12 Monkeys has the titular twelve monkeys, and Brad Pitt's squiffy-eyed loon and seeming cause of it all as mother of all Red Herrings.
Lampshaded in 22 Jump Street, where a jock suspected of being the dealer due to possessing a tattoo of a bazooka reveals that his tattoo is actually of his old high school mascot: the Plainview Red Herring.
Amsterdamned: The most prominent one being Martin, who's implied to be the killer when Laura investigates his mansion and finds scuba gear hidden away somewhere. He's not, though, the real killer was actually one of Martin's patients.
In the Movie Anamorph (2007) Blair then takes Stan to an art gallery which is filled with model depictions of the recent murders, including Stan's stolen chair. The curator informs them that the artist is Gerri Harden. Searching the art pieces, Stan finds a clay model of the raven, with hundreds of fingerprints still present on the clay. This leads them to a warehouse with a dummy model wearing a Gerri Harden name badge, and several paintings, when Stan realizes the name is an anagram from a red herring.
At the beginning of Batman, we see a couple of crooks mugging a couple and their child. We're led to think this is the young Bruce Wayne and his parents Thomas and Martha, and we're about to see the murder of his parents, but suddenly, Batman swoops in and beats up the crooks.
The movie Bloody Murder had a moment where it looks like one girl is the murderer in the camp. It then cuts to showing her at the dock, with an evil grimace, as she picks up an oar and beats one of the characters causing him to fall into the lake. It turns out she isn't actually the killer, and they make no attempt to explain why she turned evil for a split second.
In the horror anthology film Body Bags, every customer at the gas station in the first segment is implied to have nefarious designs on the heroine, but they all turn out to be unrelated to the real killer.
The creepy stalker guy in The Bodyguard was just that. The real killer was a hitman hired by Rachel's sister.
In Big Game, the pep talk Moore gives Oskari about having to act tough when one can't be tough looks like a set-up for an epic scene later, but ultimately, it amounts to nothing.
Billy Club (2013): Sometimes, we see a disgruntled-looking bearded man wandering around, which is meant to lead people to believe he's Billy out of costume. He isn't. He was a cop who was investigating the murders Billy was committing.
At one point in the middle of Brick the main character is attacked by a thug seeming to disrupt him. The origin of this is not revealed and it's implied it'll provide a greater wrinkle to the plot. The explanation isn't revealed until the end, and it turns out he was just hired by another character the protagonist humiliated earlier in the film for revenge.
Circle: The characters delve into their pasts at different points, hoping that there might be some clue to explain what is happening or how to escape from the game, but none of it really means anything. They were just picked at random during the Alien Invasion.
Cloverfield: Most of the film's extremely cryptic and obtuse Viral Marketing intentionally misled curious viewers with loads of supposed plot details, much of it about a drink called "Slusho", none of which are actually evident in the final film, which is a straightforward "kaiju attacks city" Found Footage movie, without any major plot twists or reveals, and audiences came out of it knowing as much about the monster as they did going in.
The mystery/comedy film Clue was shot with three alternate endings, and in all three of them someone says "Communism was just a red herring." Which is true, since despite the movie taking place during the height of the Red Scare and all the suspects having a connection to the US government, the murders that take place have nothing to do with the Cold War.
Crooked House has several. The most obvious ones include Brenda being the one who gave Leonides the fatal dose of eserine, her affair with Laurence and the fact she stood to inherit the estate. Charles himself almost dismisses this entirely as being far too convenient. Another is a new will turning up naming Sophia as the benefactor; it's also thrown around that she specifically hired Charles to investigate because he would be unlikely to suspect her, due to their previous romantic relationship. As it turns out neither Brenda, Laurence or Sophia was the killer.
The 2013 film Crush opens with a young girl killing a boy out of jealousy before focusing on high school student Bess, an awkward and quiet loner obsessed with star athlete Scott. When bad things start happening to people around Scott, Bess is implied to be the culprit and the girl from the beginning. The actual culprit and girl from the beginning is Bess' co-worker Andie.
