Basic Trope: The least likely character to be the Hidden Villain (The Big Bad, The Mole, The Man Behind the Man) actually is.
- Straight: Detective Bob finds out that Carl, the friendly car dealership owner who sold him a car earlier, is the Mafia boss he had been tracking.
- Exaggerated: Detective Bob, after investigating several crime lords and shady politicians, finds out that his wife Alice's dog, Fido, is the real Diabolical Mastermind.
- Downplayed: Carl is an associate of the Mafia boss.
- Justified:
- Carl takes on a normal job, which has no connection to crime, so he would never be suspected.
- The car dealership was a useful place to launder money.
- Inverted:
- Detective Bob suspected Carl from the start, even without any reason to.
- Carl is revealed to be the story's Big Good all along.
- Bob, who has amnesia, learns that he was the Mafia boss himself!
- Subverted: Carl the car dealership owner is a former mafia boss under the Witness Protection Program.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Who is actually a detective, investigating the true Man Behind the Man.
- Carl supposedly proves his innocence to Bob, then it is revealed that he had been pulling the strings all along.
- Parodied: Fido enjoys seeing Detective Bob not suspecting him, just because he is a dog. But it's just a ruse so he could take over the world once all of the suspects (who are his greatest enemies) are arrested.
- Zig Zagged: The man did it, but wait, he was really behind The Dragon, but The Dragon was really the man behind the mastermind...
- Averted: The Man Behind the Man is just one of the suspects or some other likely person, not the least likely person.
- Enforced: "Hey, how about we make the boss Carl, the car dealership owner? The readers won't ever find out.”
- Lampshaded: "Carl, you're the Mafia boss? How sneaky of you for adopting that ruse."
- Invoked: Carl becomes a car dealership owner so he could become a Mafia boss without anybody knowing.
- Exploited: Since Fido knows that no one will ever suspect him as being a serial killer, he becomes one and frame people left and right, warding detectives off the right path.
- Defied: Detective Bob refuses to believe that the least likely suspect is the criminal, and Carl doesn't adopt such a silly cover job.
- Discussed: "Hey, it's probably the dog who did it all, because he knew we wouldn't suspect him." "The dog? Seriously? You've been reading too many cheap mystery thrillers lately." Cut to a scene where Fido makes a Sarcastic Confession.
- Conversed:
- "This is such a predictable movie... Wait a minute! What just happened? Carl was behind it all? Why? It doesn't make any sense!"
- "It was Carl, the car mechanic?! It's always the one you least expect. But I guess it would be less memorable the other way."
- Implied: At the end of the story, after Bob nabs what looks like the mafia boss, and all seems well, we see Carl talking on the phone, saying that “the decoy was a success.”
- Plotted A Good Waste: The creator knew that this nonsensical twist would upset the fans, and deliberately included it to troll them.
- Deconstructed:
- Fido really was the mastermind, but because he didn't plan ahead, Fido panics and does something that incriminates him.
- Fido realizes he simply doesn’t have the resources to pull his plan off, so it never gets off the air.
- Carl gets arrested for tax evasion, and the rest of his activities come out soon after.
- Reconstructed: But since Detective Bob thinks that Fido is innocent (as he's just a dog), Fido gets to continue his Evil Plan scot-free.
- Played For Laughs: It's really freaking obvious that Carl is a Mafia boss putting up a ruse as a car dealership owner, but hilarity ensues when Bob outright refuses to acknowledge that, even when the evidence is right in front of him!
- Played For Drama: Fido successfully pulls off his Evil Plan, but he wasn't Crazy-Prepared enough when he's revealed to be the mastermind. His crimes gets him 260 different life sentences.
- Played For Horror: Detective Bob kills the Chesapeake Piano Wire Strangler in a climactic Chase Scene and sits down alone with Carl for a brew during the epilogue, and when he looks away from Carl for a second a very familiar length of piano wire suddenly comes from behind and wraps itself around his neck.
Wait, the main page was behind it all? That’s impossible!
