameShow. After constant betrayals and mind games, it's finally revealed that ShrinkingViolet Kotorogi masterminded almost all of the despair and trauma, being a {{sadist}}ic BitchInSheepsClothing who was TheDragon to the true mastermind and arranged the deaths of Tenji and Shibe's fathers after stalking them for years.

* The villain in ''WesternAnimation/{{Hoodwinked}}'', except instead of a dog it's a cute little bunny rabbit named Boingo. The fact that [[ChekhovsGunman he keeps appearing in the stories]] may send up warning flags to the savvy viewer. Used again in [[WesternAnimation/HoodwinkedTooHoodVersusEvil the sequel]], where Hansel and Gretel, the supposedly kidnapped and innocent kids, are behind everything.

* Parodied in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUDcSeUvkOw the Dog ending]] of ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'', which reveals that a female Shiba Inu dog is the BigBad behind the entire town of Silent Hill. Said dog (named Mira) makes cameos in future joke endings.

* Occurs in the FramingDevice of horror AnthologyFilm ''Film/{{Asylum}}'': in order to get a job at a mental asylum, the psychiatrist Dr. Martin has to interview the patients there and determine which of them is really Dr. B. Starr, the former asylum head who had a mental breakdown and [[SplitPersonalityTakeover adopted a new personality]]. None of the patients are B. Starr - Max, the orderly who has been taking him on a tour of the asylum, is...Once Dr. Martin guesses incorrectly, Max takes the opportunity to kill him.

* In the Water 7 Arc of ''Manga/OnePiece'', the main conflict becomes centered around the assassination of Shipbuilding executive and town mayor Iceberg, which Nico Robin (who mysteriously defected from the Straw Hat Pirates) is involved in. Eventually, it's revealed to all sides that the ones responsible for Robin's defection ''and'' the assault on Iceberg are none other than some of Iceberg's own quirky employees and an easy-going bartender, and that they are in fact government spies finishing up a very long infiltration!

** Happens again in the Friendless Game arc, as the ArcVillain playing the others against each other is revealed to be the ''other'' [[GagBoobs large-chested]] ShrinkingViolet, [[IJustWantToBeSpecial Kimiko Kyouguchi]]. Funnily enough, she and Kotorogi don't get along.

** This is something of a reoccurring theme among Spider-Man villains. The original Green Goblin was eventually revealed to be Comicbook/NormanOsborn, the father of his best friend (this being long before Norman established himself as the AlternateCompanyEquivalent of ComicBook/LexLuthor). The Jackal, better known as the villain who set up ComicBook/TheCloneSaga, 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.

* Non-villainous version in ''FanFic/TheInfiniteLoops'': For several Equestrian loops, Twilight was vaguely aware that events were going...smoother than usual; fewer conflicts, fewer ponies getting into trouble from canon events, and so on. Eventually she discovers that Big Macintosh Awoke at some point, and has been tampering with things while avoiding notice. His main reason for hiding? During the loop he Awoke for the first time, Twilight pretended to be a Nightmare-possessed villain as a prank, and it took him a long time to accept that she wasn't actually evil.

* In ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', the masterminds of Deep Thought's experiment were the lab mice that humans thought they were experimenting on.

* A ''Series/{{MADtv}}'' sketch about a [[StrictlyFormula formulaic]] Creator/AshleyJudd movie parodies this with one of her [[TheMentor mentors]] saying "Have you found out the killer is the cop from the first scene, even though all the evidence points elsewhere?"

* In ''Videogame/BlueDragon'', the mastermind and final boss behind it all turns out to be the friggin' blue frog thingy the bad guy carried around all the time.

* Be honest. In VideoGame/CurseOfTheDeadGods, did you really expect Clovis Pardieux, a character ''mentioned offhandedly in some of the journal entries,'' to be one of the ''final bosses''? Bonus points for being foreshadowed in a way that sounded like he had simply suffered AFateWorseThanDeath(his sister was told that he had become "[[TheDragon Champion of Death]]").

