Canon Character All Along / Live-Action TV

Warning: All spoilers will be unmarked.

Times where somebody was revealed to be a Canon Character All Along in Live-Action TV.

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• Ang Probinsyano (2015): Emilio Syquia, the Greater-Scope Villain in the first half of the show, would later adopt the name Gustavo Toralba, a baron in illegal mining. Toralba is also the name of the villain of the sequel to the original film, who is also involved in illegal mining.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow:
    • This show gives Oliver Queen a younger sister named Thea. Her Affectionate Nickname is "Speedy", the name of Green Arrow's Sidekicks in the comics, and her middle name is revealed to be "Dearden"; Mia Dearden is the name of the second Speedy. The pilot also shows several archery trophies in her room. While it seems to be a Mythology Gag at first, and the third episode of Season Three even has her using "Mia" as an alias, it later officially confirms that she is indeed the show's version of Mia when she dons Roy Harper's (canonically the first Speedy) vigilante gear and uses her nickname as a Code Name the following season.
    • The show also gives Dinah Laurel Lance a younger sister named Sara. She's presumed dead for Season One, but resurfaces in Season Two under the identity of "The Canary", making her the equivalent of Dinah Drake-Lance (who's also in the show as the girls' mother, but never holds the mantle), the first Black Canary in the comics until she passes the mantle to her daughter Dinah Laurel Lance. True to form, Laurel, dons the mantle after Sara's death at the beginning of Season Three. However, after Sara's resurrection in Season Four, Laurel is Killed Off for Real by Damien Darhk, asking Oliver on her deathbed to pass the mantle to someone else. In the middle of Season Five, a new character named Tina Boland, a former Central City cop who has the metahuman Canary Cry due to the particle accelerator explosion, is introduced to take up that mantle. At the end of her first episode (second counting her cameo at the end of the preceding one), she reveals that "Tina Boland" is just her undercover alias; her real name is Dinah Drake, making this an odd case of coming full circle.^note The same season that introduced Dinah also brought in an Evil Twin of Laurel, codenamed Black Siren, from a parallel Earth introduced during The Flash (2014), who eventually makes a Heel–Face Turn in Season Six and shares the Black Canary mantle with Dinah starting in Season Seven.
    • Edward Fyers' silent right-hand man wears a Deathstroke-styled costume, but after escaping him, Oliver meets and teams up with Deathstroke's civilian identity, Slade Wilson. In his second episode, Slade reveals that the man in the costume is William "Billy" Wintergreen, Slade's butler and comrade in the comics, here his partner who betrayed him to Fyers.
    • An unusual case occurs with Vigilante. In the comics, he's been various people, most notably Adrian Chase, but in Season Five of Arrow, Chase turns out to be an alias of Big Bad Prometheus, whose real name was never revealed in the comics and is given here as Simon Morrison. However, early in Season Six, Dinah Drake's old cop partner, Vincent Sobel, who was believed to have died years ago, is unmasked as Vigilante (this incarnation wears Adrian's suit from the comics, to add to the reveal).
    • In the 2018 crossover Elseworlds, the Flash of Earth-90 implies that his version of John Diggle was a Green Lantern. Eventually, it's revealed that John's stepfather is named General Roy Stewart, which means that if he hadn't rejected his stepfather's family name, Diggle would have been John Stewart. As Diggle was a Canon Immigrant who was brought into the comics before this, this led to Expy Coexistence in the comics. During the Grand Finale of Arrow, a Green Lantern ring comes to John, suggesting that he will don the mantle after all. He ultimately didn't, with some suggesting CW didn't have permission to use the character.
  • The Flash:
    • Dr. Harrison Wells, the Big Bad of Season One, appears at first to be an original character. However, it is later revealed that Wells is not only the Reverse-Flash but the original Reverse-Flash, Eobard Thawne, who stole the identity of the real Harrison Wells fourteen years before the events of the series. Word of God also confirms that Wells is the counterpart of both Dr. Robert Meersman and Dr. Garrison Slate, the founders of S.T.A.R. Labs in the comics. In Season Two, we are introduced to an Alternate Universe analogue of the real Wells, whose daughter is Jesse Quick, making him this universe's version of Johnny Quick.
