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Obvious Judas / Video Games

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Warning!: This page is all unmarked spoilers.

  • 10,000 Bullets: Crow's mentor is literally named Judas, and sure enough turns out to be a spy working for a rival gang, the Sleepers, and the final Big Bad.
  • In Alpha Protocol, you find out early on that one of your four teammates is The Mole and tried to kill you. Except one of them is actively keeping you alive and another's an idiot, so really it's two; either Da Chief Westridge or the cold, calculating data analyst Parker who openly admits to seeing people as expendable tools. You can even accuse Parker from the very beginning, with Player Character Mike commenting "it's always the quiet ones". Regardless, there's nothing you can do about it until the endgame.
  • Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter: Bosch. He may be your best friend, but it's obvious, due to his smug, aristocratic manner and the the way his ego is tied to his D-Ratio, that he's going to betray Ryu the moment Ryu bonds with the most powerful dragon in the land (thus proving that the all-important D-Ratio has nothing to do with the greatness of one's destiny).
  • It came as a surprise to absolutely no one when Richtofen, the Ax-Crazy Herr Doktor of Call of Duty: Zombies, ended up having masterminded the events up to that point in order to take control of the zombies for himself. Of course, Zombies being what it is, this was completely Played for Laughs.
    FINALLY! IT WILL BE MINE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH- I mean uh... Hey, look, I think we're in space!
  • Seth, your Mission Control in the NOD campaign of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, is an incredibly arrogant man (the first time you see him, he identifies himself as two steps away from God) who quickly shows a lack of respect for you and a growing jealousy for your successes. After the fifth mission, he starts blatantly lying to you about the conditions of each mission he assigns. He finally tips his hand by attempting to send you on an obvious suicide mission, only for Kane to finally step in... bullet-first.
  • Cuphead: From the DLC The Delicious Last Course, Chef Saltbaker initially appears as a genuinely nice fellow who shows no signs of a single vice, in contrast to the other characters' more rounded personalities. Adding to the fact that no one else in the cast was set up as a potential suspect, as well as Cuphead being a Boss Rush as a whole, the moment Saltbaker is revealed to be the DLC's Big Bad and subsequently its Final Boss came to no surprise for plenty of players.
  • Daikatana's main villain openly tells Hiro multiple times that he shouldn't trust his allies. One of said allies, Mikiko, acts incredibly sadistic and cruel in all her combat dialogue, keeps pressing for the most selfish action possible whenever asked for her opinion, and told Hiro's other ally, Superfly, "don't worry; you'll get what's coming to you" in her first appearance. For some reason, Hiro is legitimately shocked when she proceeds to backstab Superfly and try to murder him.
  • Devil May Cry:
  • Dragon Age: Origins subverts this by how quickly the villains turn; so soon that their reveals doesn't get a chance to become a spoiler. If playing the Human Noble background first, Arl Howe might surprise you in the introduction, otherwise he's already obviously evil the first time he's seen. Loghain commits his betrayal and heads for coup at the end of the first Act, and the first time we see him his pale, cadaverous look screams Obviously Evil (although the "evil" part turns out to be a case of Well-Intentioned Extremist who's overestimated his own capabilities).
    • If you fail to gain enough loyalty Zevran will turn on you as soon as he's given a chance to return to his previous life with the slate wiped clean of his initial failure. This is after he's spent the game playing up how shallow, self-interested and jovially merciless he is.
  • The notorious Fallout: New Vegas mod The Frontier features a note that there's a Caesar's Legion spy among the NCR Exiles. Not long after you hear this, you meet an NCR officer with the very obvious Latin name of Tiberius Rancor, who keeps refusing to answer questions about his past, has a professional voice actor, wears Sinister Shades, and generally acts like a jerk. Bonus for being marked as essential, so that if the player tries to kill him, he gets back up, revealing him to be relevant to the plot.