* VideoGame/RatchetAndClankAll4One'': For most of the game, we're led to believe that the BigBad is one Nevo Binkemyer. At the end, it transpires that the one responsible cute, kitten-like critter named Mr. Dinkles, possesed by the Loki Master, who forced Nevo at gunpoint to build all of the weapons and enemies the heroes had faced up until that point.
* In ''Videogame/RagnarokBattleOffline'' The final boss of the game turns out to be a Kafra (member of a group of maids that in the original game provides saving, storage, and fast travel between cities) possessed by an unknown entity.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Rosenkreuzstilette}}'', Count Micheal Zeppelin is the leader of the RKS rebellion against the Holy Empire, but the person responsible for driving him to rebel turns out to be Kahl Palesch, Liebea's unseen brother who was only mentioned in her cutscenes and was supposedly captured by the Empire, but was actually an Empire spy sent to kill Micheal's daughter Iris...except that Iris ''herself'', seemingly an average DamselInDistress, knowingly instigated the war for fun and lied about Kahl being a spy to [[HeKnowsTooMuch keep him from exposing her plans]]. In the sequel, ~Freudenstachel~, she also instigated the church's founding of the Schwarzkreuz and the witch-hunt of the Magi (with help from Eifer Skute).

* In ''Videogame/TazWanted'', Tweety is the mastermind behind it all. This is especially mind-numbing when you consider that he's been your tutorial and hint provider for the entire game, including the final level.

* ''Videogame/{{Undertale}}'':

** ''VisualNovel/VirtuesLastReward'' manages to top it's predecessor, by having the mastermind behind everything, Zero III Sr. be the main character's future self, ''and'' his partner-in-crime is the murdered old woman, who is actually [[HijackedByGanon Akane]]. Though it's ''inverted'' with Dio- him being the true BigBad and a terrorist leader is surprising precisely because [[TheUntwist he was the most obvious suspect]].

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'': A plot-point in the first season was that there was a mole on the Team. The most prominent suspects In-Universe were Superboy (a clone that could have been programmed by Cadmus before being freed), Artemis (who was hiding her villainous parentage), and Miss Martian (who had snuck onto her uncle's ship to Earth). The real mole was actually Red Arrow (who was the most determined to weed out the mole), who was actually a Cadmus clone of the original Speedy, programmed with a desire to join the Justice League so he can put the League under their control.

* In ''LightNovel/MushokuTenseiJoblessReincarnation'', the BigBad has many potential agents, all of which Orsted has identified and tracked in the past save one. The single agent whose actions constantly foiled Orsted's plans while never drawing any attention was Gisu, a man with no combat power or political sway.

* ''LightNovel/OcculticNine'': The murderer of Yuta and Sarai's father is Izumin, the flamboyant and campy owner of the bar the group hangs out, being also the leader of the cult started by Yuta's father and has been exorcising ghosts of the 256 victims of the experiments.

* In [[''VideoGame/Tropico'' Tropico 5]] part of the crime safety system includes people also becoming crime lords in addition to their regular job, resulting in this trope. Perhaps owing to interactions with docks as one of the highest crime generating buildings, dock workers are one of the most common sources of crime lords, especially as the geography often forces clustering of docks.

** McGarrett, in Main/TranquilFury to Lew: "Every cop on this island has been working overtime to help you, and you just kicked every one of them in the teeth. Now they'll have to work double-time to try to prove to the public that they're not all a bunch of killers hiding behind a badge."

* In ''Series/HawaiiFiveO'', in the second-season episode "Most Likely to Murder" from 1970, Creator/TomSkerritt plays Lew Morgan, an HPD cop whose wife was just murdered. Over the course of the episode, several suspects are questioned and eliminated as the murderer; Lew himself is then revealed as being the actual killer when he kills one of the suspects, Gary Oliver (Sam Melville), and when he calls Five-O to report it, McGarrett becomes incredibly angry with him, and delivers a blistering takedown that is Main/TranquilFury for most of it, before ending in a "Book him!" to Danno. At the end of the episode, McGarrett tells Lew that the single count of murder two that Lew was facing will now become two counts of murder one (because Lew not only killed Gary Oliver, but also his [Lew's] own wife when he found her in an affair with Gary).

* ''Series/PersonOfInterest''. The killer in the season 4 episode "Terra Incognita" was the hotel doorman.
* In ''Series/{{The Prisoner|1967}}'', Number One turns out to be a previously un-hinted-at duplicate of the hero, Number Six. Some of the writers have also hinted that in some way, [[TheButlerDidIt The Butler]] was behind everything.
* ''Series/{{Psych}}''
** In the episode "Ghosts", one of Gus's bosses at the pharmaceutical company is experiencing a series of paranormal events at his house. The one behind these events is Shawn, the main protagonist. He's faking these hauntings so Psych can "solve" the case and the company will let Gus keep moonlighting at the agency. It doesn't work, but Shawn is able to save Gus's job by telling his boss that he knows about his affair and him reselling samples.

* ''Series/{{Smallville}}''. In "Roulette", Oliver is put through a series of life and death games. Whoever designed it has a really sick sense of humor. It is Chloe Sullivan. (Now HarsherInHindsight.)

