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Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize
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Big-name actors tend to get major roles in media, so when you see a big-name actor in what appears to be a small role, it might be a case of The Cameo or a One-Scene Wonder, but it also might be because the character's role is larger than it first appears. When the plot of the story involves a mystery, this often means that you can deduce at least part of the mystery purely on the star-power of the actors: narrow down the suspect to the guy you recognize. Complications can come in when the production is an All-Star Cast, so every suspect is someone you recognize. It can also get confusing when an actor playing a small role gets more famous after the work was filmed. Sometimes you can narrow it down before you even see the work because the trailers spoiled the big-name actor's appearance. If the big-name actor hasn't shown up by the third act, he'll probably be revealed as the final Hidden Villain. Sometimes called Chekhov's Guest Star. See also: Traitor Shot, Not-So-Small Role. Compare also to Chekhov's Gunman, where the viewer is made suspicious by the strange irrelevance to the story of an apparently minor character rather than by the casting of a known actor. Contrast Dead Star Walking, where a well-known actor appears to have a major role but is doomed because they're too expensive to be a regular cast member. SPOILERS AHOY! |
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Kamen Rider Fourze cast Kousei Amano (known to Rider fans as Sakuya Tachibana/Garren) as the school's principal Kouhei Hayami, who naturally turns out to be one of the commander-level enemies. Later in the show, Nao Nagasawa of Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger fame joined the cast as a new teacher and heavily implied that she was a villain who would end up joining the commanders. Ultimately subverted; she's innocent, and the actual villain is deliberately trying to frame her out of spite. Nagasawa's character ends up becoming a recurring member of the cast and part of the heroes' support network. | |
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Pokémon Detective Pikachu: Who do you think the Big Bad is? The obvious Red Herring Jerkass played by a lesser-known actor who doesn’t even have a page on this wiki? Or the guy played by Bill Nighy, one of the biggest stars in the cast. | |
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Cleverly done in Sleepy Hollow (1999), where the main character, already investigating a crime, is introduced to the town's most important men and the audience is already looking for the guilty among them. They are all played by "vaguely famous" actors: former Maigret (and later Dumbledore) Michael Gambon as the leader, Jeffrey Jones from Amadeus and Beetlejuice as the reverend, Ian "Palpatine" McDiarmid as the doctor; Michael Gough, formerly Batman's butler and a usual in Burton's films, as the notary; and Richard Griffiths from The Naked Gun 2 (and later Uncle Vernon) as the magistrate. The guilty party is... A conspiracy among all of them! But wait: the real villain behind the ghost is the leader's wife, played by Miranda Richardson. | |
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The first episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries features Éowyn playing the supposedly heartbroken wife of the victim. | |
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Bones: An episode featured Thomas F. Wilson as the victim's boss. You best remember him as Biff Tannen from Back to the Future. He turned out to be the killer. Another had Adam Baldwin as an FBI agent looking for a mob killer and protecting Brennan from a hit man. He was the killer and the hitman. Another episode has a "People Who Died On Buffy" reunion where both major lawyers and the lead investigator were all characters who died on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Subverted in the end. Played with in one episode, where the killer was not the mildly famous person (Spencer Breslin); however, he did turn out to be the father of all those babies, including the unborn child of the victim. Subverted fabulously in an episode where Robert Englund, who's famous for playing Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, played a janitor. He also did not do it. Furthermore, the first crime featured the story of a cannibal who killed his victims for their delicious flesh. Robert Englund's character offers Bones and Booth some delicious ribs. As opposed to the Castle ep above, Miss Farrell did do it in "The Man in the Mud" ... but the episode also had Tom Friendly, Delia Fisher, and Joey Lawrence's little brother to choose from. The season 5 episode "The X In the File" featured Dean Haglund, who played a recurring character on The X-Files (Langly, one of The Lone Gunmen). He did it. A more subtle one in the second Gravedigger episode. Fans of The Wire will know Rhonda Pearlman isn't going to show up just to cameo in a couple of lawyer scenes. |
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CSI NY: Played with in an episode where retired tennis champ John McEnroe is accused of murder: the suspect turns out to be a guy who looks like him...also played by McEnroe. Another episode features "magician" and professional poser, Criss Angel. When the team suspects his character early on, it seems obvious he won't be the killer. However, by the end of the episode, he has performed almost all of his signature tricks. Oh, and killed two people... would be three, but the team arrives just in the nick of time. Also played with in an episode that has Kid Rock being suspected of killing an employee who leaked his yet-to-be-released album. He didn't do it, the leak was a Viral Marketing ploy orchestrated by him. "Second Chances" has 2 straight, 1 subversion, 1 aversion - It looks like Pat Monaghan from Train is the killer - it's his car that ran over the vic. It was his girlfriend and the vic's girlfriend (Kim Kardashian and Vanessa Lachey) taking drug users off the street and insuring them for 2 years, then killing them for the life insurance, Pat was due to be the next vic. They also interview La La Vazquez as a suspect, it isn't her. In "Some Buried Bones," Nelly Furtado is suspected of killing a store security guard who catches her shoplifting. Turns out to be someone else, but she's still arrested for her crimes. A Hilarious in Hindsight version. Misha Collins appears in the Season 4 opener, which was released a few months before he began Supernatural. While not so obvious at the time, it's pretty easy to guess nowadays that he's the killer. |
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Donna was a serial killer of sex offenders who ended up killing an undercover cop. | |