In Die Hard with a Vengeance the main villain, Simon Gruber, is presented as a mad bomber with a personal grudge against John McClane for killing his brother Hans Gruber, who was the Big Bad of the first film. Turns out that was all a distraction to keep John and his unwitting civilian partner Zeus Carver busy finding bombs, while Simon and his crew of professional mercenaries rob the NY Federal Reserve Bank of its gold. It's later revealed that Simon didn't even like his brother, and John dying from one of the bombs going off was just a bonus while doing the robbery, not a personal priority.
There are scenes that hint at Caleb possibly being the real AI, and Ava being used to test his humanity. Lampshaded when Caleb, himself, starts to wonder if he's real, after the reveal that Kyoko is an AI. He checks to see if his own skin is fake and even cuts himself.
In the end, the Episode Title Card "Ava Session 7" appears on screen even though Caleb isn't administering the Turing test and Nathan is already dead. This may suggest that Ava was testing the two of them the entire time.
In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Obscurials are wizards who tried to repress their own magic (usually due to childhood abuse), turning it into a destructive parasitical force known as an Obscurus, one of which is loose in New York during the movie. All known Obscurials are under the age of 10, since their Obscurus quickly kills them (Newt has an Obscurus for study whose host, a Sudanese girl, died at age 8. Ariana Dumbledore, an unconfirmed one, made it to 14). So surely Modesty Barebone, an around-ten-year-old Creepy Child who suffered abuse at the hands of her violently anti-magical mother, is a prime candidate for Obscurial-hood. Well, everyone might think so, but the Obscurial is actually her older brother, Credence. He managed to survive as long as he did because his magic was so insanely powerful that it kept him alive despite his Obscurus.
While undercover cop Brian is working his cover job at the auto parts shop, Hector and his crew come in to buy parts for their cars. When Brian discovers that the cars he's buying parts for are the same make and model as the cars used in a series of truck heists, he becomes suspicious. He sneaks into Hector's garage that night and looks over their cars. Hector's then exonerated when Brian discovers the cars aren't finished being modified and the tires don't match the tread marks found at the scene.
As Brian's leaving Hector's garage, he's ambushed by Dominic and Vince and tries to explain that he's only checking out the competition because he can't afford to lose again. He's able to convince Dominic he's not a cop and they decide to check out more competition: Johnny Tran. While the three of them are looking around Johnny's garage, Brian finds a load of DVD players like the ones stolen from the truck. He reports this to his superiors and they perform a raid on Johnny and his crew. However, it turns out that the DVD players were purchased legally and they were forced to release him.
In Field of Dreams, Ray assumes that the voice instructing him to build a baseball field on his cropland is instructing him to help other people. He thinks "If you build it, he will come" refers to Shoeless Joe Jackson, "Ease his pain" refers to Terrance Mann, and "Go the distance" refers to Moonlight Graham. It turns out the voice was talking about Ray making amends with his own deceased father all along.
The Final Destination film series generally uses Disaster Dominoes to set up its incredibly bizarre deaths. The lead-up to Candice's death in Final Destination 5 includes a pipe leaking onto an exposed wire and a nail landing on her gymnastics beam. She finishes her routine without even noticing the nail, and never steps on the wire. Then she moves onto the horizontal bar, which looks dangerously loose... At which point, the next girl to use the beam steps on the nail and falls off, setting off a much shorter chain of events.
Flightplan: With his history of playing villains, Sean Bean's casting as the pilot was this. He seems to be gaslighting the protagonist by repeatedly denying her claims about her missing daughter, but he just does it because like near everyone else, he sincerely doesn't believe her. And once the protagonist does find her kid, he's the among the first to acknowledge it.
After his dive off the dam, we see Dr. Richard Kimble get a ride from a woman, and we cut to the marshals saying "they've got him - shacked up with some babe over in Whiting" who "left work tonight and took him home". When Gerard and his men raid the house, surprise - it's Copeland, the other convict who survived the train wreck and escaped, and is shot dead by Gerard after resisting arrest and taking one of his deputies hostage.
Dr. Alec Lentz is set up to be the Big Bad of the movie and orchestrator of Kimble's downfall. However, we learn halfway through the film that Lentz was killed in a car crash soon after Kimble's incarceration, and that the real villain was Dr. Charles Nichols.
