Red Herring / Anime & Manga

• In the first volume of Accel World, Kuroyukihime reveals that a Burst Linker known as Cyan Pile is trying to hunt her down to collect the point bounty on her, and she knows very little about the person controlling this duel avatar except for the fact that this person goes to her school (based on the fact that Cyan Pile can challenge her while she's logged into the school intranet). Kuroyukihime initially assumes that it's Haru's Childhood Friend Chiyu, given the hostility between them in their first meeting (although Kuroyukihime intentionally eggs Chiyu on to gauge her reactions) and that Chiyu is one of a handful of possible Burst Linkers besides Kuroyukihime and Haru. Haru refuses to believe it, since the Chiyu he knows is no good at video games or keeping secrets, and insists on convincing Kuroyukihime. It turns out that Chiyu's Neurolinker was infected with a backdoor program, enabling the true culprit, her boyfriend Taku, to challenge Kuroyukihime remotely (even though he doesn't even go to her school).
• In the "Turnabout Showtime" case of the Ace Attorney manga, the defendant, Julie Henson, is suspected of killing her ex-boyfriend Flip Chambers because he left her for another girl. She's innocent, and this piece of information is never brought up again.
• In Baccano! (particularly in the light novel), a nameless woman in fatigues secretly making her way across the train is heavily implied to either be the Rail Tracer, expert assassin Claire Stanfield, or both. Turns out both of those roles were taken by the supposedly murdered redheaded conductor.
• Attack on Titan:
  • During the Marley arc, the soldier who lures Galliard and Pieck into a trapdoor has their face obscured by the camera angles, this made the readers to speculate that they were someone known, like a member of the Survey Corps in disguise, Pieck even mentions that their face is familiar. Then it turned out that it was an entirely new character.
  • The pregnancy of Historia Reiss ends up being this as it's revealed that the father of the child really was her unnamed Farmer consort/husband. After multiple chapters of her interacting with Eren in secret and even seeing a quick flash of her giving birth during one of the Rumbling chapters, many a fan theorized that the child belonged to Eren and he had some kind of plan to utilize their royal blood. But in the end the baby was born after the climax and nothing happened.
• The first chapter of Bio-Meat: Nectar shows your typical split-screen shot of the main characters, which seems to set up a Five-Man Band. The first one of the five that we see is even given a name, but when the time comes, he decides not to join up with the other four. In fact, he almost gets them killed by cutting the rope one of the heroes is going down. He gets his Karmic Death soon enough.
• Bleach:
  • For most of the Soul Society arc, Gin Ichimaru is heavily signaled as someone that is being set up as the deeper villain, with him always being around whenever bad things are happening on the Soul Society side, along with having a perpentual smug smile, fox-like eyes, and just generally acting sinister or being an asshole. However, it turns out that it's not him who masterminded the events of the arc, but rather Sōsuke Aizen, who had faked his death some time earlier. This was an [Invoked Trope], as while Ichimaru wasn't the mastermind, he was working for Aizen, purposefully acting suspicious and sinister to throw off attention from what his boss was doing.
  • Ulquiorra appears from the start to be Aizen's right-hand man among the Espada, and the ultimate target everyone needs to reach to save Orihime. When Ulquiorra realises Ichigo thinks he's the top Espada, he reveals he's only the fourth Espada. That said, during his final battle with Ichigo, he reveals a second Resurrecion form that he claims Aizen does not know about, suggesting that his ranking was inaccurate.
  • Barragan takes command in Aizen's absence, making it seem to characters that he's the top Espada until it's revealed that he's only the second Espada. It's an unsuccessful example as Kyouraku admits to his opponent (the real number one) he'd suspected all along that Barragan was number two, but had been hoping otherwise.
  • When the different types of Menos are explained to Ichigo, it's said that Vasto Lordes are more powerful than even Shinigami Captains, and that if Aizen brought 10 Vasto Lordes to his side and made them into arrancar, Soul Society would be doomed. The scene immediately cuts to Aizen awakening his newest arrancar, Wonderweiss, and telling him to meet his 20 brothers and sisters. The audience is clearly intended to think that Aizen's army far exceeds even what Soul Society thinks is the worst-case scenario. In the end, this comes to nothing and it's never specified how many Vasto Lordes are in Aizen's army (it's strongly implied that the top 4 Espada are Vasto Lordes, while numbers 5-9 are explicitly not, and Wonderweiss is the only non-Espada who might be a Vasto Lorde). And when the actual war begins, it turns out to not be Aizen's army that overpowers Soul Society. It's Aizen by himself.