** In "Aquiel," where the crew finds out that a shape-shifting organism is behind the MysteryOfTheWeek. Two people, a Klingon and the eponymous Aquiel, are suspected of being the monster, but it's really Aquiel's dog, which served as a minor comedic subplot during the episode.
** In "Future Imperfect", Riker awakens sixteen years in the future with apparent amnesia. However, the details of his future life don't add up; when he question his surroundings, the ''Enterprise'' bridge reveals itself to be a holodeck, with the evil Romulans pulling Riker's strings. Seems plausible. Yet, even this reality doesn't jibe with what Riker knows to be true. The real mastermind is Riker's "son", who is present in both realities. The boy is actually an orphaned alien left behind on a desolate planet, with only a holodeck to amuse himself. When Riker came upon the cave, the boy was delighted to have a playmate and pieced together a false world from Riker's memories.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[VisualPun Huh.]] [[GainaxEnding Well, that explains everything]].]]

* In the [[WhamEpisode 38th episode]] of the first season of ''Anime/{{Bakugan}}'' (simply known as ''Bakugan Battle Brawlers''), one of the main villains, Masquerade, finally reveals his true identity to the Battle Brawlers after Dan defeats him... But as it turns out, he was [[NiceGirl Alice]]’s [[SplitPersonality split]] [[AlternateIdentityAmnesia personality]] the whole time!

* The ''Literature/HarryPotter'' story ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4101650/1/Backward_With_Purpose_Part_I_Always_and_Always Backward With Purpose]]'' involved Harry, Ginny, and Ron [[SetRightWhatOnceWasWrong traveling back in time]] [[PeggySue to fix]] a BadFuture. At the same time ([[TimeyWimeyBall relatively]]), someone else is also traveling from the future and [[TheManBehindTheMan tweaking things behind their backs]]. It is revealed to be Harry and Ginny's son Albus, who was never seen previously and had not yet even existed in any form or timeline from the main characters' (and audiences') perspective. Perhaps most bizarrely, if you read the sequel ''it all makes sense''.

* In ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'', the person who started the chain of events leading to the Near Side routes and was primarily responsible for everything that happens on the Far Side routes turns out to be Kohaku, Akiha's [[StepfordSmiler seemingly cheerful]] [[{{Meido}} maid]] and one of the romancable heroines.

** OlderThanTheyThink. In the [[WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooWhereAreYou original series]] episode "A Clue For Scooby Doo" no one recognizes the unmasked monster at first, until Shaggy [[SmartBall of all people]] puts a beard on him. The ghost of the dead Captain Cutler was actually...[[FakingTheDead a very much alive]] [[ShapedLikeItself Captain Cutler]].

** A variation occurs in the Mysterion Trilogy ("Coon 2: Coon and Friends", "Mysterion Rises", and "Coon vs. Coon and Friends") when [[LateArrivalSpoiler 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 [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Jor-El type]] [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext man in a glowing ball appears to explain everything completely out of nowhere]], it turns out he was actually talking to Bradley Biggle a.k.a. Mintberry Crunch, who had been a LivingProp up until these episodes, about HIS superpowers.

[[caption-width-right:350:Huh. [[GainaxEnding Well, that explains everything]].]]

* ''LightNovel/DateALive'': The mysterious Phantom is Reine, the Analysis Officer and a recurring minor character. There are many hints as to this, including her tendency to call Shidou "Shin" instead of his actual name and her name can be read as containing the kanji for "zero", fitting the NumericalThemeNaming of the series.

* In ''LightNovel/ReZero'', Subaru attempts to find out who's been murdering him during the second arc. Later, he believes that it's Rem because of her initial distrust towards him, but when she too dies of mysterious circumstances, Subaru learns that death curses can only be placed when physical contact is made to the victim. It's at this moment where Subaru discovers the only person who could have cursed him was actually the dog that bit him from a village he visited that's actually a demon.

** In ''LightNovel/DanganronpaZero'', the mastermind behind the conspiracy at Hope’s Peak Academy is ''[[TomatoInTheMirror the protagonist]]'' Ryoko Otonashi, who is actually an amnesiac Junko Enoshima who did it to herself as an experiment.

[[ChekhovsGunman You've seen them before]]. Maybe once, maybe a few times, maybe repeatedly throughout the story, but you never suspected a thing up until TheReveal. [[UnwittingPawn Sucker]]. TheButlerDidIt is the classic, {{Cliche}} example (which [[DeadUnicornTrope never really was a cliché]].)