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Obvious Villain, Secret Villain

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Derek: You're really stumped, aren't you? You know there's two killers but you don't know who they are. I'm a given. The boyfriend. Way obvious. But now you're torn. Everyone else appears to be dead. Except for Cotton. Hmmm? Hmmm?
Suddenly, Hallie comes to life behind Sid, reaching out, grabbing her. Sid JUMPS. She spins around to find Hallie breaking out in a torrent of GIGGLES. Very much alive.
— Scream 2, dummy or early script

The Mole can make for powerful storytelling, but only if it's given time to develop: the bad guy has to spend some time pretending to be good before The Reveal, in order to build up its impact. However, if the mole is the Big Bad or an otherwise top-tier villain, this leaves a hole in the story: while the mole is still hidden, who's the antagonist of the story? The obvious solution is to introduce another bad guy to fill that role up until the reveal. Once the mole has been exposed, this supplementary villain may be disposed of through plot, or may turn out to be a minion of the newly-designated Big Bad.

Or they may not. Perhaps there are now two prime villains, and they'll enter into a Villain Team-Up. Or perhaps they've been a Big Bad Duumvirate all along and Two Dun It. One might even be working for the other, although to qualify for this trope they'd likely have to be the Dragon, especially if they're a Dragon with an Agenda or Dragon-in-Chief. Or it could be the case of Big Bad Ensemble where two villains are opposing the protagonist(s) but they are not working together or even aware of each other's existence. Even if they're not working together directly, it shouldn't be a case of ongoing Evil Versus Evil, so that they can both present unmitigated threats to the protagonists. May cause a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness situation.

Essentially, this trope is the pairing of two villains of roughly equal caliber: one whose evil is hidden from the characters and/or the audiences, the other Obviously Evil (in deed if not appearance). Note that the identity of the obvious villain doesn't, strictly speaking, have to be known; it's just that the villain has to be identifiably a villain from the get-go. Similarly, the secret villain doesn't have to be hiding as one of the protagonists, but does need to be a known character before their villainous nature is revealed. Essentially, the individual identity of the former doesn't qualify as The Reveal, while that of the latter does.

If the secret villain fulfills their villain role in the story even before their identity is revealed, then they also qualify as a Hidden Villain. If the truth about them comes to light after the obvious villain has been defeated, that's Disc-One Final Boss.

This is a Super-Trope. Its Sub-Tropes include:

This is naturally a spoiler trope, so beware of unmarked spoilers!

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach:
    • In the "Tale of the Lost Agent" arc, Tsukishima is the obvious villain, who goes around attacking and applying Mind Rape to Ichigo's friends, forcing him to work with Xcution to develop his Fullbringer powers in order to protect them. And then it turns out that Xcution just wants to steal Ichigo's powers, and that their leader, The Mole Kugo Ginjo, has been working with Tsukishima all along to manipulate Ichigo. Interestingly, Tsukishima spends a lot of time playing The Mole himself; he uses his powers to insert false memories of himself into Ichigo's friends and family, making them think he is Ichigo's dear cousin. But because Ichigo, and thus the audience, know who Tsukishima is well before he takes up this act, his villainy is never a secret.
    • Much earlier, there is a more ambiguous case. When Ichigo and his friends go to the Soul Society to rescue Rukia, they quickly identify the sly, sinister Gin Ichimaru as bad news. Only later is it revealed that the saintly Sosuke Aizen, who was thought dead, is in fact the true villain behind the entire fiasco, while Gin is one of his Co-Dragons. Fast forward a long ways in the plot, and it turns out that Gin is a Dragon with an Agenda; specifically, he wants to kill Aizen as revenge for an event in their past.
  • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Walpurgisnacht and her fellow Witches are the obvious villains who are threatening humanity; in addition are the Dark Magical Girls Homura Akemi and Kyoko Sakura, who get in the way of Madoka and her group for their own reasons. The hidden villain is Kyubey, the Mentor Mascot who is actually an alien Hive Mind and the one turning magical girls into witches so as to use their despair to power the universe.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Alan Jonah was set up to be a clear and direct antagonist from the first chapter, as the unrepentant monster from canon who's holding San's head and Vivienne's fusing body captive, but the true Big Bad turning out to be a resurrecting Ghidorah was probably quite a surprise.
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: In the non-canon story "Nightmares Yet to Come", the story begins with Trixie and Twilight being abducted by a group of ponies. The next chapter introduces Spell Nexus, who in the fic this fic is inspired by was the Big Bad. And sure enough, he turns out to be a villain here... as do several other incidental characters who show up through the next two chapters.
  • Total Drama: Battle of the Generations: The obvious villain is Amy, who has somehow gotten even nastier following Pahkitew Island and dedicating herself solely to making Sammy's life miserable, even going so far as to get Cody eliminated after his and Sammy's Relationship Upgrade and telling Sammy that she wished she died in the womb. The hidden villain is Dave, who worms his way into Amy and Sugar's alliance and has them eliminate Shawn out of jealousy that Shawn managed to get together with Jasmine while he failed to do so with Sky, gives Amy the idea to eliminate Cody to spite Sammy in the first place, and then double-crosses the two of them after hearing the two of them trash talk him, resulting in Amy's elimination.
  • Who Framed Kermit the Frog: In this Muppets version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Lord Jareth is the obvious villain, being the Judge Doom of the story. But in a surprise twist, the Marvin Acme of the story, Rachel Bitterman, turns out to be Faking the Dead and is working with Jareth in a scheme to exterminate all of Muppet-kind.

