• 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.

• Green Manor: Invoked. When Lord Killian is found murdered, the police immediately suspect his wife Elizabeth, the last person to see him. The members of the club mock the police for their simplicity, investigate the numerous oddities in the room, and concoct a theory about a spurned Haitian lover. It turns out that Elizabeth did kill her husband, and the wives of the club covered for her by throwing together an "impossible murder" for their husbands to solve.
• Subverted in an early John Byrne Superman story: Scotland Yard comes to see Superman for help finding Winn Schott, aka the Toyman. They relate how they've been following him after a murder spree against the toy company owners who fired him, often using his own toy designs. A baffled Superman asks why they didn't just go after Schott in the first place, when the evidence was clear. With some embarrassment, the inspector admits that he and his team were so used to cases where the least likely suspect was the killer that it took a while before they realized it really was the most obvious person.

• Played for Laughs in A Shot in the Dark. Clueless Detective Clouseau ignores blatant evidence that Maria Gambrelli, the woman he's infatuated with, is the killer, even though she keeps being found standing over a victim, holding the murder weapon, with no idea of what happened. Of course everyone except her turns out to be a murderer.
• Glass Onion: Subverted. Although billionaire Tech Bro 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 as reckless as killing a legal opponent of his shortly after the conclusion of their trial would be far too stupid a move for someone with his genius reputation; thus their suspicions initially fall on the other Disruptors since their fortunes are directly tied to Miles' and would possibly have been out to protect him. Come The Summation, it turns out that Miles is not some eccentric Genius Ditz, but an idiotic conman with Delusions of Eloquence who got where he is by leeching other peoples' ideas and putting money in the right places, and once it's established that he really is that stupid and impulsive, he is quickly exposed as Andi's killer.
• The Usual Suspects: 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 Söze. 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 Söze himself. Unfortunately, by the time Kujan realizes this, he's gone.

By Author:

• Agatha Christie used this trope in various ways.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Lampshaded 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."
  • Zig-zagged generously in Murder on the Orient Express. The more obvious and the less obvious ones – all turn out to be murderers in the end... that is, except for Poirot, his friend, the doctor – 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.
  • 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.
  • In Crooked House Brenda is the obvious suspect to everyone else in the family. An outcast of the family who married for money, the one to give Aristide his medicine, and (supposedly) having an affair with Laurence. She didn't do it.

By Work:

• 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.
• The Berenstain Bears Big Chapter Books: In The Berenstain Bears and the Red-Handed Thief, when items start disappearing from students' lockers, the cubs naturally suspect Too-Tall, whose reputation for trouble-making is well known. He turns out to be innocent, and it's revealed that the real culprit was just trying to teach the students a lesson about jumping to conclusions.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Severus Snape is a sly, abusive teacher who has a clear affinity for the Dark Arts throughout the story. It turns out that Snape is not only not the antagonist, he is actively protecting Harry from the antagonist.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Draco Malfoy is a schoolyard bully who vocally supports the actions of the mysterious Heir of Slytherin. 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 Prisoner of Azkaban: 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.
  • 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.
• 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:
    Lord Peter: Enter the obvious suspect.
    Harriet: The obvious suspect is always innocent.
    Superintendent Kirk: In books, my lady.
  • 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov plays with this: everyone on Solaria is convinced that Gladia killed her husband because, on Solaria, being in the physical presence of another human other than your spouse is extremely taboo; they use robots and telepresence technology for everything except conceiving children. The only reason they have to call in a detective from Earth is that they can't find a murder weapon to explain how the murder could have taken place to begin with. The detective from Earth is soon suspicious that there's a lot more to the story, and he's right - although Gladia did indeed strike the blows that killed her husband, he shifts the blame to another person who had set Gladia up as an Unwitting Pawn - and who, to the horror of the Solarians, found a way to trick a Three Laws-Compliant robot into allowing its own detachable arm to be used as the murder weapon.
• 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 made 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.
• In The Rithmatist, there's Professor Nalizar, who is much like Snape — 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 — 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.
• Star Trek: In the Deep Space Nine novel "The Siege" Odo is very briefly treated as the primary suspect as he was in "A Man Alone" when the serial killer on DS9 is revealed as another shape shifter. Sisko quickly shoots that down as he and a lot of other station personnel were with Odo when the murders took place.

