Troperville
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There is absolutely nothing suspicious about me.
His needs are few, his room is bare.
He hardly uses his fancy chair.
The more he bleeds, the more he lives,
He never forgets and he never forgives.
Perhaps today you gave a nod,
To Sweeney Todd.
The demon barber of Fleet Street.
— Stephen Sondheim, The Ballad of Sweeney Todd (finale).
The devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn't exist...
Someone who is so obviously up to no good that the one character who seems aware of it is shocked no one else seems to notice. Everyone else may just consider them a little quirky and wonder what the observant character's problem is.
Less extreme than the Villain With Good Publicity, who is thought of highly by most people; the Devil In Plain Sight is mostly met with inattentive indifference. May also be a Bitch In Sheeps Clothing. Might also be a case of Notice This (for the audience only).
Too Dumb To Fool can be their most dangerous enemies.
Compare with It Was Here I Swear, Not So Imaginary Friend, Mistaken For An Imposter. Contrast They Look Just Like Everyone Else.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Light from Death Note
- Guu in Haré+Guu.
- Hiruma from Eyeshield 21 plays with this trope; he's a conniving, scheming, trigger-happy Magnificent Bastard and doesn't care who knows it (his name can even be read as "devil in broad daylight"). Also, he avoids repercussions for his actions not by avoiding or sucking up to authority figures, but by blackmailing them.
- Somewhat subverted in the manga version of Neon Genesis Evangelion; Asuka is always nice to all the NERV staff, but with Shinji, Rei, Toji and Kensuke she is her usual, bitchy self. She keeps up this act for a while until, during a party, she punches out Toji in front of Misato after he starts revealing all her past angry outbursts. Misato then admits that they always knew that Asuka was faking her more amiable personality, prompting her to go ballistic... on Shinji.
- Parodied in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei with Mitama Mayo, who is evil, but because she also looks evil everyone who sees her decides not to prejudge and assumes she's not evil. Eventually even Itoshiki gets pulled into it, and decides there's nothing wrong with her.
- Xelloss of Slayers. Even though the whole party knows he's a demon, no one seems to mind him much - and that's despite his gruesome Kick The Dog record.
- Slightly adverted as, once they know he's evil, they only keep him around because he's so strong and regularly helps them out, when it overlaps with his goals/ is bored.
- Also the fact he's so strong there isn't much they can do about him, short of risking blowing up the universe. That it's Xelloss' eventual goal and Lina can do it may be part of the reason he likes hanging with her.
- Nobody in Mai-Otome except for Chie seems to suspect anything of #2 Coral Tomoe, even though the latter's sarcastic tone of voice (and occasional smirk, even in front of the teachers) is often blatantly obvious.
- Ichimaru Gin from Bleach lays on his smiling, close-eyed, soft-spoken personality so thick that it's no wonder some people immediately figure out he's evil. In a way, this actually works to distract almost everyone from the machinations of the true Big Bad, Captain Aizen.
- Bakura is this to a huge degree in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. His introduction scene is complete with Ominous Latin Chanting and when asked to show his favourite card, he whips out a picture of Sephiroth before hastily replacing it.
- And what about Alex Brisbane? Mr "I'm Most Definitely Not A Villain"? Fortunately he only has to trick Tristan, Tea, Joey and Yugi. Which isn't exactly difficult.
- And then there's
Marik Ishtar "Malik Blishtar"...
Joey: [thinking] I still think there's something fishy about that guy...
Marik: Wahahaha! Destroy you all!
Joey: [thinking] Man, if I could only put my finger on it...
- Reborn and Hibari of Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Reborn's 'disguises' are just plain ridiculous but only Tsuna can ever seem to realise who he is. And Hibari...
Comic Books
Film
- Tom Riddle. Professor Slughorn, please take a good close look at this kid. Now please, put the ball away and take another look, this time a careful one. Now you see it? Good. Then please, do the world a favor - incinerate this godless hellspawn and save us all a heap of troubles. Thank you, professor.
- Rhoda Penmark in Bad Seed personifies this trope.
- Patrick Bateman from American Psycho — despite the fact that he directly tells his friends that he is a sadistic serial killer.
- Dr. Reinhardt from The Black Hole. Even though the "heroes" suspect, they don't suspect hard enough. What makes it even more jarring is Reinhardt's explicitly evil robot Dragon Maximilian, who manages to stir up little additional suspicion. (The title of this trope is justified by this horrifically bad movie's astonishingly bad closing sequence, by the way.)
- Virtually all of the people Bruce Willis' character has psychic flashes about in Unbreakable are seemingly ordinary people who have done or are looking to do bad things. The two biggest cases being a janitor who is a Serial Killer (who also doubles as a rapist), and his own Broken Pedestal mentor.
- The main character of There Will Be Blood is clearly one of these, complete with the Meaningful Name of Daniel Plainview.