    • The mysterious masked man from the second half of Season Two turns out to be none other than Jay Garrick, the original Flash in the comics. Furthermore, Jay is the Earth-3 doppelganger of Earth-1's Henry Allen, Barry's father. Meanwhile, Earth-2's "Jay Garrick" turns out to be the Big Bad Hunter Zolomon/Zoom putting on an act (and later making use of a time remnant to fake his death), making him, like "Adrian Chase" above, a different canonical character than the one he was presented as.^note This portrayal was a bit In Name Only by being more like the Rival (as a Velocity 9 powered speedster rather than having time slowing powers), the only thing in common with the original Zoom being the character's name and civilian identity.
    • Tom Felton joins the cast in Season Three as a young CSI named Julian Albert. In the seventh episode, Julian is revealed to be the civilian identity of Doctor Alchemy, The Dragon to the current Big Bad Savitar^note Although it turned out he wasn't voluntarily evil but was being possessed by Savitar all along., and in the ninth episode, his full name is revealed in a Freeze-Frame Bonus to be Julian Albert Desmond (Doctor Alchemy's real identity was Albert Desmond).
    • Savitar comes off as an In Name Only version of his comics counterpart, who was a long-haired, shirtless, and highly muscular Eastern European man with sparse red, gold, and black armour; this version looks more like a walking suit of silvery armour with glowing blue Tron Lines. However, there's one phrase he keeps repeating when confronted, and in the twentieth episode, it proves to be a Sarcastic Confession of his true identity: "I am the Future Flash." He's the show's version of Barry's evil future self from the New 52 comics, as hinted by the Tron Lines having the same design as they did on the comics' black Flash suit, and it's indicated that he merely took the name "Savitar" from myths about the God of Motion. He also proves to be a Decomposite Character, as in the preceding episode, Barry time travels to 2024 and meets his future self, who is not villainous; "Savitar" is a scarred time remnant of that Barry, representing all of the Future Flash's negative qualities.
    • Throughout Season 4, the members of Team Flash encounter a mysterious girl. It's eventually revealed that she's Barry and Iris's daughter from the future. She introduces herself as Nora West-Allen, indicating that she's the show's version of Nora Allen II from the Bad Future in the Justice League (Rebirth) storyline "Legacy". Then it turns out that she's also the show's version of XS, who in the comics was Jenni Ognats, Barry's granddaughter.
    • Inverted with Cicada, the Big Bad of Season Five. In the comics, he's a long-lived cult leader named David Hersch. Indeed, when Harrison Sherloque Wells takes the case, he quickly deduces Cicada's identity. Sherloque faked the deduction. He has managed to identify and capture Cicada on over 30 Earths, and it's always been, David Hersch. However, due to XS changing the timeline during the Season Four finale, Earth-1's Cicada is a Canon Foreigner named Orlin Dwyer. Instead of being merely a serial killer, like Hersch would have been, Dwyer is determined to wipe out all metahumans in the world. And Dwyer is only a Disc-One Final Boss. For the last stretch of the season, the future version of his niece Grace Gibbons, now Cicada II, is an even more powerful and ruthless (she murders Dr Ambrose, then her uncle when he tries to talk her down) version of the character.
    • The Once a Season analogue of Harrison Wells for Season Six is an Adventurer Archaeologist named Nash Wells who tries to prove that the Monitor is a false god and prophet. Crisis on Infinite Earths reveals he's the Arrowverse version of Pariah, whose origins also involve searching for "forbidden" knowledge. However, his role as the one who accidentally enters the antimatter universe and awakens the Anti-Monitor, due to his experiments with trying to see the birth of creation, is given to Mar Novu, the Monitor himself.
    • Zigzagged with Eva McCulloch. She’s initially set up as a straightforward adaptation of Evan McCulloch/Mirror Master but is eventually revealed to be a mirror clone created when the real Eva was killed years past. She then takes up the name Mirror Monarch, a 25th-century incarnation of Mirror Master in the comics.
    • In the first season, Eddie Thawne was a Canon Foreigner introduced as a romantic rival for Barry to compete against for Iris, before learning he was a present-day ancestor of Eobard Thawne and then killing himself to erase his descendant from history. He makes an unexpected come back in the show's final season, turning evil and being revealed to be an adaptation of Cobalt Blue (Malcolm Thawne in the comics, but not Barry's twin brother this time around).