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Psych The first episode has the father of the kidnapped and then murdered young man played by Don S. Davis — who spent eight years on Stargate SG-1 as Gen. Hammond. He did it. One of the season finales had Alan Ruck (Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) as a bank robber. Turns out he was being forced into it; the real baddies had his wife held hostage. When David Naughton guest-starred in a Halloween episode themed around werewolves, it's easy to guess that he did it. Especially when his character was named after an ''Entertainment Weekly'' TV critic who doesn't particularly like the show. Saul Tigh recently showed up as a grizzled old fisherman and was promptly ignored by the main cast for the majority of the episode. He did it. Although, to be frank, you have to have watched Battlestar Galactica (2003) to get it. Otherwise, he's just another character actor. Surprisingly subverted with Joey McIntyre (yes, that Joey McIntyre) since he played a police officer new to the precinct and Shawn kept going on about how the perpetrator, a vigilante taking down members of a crime syndicate, had to be someone inside the SBPD. To be fair, though, it was a comic book-themed episode and you don't have to be a fan of the genre to realize the reporter in glasses would turn out to be the superhero. Subverted in the season 7 premiere. Jake Busey shows up as one of two security guys (the other one we've seen already in the episode). A few minutes later, Busey shows up pointing a gun at Shawn and Gus. Turns out he's FBI, having infiltrated the company in order to investigate the man he was guarding earlier. In the old west town episode, Jim Beaver is the most noticeable guest star, as he played Bobby Singer on Supernatural for nearly seven years. And he did it. Rob Benedict, also from Supernatural, guest starred as a lawyer who believed his client was innocent. Rob plays God on Supernatural. His client WAS innocent all along. Played with to hell and back on the 100th episode, which was based on Clue. Three guest stars from the Clue movie (Leslie Ann Warren, Christopher Lloyd, and Martin Mull), and three not (Garret Morris, Curt Smith, and Steve Valentine). What made it particularly apt was that no one committed the crime featured in the episode, and the final culprit - who committed a five-year-old cold case - was voted on during the episode, with multiple possible endings filmed. The east coast and west coast saw different killers. |
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When Nicholas Hoult suddenly materialises halfway through episode 1 of BBC crime drama Wallander (and starts hogging all the screen time) it was only a matter of time before the bloodied axe shows up under his bed. | |
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Lie to Me had Beecher (Lee Tergesen) as the perp in the second season finale. | |
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Lampshaded on The Simpsons: | |
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Pretty much everyone who was in any way interested in iCarly, knew that Nathan Kress' appearance on CSI was as a bad guy. | |
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Happens so often on Castle that lately they've taken to casting at least two familiar faces an episode, so even though you know one of them did it, they at least keep you guessing between which. Also been subverted quite a bit as Robert Picardo, Debi Mazar, Dan Castellaneta and Phil LaMarr have all popped up as being allies rather than killers. Robert Picardo was also in an episode of Pushing Daisies as a detective. He hadn't committed any crimes there either. Though Ethan Phillips also appeared and WAS the guilty party. "One Man's Treasure": You got Mrs. Ari and Miss Farrell over the corpse of a two-timer. So one of them did it, right? Nope, turns out to be Principal Wood, only slightly unrelated to his two-timing. "Pretty Dead" had Michael McKean, Teri Polo, Sasha Roiz and Jonathan Slavin. One by one they were eliminated as suspects until the last one left was pretty obviously the killer. One episode had Mitch Pileggi play a tough agent who obviously has something to do with the murder. Actually it turns out to be a paid spy-game experience and he is just a regular joe who is very shocked to learn that this isn't part of the game. He gets maybe three minutes of screentime. The guy who did it was just some guy. For the most part Castle seems to enjoy zigzagging this trope. William Mapother himself shows up in "Disciple". He did the killing, but he's not the "disciple"; another recognizable actor (Annie Wersching) takes that spot. |
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Medium: Ironically, an episode of it seems like Reed Diamond did it, but in the end Allison finds out that the 'victim' is still alive and a few years younger than in her dreams, so she understands he might do it, despite being anything but a killer to this point, and warns him so hopefully he won't do it. Will McCormack raped Devalos' daughter and others. Donna was a serial killer of sex offenders who ended up killing an undercover cop. |
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Inverted in season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery: fans spotted that two characters would end up being one and the same precisely because such a plum role would never have gone to an unknown with zero IMDB credits. The fans were right; the second "actor" was a pseudonym for the first. | |
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And again – apparently Hawaii Five-0 is pretty consistent about sidestepping this trope – with the casting of Summer Glau as the daughter of the murder victim in "Kekoa." You can tell right away that there's got to be something going on behind the scenes, because no one in their right mind would spend money to cast Summer Glau as a genuinely fragile weepy waif and the detectives have a blurry photo of a brunette girl roughly the same height, but the secret turns out to be that her father was teaching her a traditional Hawaiian combat style in defiance of gender restrictions. Naturally, she gets forced into a big dramatic hand-to-hand fight with the real perp by the end of the episode. | |
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Subverted in Hannibal. You'd think they wouldn't cast Jeremy Davies unless it was as the killer, and the show doesn't usually zig-zag a lot in that respect, but sure enough, he turned out to be a patsy. | |
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Poirot: The adaptation of Sad Cypress seems to be aiming for this, featuring Paul McGann and Rupert Penry-Jones among the guest cast. However, the presence of Phyllis Logan as a character who seems to be a complete non-entity practically screams "She did it!" |
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Powers: Wil Wheaton as Conrad Moody is the guy who hired Heavy to murder Retro Girl. | |
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Supernatural: In the episode "Clap Your Hands If You Believe...", a red flag went up as soon as Robert Picardo came on screen, acting all lame and insignificant. Obviously, he was the villain. Charisma Carpenter and James Masters guest star in the episode "Shut Up, Dr. Phil" together and of course they did it. Mitch Pileggi, Billy Drago, Mark Sheppard, Mark Pellegrino... the list could go on. At least half of the truly recognizable names on Supernatural are involved or responsible for some black and white or gray areas of evil. |
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Ironically, an episode of it seems like Reed Diamond did it, but in the end Allison finds out that the 'victim' is still alive and a few years younger than in her dreams, so she understands he might do it, despite being anything but a killer to this point, and warns him so hopefully he won't do it. | |