  • Fate/Grand Order:
    • The Agartha arc has the Rider of Resistance, actually Christopher Columbus, having undergone a Historical Villain Upgrade. Between his overly-detailed, shadowy, and sketchy Non-Standard Character Design, black and purple outfit, and his guttural voice, it's pretty clear on the surface that he's bad news. That's before he keeps ranting about how he's close to achieving an unspecific goal, or his base burns down under oddly suspicious circumstances to necessitate the group move forward. Also, the fact that he keeps conspicuously hiding his identity is rarely a good sign, nor is the fact that your Mission Control is openly suspicious of who he really is. Despite this, the group pretty much does everything he says until the very last minute.
    • In the Avalon Le Fae arc, we have Oberon betraying the heroes at the last minute. Between his Nonstandard Character Design sticking out like a sore thumb, his unexplained ability to consistently change class, his ominous placement in the newest opening for the game giving him more prominence than the supposed main villain of the story, Morgan, and that when he does fight with the heroes his golden looking attacks almost always dissolve into a black ichor at the last moment made a lot of people guess that he was going to backstab the heroes at some point. This is intentional as the script has dialogue options to consistently find him untrustworthy, rewarding a suspicious player with a bonus cutscene that discusses Oberon's relationship with the protagonist.
  • Figment 2: Creed Valley: In the Principle Square level, Dusty must solve the mystery of which Opinion knocked the Opinion on Justice unconscious. If you've been paying even the slightest attention to the humans' story, specifically the fact that the man's workaholic tendencies are ruining his relationship with his family, it should be no surprise that the Opinion on Work did it. The Allegorical Characters in the Mind for the humans' story are very obvious.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy VII has a plot where it's suggested that there is a traitor in the group. At this point in the game, most of the party has been fleshed out enough that it makes no sense for any of them to be the traitors, with the sole exceptions being Yuffie and Cait Sith. Since Yuffie is an Optional Party Member, the whole plot wouldn't even be introduced as part of the larger story, and that leaves Cait Sith. Cait Sith has not only been in the party for the shortest time, but is also a machine (taking the form of a cat riding a weird monstrous Moogle) implied to be built by Shinra even at first blush, whose introductory scene involves giving out ominous predictions before basically forcing his way into the party for no obvious reason with a Manipulate materia in his inventory. Then again, the person controlling him is Shinra's Token Good Teammate, who eventually turns on them and joins AVALANCHE for real.
    • Final Fantasy X has a far more obvious example than probably any other game in the series: Seymour, with his incredibly creepy theme music, Devilish Hair Horns, veins all over his face, And Now You Must Marry Me scene, Creepy High-Pitched Voice, a shady scene of him allowing the use of Machina despite being a Maestor of Yevon, someone supposed to condemn Machina, by saying "pretend you didn’t see it?", evil-looking elaborate outfit complete with a High Collar of Doom. As per the game's theme of not blindly following tradition, the only one of the group to realize the Maestor is evil is Tidus, the only member of the group (at the time) who isn't part of the Yevonite faith (by the time Rikku, the other non-Yevonite, joins up, Seymour has stopped pretending).
  • In the Fire Emblem series:
    • It really doesn't take much work to figure out Arvis is evil in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War—the mere fact that this is his theme should probably clue you in. In the prologue chapter, we also see his overkill statline, his coldly disdainful attitude, the fact that his little brother is scared of him, and if you check his Holy Blood, you notice a glowing purple circle in the middle. When it's revealed a few chapters later that the Loptyr cult has a powerful ally, anyone should probably be able to put two and two together.
    • Orson in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is introduced to us after a scene where Tirado, right-hand man of Smug Snake Valter, mentions having a traitor in Prince Ephraim's force. He also spends large amounts of time away from the party, he seems a little too powerful for a character you'll be keeping around on a permanent basis (especially when there's already a strong Crutch Character in the party), and most damningly, the other potential suspects fit the longstanding tradition of the red and green cavalry duo while Orson is the odd man out. The numbers add up quickly against him.