• In the Blackadder Goes Forth episode "General Hospital", Blackadder is tasked with finding a German spy in a British field hospital. There he finds an incredibly suspicious black-clad man with a heavy German accent who only states his name as Mr. Smith. Blackadder ignores him since he figures that "not even the Germans would be stupid enough to send a spy with an accent". Sure enough, when Darling takes Smith to General Melchett at gunpoint, the latter reveals Smith to be a British spy who has spent so much time undercover in Germany that he developed a thick accent.
• In Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa, one of the potential suspects for the Screaming Castle case is a developer for the game that the murders are based on. He acts shifty when interrogated by the police and goes on a rant about them judging the game for depicting murder. Later on he runs into Akemi, who fits the profile for the Night Prowler's victims. When the next victim shows up, her dying description of the killer is a male with brown hair, and the developer (who fits the description) is loitering about the scene. Of course, he doesn't turn out to be the killer, and the description that the last victim gave is revealed to be a Red Herring to obscure that she actually committed suicide.
• Elementary often uses this trope, unlike the Sherlock Holmes stories the series is loosely based on.
• 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.
• Hawaii Five-O: In "Most Likely to Murder" from 1970, Tom Skerritt plays Lew Morgan, HPD cop whose wife was just murdered. He is seemingly a grieving widower, but over the course of the story, as several suspects are examined and released, he turns into a deranged madman who roughs up one of the suspects, and when Dan Williams calls him on it and he and Lew come to verbal blows, Lew then afterwards goes to the apartment of another suspect, Gary Oliver (Sam Melville); he kills Oliver in cold blood, and even reports it that he did. When McGarrett and the rest of Five-O get to the apartment, McGarrett shoves Lew backwards on the bed, and delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech of Tranquil Fury to him about how Lew, by shooting and killing Gary, made a mockery of everything the police and Five-O were trying to do to help Lew. Lew is then arrested, and after another character testifies on audiotape in McGarrett's office about how she was afraid to be seen with him for some reason or other, McGarrett gives a second Reason You Suck speech about how the charge against Lew will be increased from one murder two count to two of murder one (because Lew not only killed Gary Oliver, but also his wife, when he found her in an affair with Gary).
• In the Heat of the Night: This occurs a few times over the course of the series.
  • After parolee Prosper Hoag is murdered in the episode "Homecoming" suspicion falls on families of the victims Prosper killed in an automobile accident. It turns out to be none of these individuals. Instead it's the husband of Prosper's attorney as she and Prosper had been having an affair.
  • In "A Step Removed", Parker's hotheaded step-father Roy Ebersole is the prime suspect in the murder of his former boss, Norbert Clemens. Especially after Roy makes a death threat towards Norbert when the latter refuses to give him his job back and Norbert is shot a short time later. It then turns out the killer was the husband of a nursing assistant who was dating Norbert.
• Hunter would usually play this straight, but occasional episodes used it for a Bait-and-Switch where it would turn out to be the original suspect all along.
• 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?").
• 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.
• This is a standard part of the average Soap Opera murder mystery, where the first person arrested for killing the Asshole Victim inevitably turns out to be innocent, despite him/her having had a HELL of a motive/means/opportunity. Port Charles went for The Un-Twist when the prime suspect in the so-called "General Homicide" turned out to be exactly who all the evidence had pointed to.
• 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.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • The Enterprise is assigned to transport Federation delegates to Coridian in "Journey to Babel". During the journey the Tellarite ambassador is found murdered. Spock is quickly able to identify the method used as a Vulcan one, and as the Tellarite earlier had an argument with Spock's father Sarek, Sarek becomes the main suspect. However, Sarek is quickly eliminated as a suspect when Kirk is attacked by an Orion disguised as an Andorian.
    • In "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. Data and LaForge discover there was a whole series of mental rapes, but when they all occurred, Tamin was nowhere nearby but was on the Ullian homeworld, and Jev was the only Ullian present when all the previous attacks took place.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In "A Man Alone" a Bajoran criminal Ibudan was apparently murdered in one of Quark's holosuites. With the doors remaining locked the entire time Odo came under suspicion right away. However, it was ultimately discovered the murderer was not Odo. It was in fact Ibudan, who had created a clone of himself, then murdered that clone.
    • Then in "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.
• 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.

• Adventures in Odyssey: Zig-zagged in the episode "Blind Justice." The defendant in a court case involving breaking and entering and burglary is not guilty of the burglary due to it requiring time that contradicts his alibi and equipment that he would have needed to lug into the house that wouldn't be possible based on how he entered. He is, however, guilty of breaking and entering, but the real thieves used him to open the door so they could do the job.