Every trailer for Godzilla made Godzilla out to be the primary threat, but in fact the MUTOs are the real bad guys.
One film critic joked that Robert Downey Jr.'s character in Gothika should have just been named Red Herring, as it was so obvious that's what he was.
A small one in Gummo in which the narrator talks about two brothers, and saying 'They seemed to have wonderful lives. I don't know what went wrong.'. We then see the two brothers fighting, and it's expected that it something drastic will happen between the two. However they're fight soon comes to and end, then one of them calmly asks the other what's for dinner.
A Haunting at Silver Falls: Aside from Wyatt, who initially presented as his daughters' killer but is quickly revealed to be an innocent and grieving man on death row, there's also Sheriff O'Leary and his son Robbie, both of whom are repeatedly referred to as "getting away with murder", with Robbie also implied to get away with more than that. However, they're not the killers of the Dahl twins story, either.
The hero of Headhunters is an art burglar. At a party he is introduced to the top detective in the country, who has recently switched from murder to art burglary investigation. It appears this is a matchup of worthy opponents who will spend the rest of the movie in dogged competition. Actually the detective never investigates Roger for art burglary, only getting involved with the film's murders. He also notices the discrepancies in evidence that Roger has left behind, but protects his own reputation as the best cop in the country by ignoring them for a quick, clean solve.
In A View to a Kill, Max Zorin's genetically modified racehorses have nothing to do with the plot and serve only as an excuse to get Bond involved in Zorin's business.
In GoldenEye Q waxes lyrical about the features of the new Bondmobile, none of which are used in the film.
In Highway to Hell, Charon's warning that evil can often be sweet seems to point to Adam as an evil figure, but it's actually his friendly father figure, Beezle, to watch out for.
Kild TV: Suspects of who the killer might be include fellow news reporter Conrad, who they find dead, and Lia, whom they tie up in the news room. Both guesses are wrong.
In The Hobbit, the Dwarven windlance in Lake-town. The Desolation of Smaug makes dedicated focus to this lone weapon on the tower, with Balin stating that it's the only thing that can make the Black Arrows pierce Smaug's hide. Bard, when he heard the rumblings from the mountain, decides to take the last remaining Black Arrow to the windlance, but he is stopped by the Lake-town authorities and thrown in a jail cell while Bain hides the Black Arrow in a boat. Ultimately, the Black Arrow never makes it to the windlance when Smaug lays waste on the town, and Bard has to fire the Black Arrow with a makeshift long-bow on top of the bell tower.
In Hot Fuzz the Red Herrings don't so much lead to the wrong killer, as to the wrong motives behind the murders. Nicholas comes up with a very complicated plan that involved money, cheating, jealousy and a very lucrative land deal. Turns out there were no connections between the victims; they were all killed because of some minor character flaws (which Nicholas and Danny actually namechecked as they were compiling their first theory) that were seen as hurting Sandford's status as an idyllic, perfect village, something the real killers take veryseriously.
The racially-charged environment of In the Heat of the Night had nothing to do with the murder. It was just a mugging gone wrong.
In The Intruders, most of the characters around the protagonist simply exist to be the audience's "suspects". The actual antagonist lives deep inside the house.
In Kindergarten Cop, when John Kimble starts posing as a kindergarten teacher, he finds that one of the boys in his class is perpetually sullen and morose, frequently having bruises which he claims come from falling down. He suspects that he is Cullen Crisp's son, but it turns out he's not; he simply has an abusive father, whom Kimble beats the crap out of.
The Loft: The business about Anne being the sister of one of Chris's patients who committed suicide turns out to be completely unrelated to death of the woman in the loft. Given it is later revealed that her first meeting with chris with staged by Vincent, it is possible the story about her sister might not even be true.
The Machinist at one point shows blood prominently flowing from a refrigerator, implying that the main character has killed someone and placed the body in there. The source is just some fish due to the electricity going out and the fridge failing. It has no real bearing on the plot.