    • Shortly after Nasir joins the group in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, we see Big Bad Ashnard mention that there's a traitor in Ike's ranks. Nasir has a unique design, but isn't playable, which should instantly tip players off that something is wrong. Soren, the group's tactician, even confronts Nasir about it early on. Unlike the above example though, Nasir turns out to have sympathetic motives, and if the right conditions are met he makes a Heel–Face Turn near the end of the game and does become playable.
    • Fire Emblem Fates:
      • In the Birthright route, Zola, who'd been introduced posing as Izana in order to try to kill the Avatar and Sakura. He looks as Obviously Evil as they come and is another example of "joins the group but isn't playable," after he tags along with the group after the Avatar prevents Leo from killing him. Everyone remains suspicious of him from the moment he joins, and sure enough, he's The Mole. It's played with, however, in that Zola genuinely came to sympathize with the party while he was with them and pleads with Garon to spare them, which gets him killed.
      • On the Revelation route, it becomes clear that there's a traitor in the party in the last act. The fact that Gunter can't support with anyone on this route (in Conquest, he can support with the Avatar and Jakob) makes him very suspicious, and sure enough, it's him.
    • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, the remake of Gaiden, has Fernand. A Canon Foreigner who didn't exist in the original game, he's a highly classist member of the Deliverance who looks down on Alm for being a commoner (and not in the benignly oblivious way Clair does), so it's not all that much of a surprise when he leaves the Deliverance and joins up with Rigel.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
      • After Chapter 6, the party rescues Flayn from the Death Knight, along with another captive they didn't know about: Monica. We're informed Monica was a student from the academy who "went missing" a year ago, and that she has now joined the Black Eagles house. The first red flag is that, if you're on the Black Eagles route, she (you guessed it) isn't playable. The second is that she seems oddly nonchalant for someone who supposedly spent a year in captivity. Hilda even comments on how suspicious she is in-universe. It came as no surprise to most players when she revealed her true colors a few chapters later.
      • The DLC story, Cindered Shadows, has Aelfric. It's established early on that the enemies you're fighting are working with a mole in Abyss. Aelfric was the only new character in the DLC who wasn't revealed to be playable, and is suspiciously knowledgeable about the Chalice of Beginnings (the item the hired thugs are trying to find), controls Abyss, and was the reason all four Ashen Wolves (who have the bloodlines necessary to unseal the Chalice) ended up there. He's also a little too fixated on Byleth's mother. Sure enough, despite the story's attempts to use Yuri as a Red Herring (the fact that he has support conversations for the main story ruins that), Aelfric was the Arc Villain all along.
  • Ghostrunner: Over the course of the final level it's revealed that the Architect wanted you to kill the Keymaster so he could establish his own utilitarian dictatorship. Who would have thought? It may be an Intended Audience Reaction, as the obviousness of it is lampshaded by the Ghostrunner himself, who is quite clearly wary of the Architect and actively disobeys him on several occasions to help out others; he's only surprised by his direct attempt at killing him.
  • Ghost School: Yakumo Kurosaki is a white haired and callous Jerkass who shows no concern for the safety of his fellow students trapped inside the titular school, instead being more concerned with getting to see a spirit up close, and refuses to help Senna until he decides he feels like it. It is thus of little surprise when he goes Ax-Crazy and tries to murder the party.
  • In Guild Wars Vizier Khilbron has several marks against him on introduction. He is the only known survivor of an entire kingdom which has been turned into the undead, is a powerful necromancer capable of controlling said undead, and has unnatural bright blue eyes. Of course this pales somewhat compared to the fact that he has the same voice as the Undead Lich.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a sort of double subversion. Since the series previously had twist villains like Marx and Magolor, one might expect Elfilin to end up the same way. But it turns out that he really is benevolent... because he's the good side of a Literal Split Personality, with the evil side being Fecto Forgo. When the latter eats Elfilin and the two merge into Fecto Elfilis, it doesn't hesitate to attack Kirby, and he has to rip Elfilin right back out of it to defeat it.