  • Supergirl: Season Three features a sinister, nameless witch who exists as an interactive hologram and pushes Samantha Arias into becoming Reign, then further manipulates her and the other two Worldkillers to bring about the cleansing of Earth. In the twentieth episode, Kara and Mon-El arrive in Argo City, where the witch turns out to be alive, a member of the High Council, and named Selena; she's this universe's version of the Big Bad from the Supergirl movie.
  • Legends of Tomorrow:
    • After being resurrected, re-ensouled by John Constantine, and briefly rejoining Team Arrow, the aforementioned Sara Lance decides to leave her identity as "The Canary" behind and becomes the White Canary, an existing comics character who's usually villainous (and asian).
    • Ray Palmer's fiancée (later wife) in the comics is named Jean Loring. In Arrow, Jean was given an Age Lift and is the Queens' family friend and lawyer while Ray had a late fiancée named Anna instead. On Legends, he finally reveals Anna's surname as Loring, making her and Jean a Decomposite Character. The women's relationship is not stated, though.
  • Crisis on Earth-X: One of the new Reichman is called Prometheus, despite having little in common with the comic versions or Arrow's own Prometheus, aside from wearing the same costume as the latter. He is eventually unmasked as Tommy Merlyn's Earth-X counterpart, essentially filling the role of the evil Tommy from the New 52 comics.^note  A closer analogue to the New 52 Tommy Merlyn is eventually depicted as the Dark Archer of Earth-2 in the eighth season of Arrow, attempting to do the Undertaking his Earth-1 self's father Malcolm had previously attempted on Earth-1's Starling City.
  • Black Lightning:
    • Khalil Payne appears to be the average high school athlete who dreams of becoming a professional until a Dream-Crushing Handicap turns him into a paraplegic. However, thanks to the machinations of Tobias Whale, who provides him with reconstructive spinal surgery, Khalil returns as a Dreadlocked enforcer for Tobias with Super-Strength and wearing bracers firing anaesthetic needles, thus becoming the villain Painkiller, part of Black Lightning's rogues in the comics.
    • Lala appears to be nothing more than a drug dealer who works for Tobias. After getting arrested and killed, it looks like that's all there is to him. However, he returns, brought back to life thanks to Tobias and the money he put into researching resurrection, with the ability to gain the images of people he's killed tattooed into his skin. Tobias then gives him the name of the lesser known DC villain Tattooed Man.
  • Superman & Lois:
    • The character known in the first six episodes as "Captain Luthor" or "The Stranger" is revealed in Episode 7 to be John Henry Irons, a.k.a. Steel.
• Inverted in The Boys (2019), where it turns out that Black Noir is not who he was set up to be. Instead of being a clone of Homelander, he is a new character named Earving.
• In Cursed (2020), a loose reimagining of the Arthurian Legend, there are a few characters who seem to be Canon Foreigners, only to be revealed as classic Arthurian characters. This includes:
  • Igraine, Arthur's nun sister, explains soon after her introduction that her birth name is Morgana.
  • Squirrel, who in the Season 1 finale reveals his given name is Percival.
  • The Weeping Monk, who reveals at the end of Season 1 that he was once called Lancelot.
  • Although not mentioned on the show yet, the book Cursed is based upon reveals that the Red Spear's real name is Guinevere.
• In the Death Note live-action drama, the Task Force is joined by a former FBI agent named Shoko Himura. She is eventually revealed to be a Race Lifted version of Halle Lidner from the manga.
• Doom Patrol (2019):
  • In the third episode, the heroes meet a dorky but good-natured American tourist named Steven, who has come to Paraguay for a procedure that will grant him superpowers. He emerges from the transformation chamber in The Stinger, revealing himself to be the show's version of Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man.
  • When Cyborg is captured and taken to the Ant Farm in the twelfth episode, one of the superhuman prisoners he briefly encounters is a shaggy-haired man who has been there for decades and can't recall his name. The next episode reveals he's an amnesiac Flex Mentallo.
  • "Dead Patrol" has Rita meet a disfigured man in the afterlife who knows her, but she doesn't recognize him. It's later revealed he is this continuity's interpretation of Agent ! of the Brotherhood of Dada, here renamed the Sisterhood of Dada, with his scarred appearance explained in "Bird Patrol" as getting killed while wearing a mask based on Rita's appearance when she partially melts from losing her composure during her stint with the Sisterhood as an amnesiac time-traveler.
  • The second season introduces an actress named Isabel Feathers, who turns out in the fourth season to be the show's interpretation of General Immortus.