• 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.
• 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.
• Love & Pies: When Amelia decides to investigate if her business competitor and rival, Edwina, was behind the fire at the former's mother's café, 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 Café 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.
• 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. He couldn't be more obviously the Nail Man, and therefore, to any Genre Savvy player, couldn't be more obviously not the Nail Man. And he isn't. However, it later comes to light that one of the victims wasn't actually killed by the Nail Man, but by a copycat killer. No points for guessing who that is.
• Metaphor: ReFantazio: At the start of the game, it's been established that Louis killed King Hythlodaeus some time after the prince was cursed and declared dead. Naturally, it would be easy to assume that Louis was responsible for both acts as his tactical and mystic knowledge would give him the means and his contempt towards the king would give him motivation for committing both acts. Louis even has the curse's formula in his office. However, the reality is a lot more complicated. While Louis is guilty of killing King Hythlodaeus, he isn't guilty of cursing the prince. It was actually Forden, who not only wanted to secure the power of the Sanctist Church but also refused to accept the idea of the prince, who happened to be half-elda, one day ruling as king, by forcing Rella into casting the curse. The reason Louis had a copy of the (incomplete) formula was because he wanted to clear his name, but King Hythlodaeus giving in to despair became Louis' final push towards murderous despotism.
• Post Mortem (2002): The prime suspect of the murder of the Whytes is a mysterious person who visited them at the hotel they were staying at and vanished. Every single detail that Gustave MacPherson finds about him seems to incriminate him. But when the man finally meets Gus, he explains that he was framed for the murder. Gus then goes on more investigation and uncovers the real killer as Dr. Kaufner possessed by De Allepin.
• In Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, 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.

• 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?".
• 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.
• 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.
• Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair and the other games in the series often employ this trope.
  • In the original game, the characters come up with three theories regarding the culprits. 1)Kamen killed Momoko and Hiro due to a falling out with them. 2)Hiro killed Momoko, and Kamen killed him and his accomplice Kotoba in revenge. 3)Runa killed Hiro for rejecting her and Momoko for stealing him away. In the end, it turns out that Momoko faked her suicide, killed Hiro, left her accomplice Kotoba to die to create a distraction and tie up loose ends and hanged herself to frame Kamen.
  • In GENBA no Kizuna, out of the four suspects, each of the three wrong ones is obvious in some way, and not just because all of them had grudges against the victim. Ryuunosuke Hazama is the initial prime suspect, and the one who seemingly was most able to kill the victim with the T-Rex animatronic although the animatronic was actually only used to cover up the crime. Terano Takamori becomes presented as the prime suspect in the climax, as the one who played the key role in the cover-up and is the first to confess to the murder. Amber Harding has the most evidence against her, particularly her bloody costume, a piece of amber at the crime scene and shards of glass with her blood on them, although it turns out that they were planted. It turns out that the actual culprit is Shiku Jura, who's the nicest and most cooperative member of Raptor Pack Productions, albeit the last to confess. After she killed the victim in self-defense and passed out, the others hatched a scheme to cover up the killing as an accident, so that she would not be traumatized by having to take a life and the victim's associates would not go after her in revenge.

• Adventure Time: In "Mystery Train", Finn tries to solve a series of murders on a train ride. He insists that the creepy conductor can't be the killer because he's too obvious a suspect. Subverted when it turns out the conductor is the killer. Fortunately, it was all a Fake Mystery and the conductor was Jake the Dog in disguise.
• 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.
• 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.
• A recurring plot beat in Scooby-Doo is for the gang to suspect a very obviously suspicious and creepy Red Herring, who inevitably turns out to be innocent. Some installments actually poke fun at this by having it turn out to actually be the Obvious Suspect after all, much to everyone's surprise.
  • A Running Gag in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo was for Fred frequently suspecting the local bully Red Herring to be the one behind the plot no matter how implausible, only to turn out to be wrong. One episode has the gang to forbid Fred from accusing Red after getting fed up with his accusations being disproven, only for Red to turn out to be the culprit for once.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated parodies it in the episode "The Gathering Gloom". Velma and Scooby suspect the Graveyard Ghoul is actually local gravedigger Count Evallo von Meanskrieg, who not only looks exactly like the Ghoul but admits to being evil. In fact, his work permit application was denied on the grounds he was too evil to hold a legitimate job. Everyone else thinks he's too obvious a suspect to actually be the culprit and cite this trope - only for it to turn out he actually is the Ghoul.
• 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.