  • Knight Eternal: Even if the player didn't play Knight Bewitched 2 first to learn how the queen of Zamaste was corrupted, she mentions the "wheels of change" like many of Zamas's pawns and has a skull throne, making it obvious that she's not to be trusted. The real twist is that she's a Reluctant Psycho who is cursed to start a world war on Zamas's behalf and that she's trying to resist her curse long enough for Adalia to replace her.
  • Knights of the Old Republic:
  • As Caddicarus points out in his review of Lego Knights' Kingdom, Lord Vladek has a name that sounds like a cross between Vlad the Impaler and Dalek, wears red and black armor, tells the player that "I won't hurt you...too much." and that they might need the skills they learned soon, and is held up as King Mathias' most trusted knight. As a result, it's not surprising when he betrays and usurps the king.
  • Minoria has Princess Amelia Soliette and the Church in general. Though seemingly the Big Goods of the setting, it is made abundantly clear since the beginning that they are a Corrupt Church- one of the first things we learn about them is that they killed heroine Semillia's mother for being a witch, and a little later it is casually mentioned that they burn down entire villages to kill suspected witches. We learn in about the halfway point that they would torture witches in a cellar below the cathedral. Amelia seems nice at first but starts badmouthing witches and spewing hateful rhetoric about them, and is fully supportive of the Church's atrocities. It is thus little surprise when they turn out to be the real villains.
  • Bishop and Qara from Neverwinter Nights 2. One's a Social Darwinist who practically screams "don't trust me!", and the other's a sociopath who hates being one-upped, which The Hero frequently will. Bishop will always sell you out, although Qara can be persuaded not to if her affection is higher than Sand's, her far more likeable Wizard counterpart.
  • In Octopath Traveler, the end of Ophilia's Chapter 3 and start of Chapter 4 reveal two traitors. One of them, Ophilia's adoptive sister Lianna, is genuinely surprising, but the other, Mattias, a merchant who Ophilia had met not long before setting out from Flamesgrace, and again in Chapter 3, is more obvious. Mattias had stood around suspiciously after Ophilia heard the news of her father falling ill; it's later revealed that he poisoned her father as part of a plan to get Lianna, the original Flamebearer, to cross the Despair Event Horizon and join his side. When Ophilia sees Mattias again in Goldshore, he talks about his struggles with believing in the gods after seeing so much hardship in his life. In reality, he had already decided that the gods don't care about humans long ago.
  • Ouija Sleepover: Linda Simons is apparently just a normal woman who got trapped in the alternate world with Aiden and Dan, yet she shows up out of nowhere, never gives any real background on herself, and is a massive Jerkass towards the duo. She also doesn't seem to be freaking out at the horrors of the alternate dimension, but is eerily comfortable with them. Also, she tries to come on to Aiden at one point, and when he refuses, he mysteriously vanishes when Dan comes back. Sure enough, she turns out to be the Big Bad spirit who trapped Aiden and Dan there in the first place.
  • Persona:
    • The true Serial Killer and Big Bad of Persona 4, Adachi, might stand out in the original version as the only major character to not have a Social Link. In the Golden Updated Re-release, this was changed and he's given a Social Link, but at that point the killer's identity was largely a Late-Arrival Spoiler anyway. Still, if you did manage to go in unspoiled, you'd definitely raise an eyebrow upon seeing his Arcana is the Jester — another 0, like your Fool. Or that his Link will only raise during plot events once it's past a certain level. His Social Link only maxes out after you reach the path to the true ending.
    • In Persona 5, the In Medias Res part of the story begins with the Thieves getting arrested because a traitor sold them out. For various reasons, you can pick out that it's Goro Akechi, the detective investigating the Phantom Thieves turned 11th-Hour Ranger due to a combination of Blackmail and Enemy Mine, about as soon as he's introduced:
      • Akechi doesn't get as much attention shown to him in promotional material, hinting that he's not a real member of the team.
      • He claims he got his Persona totally off-screen, unlike all of the other Phantom Thieves. There's no real reason for the game to pass up a perfectly good dramatic Persona awakening scene... unless said scene would be a spoiler, like if it had shown his black outfit and Loki persona.
