Games usually set up their main villain early in the story. Whether it’s a violent warlord who destroys the protagonist’s home or the leader of a rival faction in a major conflict, players can usually expect to fight that person by the end of the game.
Some games, however, aren’t content with doing this. After taking down this major villain, players discover another figure hiding in the background. The villain they just beat was a decoy, working for or a distraction from the real threat. Naturally, most of these villains are late game twists, so be careful of spoilers for every game listed.
10 Devil May Cry 5
Devil May Cry 5 opens with protagonist Nero fighting against Urizen, a demonic figure that’s causing the demon tree of Qliphoth to appear in Red Grave City. Urizen is a formidable foe, instantly setting himself up to be a powerful being that will take a lot of time and effort to ultimately take down.
However, he’s only partly the true villain. In truth, he’s one half of Vergil, the brother of fellow DMC protagonist Dante. After using his sword, Yamato, to split his demon and human sides into separate entities, Urizen, his demon side, went on a rampage. Meanwhile, his human side, V, worked with Dante and Nero to stop him. The two halves merged again later in the game, making Vergil the true threat at the end.
9 Portal 2
Portal 2 is an interesting example. The initial villain introduced in the story is the same villain the player faced off against in the first game – the killer AI GLaDOS. For much of the first third of Portal 2, the player works with a jovial British AI named Wheatley to stop GLaDOS as she seeks vengeance on them.
She is eventually stopped when the player replaces her with Wheatley, and initially things seem fine. However, Wheatley uses this moment to abuse his power and take over as the new malevolent AI in charge of the facility, and the rest of the game requires the player to take him down too.
8 Inscryption
Inscryption is a dark card game set inside a moody cabin, where the player is forced to play games against a mysterious figure shrouded in darkness. This is Leshy, who has dark plans for anyone who fails to complete his game.
However, Inscryption isn’t quite what it seems. If the player does manage to defeat Leshy at his game, secrets are revealed and suddenly, not only is Leshy no longer the main villain, but the entire structure of the game and its narrative change too.
7 Persona 4
At the heart of its story, Persona 4 is a murder mystery within all the alternate world fantasy elements. The party are seeking out the one responsible for Inaba’s terrible serial killings. Naturally, this means a few false leads throw themselves out there.
Initially, a student named Mitsuo claims to be the killer in a twisted effort to gain attention. Next, a delivery man named Taro Namatame becomes the prime suspect, but turns out to be innocent. The true culprit is Adachi, one of the police officers assigned to the case. But even he isn’t the main villain, as he’s acting under the influence of a chaotic spirit looking to cause humanity’s demise.
6 Mass Effect
Saren Arterius is a member of the Spectres, an elite mercenary force for the Citadel Council. He is known as a ruthlessly efficient agent whose methods were questionable, but his results are always commendable. He loses his status when protagonist Commander Shephard finds evidence that he led an unprovoked attack on a cargo freighter, but this fails to stop him in his rampage.
However, it turns out that his actions aren’t driven by his own desire for power, but due to mind control by a much worse threat. Sovereign, a Reaper, was manipulating him into delivering a plan that would unleash the rest of the Reapers and ultimately lead to the destruction of all organic life across the galaxy.
5 Until Dawn
Like all good slasher movies, Until Dawn traps some teens in a mountain cabin and allows a serial killer to pick them off one by one. At least, this is the plot up until the point that it turns out that the psycho stalking the cast is actually their friend Josh pulling an elaborate and cruel prank.
However, it’s not long before it turns out that there is a much more genuine threat up on the mountain, as a supernatural force reveals itself to be lurking in the shadows. Unlike Josh, encounters with this creature are much deadlier.
4 Final Fantasy VIII
In the world of Final Fantasy VIII, protagonist Squall and his friends are members of an elite military task force named SeeD. By the end of the first disc, they are tasked with taking out an evil sorceress, Edea, who is threatening the world.
By the end of disc two, however, Edea stops being a threat, and instead comes to her senses. It turns out that real villain of the game is a sorceress from the future named Ultimecia, who is possessing present day sorceresses in order to do her bidding. This leads to a late game time travel showdown to go after the real villain of the piece.
3 Bioshock
At the start of Bioshock, the game goes to great lengths to present undersea city Rapture’s founder, Andrew Ryan, as the villain of the game. His lax attitude towards anything resembling regulation has led Rapture to become a hellscape of mutated inhabitants and rapidly degrading infrastructure, and it has ruined the lives of many.
Halfway through the game, however, the player takes down Ryan and discovers that they’ve been manipulated the whole time by his political rival, Frank Fontaine. Fontaine is much more merciless than Ryan, and it’s now up to the player to stop him before he makes Rapture any worse than it already was.
2 The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
In Twilight Princess, Hyrule is being invaded by creatures from the Twilight Realm, and Link, as always, steps up to save the day. Through his interactions with an imp named Midna, she reveals that the cause of all this is Zant, who has seized the throne of the Twilight Realm. Naturally, this makes him the obvious target to take out in order to stop all this.
But later in the game, it turns out that Zant has been manipulated and driven mad by a darker force of evil, one much more familiar to fans of the Zelda series. Ganondorf has been pulling the strings behind the scenes as part of his ongoing efforts to see the destruction of Hyrule, and his reveals pushes Zant to the side as Link pursues his nemesis.
1 Okami
Okami is a game with an absurd amount of decoy villains, with nearly every boss in the game presented as the Big Bad at one point or another. When the game opens, players are told about the terrible acts of Orochi, a nine-headed serpent corrupting the land. Orochi is quickly set up as the main villain, but when canine protagonist Amaterasu faces off against him, she doesn’t have all her powers yet, which might be a clue there’s more game to come.
Sure enough, after Orochi is defeated, a new villain emerges named Ninetales, who becomes the new threat. They, too, end up being defeated and revealing that an even bigger threat lies to the north, and it’s only on a great celestial ark that Amaterasu discovers the real villain, right at the end of the game.