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Never the Obvious Suspect

238 statements
44 feature instances
75 referencing feature instances

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Never the Obvious Suspect	label	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect	page	NeverTheObviousSuspect
Never the Obvious Suspect	comment	In Detective Drama and other types of Mystery Fiction that focus on finding the culprit of a particular crime, the plot often follows this particular pattern: A crime is committed. A detective (or some other appropriate character) starts investigating the crime. The detective comes across a very obvious suspect: someone who seems to have had the motive and means to commit the crime. But the detective then discovers the obvious suspect couldn't have done it. Maybe the suspect has an alibi, or they can otherwise be ruled out. For example, someone has been murdered, and the forensic evidence reveals the killer was right-handed. The obvious suspect, however, turns out to be left-handed. The detective then finds out the real culprit was someone unexpected. For example, it can be someone who seemingly didn't have any reason to commit the crime, until the detective uncovers said reason. This plot formula is typically used in fair-play whodunnits and other types of mysteries where there are several suspects. The obvious suspect functions as a Red Herring, and the story often culminates with The Summation, where the unexpected culprit and the reason why they committed the crime are revealed. Writers like to use the above formula because it adds a twist to the story. Discovering the culprit becomes an interesting puzzle instead of the detective simply finding the number one suspect and arresting them. However, this trope has become so common that the audience is now used to it, which means they pretty much expect the real culprit to be someone else than the obvious choice. In most cases, the twist is also Spoiled by the Format: if a detective show lasts for 45 minutes, and after the first 15 minutes the detective already appears to have caught the guilty party, it's almost certain the real culprit will turn out to be someone else. Sometimes the writers like to play with audience expectations and subvert the trope as a Meta Twist by having the detective dismiss the most obvious suspect and go through others, only to discover later on that the person originally suspected was guilty after all. This is usually accompanied by some kind of unexpected reveal that explains how the obvious suspect was able to appear innocent. To use the example above, if the murder was commited by a right-handed person, and the detective rules out the obvious suspect because they are a leftie, it may later be discovered that they are ambidextrous, so they were the murderer after all. See also Arkham's Razor, where a scenario like this is played for humor, Orgy of Evidence, which can apply to the first suspect, and Red Herring Mole, when the obvious suspect is (not) a spy. If the obvious suspect is ruled out by being the second (or third, or twelfth) victim, that's Suspect Existence Failure. Since this trope deals with plot twists and surprise revelations, the examples below may contain spoilers!
Never the Obvious Suspect	fetched	2024-01-26T17:16:02Z
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_1484a16e	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_1484a16e	comment	Severus Snape is a sly, abusive teacher who has a clear affinity for the Dark Arts throughout Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It turns out that Snape is not only not the antagonist, he is actively protecting Harry from the antagonist.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_17293dfa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_17293dfa	comment	Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has Rantaro Amami (whose Ultimate talent is unknown for most of the game); Maki Harukawa (once her true identity is revealed as the Ultimate Assassin); Kokichi Oma, the Ultimate Supreme Leader (what he is the Supreme Leader of is a mystery for most of the game, though he insists it's a Nebulous Evil Organization trying to conquer the world); and Korekiyo Shinguji, the Ultimate Anthropologist (not a particularly murder-y talent, but he's a pretty weird and creepy dude and even says outright in the first chapter that his appearance and behaviour is befitting of a culprit). Rantaro is the victim of the first case, Maki survives to the end (though she does try to kill Kokichi but doesn't succeed), Kokichi is the victim of the fifth case and was actually the Supreme Leader of a group of clowns who only commit petty crimes and pull pranks on people, and Korekiyo is guilty of two murders in the third chapter. Yeah, the Meta Twist is that for once, the obvious guy really did do it.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_19ae41a0	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_19ae41a0	comment	Subverted in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. The murderer deliberately makes himself the very obvious first suspect, then prepares provably fake evidence, so the case against him will be overturned and he won't be suspected again (in English law at the time, one couldn't be tried twice for the same crime).