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Will McCormack raped Devalos' daughter and others. | |
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Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize | |
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The Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? episode featuring Malcolm McDowell has this for the culprit disguised as the Chronobeast. The only characters to show up in the episode are the Mystery Inc. gang and Malcolm himself, so it's not exactly difficult to figure out, given some of his previous roles. What is trickier to figure out is the fact that the gang's time travelling adventure wasn't real in the first place and Malcolm used a hologram double of himself to muddle things. | |
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Elementary: "Rat Race," Molly Price, who played a large role in Third Watch as well as numerous other tv shows and movies, showed up very early in the episode as a secretary. She did it. | |
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The Closer: Philip Stroh. Attorneys are relatively few and far between on this show (mostly because Brenda is very good at convincing the suspects that they don't need one), so when one not only shows up but is also played by Billy Burke, you kind of assume he's gonna be important. Stroh turns out to be his serial raping client's much more evil accomplice, and eventually becomes Brenda's That One Case. | |
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Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Nathan Fillion guest star in an episode of season 4 as a vaguely case-related rando. Of course he did it. Played With in season 6: the show had already had famous guest stars as members of the force, and Sean Astin's role seemed extended enough to justify his presence. He still did it. Subverted in the episode "Dillman". Dillman (played by J. K. Simmons) is a police detective investigating the squad after someone plays a prank that contaminates important evidence. Near the end of the episode, Jake proves that Dillman was actually fired from the police force years ago, and accuses him of setting up the prank so that he could "solve" it and get reinstated - only for it to be revealed that even though Dillman was lying about being a detective, he didn't contaminate the evidence, and the actually perpetrators were two minor characters, one of whom never appeared on screen. Averted in season 1 when Adam Sandler turns out to make only an extended cameo. Of course, it might have been awkward if he was involved in the case, as he was playing As Himself. |
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Inverted hard in Minecraft: Story Mode. One episode features a murder mystery set in a mansion, introducing multiple new characters as potential culprits. Unfortunately, every single character is voiced by and modeled after a famous (at the time) Minecraft YouTuber, except for the one who turns out to be a murderer, to avoid casting any of their real life actors in a negative light. Even vague familiarity with the YouTube scene of 2012-2016 can make the culprit glaringly obvious from the moment they're introduced. | |
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In Hot Fuzz, all of the supporting cast are famous actors, and all of them did it. All of them are also known for playing villains at one point or another, according to the commentary. | |
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Bill Moseley played Otis Driftwood in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. | |
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The Inside was pretty bad about this for its short run. William Mapother, Michael Bowen Jenette Goldstein, Hart Boecher and Amber Benson. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_5320ab5e | comment |
Subverted in one Columbo "Last Salute to the Commodore" where we see Robert Vaughn cleaning up a murder scene after the fact, and assume he did it. He didn't. In fact, he turned out to be the next victim. | |
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Murder on the Orient Express (2017) subverts this handily; almost every suspect is played by actors ranging from notable to legendary. And then double-subverts it when ALL of them turn out to be in on the murder. | |
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In the pilot episode of Blue Bloods, Corey Feldman is there for 30 seconds as a doll reviewer(!) and to create the illusion of 'they caught the bad guy really early' until we realize we've been misled by the Stunt Casting. | |
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Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney makes an effort to hide this. In the second case, you have to question a whole mob of witnesses at once. One of them happens to be voiced by Carina Reeves, who played Fiora in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, and they did it. However, said character only starts having fully-voiced dialogue once it becomes clear they're the murderer, before they only had slight Voice Grunting, making this harder to spot. | |
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The Middle: In the episode, "Second Act," Frankie lampshades this. | |
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Persona 4: Johnny Yong Bosch as an insignificant bumbling rookie detective? American fans of Japanese media didn't buy it. Yep, he did it. A kind of double subversion: Johnny Yong Bosch was also playing the protagonist, meaning that getting him to play an insignificant character would be making more use of him rather than wasting him. However, the protagonist is almost a Heroic Mime, so having him play another important character would make sure that he wasn't wasted. | |
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In the 1997 American remake of the Danish thriller Nightwatch (1994), it's fairly easy to guess who the Serial Killer is, considering that Inspector Cray is played by Nick Nolte. Roger Ebert says as much in his review: | |
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In Kiss the Girls, sharper viewers probably wondered why the producers bothered to cast Cary Elwes in such a minor role... until the final reveal. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_5d419e0b | comment |
Ride Along subverts this. Laurence Fishburne gets an And Starring nod in the opening credits, and he is a pretty big name actor. That he doesn't appear among the police force is a pretty big give away that he's going to be the main antagonist of the film, a man that no one knows the face of. However, he actually doesn't make any appearance until he reveals himself as the villain, and he has no prior connection to either of the main characters, so there's no real twist to be had. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_5d965d66 | comment |
Another episode had Kristen Cavaleri as a lesbian cheerleader in an episode where gay students were being outed. Turns out she was the outer but it was really just a scam because she only outed her girlfriend who she wanted to come out. | |