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • All the Boys Love Mandy Lane: Exploited. Nerdy Emmett is revealed as the killer early as he's shown brutally killing his way through the party. But Mandy is also revealed to be his accomplice, who has been hidden in plain sight.
  • Black Christmas (2019): The fraternity are already pretty crappy when it's clear they covered up Riley's rape. Then the sorority sisters see them breaking in and killing people. But the sorority themselves has one Token Evil Teammate, Helena, who betrayed her sisters to them. Although she is swiftly dispatched.
  • Charlie's Angels (2000): The appropriately named Creepy Thin Man is the obvious villain, having two encounters with the Angels and supposedly serving as an enforcer to whomever ordered Eric Knox abducted for his new software. At first the Angels, and by proxy the audience, is led to believe that the Big Bad is Redstar CEO Roger Corwin. However, Corwin is revealed to be a Red Herring: the secret villain is Knox himself who faked his own abduction as part of a plan to find and murder the Angels' boss Charlie.
  • Copycat: The opening scene introduces Darryl Lee Callum, a Serial Killer who tries to kill Helen but is stopped from doing so. While he causes her agoraphobia, he then behaves as just a menacing backdrop while Helen tries to find the copycat killer Peter Foley, who is revealed to the audience but not the characters. While it's vaguely implied that Callum and Foley communicated, it's never specifically answered how or why (perhaps as a Sequel Hook), leaving them as this trope.
  • The Dark Knight Rises: Bane is the apparent leader of the League of Shadows from the start. The true leader is Ra's al-Ghul's daughter Talia (mentions of her before The Reveal skipped gender-specific words so viewers could assume they were about Bane right along with Batman), who's infiltrated Wayne Enterprises as executive Miranda Tate.
  • The party in The Gamers: Dorkness Rising are originally enlisted by the King to stop the evil Mort Kemnon from using the Mask of Death to overthrow the kingdom and topple the goddess Therinn, whose church lends them support and healing items. Once Mort Kemnon has been dealt with and the Mask retrieved, however, they are contacted by the Hierophant, leader of the Church, who demands they give the artifact to him directly, at first claiming he'll hand it to the King himself, then that he wishes to destroy it, and then flies into a rage when they refuse to trust him with it. Turns out he wants the Mask for himself to become the Lord over both Life AND Death, as he'd already imprisoned Therinn in her own divine talisman and used the people's fear of Mort Kemnon to expand the church's power and control, and thus becomes the Party's true enemy and the final boss of the adventure.
  • Get Out (2017): It's clear from the beginning that Dean, Missy, and Jeremy are bad news, as a bunch of Affably Evil and Faux Affably Evil manipulators with a streak of Mad Doctor. But Rose is supposed to be the Token Good Teammate. Except that she is also the secret villain, both to Chris and the audience, who reveals herself only at the last moment when Chris finds her Evidence Dungeon.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The eco-terrorists' Big Bad Duumvirate. Alan Jonah, introduced massacring a Monarch outpost including a surrendering scientist in cold blood, is a former colonel and MI6 agent gone rogue, and Monarch have had trouble with him before which makes him known to them, as depicted in supplementary materials. His co-conspirator, however, is a complete surprise to everyone: Emma Russell is a highly-respected member of Monarch's own, a family member to two of the movie's main human heroes, and seemingly a Kidnapped Scientist, but then it's revealed that she's willingly been in cahoots with Jonah since before the movie's start, to the shock and initial confusion of the rest of the cast.
  • Hot Fuzz: Exploited. Simon Skinner is introduced as the main suspect behind mysterious deaths happening within the town, passing by the crime scenes while driving menacingly and playing Surprisingly Apropos Music. However, it turns out he is the decoy to take the heat, and only one of many in the Big Bad Ensemble, with Chief Frank Butterman being their leader.
  • Iron Man 3: Aldrich Killian (the real Big Bad of the movie) and "the Mandarin" (actually a drunken British character actor named Trevor Slattery whom Killian hired to impersonate the actual Mandarin and mask his own illegal activities) use this as part of a ploy.
  • James Bond:
    • In The World Is Not Enough, the obvious villain is the Implacable Man Renard, who seems to be behind the death of Sir Robert King and is now targeting his daughter Elektra, having kidnapped her years before, prompting M to assign Bond to protect Elektra... except that Renard's actually working for Elektra, who's out for revenge on her father and M for not paying the ransom when Renard kidnapped her.
    • In Die Another Day, Gustav Graves is the obvious villain, with the twist that he's also Colonel Moon, the apparent Starter Villain Bond was pursuing in the Action Prologue before being set up and captured. Bond investigates him together with MI6 agent Miranda Frost and NSA agent Jinx, but Frost turns out to be the secret villain; she's been The Dragon to Graves all along, and was the one who set Bond up at the start of the film.
  • Kingsman: The Golden Circle: The remaining Kingsman agents (Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry) team up with their American equivalent, Statesman, to stop drug lord Poppy Adams' plan that involves killing the world's drug addicts on a mass scale. When they have a chance to disperse an antidote to her toxin, they are stopped by Statesman Agent Whiskey, who is more than happy to let all the addicts die (his wife had been accidentally killed by junkies during a robbery), and he fights them over control of the antidote.
  • The Lost Boys: For most of the film it's assumed that the Big Bad is David, the leader of the gang of biker vampires. Only at the end do we learn that David is actually The Dragon to Max, the affable, mild-mannered video store owner who becomes the heroes' mother's love interest.
  • Mission: Impossible III: Davian, the apparent Big Bad, is a sadistic Arms Dealer who is clearly evil and an utter monster. However, it's revealed during the climax that his partner and mole in the IMF is Ethan's seemingly good-natured friend and boss Musgrave, who's working with him to kickstart a war in the Middle East.
  • Predators: The main group of soldiers are whittled down by a Predator team led by the Berserker, who serves as the Final Boss for Royce, Isabel and Edwin. As Royce teams with an older Predator to outmaneuver the Berserker, Isabel is ambushed by Edwin, who reveals that his cover as a meek doctor is a ruse: he's actually a Serial Killer, and overjoyed to be on a planet filled with monsters like him.
  • Promising Young Woman: Cassie knows that Al raped Nina, drove her to suicide, and faced no consequences. She even knows who bullied Nina (Madison) and who made sure Nina never got justice (Jordan and Dean Walker). She doesn't know that Ryan, who has re-entered her life and become her boyfriend was there and filmed Nina being raped.
  • Scream:
    • Exploited in Scream (1996). Billy Loomis, Sidney's dark and brooding boyfriend, is set up to be the killer; he acts suspiciously and he - gasp! - has a cell phone, which he reveals after Sidney's already got a harassing call from Ghostface. And he is the killer. But, in what was a totally new twist for slashers at the time, there are two killers - Billy and his accomplice Stu, a funny class clown.
    • Subverted in Scream 2 despite providing the page quote. That quote doesn't come from the movie, but from an either early draft or dummy draft depending on who you listen to. The killer Mickey wants Sidney to believe that Derek is the obvious villain, but he is genuinely innocent.
  • Sleepy Hollow: The Headless Horseman goes around killing the residents of the town to recover his head after he was decapitated by revolutionaries using his own sword in the Revolutionary War. However, Ichabod Crane and the other residents of Sleepy Hollow are initially unaware that the Horseman is controlled by someone else. That someone is none other than Katrina's stepmother Lady Van Tassel.
  • In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the obvious villain is General Chang, played by Christopher Plummer in full Evil Is Hammy mode. Everyone else involved in his conspiracy is a secret villain, with the most notable amongst them being Valeris, who is portrayed as a helpful ally up until the reveal.
  • The Stepford Wives: The rest of the Men's Association are pretty clearly villains, with their braindead, old-fashioned wives and passive sexism towards Joanna. However, Joanna is horrified to discover that her own husband Walter has been recruited as one of them. Whether or not the audience shares her surprise is debatable.