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_22e860f4	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_22e860f4	comment	Shawn from Psych has had a few of these. One example is Emily Bloom from "Black and Tan: A Crime of Fashion". After her bosses (husband and wife fashion moguls) are murdered, she gets fingered as the prime suspect. She had motive (the wife was verbally abusive to her, the husband stole her designs, and she was next in line for company president), means (she made the wife's protein shake which contained the poison that killed her), and gives O'Hara a makeover when she comes to interrogate her (read: bribe). Not only is Bloom not the killer (the couple actually killed each other), she's almost the next victim when she accidentally drinks a poisoned shake.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_2a8d8e6f	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_2a8d8e6f	comment	Gotham deals with the origins of various Batman villains and as such it is only a matter of time before The Joker is introduced. Enter Jerome, a Laughing Mad circus freak who murdered his own mother and imitates the mannerisms of Heath Ledger's and Mark Hamill's Jokers. As "The Last Laugh" shows, however, the Joker is someone else entirely.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_3806e47c	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_3806e47c	comment	Blight Dream blatantly sets up Yuu, the brother of Amnesiac Hero Michiru, as the killer terrorizing the hospital and coming for Michiru. He is creepy and mysterious, seems to know a lot more than Michiru and is obviously keeping things from her, keeps her from leaving the house, destroys whatever she wrote in her memory-keeping diary if he catches her snooping around, and turns out to be keeping records relating to the hospital killings. The ending, of course, reveals that he is not the killer- Michiru is the amnesiac killer, and he was trying to keep her from finding out the Awful Truth.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_39c15180	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_39c15180	comment	Angels & Demons sees a plot to exterminate the Vatican with an antimatter bomb. The brains behind the attack remain hidden until the novel's end, but that doesn't stop Professor Langdon of suspecting Maximilian Kohler, a vocally anti-religious scientist who helped fund the antimatter bomb to begin with.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_3b34143f	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_3b34143f	comment	Harry Potter: Severus Snape is a sly, abusive teacher who has a clear affinity for the Dark Arts throughout Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It turns out that Snape is not only not the antagonist, he is actively protecting Harry from the antagonist. Draco Malfoy is a schoolyard bully who vocally supports the actions of the mysterious Heir of Slytherin in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and co. spend months investigating the connection between the two, but it becomes obvious Draco has nothing to do with the Heir. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sees Harry suspect Snape and Malfoy yet again, this time of hatching several failed assassination plots from within Hogwarts. By this point, Harry's friends and allies are Genre Savvy enough to attribute his suspicion to his dislike for both people. As it turns out, Harry is completely right about both, even if their situations are much more complex than Harry assumed. Sirius Black was caught at the scene of an explosion that killed twelve non-magicals and Peter Pettigrew laughing maniacally about how he killed the Potters. It was actually Pettigrew who killed those people, faked his death, and framed Sirius for it. Sirius was likely suffering from a mental breakdown from guilt about convincing James and Lily to make Pettigrew the Secret Keeper.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_4737c653	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_4737c653	comment	Elementary often uses this trope, unlike the Sherlock Holmes stories the series is loosely based on.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_4d5b6107	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_4d5b6107	comment	The Usual Suspects is probably the Trope Codifier. Dave Kujan is so focused on Dean Keaton and arrogantly believes that he's smarter than Verbal Kint, who he thinks is just a stupid cripple, that he doesn't second guess the story he's told and automatically believes that Keaton is the legendary Keyser SÃ¶ze. It's not until the end of the film where it's revealed that Verbal's story was put together on the fly, that he's not crippled, and is actually Keyser SÃ¶ze himself. Unfortunately, by the time Kujan realizes this, he's gone.