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Many viewers of the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy guessed that the traitor was Bill Haydon on the basis that he was played by Colin Firth, while the other suspects were played merely by recognizable British character actors. Justified in that the book, at least, makes the point that Smiley, Control, all of them knew deep down that Haydon was the traitor all along, but couldn't bear to acknowledge it to themselves explicitly, so the audience's state of knowledge mirrors that of the characters. |
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Day Break (2006): Subverted. Mitch Pileggi plays an Inspector Javert-type detective who is made to appear to be The Mole, but later turns out to be a Red Herring Mole. | |
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In Terminator Genisys, pre-release marketing materials indicated that a minor character, a "Resistance soldier named Alex", an apparently-inconsequential role, would be played by noted British actor Matt Smith (of Doctor Who fame), and when questioned, the film's production team played coy with what his role entailed. In the film, he is revealed to be the Hidden Villain, the T-5000 / Avatar of Skynet, who sets the plot rolling by infecting John Connor with a virus that turns him into a Terminator, and appearing as the avatar of Genisys in the third act. The film even clues viewers in with Five-Second Foreshadowing, slightly zooming in on him acting shady before The Reveal. | |
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CSI is very guilty of casting actors that are go-to TV bad guys as the eventual killer. It's pretty simple to pick out whodunnit if you've watched enough TV (especially 90's dramas like The X-Files. More than once they've cast two "that guy" actors in an episode, and more likely than not they both did it. | |
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When David Naughton guest-starred in a Halloween episode themed around werewolves, it's easy to guess that he did it. Especially when his character was named after an ''Entertainment Weekly'' TV critic who doesn't particularly like the show. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_6bb79d97 | comment |
"One Man's Treasure": You got Mrs. Ari and Miss Farrell over the corpse of a two-timer. So one of them did it, right? Nope, turns out to be Principal Wood, only slightly unrelated to his two-timing. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_6e859048 | comment |
The movie Big Hero 6 has this occur in-universe and out since it only has thirteen named characters in its cast, six of which are the titular heroes. There is a masked, unknown villain. Of the seven left several don't fit the physical profile, and two more are dead, easily leaving the heroes themselves to narrow it down to the shady CEO, voiced by Alan Tudyk. Only for it to turn out to be one of the supposedly-dead characters instead. The character happens to be voiced by James Cromwell, who had only had about a dozen lines before his "death". | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_7149a731 | comment |
Wonder Woman (2017): There's no way they'd hire David Thewlis to play just a minor British commander who disappears after a couple of scenes. Sure enough... (It helps that his most notable roles tend to be either quirky/mysterious mentor figures or Axe-Crazy villains, and he sure wasn't the former in this one). | |
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It's only noticeable if you're a fan of certain franchises but this was in full force for certain viewers in Season 9's "The Black Queen." Oh yeah, I'm sure they got Jeffrey Combs just to be the guy who sticks his head in and comments to Penelope's ex that their servers have been hacked ... | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_761cd218 | comment |
In Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost, Ben Ravencroft is voiced by Tim Curry, who is famous for his many villainous roles. Anyone who is familiar with their filmography will likely suspect long before the finale that Ben is secretly evil. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_78fc0025 | comment |
Subverted again in "Rashomama" when Ray Wise, who has played a killer and the Devil himself, was only a suspect for a short time. The same episode also had soap opera actress Rachel Miner and Big Love star Amanda Seyfried. Which, if either of them did it? Well, they both participated, with help from two others. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_7e4805b6 | comment |
Knives Out is another work that tries to avoid this via All-Star Cast, but the fact that the one member of the family who only gets a few cameos in the initial "Rashomon"-Style flashbacks is played by Chris Evans might set off alarm bells. There's no way they'd hire that actor for a minor role... | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_7e7124af | comment |
Persona 5 Strikers: The English dub makes it easy to figure out that EMMA plays a larger role in the story than it initially seems because her voice actor, Susan Bennett, is far and away the most prolific of the game's cast, having gained fame as the original voice of Apple's Siri AI. As it turns out, EMMA, or rather the Demiurge she transforms into, is the Final Boss. | |
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| Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize / int_8095ea4e | comment |
Happy Death Day has a cast of unknowns. So some viewers who managed to recognize Ruby Modine, who had become a regular in Shameless (US) the year before, can be suspicious of Lori, and indeed she's the killer! | |
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In Shoot to Kill, a killer on the run whose face we never saw has done a Kill and Replace on an outdoorsman and is hiding among a group of hikers. They're all played by recognizable character actors known for playing villainous or otherwise unpleasant guys in action movies, including Frederick Coffin (Hard to Kill, If Looks Could Kill), Clancy Brown (Highlander), Anthony Robinson (Dirty Harry, Cobra), etc., making it difficult for the audience to guess the villain's identity until about halfway in, with each hiker given subtle clues that could be interpreted as sinister or suspicious. It ends up being Clancy Brown's character. | |
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In an episode of Strong Medicine, a flood of patients from a train derailment caused by a car on the track was followed by a frantic and confused young woman coming into the hospital. Nothing special, except that it was Delia Fisher from My So-Called Life. She did it, but she didn't know she did it. | |
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Frequently played straight and averted on Death in Paradise, thanks to the show's production location. A guest spot on Death In Paradise comes with a week's free holiday in sunny Guadeloupe, which is enough to get a lot of British TV stars to sign on for small roles. Sometimes the most recognisable guest actor has the smallest speaking part (victims of the week have included James Cosmo and Sean Pertwee) — presumably having used their star power to maximise their beach time | |