    Literature 
  • This is pulled off twice in The Chosen (1997):
    • Rashel and the Lancers are aware from the start that Quinn is involved in the vampire slave ring, though they guess he's working for someone else. Nearly halfway through, Rashel learns that he's The Heavy to Lily Redfern.
    • In the climax, Lily becomes the Obvious Villain, with not even Quinn or her other subordinates knowing she's acting on her father Hunter's orders until this moment. It's justified as Hunter is an Elder and is supposed to be a figure of respectability to the Night World, so it would be damaging for him to blatantly break the rules until he had supporters to back him up.
  • Dark Places: Diondra is an unstable, drunken, extremely angry, and often-abusive girlfriend to Ben so it's not a big surprise that she would kill Michelle when Michelle found out she was pregnant and threatened to tell. It is a surprise that Calvin Diehl, a character who had until then been described as a myth, was actually real and had been recruited by Patty (although with the best of intentions) to kill her on that very same night as an insurance scam.
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire both feature Voldemort as the obvious Greater-Scope Villain whose involvement in the plot is revealed relatively early on, while his plans are carried out by his secret agents at Hogwarts, Professor Quirrell and Barty Crouch Jr. disguised as Mad-Eye Moody respectively. To further obfuscate their involvement, both books had red herrings in the form of Severus Snape and Igor Karkaroff, respectively.
  • I Hunt Killers: The obvious villain is Billy Dent, the most prolific murderer in United States history who is currently behind bars until he breaks out of prison but he does very little to hide his sadistic impulses as he enjoys torturing people, both men and women, to death.
    • Book 1: He's contrasted with hidden villain The Impressionist, who poses as being a grieving father so he can get close to protagonist Jazz and copy Billy's murders.
    • Book 3: He's contrasted with the other hidden villain Ugly J, aka Janice, Billy's wife and Jazz's mother. Although she does a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, she is actually More Deadly Than the Male, maintaining a reputation as a terrible and violent murderer. Plus, she sexually abused and thought about murdering Jazz.
  • Maya's Notebook: Brandon Leeman, the small-time drug dealer (with connections to human traffickers ) who hires Maya as his courier and his mooks Joe Martin and El Chino qualify as the former. As for the latter, that would be the Big Bad, Corrupt Cop Arana, who tracks Maya all the way down to Chiloé Island after she goes into hiding.
  • The Oaken Throne, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, has the treacherous squirrel Morwenna as the obvious villain introduced in the opening chapter. The seemingly innocent and friendly stoat jester Wendel Maculatum is revealed to be the secret villain towards the end of the book.
  • Troubled Blood: The Serial Killer Dennis Creed who tortured and murdered many women throughout the 1970s and 1980s in his Torture Cellar is now imprisoned in a high-security psychiatric hospital where he still enjoys toying with the surviving families of his victims. The hidden villain is the Big Bad, Janice, a Battleaxe Nurse who poisoned her son and so-called friends whenever they displeased her. She also murdered multiple people, most because she saw them as threats to her crush with a man she barely knew, but also just because she wanted to. And she murdered Margaret Banborough and did a decent job of framing Creed for it.
  • In We All Fall Down, it's made known to the reader that Harry Flowers and his friends are responsible for raping Karen, but "The Avenger", apparently a child who commits two unrelated murders and later terrorizes Karen's sister Jane, is actually Mickey, a handyman who killed a bully and his own grandfather decades ago and imagines himself as a vigilante and still a child.
  • The Zodiac Series has Ophiuchus as the Big Bad and obvious villain...for one book. After that, he changes sides, and the Marad takes the role of obvious villain to the master's secret villain.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Hannibal has this structure, especially throughout Season 1.
    • While the audience knows that Hannibal is a serial killer, none of the main characters do and they set about catching several other villains. Season 1 switches up between killers who are aware of Hannibal's existence and either awed by him or form uneasy alliances with him, and killers that don't know him at all.
    • This is also the dynamic between Garrett Jacob Hobbs and his daughter Abigail. Hobbs is immediately identified as the Minnesota Shrike in his first appearance, and is killed by Will shortly after he tries to kill Abigail. However, after much back and forth, Abigail admits about halfway through the season that she knew what her father was doing and helped him, but not of her own free will.