      • His unlockable outfits tend to belong to other games' villains.
      • And of course, the smoking gun: when he first meets the gang in May, he asks if someone mentioned pancakes. Someone did, but it was Morgana (he mentioned that a certain building looked like a stack of pancakes), and only people who have entered the metaverse can understand Morgana's speech as anything but cat noises, while Akechi later claims he only got his persona in November, thus giving away that he's lying...
      • In a unique twist on this, after you get back to the starting point it's revealed that he's just as obvious in-universe as out; Joker almost immediately twigged to the 'pancakes' comment and had formulated a plan to outmaneuver Akechi in the casino heist. Even his supposed boss, Shido, was well-aware that Akechi planned to betray him eventually and had a contingency to kill him when he tried. Even in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, several members of the Investigation Team and S.E.E.S. realize that this trope is in play after being around Akechi for long enough.
      • Aketchi's name is also a tip off, though this is a bit lost to western viewers; He shares his name with Akechi Mitsuhide, one of the more notorious figures from the Sengoku Period. Mitsuhide was a trusted vassal of Oda Nobunaga who, for reasons that are still debated today, turned on his master and killed him right as Nobunaga was on the verge of unifying Japan. This is like naming a character after "Marcus Junius Brutus" or "Benedict Arnold" in western media.
    • In the same game, there's also the true Big Bad and the Greater-Scope Villain, Yaldabaoth himself, who was impersonating the Big Good Igor all along. And he does a terrible job hiding it too; his voice and speech tone are completely different from the real Igor, which is extremely arrogant and condescending and much unlike the real one who is much more calm and refined. In fact, he even blatantly tells you "the game is over" if you die! (As opposed to the real one who just tells you to hit the Reset Button, in case of a deadline-induced game over.) Igor starts acting even more strangely the night before the final dungeon of the original game, to the point that even the twins who are the Velvet Room attendants are unnerved. While the voice change can be dismissed as the result of his previous Japanese voice actor's death(although his voice actor is also changed for the English version), you can definitely see that "Igor" is defintely not the real thing if this is not your first Persona game.
    • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth: There's the Big Bad Nagi, actually Enlil. Unlike Yaldabaoth above, she doesn't even try to pretend that she's the Big Good. For all of the Persona users' ventures in the movie world, there is a clear story behind it, which is the embodiment of the traumas that caused Hikari to fall into suicidal depression, and even Doe has been revealed to actually trying to help her up to the fourth labyrinth. (Remember that the Fourth Dungeon is near-endgame in Etrian Odyssey, which the Persona Q titles take after.) Yet, Nagi herself appears to be absolutely doing close to nothing throughout the four movies. And of course... she's obviously going to be the Obliviously Evil Big Bad of the game, being responsible for locking thousands in catatonic depression in a misguided attempt to save them from the pain of society.
    • Persona 5 Strikers has Kuon Ichinose, who does nothing for a good majority of the game save for acting as a Quest Giver and yet is hyped up as a major character, takes Most Definitely Not a Villain and Obfuscating Stupidity to the next level, and has numerous ham fisted "hints" that "hint" at a secret agenda. Surprise, surprise: she turns out to be the villain.
  • Pokémon has a history with twist villains—usually evil team leaders pretending to be normal NPCs—being really easy to see through:
    • Cyrus from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl isn't revealed to be the leader of Team Galactic until some time after getting the seventh Gym Badge. However, in his two prior appearances, he monologues about how conflict has ruined the world and that a new world should take its place, making it pretty easy to predict that he has a connection to the local criminal organization before The Reveal. Averted in Platinum, where he appears near the beginning of the game and monologues about how he plans to make time and space his, with him directly revealing himself as the leader of Team Galactic to the player character around the time of getting the fifth Gym Badge.