- How much better his enemies the Sundays are is up to debate. At least until the bodies begin piling up.
- "Would you like to hear the story of Right Hand and Left Hand, of Love and Hate?"
- Simon Skinner, owner of the local supermarket in Hot Fuzz. He often behaves extraordinarily creepy around Sergeant Nick Angel, having a bit of a Psychotic Smirk, making puns about killing and showing up around the murder scenes. The fact that the murders committed lead Angel to believe that Skinner is responsible in order to get more land for his supermarket doesn't help either (though that wasn't the true nature. Turns out Angel's only part right.)
- Then there's the wonderful scene where Skinner drives up to a burnt down house with a song about fire playing loudly on his card radio.
- In fact, every time Skinner turns up there's a song that's related to the murder. His drive past the scene of the "traffic collision" features Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits.
- Henry from The Good Son could be considered this, seeing his robot voice makes even his bogus innocent act seem... well, bogus. But, of course, even his parents can't see this...
Literature
- Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov is really just thought of as a skullion who has airs of intellectualism about him, and who carries blasphemous notions about religion. He's also thought of as pathetic to others because he suffers from epileptic seizures. The idea of him being the murderer is absurd to everyone in town for these reasons, yet he is. Only the protagonist seems to have any deep misgivings about him. I mean come on, he even flashes Psychotic Smirks whenever given the chance.
- Count Olaf of A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Though the Baudelaire orphans always see through his flimsy disguises, none of the adults ever believe them.
- Reacher Gilt in Going Postal remarks on the fact that he actually tells people he's one of these and they just laugh.
- Reversed with Redwall's Veil Sixclaw. Everyone except his foster-mother Bryony realises that he's a delinquent and guess that it was him when an Abbeydweller is nearly killed. Ironically, it's heavily implied that if they'd treated him as if he was normal, he'd have grown up okay. But then they are mice trying to raise a ferret.
- Don Sebastiano (that's his chosen codename) of the Whateley Universe. I mean, he's known as 'The Don', he turned two teenagers into mindslaves last year, and he's still walking around campus as the head of the Alphas. Yet no one in the school administration seems to realize how badly he needs to be stopped.
- Actually, they DO know.... even the Headmistress is fully aware. But they're keeping him on because he is the only link they have to the real, as of yet unknown, mastermind behind his actions....
- This is inverted in the Harry Potter novels. Harry is utterly convinced that Snape is a terrible villain, but nobody believes him except his friends. Eventually, even they stop believing him. This continues until Snape kills Dumbledore, but is then subverted again when it is revealed that this was a mercy killing, agreed to well in advance, due to Dumbledore suffering under a terrible, incurable, and fatal curse.
Live Action TV
- The iconic television DiPS: Eddie Haskell of Leave It To Beaver. Prim and polite to adults, a bullying troublemaker to everyone else. Ward Cleaver to June: "There's something odd about that boy." Beaver to Eddie: "Even Wally doesn't like you, Eddie, and he's your best friend."
- The film revealed that Mrs. Cleaver knew about Eddie all along.
- Megan on Drake And Josh, to the point where it's not funny anymore and you would feel no remorse in watching her being torn limb from limb by a pack of rabid wolves.
- The Janitor on Scrubs.
- Actually, everybody seems to know the Janitor is weird, but they let him be, either because of amusement or boredom. This trope was more true in the earlier seasons, but then again, he only picked on JD and was relatively nice to everyone else.
- Dexter stays well under everyone else's "something's not right with him" radar, except for Doakes. Dexter comments at one point about being in a room full of police officers and Doakes being the only one who has any sort of sense of something wrong about him.
- Done again in Season 3 with Miguel Prada, the local DA, who only Dexter suspects of sinister urges. It turns out that Dexter underestimates the degree of his sociopathy and has to kill him.
- The one-season wonder '80s sitcom It's Your Move featured Jason Bateman as a manipulative teenaged con artist whose single mom was (initially, at least) blissfully unaware of his intrigues. The first dozen or so episodes dealt with his efforts to prevent the mother's equally devious boyfriend from exposing him. When she finally got wise to him, the show's whole comedic premise was effectively retooled (and, arguably, ruined).
- Laurence Dominic on Dollhouse. In episode 5, he tries to kill Echo. In episode 9, he is revealed to be the mole. Note that at the time of the episode's airing, the Dollhouse WMG page had
eight different guesses eight guesses as to the identity of the mole, only one of which was a repeat, and yet no one had bothered to guess that it was Dominic. Because we're too Genre Savvy to fall for such an obvious Red Herring...yeah.
- Oddly enough, the Devil in Reaper frequently exemplifies this trope.