  • The Haunting of Bly Manor: Peter Quint has been advertised as being bad news from the first minute, as he is already missing from the grounds, having stolen money from Henry, and already a malevolent presence. Unbeknownst to any of the characters, though, they were also menaced by the Lady in the Lake that nobody knew was Viola Willoughby because even she had forgotten her name or purpose.
  • Harper's Island: John Wakefield committed a massacre twenty years ago then vanished. So is he behind the copycat crimes? Yes. But so is Henry, his son who has posed as the loving groom while killing people so he can be alone with Abby, the real target of his obsession.
  • Kamen Rider: A pretty common setup for villains, particularly in the Showa era.
    • The Great Leader usually has this relationship with his Co-Dragons, who takes turns acting as the Obvious Villain and The Heavy while the Great Leader plays the Secret Villain, giving orders to them as an omnipresent voice.
    • Kamen Rider X: The Obvious Villain is Apollo Geist, GOD's "Chief of Security", while the GOD General Commander is the Secret Villain, leaving tape recordings that contain his orders for his minions.
    • Kamen Rider Amazon: In the second half, Zero the Great is the head of the Garanda Empire and the Obvious Villain, while his unseen master "Ruler" is the Secret Villain.
    • Kamen Rider BLACK: The Three High Priests and Shadow Moon take turns playing the Obvious Villain, while the Creation King looms in the background as the Secret Villain and doesn't even appear until the finale.
    • Kamen Rider Kuuga: La-Balva-De is the Obvious Villain, serving as the "judge" of the Gurongi game in place of her master, N-Daguva-Zeba, the Secret Villain who doesn't show up until the finale.
    • Kamen Rider Fourze inverts the usual setup of this trope, with the Big Bad Mitsuaki Gamou being the Obvious Villain whose identity is known (to the viewer) from the start, while his subordinates, the Scorpion, Libra and Virgo Zodiarts have their true identities concealed until later in the show.
    • Kamen Rider Wizard: The Greater Phantoms are the Obvious Villains, while their master Wiseman is the Secret Villain whose true identity isn't revealed until late into the show.
    • Kamen Rider Drive has the duo of Heart (as well as the other Roidmude executives) and Freeze. Heart is visible from the very start of the show, while Freeze is deep undercover and spends most of the show behind the scenes until his public identity is revealed.
  • Line of Duty: In Series 4, Roz Huntley was bad news from the minute she began covering up an accidental killing that she committed to disguise that she was framing a mentally disabled man for serial murder. Then she made it worse by trying to frame the surviving victim of that serial killer for the murder she committed. But what even she wasn't aware of was that she was being set up by the man accused of those murders, her friend and lawyer Jimmy.
  • In Scream: The TV Series, the town was previously menaced by Brandon James, a disfigured victim of bullying and several people died. So, when the killing starts up again, it's Brandon... but it isn't. Although he probably did commit those murders, the actual villain of Season 1 is his daughter, Hidden Villain and journalist Piper.
  • A very disturbingly meta example throughout Season 1 of Twin Peaks. The murdered Laura Palmer's mother, Sarah, repeatedly sees visions of an evil long-haired man, BOB in Laura's bedroom, who - as revealed in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me - repeatedly raped Laura from childhood and eventually killed her. But BOB is also possessing and influencing Laura's father and Sarah's husband, Leland; he is Laura's earthly killer and her rapist, and even worse, it isn't all BOB's influence.
  • Veronica Mars:
    • Season 2 follows on from Season 1 in that the Big Bad Aaron Echolls remains a major threat. So does Thumper and the Fighting Fitzpatricks, who is revealed early as Felix's killer in one instance and then pretty Obviously Evil as an entire gang of Fighting Irish. But the bus crash was caused by a Hidden Villain, Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas who is also revealed to be Veronica's rapist.
    • Season 4 has Richard "Big Dick" Casablancas who was always a villain from his first appearance in Season 2, when he was running a Ponzi scheme on top of bullying his youngest son. And he also committed the other bombings to drive out undesirables from Neptune. But he wasn't behind the first bombing, which was done by the apparently Endearingly Dorky Penn in order to avenge his fiancée's death. Penn then kills Logan during his and Veronica's wedding.
  • You (2018): In Season 2, Joe is the obvious villain, as a Villain Protagonist who killed Beck and got away with multiple other murders at the end of Season 1. The Hidden Villain is his new girlfriend, Love, who framed her brother Forty for the murder she committed, set herself up for Joe due to being a Monster Fangirl, and killed both Candace and Delilah for threatening Joe.