    • Ghetsis from Pokémon Black and White is a variation - he's actually cemented as a core part of the game's evil team, Team Plasma, right from the start, but he is in an advisory position to the team's actual leader, N. However, his look, creepy Leitmotif and Faux Affably Evil demeanor, combined with the fact that N is battled several times over across the span of the journey while Ghetsis is not makes it easy to guess that Ghetsis is really pulling the strings in Team Plasma and will be the Final Boss. The biggest twist is simply how evil he turns out to be in this role.
    • Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 has Colress. A scientist dressed in the colors of Team Plasma (blue, black and white), usually met in areas where Team Plasma have been operating, and constantly talking about how his research is about drawing out the true potential of Pokémon no matter what it takes. Nobody was surprised when it's revealed that he's the one Ghetsis replaced N with as acting leader of Team Plasma.
    • Lysandre from Pokémon X and Y has so many tip-offs and Obviously Evil tropes stapled onto him. Between his intimidating character design, red (specifically Team Flare red) and black color scheme, ominous Leitmotif, tendency to go on Motive Rants over the fate of the world (along with calling people "filth"), and the fact that Team Flare members openly congregate at his cafe, the only people surprised that he was the Big Bad were characters in-game... this includes the region's professor and Champion, both of whom he's openly given villainous monologues to.
    • The Aether Foundation, specifically Lusamine from Pokémon Sun and Moon suffers from this to an even greater extent thanks to having much of the games' plot revealed in marketing. In their debut trailer, the Aether Foundation appeared to be a group of Motherly Scientists dressed in gold and white who run a conservation group for Pokémon that were hurt by Team Skull. Of course, people quickly got Light Is Not Good and Pure Is Not Good vibes from them when they saw that their "branch chiefs" and "employees" were basically admins and grunts in disguise. Within the game itself, the opening sequence features Lillie running away from Aether employees, and their formal introduction includes a number of Obviously Evil tropes, raising the question of why the marketing even tried to pass them off as good guys. A twist still exists in that Lusamine's research with Ultra Beasts has made her Brainwashed and Crazy, and that Admin Faba is the only actual sinister member of the organization (with the post-game of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon emphasizing both these points even more), though.
      • Not helped by the fact that Team Skull, a group of Large Ham goofballs mostly involved in petty crime who nobody took seriously in-game, were the ones advertised as the supposed actual villain team of the story. Due to the series' Plot Leveling of having the villainous teams becoming more and more dangerous with each new installment, to the point that the entire world was usually at stake by the end of the game, everyone correctly pegged them as decoy antagonists meant to hide the real villains.
    • Pokémon Sword and Shield does this again with Chairman Rose. Just like its predecessor, Sword and Shield had Decoy Antagonists in the form of Team Yell, who were little more than obnoxious fans of your rival, Marnie. Meanwhile, Chairman Rose and his assistant Oleana were shown to have a lot of power in the Galar region by virtue of being the organizers of the Gym Challenge and Leon's sponsors.
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet does a terrible job of hiding that The Smart Guy Penny is the boss of Team Star. Save a nerd getting picked on, then almost immediately have a Mysterious Employer hack your phone and task you with getting rid of the same people responsible? That same nerd coincidentally happens to also be involved with said employer and happens to be in the area whenever you complete a task for them? That same employer also displays personal knowledge of all the Team Star bosses? And for the final strike, if you complete Arven's storyline first the Player Character offers to recruit Penny before they even find out she's the one who hacked their phone.
    • Nuzleaf of Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon has received this reaction from quite a number of players. He acts pleasant enough with the heroes, but the series has a tradition of making the overtly nice ones be Evil All Along. He also seems a little too interested in the player character's amnesia and Serenity Villages's high security area. So of course, he eventually betrays you and reveals he is The Mole for Dark Matter (albeit a Brainwashed and Crazy one).
  • Rave Heart: Prince Eryn being an antagonist was already hinted at due to how he is ineligible for the throne due to his lack of psychic abilities, which establishes a motive for resenting his sister. This is in contrast to Count Estuuban, who is presented as a backstabbing schemer from the start and Lady Marselva Zephyr, who outwardly has no established motive for working for Estuuban.