• The Exorcist initially seems to have little if any connection to the original films, until it's revealed that Angela Rance is Regan MacNeil and the "new" demon known as the Salesman is her old enemy, Pazuzu.
• When From Dusk Till Dawn was adapted into a television series, Jake Busey showed up early in season one as Professor Aiden Tanner. Professor Tanner never appeared in any of the films, so you could assume he's a Canon Foreigner. You can stop assuming a few episodes later when he shows up as the biker Sex Machine.
• Game of Thrones: Theon spends most of Season Three tortured by a nameless Bolton follower portrayed by Iwan Rheon. It isn't until the finale that he's finally called Ramsay, Roose Bolton's son.
• Fate: The Winx Saga: Throughout Season 1 it’s implied that Beatrix is a Composite Character of The Trix, due to the fact that she shares several aspects of the three witches in her character. Like Darcy’s personality and relationship with Riven, Icy’s fashion sense and color scheme and Stormy’s powers and appearance, when she disguised herself as a fairy in order to get back at Musa. However throughout Season 2 she is often fondly referred to by her Adoptive Father Andreas as Little Storm and at the end of Season 2 she finds out that she has 2 sisters, whose names are revealed in a Freeze-Frame Bonus to be Isobel and D’Arcy, which means that Beatrix is actually Stormy.
• Gotham:
  • In Season One, The Electrocutioner seemed to be a new creation, given his name of "Jack Gruber", much like Batman: The Animated Series creating Temple Fugate for its Clock King or Lois & Clark creating Kyle Griffin for its Prankster rather than respectively using the canonical William Tockman or Oswald Loomis. Then Jack's real name is revealed to be "Buchinsky", the last name of two of the canonical Electrocutioners in the comics (who are also brothers), meaning he's either the original undergoing Named by the Adaptation (as his first name was never revealed) or he's the third Electrocutioner, Lester, undergoing Adaptation Name Change with his first name.
  • In Season Two, Theo Galavan seems to be a brand-new villain invented for the show. Throughout his arc, nothing seems to change this, aside from having an association with the Secret Order of St. Dumas, his original family. Then the next Arc Villain brings him Back from the Dead, and his memories are kind of scrambled, leading to him taking on the identity of a mythical knight from his family's mythology...Azrael, another character connected to St. Dumas.
  • In the Season Three finale, Butch Gilzean, Fish Mooney's former lap dog turned Penguin's then turned Barbara's, has fallen into a coma, and the nurses discover that his real name is Cyrus Gold, a.k.a. Solomon Grundy. Sure enough, in the very next season, he returns as the famed villain.
  • Subverted with Ecco, who was introduced late into the fourth season, and started gradually exhibiting more and more characteristics of Harley Quinn, to the point where she's seemingly one Given Name Reveal away from being cemented as the show's incarnation of Harleen Quinzel. Then, in the series finale, after getting stabbed by Barbara Kean, she's shot to death by The Joker, with the implication that he would find another girl like her (i.e. the actual Harley) later in life.
  • Similarly, Mr Penn suddenly comes Back from the Dead with a dummy called Scarface and, despite his obvious physical resemblance to Arnold Wesker, is killed by Riddler in the same episode.
  • Secretary Walker turns out to be Nyssa al Ghul, filling a role similar to her sister Talia in The Dark Knight Rises. Perhaps less surprisingly, her heavy Eduardo is Bane — the fact his surname is "Durance" is a clue, but a fairly subtle one, since it's a name more associated with Bane's father Edmund Durance/King Snake than Bane himself, who in the comics just goes by Bane.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): At the end of Season 1, it's revealed that the vampire Armand (a major character in The Vampire Chronicles) is the true identity of the human servant Rashid.
• Episode 5 of Jupiter's Legacy opens with Sheldon Sampson talking with a therapist in what appears to be a therapist's office, setting it up as a framing device for the Union origin story flashback portions of the episode. The therapist himself appears to be just a random nameless bit character, however, the end of the episode reveals he's Jack Hobb –- a villain the Utopian fought and eventually re-habilitated in Jupiter's Circle, with the therapist's office being inside a cell in the Supermax.
• Kamen Rider Decade has a few subversions, although it can be handwaved because the heroes are travelling through The Multiverse and these characters are just Alternate Selves of the originals.