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_524a632d	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_524a632d	comment	Happens fairly frequently in Point Horror In The Fun House, Tess suspects classmate Trudy is the one injuring the kids of various boardwalk owners after a beach party resulted in most of her friends being poisoned and falling ill because Trudy didn't eat anything. Surely she must have avoided the food because she had put rat poison in it, right? Trudy simply wasn't hungry that night, and had no idea about the poison. The actual culprit is Tess's half brother, who decided to make his classmates suffer because their parents tricked his birth family out of the boardwalk they owned (resulting in his birth father's suicide), then pressured his birth mother into selling her baby so Tess's father could have an heir (leading to her suicide). In The Fever, you would think it would be jealous girlfriend of one of the local boys who is targeting the sick protagonist due to him visiting her regularly and making sure she's okay, especially when she shows up with her leg bandaged due to a cut (the protagonist had been assaulted while attempting to shave her legs, and used her razor to defend herself). It turns out to be one of the student nurses who killed the protagonist's best friend in her hospital room, because he threatened to tell her superiors about a terrible mistake she mad with medication, that put a patient in danger, and the killer couldn't stand the thought of her perfect record and future as a nurse being put in jeopardy.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_5f831ed	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_5f831ed	comment	Zig-zagged generously in Murder on the Orient Express. The more obvious and the less obvious ones â€“ all turn out to be murderers in the end... that is, except for Poirot, his friend, the doctor â€“ and the one who was the first and the most obvious suspect to be discovered: Countess Andrenyi knew of the crime, but was asleep while it was being committed.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_6173e1cb	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_6173e1cb	comment	Lampshaded in Peril at End House. When Hastings dismisses a suspect on account on him being too suspicious to be guilty, Poirot says that while the least obvious guy is usually guilty in books, in real life, the most suspicious-looking one is usually the criminal. The ending, though, plays it completely straight, as the murderess has been posing as the intended victim the entire time.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_61d57039	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_61d57039	comment	In The Rithmatist, there's Professor Nalizar, who is much like Snape â€” a nasty, arrogant teacher who the protagonist Joel immediately suspects of being involved in the evil doings aroud the school. Eventually, Joel discovers that Nalizar was not the one who caused the disappearances and admits that Nalizar was a hero who saved his life â€” but in a subversion and something of an invocation of the trope, Joel then finds out that Nalizar was behind it all, and he gloats that, since Joel had already recanted his suspicions, he can't credibly accuse him again.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_6cd6c4e8	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_6cd6c4e8	comment	Most episodes of iZombie follow this formula, though it gets occasionally subverted when the obvious suspect is revealed to be the killer after all (such as in the episode "Brother, Can You Spare a Brain?").
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_72e7d7f6	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_72e7d7f6	comment	Lord Peter Wimsey: Played straight in Strong Poison, where Harriet is the obvious suspect in the poisoning of Philip Boyes - so much so that the story starts with a judge summing up the evidence for the jury at Harriet's trial. After the jury returns a hung verdict, Lord Peter has thirty days to prove that Harriet didn't do it. Discussed in Busman's Honeymoon, just before interviewing the last person to see the victim alive: Conversational Subverting in The Five Red Herrings, where Lord Peter says that if he wrote a detective story it would open with a man with a gun fleeing a cul-de-sac containing a dead body and nobody else, and 20 chapters "stinking with red herrings" later, it would turn out he was the murderer.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_73383fee	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_73383fee	comment	Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has Kyoko Kirigiri (whose Ultimate talent is unknown for most of the game, although she seems quite comfortable around corpses) and Toko Fukawa (who has a Split Personality that is an infamous Serial Killer). Both survive to the end of the game. Lampshaded by said split personality, who says she'd have to be a complete idiot to kill someone in this situation since she would be immediately found out.