    Podcasts 
  • The Magnus Archives does this twofold. In the first two seasons, Elias is Jon's Ambiguously Evil boss who clearly knows more than he lets on and is rather creepy, but seems to worry about his employees and isn't much of a threat compared to the various monsters running around... until he beats an old man to death with a pipe and frames Jon for it, and the third season reveals he's an Eldritch Abomination with horrifying supernatural powers. He then joins the other Avatars as an obvious villain, while the long-dead Jonah Magnus is slowly revealed to be a Greater-Scope Villain who started the Institute for nefarious reasons. And then comes the twist in Season Four that the real Elias has been dead for years, and Jonah is currently inhabiting his body.

    Video Games 
  • Assassin's Creed: Robert de Sable is very obviously a villain since he is a Templar with an evil-looking scar. Al Mualim on the other hand isn't revealed to be the true antagonist of the game until much later which comes off as a surprise since he was an Assassin Mentor to Altaïr ibn La'Ahad.
  • Azure Striker Gunvolt: While Nova and the Sumeragi group are the obvious villain Gunvolt needs to defeat, Asimov is a secret villain who is only revealed at the end of the game.
  • Baten Kaitos combines this trope with The Man Behind the Man. Geldoblame is the apparent Big Bad for most of the game; he sends his minions after you, and is attempting to reassemble the End Magnus. But in fact, Geldoblame is working for the seemingly-helpful Melodia, who is the real Big Bad. The true instance of this trope, however, comes shortly after: there is a mole in your party, and it is none other than Kalas, The Main Character himself! He and Geldoblame have both been working to assemble the End Magnus for Melodia, the latter openly, the former in secret.
  • In BioShock, Jack makes his way through Rapture, which was destroyed in a civil war between the city's founder, Andrew Ryan, and his now-deceased rival, Frank Fontaine. Jack is led by Atlas, an inhabitant of the city who wants to escape with his family. When Atlas' family is killed, he asks Jack to help him get revenge on Ryan before leaving. After fighting an army of splicers sent against them, Jack confronts Ryan, who reveals that he's Jack's biological father, and the embryo that was to become Jack was bought by Fontaine to be his "Ace in the Hole". Once Jack kills Ryan, Atlas reveals that he was Fontaine all along, and now that he's taken over Rapture and its advanced technology, he sics his newly gained splicer army against Jack.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: For most of the campaign, Vladimir Makarov is presented as the main antagonist, being the leader of the Inner Circle, an extremist faction of the Ultranationalist Party, and the man responsible for the airport massacre that would kickstart World War III. Hunting him becomes the top priority of Task Force 141. However, upon raiding his apparent last safehouse and retrieving its data logs, Shepherd reveals that he's just as crooked as Makarov, having conspired with the Russian Terrorist to start the war in the first place when he has Ghost and Roach killed. In the last two missions, Task Force 141 decides to go after Shepherd instead, due to him being the more immediate threat at the moment.
  • In both the first Dawn of War and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, the main threat are invading orks, but as the game progresses the forces of Chaos take precedence, with both games ending in a fight with a Daemon Prince.
  • Dragon Quest X: For most of Version 3 after Antero's defeat, his brother, Principal Nadia, is the main villain, being the figure in the dark hood who menaces Nagaland such as corrupting the Holy Bird, brainwashing Hussar into attacking the Hero, and even locked Patriarch Orstov into the dungeon by the time all of Nagaland's territories have been reunited. When he and his aides are defeated by the Hero, Estelle, and their allies, however, a scorpion tail stabs the Hero just as they've found Orstov, who is not only the one behind the scorpion tail, but also behind Antero and Nadia's actions, having them kidnap the vessels of the Astoila Gods and manipulate the Hero into "rescuing" them while reuniting Nagaland's territories in order for Nadraga, the Astoila God of the Dragons to be revived.
  • In Jade Empire, Death's Hand is the main villain for the first three acts, with the question of how much control the Emperor has a lingering question. It turns out he's in total control and Death's Hand has no free will of his own. After the Emperor's defeated, a second hidden villain, Master Li, reveals the entire game up to that point had been the culmination of a twenty-year plot to avenge himself on his brother and take control of the Empire and the Water Dragon himself.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Yuga the obvious villain from the start and Hilda the hidden mastermind.