  • Eijiro Hikari, the Cloud Cuckoo Lander Team Dad of the heroes, is Shocker's Dr Shinigami, complete with his kaijin form, Ikadevil. It's implied however that he was just a guinea pig of the actual character, and Decade's Grand Finale movie shows that it's an identity that he doesn't want to go back to, although he gets kidnapped by the next character on this list and brainwashed.
  • Narutaki, the closest Decade has to a Big Bad, takes on the identity of Colonel Zol, another Shocker admin like Hikari. However, Narutaki is still a Non-Action Big Bad and never assumes Zol's werewolf form, making him just a flimsy Legacy Character. Then in Super Hero Taisen, he becomes yet another character, this time Destron's Doktor G from Kamen Rider V3, but unlike his Zol identity, he does transform into an updated version of G's kaijin form, Kani Laser.
  • Nobuhiko Tsukikage, Sayo's (Tsukasa's/Decade's younger sister) caretaker and usurper of Tsukasa's role as leader of Great Shocker is in fact Shadow Moon.
• Throughout the first season of Legion (2017), David is tormented by several psychic entities, including one that has assumed the guise of his friend Lenny, a monster called the Devil with the Yellow Eyes, a children's book character called the Angry Boy, and his childhood dog, King. In Episode 7, we find out that all of these individuals are forms of Amahl Farouk, a.k.a. the Shadow King, a prominent villain from the X-Men comics.
• The Season One finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reveals that The Stranger is one of the Istari (the Five Wizards), most likely but not confirmed to be Olorin (better known as Gandalf), and that Halbrand is Sauron.
• Inverted with Dr Smith in Lost in Space (2018), as she's not Dr. Smith, who was still male, but rather, pulled a Kill and Replace on him.
• From the TV sections of the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • Skye. Throughout the first season, she's a normal human hacker with a Mysterious Past. At the beginning of the second season, the team starts suspecting she may have an alien origin. But it isn't until the tenth episode that it's revealed that she is Daisy Johnson a.k.a. Quake, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent from the comics.
    • Andrew Garner, May's husband, is nothing more than a regular psychoanalyst and professor - until at some point between seasons 2 and 3 he became an Inhuman, a canonical supervillain named Lash (whose human identity in the comics is someone else, as with Deathlok).
    • Speaking of Deathlok, he was introduced in the very first episode as Mike Peterson, a factory worker given superpowers due to a modified version of the Extremis serum from Iron Man 3 called Centipede. He was captured by SHIELD and became a SHIELD agent until he was seemingly killed by Hydra and turned into a cyborg. His identity as Deathlok was not revealed until a close-up of one of his bionic parts showed that he was part of Project Deathlok.
    • In the first half of Season 3, the central plot is an attempt by HYDRA to bring back an ancient Inhuman banished to another planet thousands of years ago. Finally, the Inhuman possesses Ward, a SHIELD agent who turned out to be a HYDRA agent, and turns out to be the MCU version of Hive (with overtones of Apocalypse), making it a double case of the trope.
    • Anton Ivanov, the "Superior" of the Watchdogs, received a lot of build-ups, only to be ignored by Coulson (whom Ivanov considers his greatest foe) and soundly defeated by Daisy (whom Ivanov considers scum). Then Aida gets a hold of him and gives him a remote-operated LMD controlled by his severed head in a jar, revealing that he is Red Guardian. Part of this worked because the MCU averts One-Steve Limit; Ivanov is not the first character named Anton. And then in later episodes, he learns how to pilot multiple mobile LMD bodies at once, which he describes as "designed only for killing." So he's also the MCU's M.O.D.O.K.. (A further clue is that the current version of M.O.D.O.K. in the comics is a cloned brain of the original who was introduced as controlling an army of LMDs, and he calls himself M.O.D.O.K. Superior.). This leads to Expy Coexistence when M.O.D.O.K. makes his debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, although he's not George Tarleton but instead Darren Cross.
    • AIDA is already drawn from the comics for the fourth season, but late in the season, she traps the cast in a virtual simulation where she runs a tyrannical regime under a much better-known comics identity of Madame Hydra, and later escapes into the real world with this form, albeit now with Inhuman powers.
  • Nobu in Daredevil (2015): an episode late in the first season reveals that the organization he represents is the Hand, a clan of ninjas that often clash with Daredevil. His full name is later given as Nobu Yoshioka; in the comics, Kagenobu Yoshioka was the founder of the Hand, and true enough, he comes back as season 2's Big Bad.