Prince Phillip becomes this in Maleficent, wherein the fairies believe that his Love at First Sight for Aurora will break her curse. It doesn't, because a love that deep cannot exist between two people after just one meeting, and in the film it is rather forced by the fairies, leaving little room for any "true love". This works because it did break her curse in the original film.
Promotional material for Iron Man 3 (2013) smokescreens the fact that The Mandarin is just an actor paid to take the blame for the real Big Bad.
Everything advertised about Captain America: The Winter Soldier from the trailers to the posters to the title itself is designed as a distraction from the true plot of the film. It's an Antagonist Title, but a minor one: the Winter Soldier is just on the payroll of the still-alive HYDRA, which turns out to have been hidden within S.H.I.E.L.D. since the organization's creation after World War 2.
Avengers: Endgame has Ant-Man's van with the Quantum Tunnel. While it is the reason that Lang reappears after five years, afterwards it fails to be useful to travel back in time as Stark invents a better design. In the final battle, Thanos destroys the van before they can use it to send the glove with the Infinity Stones back in time and out of his grasp for good.
Mindhunters: By the time the cast is whittled down to about five people, it's revealed that Jake Harris, the supervisor, is the real killer when he begins to taunt them through the loudspeakers set up on the island. They find him inside his lair, only to discover that the speakers were playing a pre-recorded tape and Harris himself had been tortured to death.
A Murder of Crows: At first Lawson thinks his publisher is in cahoots with Thurman Parks III to get revenge on Lawson as he seems them together. Initially he thinks the man who's revealed to be the killer is working with Parks as well. However, it turns out that Parks isn't plotting against Lawson at all.
A complicated one occurs in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) where Dr. Arbuthnot appears to be the culprit, shooting Poirot in the shoulder when Poirot was accusing Mary and confessing to the murder, while giving a passionate speech how Cassetti deserved to die and then attacking Poirot outright. While Dr. Arbuthnot is in fact a culprit, the former is not the culprit as all the passengers, including Mary and Dr. Arbuthnot, stabbed and killed Cassetti, with Linda Arden being the mastermind of the murder.
A few in Mystery Team. Parodied with Old Man McGinty, played straight with the union strike.
No Way Out (1987) has the antagonists start a Witch Hunt for a Soviet mole suspected of killing the Defense Secretary's mistress as a red herring to divert attention from the real murderer.
Played straight repeatedly in A Perfect Getaway, where the protagonists try to find out which romantic couple is a pair of killers. Just for good measure, two characters are introduced all shadowy-The Faceless-like to drive the audience crazy. Even better, another possible suspect invokes "red snappers" in his second scene. And as it turns out, they're both red herrings, as the real killers are the protagonistcouple themselves, and the whole movie hasn't been about finding the killers, but about finding their next victims.
In Point Break, undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah encounters a gang of tough and violent surfers at a beach and suspects that they are the "Ex-Presidents", a gang of bank robbers suspected to be surfers. He soon participates in an FBI raid on the surfer gang's home — where he finds that while they are drug smugglers and heavily-armed, they are not the Ex-Presidents. Even worse, the raid ruins another undercover operation by the DEA. Oops!
The 2013 film Prisoners is about two little girls being kidnapped by a serial killer, and the main characters' borderline-Knight Templar efforts to find the girls. A man named Bob Taylor is finally set up to be "the culprit". There's lots of evidence: he buys small childrens' clothes despite not having kids, he has a creepy, suspicious personality, he behaves evasively when Detective Loki shows up to question him, there's even a climactic "resisting arrest" scene before Taylor is subdued, and just to drive it home how psychotic Taylor is, he keeps friggin' snakes in the same trunks as the bloody children's clothes, those clothes also being a clue. The problem is, this is all a Red Herring; Taylor was actually a previous kidnapping victim who simply went bonkers and started imitating the true culprit. Also, Alex Jones could count as one, but since Mr. Keller goes Knight Templar trying to torture information about the girls out of Jones, the audience was already pretty sure Jones was going to turn out to be innocent.