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_73cb7f0b	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_73cb7f0b	comment	Hunter would always play this straight, except one episode that did the Bait-and-Switch. A woman dies during a gang rape, with the culprits let off on a technicality. When they are shot one by one, the victim's sister is the obvious suspect. Then it looks like a Corrupt Corporate Executive has a motive, and she's being framed as a patsy. Nope, it was the sister all along.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_7460586f	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_7460586f	comment	Archer: In "Skytanic", when investigating a bomb threat on a zeppelin, Archer at first suggests the German second mate, Kraus, who has a sinister-looking scar emanating from under an eyepatch, but then immediately dismisses him as "too obvious" and moves on to a man in a (Sikh) turban. Turns out Mallory faked the bomb threat to get free tickets, but Captain Lammers coincidentally planted a real bomb (whether he did this independently or because of the bomb threat is unknown) with the intention of shorting the stock and recouping his retirement fund. Kraus knows how to disarm the bomb and also received the scar while saving a Jewish girl from a gang of skinheads who threw him a "curb party" for his efforts. He is unceremoniously shot by Lammers before he can disable the bomb.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_78fc0025	comment	In Twin Peaks there is a seemingly never-ending stream of characters with suspicious lack of alibis and suspect motives who could have potentially killed Laura Palmer and are investigated early on. Such characters include Bobby Briggs, who was cheating on Laura, recently quarreled with her, and behaves belligerently throughout the investigation, James Hurley, who was the last to see her alive, also quarreled with her, and had a bad alibi for what happened after he saw her, and Leo, a violent wife-beater who sold Laura drugs and turns out to have seen her after James did. But none of these obvious suspects killed her. Originally, the writers intended to never reveal who killed her, but the real culprit turns out to be someone no one could have suspected, and their identity reveals a dark secret within the town.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_7abc4637	comment	Magical Girl Raising Project: In Restart, the goal of the players is to kill the Evil King hiding among them, whose goal is to eliminate the other players. Melville murders several of them in secret over the course of the game, and she has connections to a former villain, so naturally she must be the Evil King. Except she is just another player, and the real Evil King is Nokko, who never took direct action against everyone and was always cooperative, opting to manipulate them with her Emotion Control powers instead.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_81692f99	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek: In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Wolf in the Fold", Scotty is found on three separate occasions standing over the corpse of an attractive woman with blood on his hands and no idea of what happened. Captain Kirk uses Insane Troll Logic to argue that the ghost of Jack the Ripper is responsible. He's right, of course. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Violations" the Ullian Tarmin is suspected in a series of mental rapes, especially after Tarmin's son Jev manipulates Troi into believing she was attacked by Tarmin. After further investigation and a second attempt by Jev to assault Troi it turns out Tarmin was never the culprit, but it was his son Jev. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Passenger", a bad guy named Vantika escapes the death of his body by transplanting his mind to another person. The most obvious target for this mind transfer is Kajada, who becomes the main suspect because of this. But then it turns out Vantika actually resides in the brain of Bashir, whom none of the protagonists suspected, even though most viewers had probably guessed it long ago due to a very obvious hint dropped in the first act.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_85eced19	comment	Love & Pies: When Amelia decides to investigate if her business competitor and rival, Edwina, was behind the fire at the former's mother's cafÃ©, Joe (actually his twin brother Sam masquerading as him) lampshades the trope by saying that "the real villain is NEVER the person [she thinks] it'll be." He was right, Edwina didn't start the fire because she believes that Windmill CafÃ© is already falling behind, so she didn't feel the need to sabotage it. In fact, she and Sebastian were at a board meeting for their company when the fire happened, also proving the latter innocent, and Edwina also phoned the fire department out of legitimate concern.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_892aa56a	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_892aa56a	comment	Ralph Fellows in Murdoch Mysteries exploits this in his debut episode. As a huge fan of Murdoch's cases, he knows the first suspect is almost never guilty, so he intentionally becomes the obvious suspect to get Murdoch to discount him. It almost works.