  • Will Simpson in Jessica Jones (2015) seems to be an original character who wasn't based on any previous Marvel hero or villain. It's later revealed that he is the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Daredevil villain Nuke a.k.a. Frank Simpson.
  • Andre Deschaine in Cloak & Dagger (2018) turns out to be D'Spayre, sort of. He's a superhuman rather than a Fear Lord, but he has the same powers and a link to Tandy and Ty's origin.
  • In WandaVision, Wanda's Nosy Neighbor Agnes turns out to be the witch Agatha Harkness, who served as a mentor to Wanda in the comics. However, she has a more villainous role here, meddling in the plot of Wanda's sitcom reality for her own ends. The Reveal even calls this trope by name, courtesy of a Villain Song titled "Agatha All Along".
  • Hawkeye (2021):
    • In Episode Two, Clint's old Ronin suit gets taken by a firefighter who LARPs on his downtime and wanted a better costume for an upcoming session. After Clint finds him, he's revealed to be Grills, Clint's neighbour from the Matt Fraction/David Aja run of the comic.
    • Episode Three introduces the mysterious "Uncle", the leader of the Tracksuit Mafia in a flashback. For most of the series he seems to be The Ghost, until Episode Five "Ronin" reveals him to be none other than Wilson Fisk a.k.a The Kingpin.
  • Loki has an instance where a fictional character turns out to be a real person, TVA receptionist Casey was revealed in the second season to be real-life Alcatraz escapee Frank Morris.
    • The same episode contains an Easter Egg, revealing that Hunter B-15's real name was Verity Wills.
  • Moon Knight (2022):
    • Marc Spector's wife was changed from Marlene Alraune to Layla El-Faouly, becoming both an Action Girl and Egyptian like Moon Knight's origin. But the character's father, still a murdered archaeologist, being now named Abdallah El-Faouly hinted at what the character would become: Abdoul Faoul was the first Scarlet Scarab, and the season finale had Layla turning into that hero.
  • Ms. Marvel (2022): An item example with the bangle that Ms. Marvel wields to gain her powers; it swaps her and Captain Marvel in The Stinger, revealing it to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of the Nega-Bands that swapped Mar-Vell and Rick Jones in older comics.
  • Secret Invasion (2023) introduced Gravik, the leader of a group of rebel Skrulls, but seemingly an original Skrull created for the MCU's canon. However, midway through the series, he infuses himself with a combination of different DNA sources, becoming the MCU's version of Super-Skrull (with the Fantastic Four powers replaced with those of objects originating within the MCU such as samples from Groot, the severed arm of Cull Obsidian from Avengers: Infinity War, DNA from an Ice Beast from Thor: The Dark World, and the Extremis formula from Iron Man 3).
• The Portal Book series Maria Clara at Ibarra gives focus on Fidel Reyes y Maglipol being an anomaly in the Rizal novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo towards the end of the show, with her him being an amnisiac visitor from the real world like protagonist Klay being a Red Herring. It's eventually revealed that he actually is a childhood friend of novel protagonist Crisostomo Ibarra mentioned passingly in the early parts of Noli. His vastly increased role is due to his interactions with Klay.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: Applied Experimental Technologies, the morally dubious tech corporation that May used to work for under new character Brenda Holland, until May eventually discovered that they were secretly running cruel experiments on chimps to develop Electronic Telepathy technology; as revealed in May's backstory in "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?". In the episode's Wham ending, the company is rebranded Apex Cybernetics, the not-so-well-intentioned Evil, Inc. who create Mechagodzilla and cause the conflict of Godzilla vs. Kong, making this an Origins case of this trope.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • August Wayne Booth is a mysterious character who's implied at various points to be the Author and Baelfire, or possibly an actual Canon Foreigner, but the end of Season One reveals he's none of those; he's a grown-up Pinocchio, coming to Storybrooke after magic returning to the world means his curse activates and he starts turning back into a puppet for being selfish.
  • Part of Rumpelstiltskin's backstory involves his neglectful Resentful Guardian of a father, Malcolm. Malcolm is revealed in the third season to be the adult counterpart of Peter Pan.
  • While most of the characters, settings, and storylines have been derived from fairy tales and myths, the Dark One's dagger seems for most of the show to be an original creation. However, it's revealed in the fifth season that the dagger was fashioned from the broken blade of Excalibur.