  • Life Is Strange: The kidnapper of Rachel Amber is a mystery, but Max Caulfield knows Nathan Prescott is bad news from the moment he shoots and kills Chloe Price, triggering Max's power to rewind time so she can intervene. Chloe reveals that Nathan drugged her and took pictures of her tied up and unconscious, then Kate Marsh compounds it by telling Max that Nathan "took her home" after her own drugging. There are two additional suspects in David Madsen, Chloe's abusive stepfather, and Frank Bowers, a drug dealer who had a history with Rachel. As it turns out, David and Frank are innocent and Nathan was a pawn. The hidden villain is Mark Jefferson, the manipulative mastermind and brilliant photographer who murdered Rachel and to whom Nathan was the apprentice.
  • Mega Man X8: the opening of the game claimed that Lumine, a New Generation Reploid, is behind the Jakob Space Elevator project, a project that is aimed to evacuate war refugees and other people to the moon. Then Lumine gets kidnapped by Vile, whom X and Zero knew from the past as being an underling of certain someone. The identity of the Big Bad isn't made apparent until you defeat 4 main bosses; as expected from previous 7 games, Sigma is behind everything again. After you defeat 4 more bosses, it is detailed that Sigma's the one behind the Jakob project and the related New-gen project (and thus, he's behind Lumine) and he had another goal with the elevator: to make a new society only for the New-gen Reploids, he wants to put everything needed on the moon and then he and his army will destroy the earth, then rebuild it as they see fit. In a Meta Twist, Sigma is not the final boss in this game - instead, it's Lumine, whom the heroes (and the audience) think is the victim. He shares Sigma's goals of resetting the world; he also claims to have "used" Sigma though it's ambiguous who's using who.
  • No More Heroes has a variant of this with Sylvia Christel and Jeane. Prior to the leadup for the Rank 1 battle, Travis Touchdown and the player were lead to believe that Sylvia was working for the United Assassins Association, but when he uses the company's phone number it's actually the one for her mother, who reveals that the UAA doesn't actually exist and was used as nothing more than a money scam. Of course, even that turns out to have an ulterior motive: Sylvia was purposely training Travis so that he could take on Jeane, his ex-girlfriend and the murderer of his parents, who kills the actual number one ranked assassin Dark Star after Travis finally reaches his estate.
  • Persona 5: Goro Akechi is such an Obvious Judas that the real plot twist isn't that he's The Mole, it's that the Phantom Thieves knew all long and secretly plotted against him. His boss being Corrupt Politician Masayoshi Shido, who was a blatant Jerkass to the protagonists earlier in the game and is clearly the cause of Joker's probation, also isn't much of a surprise. But this disguises the true Man Behind the Man: Igor, or rather Yaldabaoth impersonating him, who was Beneath Suspicion until partway through the final dungeon.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon: From the beginning, Guzma and Team Skull seem to be the ones behind all the trouble in the Alola region, given the usual formula of the Pokémon games by this point. Thus, it comes a surprise once it turns out that Team Skull is actually doing the bidding of the President of the seemingly-benevolent Aether Foundation Lusamine, Gladion and Lillie's mother.
  • Both RosenkreuzStilette games do this:
    • In the original, Count Micheal Zeppelin is the leader of the RKS rebellion against the Holy Empire who intends to tear it down and create a world where Magi can live free from persecution. Once he is defeated at the end of his castle, his seemingly innocent daughter Iris kills him and reveals that she was manipulating him all along as part of her plan to become a goddess and get the RKS killed for her amusement.
    • In Freudenstachel, the Pope of the Orthodox Church is the leader of the Schwarzkreuz, whom he uses to capture Magi en-masse after declaring them enemies of the Empire. Turns out the Pope has been long dead, murdered by Iris who used a homunculus copy to pose as him and get Magi to steal their powers.
  • The Sakabashira Game makes it clear from the outset that the eldritch host is behind the titular game, and of the two traitors aligned with them in the group, Evan is openly hostile to everyone from the outset. The other traitor, Ceci, isn't exposed until the very end of the game, and overall does a better job at appearing friendly.
  • Splatoon 3: The Great Zapfish is stolen again and Cuttlefish believes it be the work of the DJ Octavio's Octarian Army since they've stolen the Great Zapfish twice in the past. But when he and new Agent 3 confronts an angry DJ Octavio, Octavio reveals he lost his entire army to Fuzzy Ooze and thus never got the chance to steal the Great Zapfish. It's soon revealed halfway through the campaign that the real perpetrator is Mr. Grizz, who is planning to turn all marine life into hairy mammals with the aid of a Fuzzy Ooze-filled rocket powered by the Great Zapfish.