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_89446aa7	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_89446aa7	comment	Glass Onion: Subverted. Although Miles Bron is the person with the most obvious motive, Blanc and Helen quickly rule him out as a suspect in Andi's murder because doing something like that — killing a legal opponent of his shortly after their trial ends — would be too stupid on his part. Come The Summation, it turns out that Miles really is that stupid and is the one who killed Andi.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_89a3ffd6	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_89a3ffd6	comment	Subverted in Lord Edgware Dies. The criminal knew everyone was bound to suspect her, and took great pains in establishing a solid alibi, thanks to the help of a double, and demonstrating a seeming absence of motive. While in fact, everything happens just as everyone thinks: she walks into Lord Edgware's house and stabs him.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_8ae5da03	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_8ae5da03	comment	In Wadanohara, the Blue Sea Kingdom has a traitor working to subvert the kingdom's defenses against their enemy Tostasu Kingdom. Everyone suspects the shark Samekichi- he has an intimidating, "bad boy" appearance, antagonizes Wadanohara and tries to keep her away from the sea, gets in the way of the mission to restore the kingdom's defenses, and refuses to explain his reasons for doing so. His silhouette is also occasionally seen destroying the shields and doing other bad things. Because of this, everyone (save Wadanohara) thinks it's him. So naturally, he turns out to have been framed by Sal/Syake-san, his own brother.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_8f25225c	comment	Danganronpa In any case where there's a really obvious suspect (sometimes there's even more than one), you can be assured that they are innocent. Even if they're a Serial Killer who has already racked up an impressive body count prior to the events of the game. In each game, there will be a few students whose Ultimate talent or backstory makes them seem perfectly suited for murder, or at least makes them seem untrustworthy. In the spirit of this trope, you can usually assume that they will never be the culprit of any case. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has Kyoko Kirigiri (whose Ultimate talent is unknown for most of the game, although she seems quite comfortable around corpses) and Toko Fukawa (who has a Split Personality that is an infamous Serial Killer). Both survive to the end of the game. Lampshaded by said split personality, who says she'd have to be a complete idiot to kill someone in this situation since she would be immediately found out. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, the Ultimate Yakuza, and Byakuya Togami (a returning character from the first game who has a significantly different appearance and personality, facts that are never brought up since the rest of the game's cast are new characters who wouldn't know Byakuya from the first game). Byakuya (actually the Ultimate Imposter pretending to be Byakuya) is the victim of the first case, while Fuyuhiko survives to the end of the game (though it's implied he did try to kill Mahiru but had his kill stolen). Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has Rantaro Amami (whose Ultimate talent is unknown for most of the game); Maki Harukawa (once her true identity is revealed as the Ultimate Assassin); Kokichi Oma, the Ultimate Supreme Leader (what he is the Supreme Leader of is a mystery for most of the game, though he insists it's a Nebulous Evil Organization trying to conquer the world); and Korekiyo Shinguji, the Ultimate Anthropologist (not a particularly murder-y talent, but he's a pretty weird and creepy dude and even says outright in the first chapter that his appearance and behaviour is befitting of a culprit). Rantaro is the victim of the first case, Maki survives to the end (though she does try to kill Kokichi but doesn't succeed), Kokichi is the victim of the fifth case and was actually the Supreme Leader of a group of clowns who only commit petty crimes and pull pranks on people, and Korekiyo is guilty of two murders in the third chapter. Yeah, the Meta Twist is that for once, the obvious guy really did do it.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_934f7972	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_934f7972	comment	Master Detective Archives: Rain Code plays with this in its second case. When investigating the Nail Man killings, one suspect is a Loony Fan of the killer who is always the first on the scene when they kill someone and has encyclopedic knowledge of their methods. Any Genre Savvy player would think they couldn't possibly be the Nail Man, and they'd be right. But they did commit a copycat murder.