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Lost loves to play around with this. One good example is the actor Doug Hutchison, most famous for his role as the sadistic guard Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile. He briefly appears in a season 3 episode. Then he briefly appears in a season 4 episode. Then he plays a central role in five episodes in season 5. | |
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NCIS had a late first season episode that guest starred Adam Baldwin, Julie Benz, and Doug Savant (albeit this was the season before the later show started). Though Adam Baldwin is never a suspect. Subverted in that NONE of them are guilty - the murder of the week was actually a suicide. Inverted in the episode "Singled Out" with Misha Collins accused of murdering a female navy officer. He's guilty of carjacking her, but not her murder. In another episode, the team got a lead on their case from a bartender played by Claudia Black. Guess who did it? |
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Monk: "Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf" featured Emma Caulfield (Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as Sharona's creative writing teacher. She hadn't "done it" yet, but she was about to. Subverted in "Mr. Monk on Wheels," in which Bradley Whitford's character Dr. Dean Berry is not the killer - who is his assistant Sarah Longson (Pamela Adlon). "Mr. Monk and the Kid" had Nicole Sullivan in a minor role, and as soon as the audience heard her and said "Hey, that's Shego!" they knew Janet Novak was guilty. "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show," where Malcolm McDowell is fashion designer Julian Hodge. In the episode, one of his models is killed. Just do the math once you see his Berserk Button. Played straight with Brad Garrett as "Honest" Jake in "Mr. Monk Buys a House". David Strathairn in "Mr. Monk and the Genius" - whose character we are introduced to before he kills his wife, who flat out tells Monk her husband is going to kill her and hires him to solve the case. With Steve Valentine in "Mr. Monk and the Magician", more so since we see that this magician is involved in drug trafficking. Wonderfully subverted in "Mr. Monk Joins a Cult." By this point in the series it was common for the highly-billed guest-star to be the killer, so in the end Howie Mandel's Ralph Roberts actually turns out to not be the murderer in the episode and it's revealed to really be the eyewitness to the murder who appeared at the very beginning. Also subverted in "Mr. Monk and the Bully," where Noah Emmerich's role as Roderick Brody is billed as special guest star, but he instead gets framed up for a stabbing by his wife's evil twin sister played by Julie Bowen. So technically the actress you recognize did it but not the character. Also subverted in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs," which features Bob Costas as himself. He only serves as a plot point and is not involved with the crime in any way. In "Mr. Monk Vs. The Cobra" one of the gravediggers who helps exhume Sonny Chow's body is played by Mark Sheppard. Turns out he's the bad guy. Is he ever anything else? |
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Hawkeye: Many viewers predicted well before The Reveal that Eleanor Bishop would be revealed as Evil All Along - while Echo is played by a complete newcomer, Vera Farmiga is an established recognizable actor, and the only other big names in the cast are Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld, who play the protagonists. | |
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Xenoblade Chronicles 1 begins with you in control of three characters: The Hero with the Sword of Plot Advancement, one of his closest friends... and an Obviously Evil Dirty Coward who abandons you to save his own skin within the first five minutes. Predictably, he ends up fleeing into a horde of enemies, cue scream and fade to black. But upon realizing that his Japanese voice actor is the Norio Wakamoto, it should be obvious his part in the plot isn't over yet... | |
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Featured a star from the Canadian TV series Eleventh Hour. His guest shot was overhyped in CTV commercials, making it obvious he was the killer when he failed to show up almost until the end. But then, CTV does this a lot. Cynthia Nixon's appearance on an episode of Law & Order: SVU, for another example. | |
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Carnivà le: The plot in Babylon city involved the murder of one Carnie and the others looking for the murderer among the Babylonians. They eventually decided to exact their justice in John Hannah's character (The Mummy; Sliding Doors). Hannah then confesses. | |
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One of the season finales had Alan Ruck (Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) as a bank robber. Turns out he was being forced into it; the real baddies had his wife held hostage. | |
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Spectre can end up as this for Sherlock fans, as they are sure of the guy who played Moriarty will be one of the bad guys. | |
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On that same plane was Urkel, or Jaleel White, who was also accused of the murder. He didn't do it. | |
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Also played with in an episode that guest starred Roger Daltrey. He did it, but his character spent most of the episode disguised as several other people. The guy you would have recognized did it, but he was unrecognizable. | |
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In Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, there are three suspects who are all potential candidates for the identity of Jack The Ripper. They are Harvey Bullock, Harvey Dent, and James Gordon, respectively voiced by John DiMaggio, Yuri Lowenthal, and Scott Patterson. Given that the latter is the only one of the three who's not a professional voice actor, it gives more credence to the idea that James Gordon is the Ripper. | |
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Interstellar: The moment Matt Damon makes a cameo, something can be expected to go awry. | |
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When it comes to The Blacklist, having James Spader as your main character means your show isn't afraid to throw around some star power. But when the episode centers around unmasking an unhinged Russian criminal, and it just so happens that an actor instantly recognizable for playing unhinged foreign characters shows up in the episode, it's a good bet he's more than the injured prison guard he initially claims to be. The second episode of the series plays it straight with Isabella Rossellini, although she isn't the Blacklister of the week. She plays Floriana Campo, whom we're told is dedicated to combating sex trafficking and is a target of an assassin named The Freelancer. Those things are both technically true; she is a sex trafficker herself and uses her charitable organization to wipe out her competition, and Red hired The Freelancer to kill her because of this. |
