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Films — Animation
- In Hercules, throughout the majority of the film, the titular hero was completely unaware of Hades' existence, that he was behind him losing his godhood as a baby, and was the one responsible for all the seemingly random monsters he had been defeating. It isn't until the final act that Hades introduces himself to Herc and the hero finally learns the extent of Hades' manipulations.
- In How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup is completely oblivious to how jealous Astrid is of him suddenly outperforming her in training. When she confronts him after he officially becomes top of the class, he has no idea how mad she is or why she's getting so physical with him.
- Kung Fu Panda 2: Lord Shen has spent the greater part of two decades meticulously preparing for his eventual battle with Po, but Po sees Shen as just some random baddie to stop. Po is completely unaware of the deeply personal role Shen played in his history, having only learned he existed a few days before meeting him. Even after he learns the truth, he refuses to make their conflict personal, which absolutely baffles Shen.
- In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, Kovu never seems to have any idea that Nuka resents him. In fact during the few scenes the two are shown interacting, Kovu never shows anything but love and care towards his brother.
- In Penguins of Madagascar, Dave's disdain for penguins started out when the Penguins stole his glory back at Central Park Zoo back when they were younger. They never really met the guy until this movie and Skipper especially has trouble remembering his name.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Bowser's ire towards him is upon finding out that he is another human journeying with Peach and starts to think of him as a romantic rival for Peach's affection, something Mario never learns about. He and Peach do have their moments where they seem to flirt a bit as they bond and a few other characters (Toad and Luigi, to an extent) see them as a good couple, but even though she does count as a love interest for him, Mario is not aware of his eventual feelings for her, and even if he is, he keeps them to himself because it's not his priority, he's focused on finding Luigi and saving him.
Films — Live-Action
- Salieri in Amadeus hates Mozart with a passion. However, he never lets on that he does, and actually is rather nice to the younger man when they are in each other's company.
- In Big Fish, Ewan McGregor's character unknowingly grew up with a rival who was constantly overshadowed by him. They end up fighting over the same girl when they become adults.
- Sort of happens in Black Swan. While Nina feels threatened by the new dancer Lily, Lily's not really threatened by her.
- In Casper Meets Wendy, the Big Bad Desmond Spellman is this to Wendy. He wants to destroy the Good Little Witch because he is currently the world's most powerful magic user, but the Magic Mirror which decides such things has foretold that Wendy will usurp him. Wendy, meanwhile, is only about twelve years old and has no idea who Spellman even is, much less why he's trying to kill her.
- In Country Strong, much drama comes from Kelly Canter worrying that Chiles Stanton is going to replace her as the hot new thing. Chiles meanwhile is oblivious to this.
- DC Extended Universe:
- Wonder Woman (2017): General Ludendorff and Dr. Maru spend almost the entirety of the movie completely unaware that Diana even exists, let alone that she's working with Steve to foil their plans. However, the ignorance (and irrelevance) of Ludendorff is supposed to be more of a minor plot twist, since throughout the movie Diana believes that Ludendorff is actually Big Bad Ares, who naturally knows about Diana and all the other supernatural secrets of the world, but is merely pretending to be an ordinary human. The climax shows that Ludendorff really is just an ordinary human and that Ares was really disguised as another, seemingly harmless, minor character.
- Aquaman (2018): When David Kane meets Aquaman, Kane says as a pirate, he's dreamed of fighting the protector of the ocean for some time and considers him his Arch-Enemy. Aquaman is just meeting him for the first time and has no idea who he is and doesn't care. After Aquaman defeats him and refuses to rescue his father from death, Kane reinvents himself as Black Manta, obtains some Atlantean technology, and forces Aquaman to take him seriously.
- Enchanted: Queen Narissa ploted to destroy Giselle because she thinks Giselle is going to remove her from her throne once she married her son Prince Edward. Until Narissa reveals herself at the climax, Giselle has no idea about any of this and sincerely wants to become friends with her.
- Enter the Dragon has the Big Bad confront two minor characters before he ever meets the protagonist of the movie, played by none other than Bruce Lee. Oddly enough, Lee was sent there for the specific purpose of bringing the villain down while the two minor characters were at the tournament for unrelated reasons.
- Odd example from The Fifth Element: Korben, the hero, and Zorg, the villain, never actually meet in the entire movie, despite being clearly the good guy and the bad guy. It's not even clear that the two of them realize they're in competition with each other over the stones. The closest they ever get to interacting is either when Zorg orders one million of his employees fired, a pink slip shows up in Korben's mail tube in the next scene, or when Korben and Co. enter one elevator as Zorg steps off the one next to it. The pink slip part is about as impersonal as it gets, as well. An underling tells Zorg that due to possible economic troubles, they want to fire 500,000 employees, possibly in one of the smaller cab companies where no one will notice. Zorg, being a Card-Carrying Villain, orders one million fired instead.
- Godzilla vs. Kong: Godzilla is this to Kong. While Godzilla views Kong as a potential rival to his position as the Alpha of all Titans on Earth, Kong is completely uninterested in the position and would rather be left alone in his own territory, be it Skull Island or Hollow Earth. It's unclear if Kong even knew he was a legitimate contender for Godzilla's position. Hell, it's entirely possible that prior to Godzilla's first attack against Kong, Kong had no idea who he was or that he even existed. Even after that attack, Kong made no move to seek out a rematch until Godzilla used his atomic breath to blow a hole into Hollow Earth and destroyed part of Kong's ancestral home, provoking him.