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9908ca47	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9908ca47	comment	Draco Malfoy is a schoolyard bully who vocally supports the actions of the mysterious Heir of Slytherin in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harry and co. spend months investigating the connection between the two, but it becomes obvious Draco has nothing to do with the Heir.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9a0cb5f4	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9a0cb5f4	comment	Parodied in Bob's Burgers: When Linda performs a stage play in the restaurant, Louise plays a butler who reacts dismissively to the murders and loudly remarks that the murder weapon is hers. This is intended as a (lazy) Red Herring, with Linda actually being the killer. When the true killer is revealed, the audience becomes angry since clearly The Butler Did It and there were no clues pointing to Linda.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9a7088bc	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9a7088bc	comment	In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Wolf in the Fold", Scotty is found on three separate occasions standing over the corpse of an attractive woman with blood on his hands and no idea of what happened. Captain Kirk uses Insane Troll Logic to argue that the ghost of Jack the Ripper is responsible. He's right, of course.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9fa7d06a	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_9fa7d06a	comment	Played for laughs in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei with the character of Mayo Mitama: it's so obvious she is a delinquent (because she looks exactly like one and tend to do delinquent things in absolutely plain sight) that everyone somehow believes she must be a living case of Face of a Thug. Turns out, she is a thug in face, behaviour, and everything else.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_a61bda23	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_a61bda23	comment	Life Is Strange presents three prime suspects for the one who kidnapped Rachel Amber — Nathan Prescott, the rich jerk son of Loan Shark Sean Prescott and local bully at Blackwell Academy who kicked off the plot by killing the original timeline's Chloe Price; David Madsen, Chloe's paranoid and controlling stepfather and chief of security at Blackwell; and Frank Bowers, a drug-dealer who is revealed to have secretly dated Rachel. By Episode 4, David and Frank turn out to be red herrings with no involvement in what happened to Rachel, while Nathan is merely working for the real culprit, photography teacher Mark Jefferson.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ba5d4fd1	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ba5d4fd1	comment	Lamshaped again in The Murder at the Vicarage when Marple notes how she was onto the killer as "in the books, it's often the least likely person but I've found that rarely applies in real life."
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ba5d4fd1	featureApplicability	1.0
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_c34f83b2	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_c34f83b2	comment	Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, the Ultimate Yakuza, and Byakuya Togami (a returning character from the first game who has a significantly different appearance and personality, facts that are never brought up since the rest of the game's cast are new characters who wouldn't know Byakuya from the first game). Byakuya (actually the Ultimate Imposter pretending to be Byakuya) is the victim of the first case, while Fuyuhiko survives to the end of the game (though it's implied he did try to kill Mahiru but had his kill stolen).
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_c34f83b2	featureApplicability	1.0
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_d3e3e38a	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_d3e3e38a	comment	She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In "Mer-Mysteries", when it becomes clear that there's a Horde spy somewhere in the Bright Moon castle, most of the Rebellion quickly guess it's Shadow Weaver, but Mermista, who's read plenty of detective novels, immediately rules her out because she's the most obvious culprit.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_e5feb1e	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_e5feb1e	comment	Played straight in all but two trial cases in the Ace Attorney games (including the crossover with Professor Layton), where the culprit is not the defendant. Given that the entire premise of the series is of a defense attorney trying to clear his clients of murder charges, the real application of this trope should be when Phoenix's first suspect isn't the guilty one, which happens a couple times as well. Most famously, in the final case of Justice For All, Phoenix accuses someone, only to later discover that his client is actually guilty after all. While he didn't kill the victim himself, he hired an assassin to do it, and therefore didn't set off Phoenix's lie-detecting Magatama when he answered "No" to "Did you kill him?".