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CSI: Miami : Subverted this by having skateboarding (and video game) star Tony Hawk guest starring... as the victim (so naturally his role was in flashbacks). Chris Pine did an episode before he was Captain Kirk. He did it. And had a lip-ring. Michael Westen appears in an episode as part of a convict team fighting fire in the Everglades, while the CSI team is there investigating a different case entirely. He later takes Alexx hostage and escapes. Mark Pellegrino guest-stars as a helpful neighbor giving eyewitness evidence of the killer leaving the scene of the crime, in hopes of getting a reward. He did it, and framed the other guy for a past murder to boot. |
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Widows: The viewer can assume that Harry didn't actually die in the beginning of the film and will appear later on because they wouldn't have hired an actor as famous as Liam Neeson to play such a minor role. | |
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The West Wing had Glenn Close show up during a search for a Supreme Court Justice. Semi-subversion in that Close's character was up against Bill Fichtner for the job. The twist was that the White House staff found a way to hire both of them. |
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NUMB3RS often did this. One episode featured two well-known actors. Of course, they had both done it. Exception: an episode with Wil Wheaton (again) and Christopher Lloyd. Neither did it. Another: Bill Nye the Science Guy getting called in as a consultant, and the criminal was someone completely unrelated. |
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World War Z includes an unintended subversion of this trope: during the Lane family's escape from the besieged apartment building full of the undead, Matthew Fox (of Lost and Party of Five fame) appears in a blink-and-you-miss-it uncredited role as the helicopter gunner who shoots down the infected father chasing Gerry. In the finished film, he is never seen again, making viewers wonder why he was cast to begin with... but in the original third act (scrapped before release due to production problems), he would be revealed as the leader in charge of a refugee camp where Gerry's wife has been prostituting herself in order to stay in the camp and keep their kids safe, prompting the Sequel Hook of Gerry, Segen and another character to take a boat back to the U.S. to rescue them. | |
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While the involvement of Gellert Grindelwald was teased as the marketing for the original Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie wore on, his appearance in the climax leaked when people who saw the press screening noted that Johnny Depp was in the film. | |
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In season 3 of Lucifer (2016), we are introduced to the mysterious Diabolical Mastermind known as "The Sinnerman" while lieutnant Marcus Pierce, played by Tom Welling of Smallville fame, join the team. Fans connected the dots long before Pierce's backstory was even hinted. The issue is somewhat mitigated in that while Pierce is indeed the Sinnerman, the man who drove the firs half of the season was a rogue agent who usurped his identity. | |
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In Men in Black: International, with heavyweights Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson playing the leads and Emma Thompson's Agent O firmly established as the series' Big Good, it was pretty much assured that the one remaining big name, Liam Neeson, would at least be involved with the bad guys in some capacity from the moment the first trailer dropped. True enough, Neeson's Agent T turns out to be The Mole in the MIB's London branch and therefore The Man Behind the Man for much of the plot up until the finale where he turns into the Final Boss. Plus the Obviously Evil Jerkass Agent C is far too obvious in his antagonism to be the real enemy, which makes T's role even more blatant from the outset. | |
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Life On Mars did this a lot; then again, the week's criminal case was usually the episode's least important plot. | |
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Played with in Until Dawn. It is possible to get Sam killed, but she and Mike are the only playable characters to wear Plot Armor until the final chapter. They weren't going to cast Hayden Panettiere as Sam just to risk her leaving the game early. Retroactive Recognition does create a straight example with Rami Malek as Josh, who turns out to be the villain after being the one character who you never get to play as, but this was a couple of years before he got his big break with Mr. Robot. | |
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Parodied in the Saturday Night Live sketch "Murdur Durdur", where everyone assumes the creepy priest played by guest host Elon Musk murdered the titular durdur the minute he shows up, followed by him immediately confessing. | |
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Saving Private Ryan: The team find a private Ryan, but he turns out be a different Ryan than the one that they want. Later, they find another Ryan, who is played by Matt Damon. Aha! | |
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Se7en: Kevin Spacey insisted that his name not appear in the promotional material or the opening credits of the film in order to avoid this trope (the producers had wanted to give him top billing). | |
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This is discussed and ultimately subverted an El Goonish Shive side comic, where "Celebrity Guest Star" plays a "humble milk delivery man" who "won't be important later". However, rather than being the criminal, he is instead the corpse. | |
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Partially averted in State of Play (the American film): A number of characters are played by recognizable actors, but Ben Affleck is too famous, too good-looking and too underused to not be important in the outcome. Also, he spends the whole plot being way-too-ready to sacrifice his career, mostly because by doing so he expects to avoid jail. | |
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In Get Out (2017), while those behind the body stealing are never in doubt, it seems fishy that Stephen Root would only show up as a party guest in one scene... and indeed, he's not only in on it, but he's also the one receiving Chris' body. | |
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The director of The Alphabet Killer deliberately made use of this trope to make the audience question who the killer might be by casting male actors who have played killers in other films. Cary Elwes starred as the serial killer Casanova in Kiss the Girls. Michael Ironside, who plays Wagner Police Captain Nathan Norcross, has played villains in numerous roles throughout his long career, including his roles in Scanners and Total Recall (1990). Carl Lumbly, who plays Paige's therapist Dr. Ellis Parks, did voice work as the villain "Stalker" in Batman Beyond. Bill Moseley played Otis Driftwood in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. |
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Robert Picardo was also in an episode of Pushing Daisies as a detective. He hadn't committed any crimes there either. Though Ethan Phillips also appeared and WAS the guilty party. | |