• The second season of the horror Massive Multiplayer Crossover Penny Dreadful reveals that the werewolf Ethan Chandler was actually born Ethan Lawrence Talbot.
• Power Rangers
  • Nate is just another Mission Control member and creator of the Rangers' tech in Power Rangers Beast Morphers until he gets kidnapped by the bad guys and becomes the PR equivalent to Beet Buster, the Gold Beast Morpher Ranger.
    • This gets one-upped by the end of the second season. The team captures Evox and tries to destroy him, but he escapes into the computers of Grid Battleforce HQ. Instead of going to the Morph-X towers, he heads to Nate's Ranger Vault...and the suitcase containing the Ranger Series Morphers. It turns out that Evox is RPM's Big Bad Venjix!
  • So, Power Rangers Mystic Force introduces the new Big Good the Mystic Mother. So far, so good- wait, she looks quite a bit like the Big Bad of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Rita Repulsa, doesn't she? Because she is a Heel-Face Turned Rita!
• Riverdale:
  • Inverted with Miss Grundy, who turns out to be an impostor who stole her current identity from a dead woman of the same name.
  • Zigzagged with the man who attacked Fred in the Season One finale. Season Two reveals that the assailant is the show's version of Black Hood, but it turns out that his true identity isn't anyone who took on the mantle of the Black Hood in the comics, but rather fellow canonical character Hal Cooper.
• Molly's colleague Jim in Sherlock seems like an ineffectual Straight Gay background character, until it's revealed that his last name is Moriarty.
• Smallville:
  • Zig-Zagged with Chloe Sullivan who, when she writes her first piece for the Daily Planet, uses her cousin's Lois Lane's name as her nom de plume - setting up that Chloe is the Smallville-verse Lois. But later in the series, Lois properly shows up. Chloe becomes the series' version of Oracle instead.
  • Tess Mercer is eventually and gradually revealed to be a Composite Character of Eve Tessmacher, Lena Luthor, Mercy Graves and Big Barda.
  • Davis Bloome, a love interest of Chloe's, is revealed to be the mortal form of Doomsday, with Doomsday being a Superpowered Evil Side.
  • Also inverted: after spending several seasons with Jimmy Olsen, he's killed off and we find out that his hereto unseen brother will become the canonical character. As it turns out, the name he was identified by was his middle name, his first name was Henry. His younger brother has the actual canonical name.
  • In the final season, Tess adopts a young clone of Lex known as LX-15 in hopes of him avoiding the same path as his donor as he ages rapidly into a teenager. At first, it seems he's going to be the new Lex Luthor but eventually becomes scared of what he's becoming and gives in. Tess tries to end his suffering by injecting cyanide but finds his skin is invulnerable. After more tests and his memories as LX-15 disappear, it turns out he has Clark Kent's DNA. He adopts a new, friendly attitude and is welcomed by Clark with a new name: Conner Kent.
• The Spartacus series:
  • The gladiators' Drill Sergeant Nasty mentor throughout Season One is revealed to be Oenomaus, one of Spartacus' historical generals.
  • The show features one Rebel Leader named Agron. His name is not in the historical records and the show is only missing Castus. Many thought that either Castus was Adapted Out or Adaptation Name Change was in play until the final season confirms that he is a Decomposite Character of Castus, who appeared as an In Name Only Sixth Ranger to the rebels.
• Watchmen (2019) focuses on a Tulsa policewoman named Angela Abar. While she isn't a case, at first, it seems that her grandfather, Will Reeves, and husband, Cal, are created for the series like her. However, Will and Cal are this trope as "This Extraordinary Being" and "An Almost Religious Awe" reveal they're respectively Hooded Justice and Dr Manhattan.
• In the "Terra Firma" two-parter of Star Trek: Discovery, Burnham and Georgiou encounter a mysterious man named Carl, who knows things about them that he shouldn't, guards a door in the middle of nowhere, and has unknown powers. Between the two parts, there was much fan argument about who he might be, the most popular suggestions being that he was a Q. After he sends Georgiou to the Mirror Universe and back as a Secret Test of Character, he finally decides to reveal himself...
  Burnham: Who are you? Really?
  Carl: Really? (voice changes and echoes) I AM THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER. (the door explodes into splinters that rapidly form the Guardian's donut-shaped portal)

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