In the case of most shows, the protagonist will deal with a villain who goes by another identity. An identity which isn't given away, and is later revealed in the series.

However, like any kind of story, mysterious can be marred by lack of proper build up to the answer or the identity is so obvious that you'd think it wasn't suppose to be a mystery.


The best example I can think of off hand is Digimon Zero Two. The show starts with a human enemy called The Digimon Emperor (Kaisar in Japan), who is controlling Digimon. Episode 8 "shockingly" reveals him to be a young prodigy named Ken Ichijouji.

Problem with that? Well, for one, no red herrings were introduced prior to him. And while he looks a great deal different in his DE garb, his behavior was the same as Ken. Now sometimes a mystery will give us a red herring that is greatly similar to the villain so that we overlook the least obvious answer, but no.

Either in sub or dub, Wormmon called him Ken and at the end of episode 7, he's in his ordinary clothes plotting against the Digi-Destined. And yet the episode 8 preview (Japanese) and the Fox Kids commercial (US) acts as if the audience can't guess who The Digimon Emperor is.