- Subverted and parodied so very hard in the Blackadder Goes Forth episode "General Hospital"; a German spy has infiltrated a nearby field hospital and Blackadder is assigned to find out who it is. In the field hospital, he meets a wounded man with a German accent so thick it could be spread on bread ("My name... eeeees Meeeiiiister... Smeeeeth.") who's always skulking around acting suspicious. Turns out he is a spy... a British spy, who's been undercover in Germany so long he's picked up "a teensy bit of an accent". Blackadder even lampshades how ludicrous it would be for the Germans to place in a British field hospital a spy with a thick German accent. This doesn't stop Darling from humiliating himself by trying to arrest him, however.
Newspaper Comics
- Little brother Barry in the comic strip Curtis. While the creator clearly intends for Barry to be a stereotypically bratty little brother to Curtis, his actions are so frequently mean-spirited (and of a "because I can get away with it" bent), he ends up a Scrappy-Doo-flavored DiPS.
Video Games
- Gary Smith in Bully. Despite how often he's told lies in the past, everyone still takes his word for it, apart from Jimmy and Pete.
- Manfred von Karma from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. The thing most characters in-game focus on when discussing him is his incredible record as a prosecutor, but... frankly, the guy may as well have 'evil' stamped across his forehead. And then he talks, and it just gets worse.
- Al-Mualim from Assassins Creed. Despite every target telling Altair he's lying or using him and there never being any explanations for anything, everyone pretends to be surprised when he turns out to be the Big Bad.
- Tanaka of Persona 3 is much like this, particularly with the fact that he is represented as the Devil Arcana.
- Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic.
- Actually both games have a whole bunch of examples. Atris also in the second game, and if the player goes evil, other characters mistake them as such. And then there's the player in the first game, with a twist. Bastila sort of counts too, since it's obvious going to go evil from the start, although she doesn't really qualify as she was turned later on. And Revan and Malak, back when they were Jedi (and everyone who turned with them).
- In Wallace And Gromit's Grand Adventures: The Last Resort, Ms. Flit's cutesy dogs Poodgie-Woo and Tinkie-Wee are quickly revealed to be ill-tempered, mischievous mongrels with a collective mean streak twice as long as your arm.
- Michelle in Grand Theft Auto IV. From the newly bought furniture to her not really answering Niko's questions as to what she does to her near-constant questions asking if Niko and friends are involved in crime, it's pretty obvious that she's really an undercover government agent...well, obvious to everyone except for the in-game characters. Although Niko does occasionally comment "There's something strange about that girl..." right after they have sex.
Web Comics
Web Original
- In A Very Potter Musical, Quirrell/Voldemort are played by two people standing back-to-back in the same set of robes. Quirrel's turban covers Voldemort's head, but it looks exactly like what it is: a second head, covered by a turban. Also, the turban occasionally sneezes. Needless to say, this is played for laughs.
Western Animation
- Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends: "Everyone Knows It's Bendy" revolves around a new friend, Bendy, who goes around making trouble, blaming it on others, and getting away with it by playing on the sympathies of Mr. Herriman and Frankie in a painfully melodramatic fashion.
- Zim in Invader ZIM.
- Lampshaded in a sense, as Dib has apparently cried wolf so many times that the rest of the class seems to ignore the obvious signs to spite him (also because their world is full of ridiculous people like Old Kid and because everyone is remarkably stupid).
- Angelica of Rugrats, though occasionally she did get caught.
- Stewie on Family Guy. It probably helps that no one expects
a toddler an infant to be an Evil Overlord wannabe.
- Joe from Moral Orel is an all around hellion and sociopath, yet nobody with the exception of the main character seems to make much of a fuss about it.
- "The Precious, Wonderful, Adorable, Loveable Duckling" from the Courage The Cowardly Dog episode of the same name.
- Suzy Johnson, Jeremy's clingy, Creepy Child little sister from Phineas And Ferb.
- Ivy DeVil, Cruella's niece in 101 Dalmatians.
- Soundwave of Transformers Animated definitely fits this troup in his premire episode. Bulkhead spends half the episode trying to convince everyone else that the robot is evil. Guess who was right.
- Shockwave/Longarm is an even better example, having risen to a high commanding position within the Autobot ranks.
- Although given he's a shapeshifter it's arguable how much he really is in "Plain sight".
- They are called Transformers technically, they are ALL shapeshifters!
- The anonymous bunny in the Ruby Gloom episode "Bad Hare Day".
- Comic: "I Luv Halloween". A black comedy of the darkest kind. About a group of amoral trick-or-treaters who want their Halloween candy even in the midst of an alien invasion and zombie apocaypse. One of the characters is Devil-lad, a hooded young boy wearing a devil's mask who patiently goes along with the group's crazy hijinks. The other trick-or-treaters note he smells like sulfur. Proven in the second volume, when he nonchalently rises from a crater after being in the middle of a nuclear explosion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxDZ7DQmYwA&feature=related
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