  • Red Dead Redemption II: In Chapters 4, 5, and 6, Dutch begins to suspect that one of his men is talking to the Pinkerton Agents who are after them due to how quickly they keep getting found. It turns out he's right. Who's the traitor? Micah Bell, the Obviously Evil Psycho for Hire who's only been in the gang a few months. Unfortunately, Dutch's paranoia causes him to start pushing away all of his lifelong friends who are questioning his increasingly dubious decisions while relying on Micah more due to him always being (outwardly) supportive of anything Dutch does. Dutch does eventually get revenge on Micah in the game's epilogue, however.
  • The Sakabashira Game: Evan wears black, has his eyes ominously covered up by his hair, is quick to brag about his intellect, takes credit for the group's progress despite Alex having done most, if not all of the heavy lifting, and insults another of his fellow contestants upon discovering his corpse. It comes as no surprise to the player, despite the story's attempts to convince them otherwise, when he stabs two of his companions (one of them to death), is revealed to have murdered his sister, and becomes a demonic monstrosity attempting to kill Alex.
  • The Sinking City:
    • To anyone familiar with Lovecraft, it's almost immediately obvious that Johannes van der Berg is Hastur (a.k.a. The King in Yellow). Not only is his outfit an eye-catching yellow, but Reed even goes out of his way to comment on the unusual colour. You can also view the ensemble in the wardrobe as soon as Reed reaches his hotel room, where it's named the King's Robes.
    • Similarly, anyone familiar with The Shadow Over Innsmouth will instantly peg the EOD as really being the Esoteric Order of Dagon.
  • In Soma Spirits, while Dissonance is openly presented as the antagonist, his sister Form is positioned as a benevolent ally and Big Good, and initially nothing seems amiss. Until she tells you that she wants a world of happiness and to only collect orbs of joy, which is already at odds with the moral of achieving balance, and when you see that doing this requires you to sacrifice the happiness of the greater society, combined with her being incredibly pushy and demanding if you disobey her- or even if you obey her- and outright encouraging you to condemn the wildlife of Freezing Fjord to die in an endless winter, it becomes increasingly hard to trust her. Sure enough, she is every bit as evil as her brother and wants to force everyone in the world to be happy against their will.
  • Sonic Frontiers: The mysterious voice in Cyberspace that guides Sonic to destroy the Titans was predicted by many players as being the real Big Bad even before the actual game came out, due to how ominous the voice sounds, how cryptic it is, how it does not want to divulge too much information about itself, and how Sage constantly tells Sonic that he is putting the world in danger by following its orders- by the time she outright tells him the voice is deceiving him, Sonic just says he will fight against them too if that is the case, as if even he was suspicious of it. Sure enough, it turns out to be THE END, an Eldritch Abomination who tricked Sonic into freeing it.
  • Tales Series:
    • Tales of the Abyss: The first half of the game does a good job at hiding the potential mole in your party. It's during the second half, when suddenly all curtains are raised and an arrow points at Anise, including her utterly exaggerated reactions to things or mysterious disappearances, along with the fact that her parents are in debt to the Order of Lorelei, so Mohs has leverage against her. According to some players, Anise being the mole felt like an Ass Pull.
    • Tales of Destiny:
      • While the twist that Leon betrayed the party was shocking at the time, it's blatantly obvious now that the Tales formula has become established that Leon is going to be the game's traitor. He's constantly sour and unpleasant about working with the party and flat-out tells Stahn he's not his friend in the original PSX game.
      • In the PS2 remake, it's made obvious that Hugo is a smarmy Jerkass ready to betray the King of Seinegald, complete with his redesign for the game sporting Four Eyes, Zero Soul, a Beard of Evil, and a Slasher Smile, yet it's a shocking twist in-universe when he has Leon steal the Eye of Atamoni.