In Prom Night, there are several suspects for the killer's identity, all pertaining to whoever found Robin Hammond's dead body after she was killed by her classmates: Leonard Murch, a Serial Rapist who was framed for her murder and recently escaped from a hospital meaning he'd want to take revenge on whoever framed him; Mr. Sykes, the school's Crusty Caretaker who stares at the girls creepily, and Robin's father Mr. Hammond, who would likewise have a strong motive for the crime and conveniently disappears when the killings begin to pile up.
Ratter contains several, with the biggest one being Emma's jilted ex-boyfriend. They all turn out to be unrealted to her stalker.
In Red Riding Hood, the Wolf had certain dialogue that made it sound like it could be Peter and also there was also Valerie's grandmother who was creepy and unnatural at times.
In Rising Sun, Eddie Sakamura is shown from the beginning of the film as a Jerkass, rich corporate son who is used to getting his way, disrespects his girlfriend and has sex with lots of other women. He is also played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who is known to play villain roles throughout his career. So naturally when the girlfriend turns up dead at a corporate business party, he is the first one the police suspect, except Connor the veteran detective that knows Japanese culture. Conner is right, as Eddie was part of a setup along with a US Senator. Eddie is made to be the fall guy for the police, while the Senator, who was having an affair with Eddie's girlfriend, gets black mailed to agree on a certain bill in congress. The real killer is revealed to be the one corporate employee nobody takes seriously and thinks is a pathetic ass kisser.
Zepp the hospital orderly is clearly set up to be the Jigsaw killer throughout Saw, however it is revealed in a twist ending that Zepp was merely a useful pawn of the real Jigsaw killer, a patient of his and Dr. Gordon's named John Kramer, who has been posing as a corpse on the floor of the bathroom where the victims were shackled.
There's usually one of these about once a movie, whether it be a character or just sequences in there to distract from the main plot twist, usually with plenty of foreshadowing.
Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed has two of them, in regards to the main villain behind the monster attacks. Both also hint at who the main villain actually is.
Firstly, there's Jeremiah Wickles. He was the cellmate of Jonathan Jacobo, who'd been investigating methods to create real monsters prior to his death, and he'd also been the Black Knight Ghost, one of the costumes stolen in the museum robbery. The gang investigate him and find a monster-making manual in his library, along with a bunch of Applied Phlebotinum used in monster-making. Turns out that not only is he trying to go straight, but he and Jacobo hated each other and would never have partnered up. This comes into play when Jacobo is revealed to have been the villain all along, having been Not Quite Dead; he'd been intentionally trying to frame Wickles.
Secondly, there's Patrick, the owner of the museum. While undercover at the Bad Guy Bar, Shaggy and Scooby run into him grilling a man in an uncharacteristically aggressive manner. Later in the film, Velma infers that Patrick is the villain, and towards the climax she encounters a Stalker Shrine to Jacobo that Patrick seemingly set up. This comes into play when it provides Velma with a crucial piece of evidence: a photo of Jacobo outside the unfinished museum, when he'd supposedly died before construction ever began, proving that he's still alive.
Sheriff Burke gets a close-up shot, which shows that he wears the same kind of shoes as the killer. And then he barely appears for the rest of the film.
Played with very cleverly; Sidney's boyfriend Billy is very obviously set up as the killer, and given the savvy nature of the film and its characters, the audience will assume that this is a Red Herring. It's not. Billy actually is the killer; the true twist was that Stu was his partner in crime. Bonus points for faking his death too.
Derek and Cotton (and his bloody hands) in Scream 2, detective Kincaid and John Milton in Scream 3, Deputy Judy and Trevor in Scream 4. They love this trope.
Towards the beginning of Sonic the Hedgehog, a scene with Maddie's sister Rachel (who hates Tom and constantly tries to convince Maddie to divorce him) and a meaningful-looking shot of Robotnik's drone riddling a photo of Maddie and Tom with bullets suggests that the shenanigans of the movie might put a strain on Maddie and Tom's relationship. This never happens, Maddie is amazingly patient with the shenanigans Tom's apparently gotten up to even before she sees the wounded humanoid hedgehog he's been protecting, and in fact Rachel spends the entire second half of the movie tied to a chair where nobody, not even her own daughter, will listen to her.