  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: While Dagan Gera is openly antagonistic from the get go and is the adversary Cal Kestis spends the majority of the game hunting down, Bode Akuna is a seemingly friendly ally until he reveals his true colors not long after Dagan's death, in which he becomes the game's final antagonist.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • Toonstruck: Count Nefarious is the ruler of the Malevolands who wants to take over the world by turning everything dark and scary with his Malevolator. He is the sole main antagonist for much of the game, but it's revealed at the end of Disc 1 that Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun, a resident of the good kingdom Cutopia, has taken over her kingdom, and is also planning to take over the rest of the world.
  • Yakuza 2: Kiryu is introduced to the Omi Alliance's main lieutenants, Goda, Sengoku, and Takeshima, the last one being the late Tojo clan chairman Terada's sworn brother. Goda and Sengoku are the ones who cause most of the trouble for Kiryu and the Tojo clan, while the only thing Takeshima does is send a message early on to not to depend on him for help. Takeshima reveals himself at the last minute that he was actually working with Terada, who faked his death and was using the Omi Alliance to further is plan for vengeance for the Jingweon Mafia, only to stab him in the back since he was only ever using him for his plans to take over the Omi Alliance afterwards.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney uses this in a few cases, sometimes via a case's obvious culprit having a secret accomplice, or there being a second antagonist with competing goals.
    • In Case 2 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, fittingly for being themed on stage magic, the Obvious Villain and Secret Villain are the same person, on two different occasions. Roger Retinz is an obviously smarmy Corrupt Corporate Executive who forces Trucy to sign away the entire Wright Anything Agency. He seems to be colluding with Bonny De Famme, who acts like an obvious Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. It's clear that both will be involved with the crime somehow. "Bonny" was actually her twin sister Betty, while the real Bonny is genuinely nice, but an Extreme Doormat to her bullying sister. Meanwhile, Roger Retinz is actually the real Mr. Reus, the victim instead being an apprentice of his, and he's a master Stage Magician and far more cunning than he seemed, the murder plot actually being a long-planned act of revenge on Troupe Gramare for casting him out.
    • Investigations 2 has the Obviously Evil Amoral Attorney Blaise Debeste as The Heavy, with the real twists being how much he's guilty of and how to prove it. The Big Bad is the far more hidden Simon Keyes, who's actually out for revenge against Blaise and his co-conspirators. A secondary Secret Villain is "Di-Jun Huang", who seemed like a simple Dirty Coward in the first case but is revealed as a Body Double who killed the original in the final case, after his death.
    • The Great Ace Attorney has Lord Chief Justice Mael Stronghart appear Obviously Evil from the outset and sure enough he's the Big Bad. However, he never directly killed anyone, the actual murderer of the final case being Seishiro Jigoku, the Japanese Judge, who was part of his conspiracy. Meanwhile, the unsolved Professor Killings in the past also follow this trope, as the player and main characters are shown that Genshin Asougi was responsible at the end of Case 3 but he only killed one person: Klint van Zeiks, who was the actual Professor. Klint allowed himself to die in a duel after he realized how far he'd fallen.
  • The Danganronpa series plays with this in an interesting way. Namely, the obvious villain and hidden villain are often the same person. Monokuma is the clear villain, with him being the one provide the motives to kill, as well as the one to personally kill the Blackened. Figuring out who's controlling him is often the mystery of the games. The first game plays this the straightest, as the hidden villain is Junko Enoshima, who the player is led to believe died at the beginning of the game, but has actually been controlling everything from behind the scenes.
  • Done twice in Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. From the start, Hikaru Minato is established as the most important threat that the main character Kageaki must face. Much later however it is made clear that the seeming ally Chachamaru Ashikaga is in fact the other half of the stories Big Bad Ensemble and is acting as The Man in Front of the Man to Moriuji Ashikaga and the seemingly minor recurring villain Ichizo Sorimachi, while not as big a threat as the other two, ends up a much more personal antagonist towards Kageaki, specializing in hitting where it hurts.