    • Tales of Destiny 2: Subverted in-universe. Loni immediately pegs Judas as extremely suspicious with his wearing all black and a bone mask and refusing to give them his real name, while Kyle brushes off any and all suspicions Loni has towards him. Judas is, of course, Leon Magnus, the traitor from the previous game. However, Judas has learned from his past and is now fiercely loyal to the party, preferring to stay in a living nightmare rather than betray anyone else when given the choice between the two.
    • Tales of Symphonia: After Kratos, who was a mercenary with suspiciously varied knowledge in all sorts of aspects of the world of Sylvarant (see where Alvin got it from?), betrays you, the player can easily tell the next one coming. It's no surprise when it turns out that Zelos is the next traitor in the group. He disappears at times, has convenient excuses or explanations for things. His Obfuscating Stupidity didn't fool any player for very long, either. Ultimately, however, it's subverted in that Kratos is really on your side the whole time, and in most story routes Zelos is too.
    • One of the factors to how obviously the Traitor character in any given Tales game will be portrayed comes down to Idealistic vs. Pragmatic spread among the party members; Tales of Vesperia is no exception. Raven betrays the party once or twice before he even formally introduces himself to them. When he does join, he shamelessly does so by exploiting their need for information he has after they make it clear they don't trust him. While the revelation of his true identity as Captain Schwann seems to catch everyone by surprise, only Karel and Rita seem genuinely surprised by his betrayal, whereas the more experienced Yuri and Judith seem to have anticipated his inevitable betrayal.
    • Tales of Xillia: In the series in general, everyone expects one traitor per game, but Alfred vin Svent/Alvin is not only a very suspicious mercenary who very conveniently bails Jude and Milla out of getting arrested, he betrays the party constantly (not kidding, it was at least eight times). The party justifies keeping him around by saying he'd follow them anyways and at least this way they can keep an eye on him, but it's a surprise no one just kills him with all the trouble and grief he causes.
  • In Ultima V, who would have suspected that Saduj was secretly plotting against you?
  • World of Warcraft:
    • During one Alliance quest in Spires of Arak, the traitor who was selling plans to the Horde turns out to be a drunk with a history of disciplinary problems, meaning he clearly wasn't even pretending to be a model soldier.
    • In the Dagger in the Dark scenario it is rather obvious that Rak'gor is going to turn on Vol'jin and the player based on his disrespect and simmering hostility. The hostility between Vol'jin and Garrosh's loyalists had been built up since Cataclysm, and the game even changes the objective to killing Rak'gor and the Kor'kron assassins with him before Vol'jin gets stabbed.
    • In the Highmountain storyline, the player is tasked with helping Mayla Highmountain, chief of the Highmountain tauren, gain the assistance of three fellow tauren tribes. One of them, the Bloodtotem tribe, not only has the most imposing name, but is also the most xenophobic and hostile. Eventually, the player realizes that the Bloodtotem are in league with the Burning Legion.
    • Baron Vyraz in the Maldraxxus storyline. He's supposedly a great warrior who has earned his place as Margrave Krexus' right hand man over many victories, but he always just employs Attack! Attack! Attack! strategies that inevitably fail spectacularly and get everyone except him killed. So it doesn't come as a huge surprise when it's revealed he's working with the bad guys and has been deliberately setting you up for failure in an attempt to weaken the House of the Chosen so he can take over as it's new Margrave. He's also a new character who is only introduced in Maldraxxus, which makes him an obvious pick compared to established heroes Draka and Alexandros.
  • In the prologue of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Dunban is fighting the Mechon armies in Sword Valley, accompanied by his war mates Dickson and Mumkhar. Dunban opts to keep on fighting the Mechon with the Monado, with Dickson reluctantly agreeing to go with him. Mumkhar, on the other hand, doesn't ever talk about anything other than backing out. After Dunban and Dickson jump into battle, Mumkhar schemes that he'll just wait until the right time to get the hell out of dodge, which he immediately does within minutes. The appearances of these three warriors certainly don't help matters. This does, however, obfuscate that Mumkhar wouldn't be the only traitor in the group in the greater scope of the story...

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