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Season 2 of True Detective leaves you spoiled for choice here, but James Frain as a seemingly token background character? Please. Subverted: Despite suggestions the killer may be a cop, and despite wearing the same suit as the killer, and despite having the same build as the killer (and even somewhat resembling the mask the killer wears, impressive considering it's a huge black raven mask), James Frain is in fact not the killer, but is one of many other killers central to the plot. | |
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A more subtle one in the second Gravedigger episode. Fans of The Wire will know Rhonda Pearlman isn't going to show up just to cameo in a couple of lawyer scenes. | |
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CSI: Featured a star from the Canadian TV series Eleventh Hour. His guest shot was overhyped in CTV commercials, making it obvious he was the killer when he failed to show up almost until the end. But then, CTV does this a lot. Cynthia Nixon's appearance on an episode of Law & Order: SVU, for another example. Stephen Baldwin was in the same episode as the lead suspect for the other case, about a serial rape-murderer. He had two scenes, and wasn't guilty, dismissed as a suspect halfway through the story. His first scene didn't even give him dialogue. Also, the celebrity unsubs are sometimes under so much make-up that it takes a few minutes before you realize who they are. Prime example: Jamie Kennedy. Also played with in an episode that guest starred Roger Daltrey. He did it, but his character spent most of the episode disguised as several other people. The guy you would have recognized did it, but he was unrecognizable. Yet another episode featured Jeffrey Combs. As a coroner. He was barely even a suspect. Zachary Quinto was on an episode as a mechanic before Heroes or Star Trek (2009), in the Season 2 episode Anatomy Of A Lye. He didn't do it. CSI is very guilty of casting actors that are go-to TV bad guys as the eventual killer. It's pretty simple to pick out whodunnit if you've watched enough TV (especially 90's dramas like The X-Files. More than once they've cast two "that guy" actors in an episode, and more likely than not they both did it. Pretty much everyone who was in any way interested in iCarly, knew that Nathan Kress' appearance on CSI was as a bad guy. Subverted again in "Rashomama" when Ray Wise, who has played a killer and the Devil himself, was only a suspect for a short time. The same episode also had soap opera actress Rachel Miner and Big Love star Amanda Seyfried. Which, if either of them did it? Well, they both participated, with help from two others. Two episodes with Justin Bieber as a Mad Bomber who really likes Nick. He dies in a shootout. Another episode guest starred Andy Berman. He did it. Aaron Paul was on the show several years before he was Jesse Pinkman. Like Zachary Quinto above, he also appeared in Season 2, though four episodes earlier in Felonious Monk. He didn't do it. Joel Grey as a passenger on a plane where several other passengers are robbed, and one of them later turns up dead. He committed the thefts, but not the murder. On that same plane was Urkel, or Jaleel White, who was also accused of the murder. He didn't do it. The episode Butterflied doesn't even attempt to present any viable suspects besides Kyle Secor. |
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JAG had Ernest Borgnine in "Yesterday's Heroes", surely he did something... | |
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Criminal Minds, "L.D.S.K.", where Detective Lassiter of Psych fame briefly pops up as an ER nurse who gives the agents directions. About eight months before Psych premiered. "Paradise", where 'Wil Wheaton is introduced among a series of hotel workers being interviewed. "Uncanny Valley", if you've paid attention to the credits. Jonathan Frakes was billed to appear in the episode but doesn't appear until the end when the team figures out that he's the one who induced the case's UnSub to kidnap women in the first place because he took away her dolls. Once, it was Jamie Kennedy, except he was nigh-unrecognizable until The Reveal. It's only noticeable if you're a fan of certain franchises but this was in full force for certain viewers in Season 9's "The Black Queen." Oh yeah, I'm sure they got Jeffrey Combs just to be the guy who sticks his head in and comments to Penelope's ex that their servers have been hacked ... |
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Forever spoiled the identity of a killer by casting Emily Kinney (Beth from The Walking Dead), as it would have been strange to hire an actress at the height of her popularity to date to play such a small role if it wasn't that of the killer. The show later spoiled a subversion of the trope by advertising Cuba Gooding Jr.'s appearance by stating that he was playing a man who would be exonerated of the Murder Of The Week. |
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier: The Big Bad of the conspiracy is portrayed by the biggest-name actor to be freshly added to the roster. Robert Redford, in case you were curious. There are still a fair few big-name actors besides the spoiler; it's just that most of them were in roles that had been established beforehand, while Redford hadn't really been seen before. | |
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Saul Tigh recently showed up as a grizzled old fisherman and was promptly ignored by the main cast for the majority of the episode. He did it. Although, to be frank, you have to have watched Battlestar Galactica (2003) to get it. Otherwise, he's just another character actor. | |
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Parodied in Police Squad! where the guest star shows up for about half a minute and dies in a single, separate scene that's part of the beginning credits Once an Episode. | |
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Veronica Mars: Inverted - the murderer is played by one of the few major cast members who didn't appear on the TV show. | |
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This is referred to on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Titus's acting rival Coriolanus boasts of having appeared on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as "the guy who, at the end, turned out to have done it". | |
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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has a hidden villain, the Power Broker, a powerful crime lord who rules Madripoor with an iron fist. The only other crime lord the heroes encounter (save for a swiftly killed underling) is none other than their old ally Sharon Carter, who's been in the MCU blockbuster films and thus has the prestige to portray a major supervillain. | |
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Veronica Mars, the first two cases during the overarching Story Arc of their respective seasons: In the first season, the murderer was the character played by Harry Hamlin, of L.A. Law and Clash of the Titans fame—only a recurrent character. Though you might be sidetracked by thinking that they just hired a famous actor to play a famous actor, for verisimilitude. Another episode had Kristen Cavaleri as a lesbian cheerleader in an episode where gay students were being outed. Turns out she was the outer but it was really just a scam because she only outed her girlfriend who she wanted to come out. |