    Web Animation 
  • In Red vs. Blue, Season 11 has the main antagonist be Locus, a cold and brutal mercenary clad in black armor working for the sinister Federal Army of Chorus, and though the following season reveals they aren't actually villainous, Locus is shown to be only barely under their control and he's eventually revealed to be working for a third faction that wants to wipe out everyone on Chorus. At the same time, it's revealed that Knight in Sour Armor Jerk with a Heart of Gold Felix, who up to this point has been depicted as Locus' Arch-Enemy and been an ally to the Reds and Blues, is his partner and a very sadistic and manipulative psychopath working for the same third party.

    Western Animation 
  • Elena of Avalor: Shuriki is an evil sorceress who took over Avalor and ruled it for four decades. Elena's cousin, Esteban, is the one who brought her to the kingdom which led to said take-over, but only the audience is aware of that fact. Not Elena, or her family and friends.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Season 8 features Chancellor Neighsay, who is not only an obvious Corrupt Bureaucrat, but believes non-ponies aren't capable of friendship and shouldn't be taught at Twilight's school. Come the finale, the real Big Bad of the season is Cozy Glow, who wanted to amass magical power for herself. Neighsay ends up having a Heel Realization and becoming The Atoner.
  • Total Drama:
    • Revenge of the Island has Jo who openly bullies and controls her teammates such as Brick and Cameron, and Scott who secretly sabotages his own teammates and manipulates others to vote off his competition. Ironically neither one end up being the final villain of the season, with the role instead going to Dumb Muscle Lightning.
    • Max in Pahkitew Island openly brags about how evil he is and openly schemes his grand diabolical plans. Max turns out to be a Big Bad Wannabe, as the real villain turns out to be Scarlett, who is revealed to be an Ax-Crazy Sociopath that wants to blow up the Island unless she gets the million dollars. Again, neither end up being the final villain of the season, with Fat Bitch Sugar taking the role instead.
    • Julia in Total Drama Island (2023) is The Obvious Villain to Bowie and MK's Secret Villains as her openly hostile, mean-girl attitude and high competence in challenges make her the biggest target for elimination, allowing the other two to work behind the scenes and enact their schemes.
  • Wakfu: Early in the second season, we are introduced to Rushu, king of the Shushus, lord of the fire-and-brimstone dimension of the Shustuft Crust, who desperately wants to destroy the World of Twelve, and is only prevented from doing so by the fact that he has no way to physically escape his own dimension. Until, that is, the Eliatrope Qilby reveals his villainous nature, turns on the heroes, and goes to Rushu, offering to use his portal-making abilities to give the Shushus access to the world in exchange for some help with his own plan. Together, they invade the Crimson Claws Archipelago; Rushu to destroy the world, and Qilby to find his Dofus. The clincher? Qilby only learned about Rushu and the Shustuft Crust by coincidence, while still The Mole, when he helped rescue some protagonists who had become stranded in that dimension.

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