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_e6f1b188	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_e6f1b188	comment	In Mystic Messenger, it becomes gradually clear that the supposed Big Bad Unknown, a leader of Mint Eye, is working for someone else, whom he calls The Savior. All clues initially point to V, the current leader of the RFA, due to how suspiciously he acts. He appears sparingly, talks cryptically about everything, divulges little information on the supposed suicide of the past leader (and his girlfriend) Rika, refuses to give a straight answer whenever the RFA members question him, disappears for days in each route and will not answer calls or messages, and generally behaves in a way that screams traitor. Notably, Rika's grieving cousin Yoosung is convinced that he is indeed responsible, and even Seven, later on in his route, begins thinking the same thing. In the first secret ending, it turns out that he is actually The Mole infiltrating Mint Eye to stop their plans; Rika herself is Unknown's boss.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ef627676	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ef627676	comment	Parodied in The Macbeth Murder Mystery by James Thurber, in which a detective novel fan reads Macbeth and decides that Macbeth, being the obvious suspect, must be a Red Herring and thus that King Duncan was killed by someone else.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_f91de837	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_f91de837	comment	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sees Harry suspect Snape and Malfoy yet again, this time of hatching several failed assassination plots from within Hogwarts. By this point, Harry's friends and allies are Genre Savvy enough to attribute his suspicion to his dislike for both people. As it turns out, Harry is completely right about both, even if their situations are much more complex than Harry assumed.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_fd56953	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_fd56953	comment	Subverted in The Hollow. The guilty party is standing near the shot man's body with a pistol in her hand. Yes, just like that. She really is the one and only perpetrator.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ff9ab17f	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ff9ab17f	comment	In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Violations" the Ullian Tarmin is suspected in a series of mental rapes, especially after Tarmin's son Jev manipulates Troi into believing she was attacked by Tarmin. After further investigation and a second attempt by Jev to assault Troi it turns out Tarmin was never the culprit, but it was his son Jev.
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Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ffe34832	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Never the Obvious Suspect / int_ffe34832	comment	Occasionally referenced by Tommy and Tuppence in Partners in Crime as part of their Conversational Troping of mystery tropes. For instance, in one story Tommy jokingly suggests the criminal is a woman in a wheelchair with no perceivable motive, because she's clearly the least likely suspect. In another Tuppence is disappointed that other evidence seems to rule out the wife, because she always suspects wives who were nowhere near the scene of the crime and couldn't possibly have done it.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Never the Obvious Suspect	processingCategory2	Crime and Punishment Tropes
Never the Obvious Suspect	processingCategory2	Laws and Formulas
Never the Obvious Suspect	processingCategory2	Mystery Tropes
Never the Obvious Suspect	processingCategory2	Spoilered Rotten
BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!☆PICO / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Robin (1993) (Comic Book) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
X-Men (Comic Book) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Fractured Fates (Fanfic) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
I'd Trade My Life For Yours (Fanfic) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Queen of Diamonds (Fanfic) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Smart Adversaries AU (Fanfic) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The Redemption of Gideon Grey (Fanfic) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
A Bride's Revenge / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
A Shot in the Dark / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Brigham City / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
555 / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Glass Onion / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Hot Fuzz / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Ice Station Zebra / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Memories of Murder / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Scream (1996) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Scream 2 / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Scream 3 / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Scream 4 / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Sicario: Day of the Soldado / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
12 Days of Terror / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Ace Attorney (Franchise) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Perry Mason (Franchise) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Magical Girl Raising Project / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
A to Z Mysteries / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
After the Funeral / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Beasts in Velvet / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Crooked House / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Harry Hole / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Holmes on the Range / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Magical Girl Raising Project / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Moonlight Becomes You / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The Hollow / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The Mysterious Affair at Styles / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The Three Investigators / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Jin (Manga) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
A Very Fatal Murder (Podcast) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Making Kayfabe (Podcast) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Dragnet (Radio) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Death in Paradise / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
El corazón nunca se equivoca / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Elementary / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
General Hospital / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
How to Get Away with Murder / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Hunter (1984) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
iZombie / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Innocent (UK) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Jury Duty (2023) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Legacies / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Murder, She Wrote / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Recht Op Recht / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The High School Heroes / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The Undoing / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Trigger Point / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Vienna Blood / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Camping (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Detective Grimoire (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Love & Pies (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Pedestal (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Pedestal (2021) (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
The Painscreek Killings (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? (Video Game) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Dark Tales / Videogame / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Puffin Forest (Web Animation) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
A Killer Party (Web Video) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Dimension 20 (Web Video) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Total Drama Havoc (Web Video) / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Bob's Burgers / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect
Undone / int_438e94fa	type	Never the Obvious Suspect

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