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In Gone Girl, the credits at the beginning include Neil Patrick Harris. Early in the movie, they talk about Amy's ex and show a picture of him. Guess who it is? Yep; Neil Patrick Harris. Gee, wonder if he'll be involved somehow. Subverted in that he didn't actually do it, but was, in fact, a pawn in Amy's master plan. | |
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Nancy Drew features a seemingly jolly lawyer played by Barry Bostwick. It turns out he was the murderer of an actress from the 80s. | |
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On Wednesday, the most famous cast member Christina Ricci turns out to be the Big Bad controlling the monster who was killing everyone. | |
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Invoked in Honest Trailers's Glass Onion video, where they point out that in both this film and its predecessor, the most famous actor in the cast did it. | |
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A Season 5 episode features Joel Grey as a demon that could assist Dawn in bringing her mother back from the dead. While the small role probably still had enough significance to justify a big actor, he ended up making a second appearance in the Series Fauxnale as an agent of Glory. And John Ritter guest starring on Buffy? Has to be an evil robot hell-bent on getting Buffy out of the way to get to her mother. |
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Also frequently seen in Midsomer Murders. The episode with Siân Phillips even alludes coyly to her role as a poisoner in I, Claudius. Sometimes subverted (one episode managed to bring it down to 'Narrowed It Down To The Person I Recognise As Playing Villains by hiring two well-known actors), and sometimes self-subverted through the Retroactive Recognition issue mentioned in the trope description (for example, in one episode Orlando Bloom showed up as 'guy who got run through with a pitchfork in the first few minutes of the episode'). Particularly the case in earlier seasons - at least from the perspective of a UK viewer - when it wasn't unusual for episodes to feature an "all-star" cast of well-known British character actors. They might not have been huge stars, per se, but they were often well-known enough (and with enough appearances in crime dramas under their belts) for it to muddy the waters as to *which* Guy You Recognised was going to be the murderer. |
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Family Guy blatantly points out this trope when they have an episode of a random crime drama playing. With the main characters questioning who committed a crime, then nodding and pointing to the "With Special Guest Star Jimmy Smits" part when it pops up in the opening credits. | |
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In The Bone Collector, a film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, the killer is the guy played by Leland Orser — a character actor whom you might have seen in several other movies (like Alien: Resurrection, Se7en and Very Bad Things). This makes it easy to peg him as the killer, although his screentime before his big speech is probably around 20 seconds. | |
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The Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Think Tank" has Jason Alexander as a guest star. Although his role isn't insignificant from the start, it's still good cause to be suspicious of the character. | |
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A Nero Wolfe Mystery played with, or possibly completely inverted, this trope: The supporting cast stayed mostly the same from episode to episode, but except for a small core cast the actors played different roles in different stories — so while you can nearly always recognize "the guy" (or "the gal"), it's of no use to you in jumping to the solution of the case, since the murderer one week might be the victim the next week and just some background supporting character the week after that. | |
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Frequently used on The Mentalist. If the actor is familiar but playing a bit role, generally they're the murderer or the mastermind of the murder. | |
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How I Met Your Mother: Not a detective show, but in one episode Ted is given a choice of three women to date - Barney shows him their photos before Ted sees the girls. While the other two are not so familiar, one of the pictures is of Anna Camp, and of course, she gets chosen. Inverted with The Mother herself, where a virtual unknown was cast and all of the bigger names were revealed not to be her. |
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Breaking Bad wasn't known for casting famous people, yet they had done this once. Walt and Jesse are going to meet a super-mysterious drug dealer to handle their bulk amount of meth at a fast food restaurant and the manager asks them if they're doing well. Gus Fring's actor is Giancarlo Esposito; not hugely famous at the time, but prolific enough that they wouldn't have cast him as a minor one-scene character. | |
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Michael Westen appears in an episode as part of a convict team fighting fire in the Everglades, while the CSI team is there investigating a different case entirely. He later takes Alexx hostage and escapes. | |
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In an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Dave Chappelle told a story where he was almost on the business end of a real-life version of this trope: he was picked up for a police line-up in LA, and the woman who was brought in to pick out the perp looked at him and said: "Well, he looks kind of familiar..." Chappelle said his internal reaction was "I'm about to go to jail because I've been on TELEVISION!" | |
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In Hot in Cleveland, Betty White is told of a murder, and when she says "Why are you telling me that?" the person telling her says that she always figures out who the killer is in CSI in the first three minutes. Betty White says that it's due to knowing who the guest stars were - you don't hire Tony Danza to play "a hotel concierge with three lines." | |
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Cold Case: An episode had Daveigh Chase (Samara Morgan from The Ring) guest star as one of the suspects. Guess who the killer was? There were Reed Diamond he did it in the season 7 episode "Forensics", Steven Culp who also did it in the episode Jurisprudence, and Loretta Devine in Soul, and yes, she did it too, among others. Another episode had Barry Bostwick as the killer. Also doubles as Stunt Casting, as the original murder took place after a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the late 70s. Though they actually gave away that it was him from the get-go, as he played the aged already-imprisoned serial killer. As soon as Daniel Baldwin showed up, you just knew he was the perp. He was so effective in this role, he stayed on for 7 episodes. Episodes with really, really old cases from the '30s and '40s often had the perp, if they were still alive, played by someone well-known, including Peter Graves, Ralph Waite, Orson Bean, and Piper Laurie. |
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