- In A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints Mike merely thinks Antonio is a jerk to everyone. He doesn't know that Antonio is jealous that Dito is blowing him off to hang out with Mike.
- Tien Hao in Legendary Weapons of China is in a quest to kill off every rival martial artist who knew the skills of all 18 titular weapons, regardless of their allegiance. This is naturally confusing th Uncle Yu, the heroine's mentor, who was ambushed by Tien and had to knock him out in self-defense, and later as Tien recovers from his injuries, upon waking up one od the first thing he did is attacking Uncle Yu again.
- This is the case for the first half of The Man with the Golden Gun. James Bond is tracking down Scaramanga on the basis of the bullet carved with his number which was sent to MI6 and interpreted as a threat. The bullet was actually sent by Scaramanga's assistant Andrea, who wanted Bond to kill him, and Scaramanga even admits when he meets Bond that he has nothing against him. He still has a training dummy of Bond in his funhouse and desires a one-on-one duel to prove who's the best killer, but he didn't actually plan on summoning Bond until Andrea's interference brought him into the plot.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Ant-Man: Hank Pym and Howard Stark had a bitter falling out after the former found out the latter was trying to replicate his shrinking technology to use in military weapons. Hank is so bitter about it that he refuses to contact Howard's son Tony to help him with a mission. Then in Captain America: Civil War, Hank's protégé Scott Lang is furious at Tony for locking him, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and the Falcon in prison and tells him that Hank was right about the Starks. On the other hand, this is the first time Tony has ever met Scott and he has no idea who he is or what he's talking about.
- In Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax wants revenge on Ronan the Accuser for murdering his family. He's outraged when he can barely get Ronan to pay attention to him, as shown when he challenges Ronan to a fight and charges him, only for Ronan to nonchalantly walk away mid-charge. When he finally gets Ronan's attention, Ronan effortlessly beats him up.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming: In the wake of the Chitauri invasion, Tony created the Department of Damage Control to oversee the cleanup of all the disaster areas. However, Adrian Toomes, who was employed by the City of New York to do just that and invested a lot of money in the operation, to lose the contract and not be compensated. This causes Toomes to develop a hatred for Tony Stark and get indirect revenge by using stolen alien and Avengers technology to create weapons to sell for profit. Interestingly, Toomes is savvy enough to exploit the "unknown" aspect of the trope by using it to stay off Stark's radar and sell his weapons with him none the wiser.
- Black Panther: Prince N'Jobu had teamed up with Ulysses Klaue to steal Wakandan vibranium as part of a plan to arm oppressed African-Americans. However he was killed by his brother, King T'Chaka, when he found out and N'Jobu attempted to pull a gun on Zuri, the spy who sold him out. This results in N'Jobu's son Erik developing a burning hatred for the Wakandan royal family and spending the rest of his life training to get revenge on them. T'Chaka's son T'Challa on the other hand is completely unaware of the incident in question and doesn't even know that Erik exists until he reveals himself decades later.
- In the Final Battle of Avengers: Endgame, Thanos is this to most of the Avengers since most of them don't realize he is not the version that dusted half the universe. He knows the Avengers who were around in 2012, since his underling loaned Loki the Chitauri to invade Earth, but others, he has no idea what his past self did that would make them specifically want to kill him.Wanda Maximoff: You took EVERYTHING from me!
Thanos: (almost bewildered) I don't even know who you are.
Wanda Maximoff: You will.
- In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Paris Hilton plays Amber Sweet, a spoiled brat heiress with pretensions of being a gifted singer. Amber believes she is due to replace Broadway legend Sarah Brightman's character, Blind Mag, a world-famous opera singer who headlines the Genetic Opera for the all-powerful Gene Co company. Mag must know who Amber is due to her association with Amber's father, but Mag doesn't even acknowledge Amber.
- In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan from Kirk's perspective the encounter with Khan was a one-off event that happened 15 years ago and ended with Khan and his people voluntarily leaving to peacefully set up their own colony free of Federation control. Meanwhile, the colony suffered a massive natural disaster and complete ecological collapse almost immediately afterwards and Khan watched his wife and most of his friends die horribly with no way to leave the planet. Khan is enacting 14 years of pent-up revenge for something Kirk is completely unaware of.
- Street Fighter has a situation similar to the above Superman one. Chun Li pledged her life to bring down M. Bison for having her father shot. But for Bison, it was Tuesday. Bison acknowledges his actual arch-enemy to be Colonel Guile.
- X-Men Film Series:
- X-Men: Everybody assumes Magneto is trying to kidnap Wolverine, presumably to experiment on him because of his Healing Factor. When they meet face to face, Magneto reveals he doesn't care about Wolverine and was really after Wolverine's companion, Rogue.
- Deadpool 2: Deadpool assumes Cable is an assassin sent to kill him, until Cable reveals he doesn't care about Deadpool and was really after Russell Collins.