In Attack of the Clones, when Anakin is trying to fight against the Geonosians inside of the Droid factory, he at one point gets his arm trapped within a piece of molded armor, and is drawing closer and closer to a crushing machine/cutting machine, causing the audience to think he'll lose his arm as a result of the battle. Turns out he actually loses it during the battle with Count Dooku towards the end (but it does cut his lightsaber, making the next one be the one be the "family heirloom" Obi-Wan passes to Luke later).
A meta example with The Force Awakens. All the marketing materials, from the trailer, to the movie's poster show Finn holding Anakin's blue lightsaber, lead people to speculate that he would be the subject of the titular "awakening" in the Force. However, it turns out that it's Rey who's Force sensitive and who eventually uses said lightsaber to defeat villain Kylo Ren.
Rogue One: K2 mentions that if they can't get through the orbital shield, they'll all disintegrate in the cold void of space... except him. He's the first to die in the tower, shot by stormtroopers. Everyone dies on-planet.
In Sunset Boulevard, Max, Norma's butler seems to have motive and opportunity for the murder of Joe Gillis: he was Norma's discoverer and first husband, and is still slavishly loyal to her, trying to comfort her even as Joe wants to leave her, and he was outside with hi. However, it turns out that Max is actually polite and docile, and Norma shoots Joe herself.
It was initially believed that Eric Sacks was going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)'s incarnation of the Shredder. He's actually The Dragon to the real Shredder. Also a case of Executive Meddling as Eric Sacks really was intended to be the hidden alias of Shredder; focus testing told producers that some considered it to be a case of 'whitewashing'. They played it safe and rewrote the plot.
All of the discussion about the mysterious disappearance of Davras' father in Theatre of Death. The father turns out to have nothing to do with the case.
Tower of Death introduces a crazed, almost feral martial artist named Lewis, who keeps lions as pets, savagely beats challengers to death with his bare hands, and enjoys feasting on bloody steak in order to make himself - in his own words - more savage. The film pretty much builds him to be the villain, until Lewis gets unceremoniously killed by his own valet, a traitor working for the realBig Bad. Who is the hero's supposedly deceased friend that actually faked his own death earlier in the movie.
Finn Youngblood, the escaped mental patient, turns out to have nothing to do with the murders in Varsity Blood. However, The End... Or Is It? ending to the film reminds us that he is still out there as a possible Sequel Hook.
In Victim (1961), there's a lengthy subplot involving an older blind man and his partner which implies they're involved in the blackmail ring. Turns out they're just minor swindlers operating their own, separate racket.
In the film version of the nuclear farce Whoops Apocalypse, a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Princess Diana is kidnapped, drugged, and placed on display in Madame Tussaud's London wax museum. The obvious assumption is that she's disguised as the waxwork of herself, but it turns out that she's actually disguised as Sleeping Beauty.
In Wonder Woman, it is heavily implied that General Erich Ludendorff is Ares in human disguise. Ares turns out to be a totally different character.
X-Men: Magneto looks at Wolverine's dogtags before asking Sabretooth, "Where is the mutant now?" This is to mislead the audience into the same line of thinking as the heroes, that Magneto is after Wolverine, instead of his true target Rogue.
The Wolverine: Will Yun Lee (Harada) was promoted to have rigorous sword training, but most of his action scenes involved archery. If you're familiar with the comics character, one might be surprised that in this film, Harada is NOT the Silver Samurai.
X-Men: First Class: There are two incidents which fooled some audience members into believing that this would be the moment where Xavier would become crippled: the first was when the Blackbird crashed, and the other was when Charles experienced the trauma of Shaw's death telepathically. Afterwards, these viewers then assumed that Xavier's disability will be dealt with in a sequel, but then he is accidentally wounded by Magneto.
X-Men: Apocalypse: The Blackbird, along with all the various equipment that is kept underground at the school, seem to foreshadow their use later on in the film. Their only purpose is to cause the explosion that destroys the entire school and kills Havok.
Logan has Charles imply Wolverine is responsible for the X-Men's death, when really it was his own uncontrolled psychic powers.