• Blue Flag: Early chapters point to Touma being in love with his sister-in-law and former teacher Akiko. Chapter 5 however, reveals that this was a lie that he created to hide the fact he is in love with his childhood friend Taichi.
• Red Herrings are a staple of Case Closed, but a big one happens in the recurring Black Organization meta-arc when Vermouth finally shows herself and it's not who you think it is at all. She's been impersonating Dr. Araide. The suspicious-looking foreign English teacher? She's the FBI agent on Vermouth's trail.
• In Code Geass, Cornelia and Schneizel are set up as two possible suspects for killing Lelouch's mother Marianne, since Clovis, while forced to tell the truth, suggested that they might know something about it. Neither one of them did it; V.V. tried to kill her, but she managed to transfer her soul into Anya's body before she died. Then again, given the significant changes that the plot of season 2 allegedly went through due to the time slot change, it's possible that this could be less of a Red Herring and more of an Aborted Arc. It was, however, made clear at the end of season 1 that Cornelia had nothing to do with Marianne's death, contrary to earlier implications.
• Dancougar Nova: Head of the Dancougar team, Commander Tanaka acts friendly enough most of the time, but has a few moments where he gets Scary Shiny Glasses and it looks like he knows more than he lets on, having a few vaguely sinister conversations with his employer, Fog Sweeper. It later turns out to have been a red herring.
• In Death Note, the writer Ohba hadn't decided who the third Kira was when he began writing the Yotsuba arc, and so needed all eight members of the Yotsuba Group to have the potential to be Kira. Therefore he pushed this trope to its absolute limits to place suspicion on every member at one point or another. Namikawa is the biggest example of this, as he's the immediate suspect but also the second to be confirmed innocent after Hatori's death. Other notable red herrings are Takahashi and Mido: Takihashi only seems to exist to serve as a red herring and nothing else is ever done with his character, and many subtle clues point to Mido as the story continues (so many, in fact, that most of them are probably examples of Hilarious in Hindsight).
• During the doppelganger business in Delicious in Dungeon, one of the Marcille's states that has mostly gotten over her issue with eating monsters, after having eaten all sorts of things like merfolk eggs. Laios realizes she is the doppelganger Marcille not due to that but due to her casually pouring out boiling water, an action that earlier in the story nearly got her killed by an angry Undine. Marcille assumes that the merfolk eggs are what tipped Laios off, but is horrified to learn that that part was true, Chilchuck just made Laios keep quiet about that.
• Durarara!!:
  • Up until vol. 9, it's heavily implied that "that thing back in middle school" was that Izaya stabbed and nearly killed Shinra. This is exactly what Izaya wants people to think.
  • Since Mika Harima has the same face as Celty Sturluson and has a scar that goes all around her neck, everyone is led to believe that Mika is a corpse that has had Celty's missing head grafted on to it to give it life. It later turns out that Namie manipulated Mika into undergoing plastic surgery that would make her resemble Celty, and subsequently gave her memory-altering drugs to hide the truth.
• Elfen Lied:
  • The silhouetted figure at the end of the anime deliberately plays on people's need for closure and human emotions. Viewers immediately think this is Lucy or Nyuu at the end despite the anime very deliberately setting up the circumstances that it's entirely impossible for it be her and that she commits suicide at the end to protect her family and atone for her sins. But upon closer inspection of the figure, she has long hair where as in episode 11 Nyuu cut her hair, and the last episode shows dozens of angles of her hair not touching her shoulders, and that in episode 13 Her two personalities are not divided anymore by the end of the anime. Yuka's comment at the end eludes to the fact that Nyu is gone and is being missed, Kouta is remembering Nyuu looking at the shell, and Nana remembers Lucy and Mariko's passing. Life is returning to normal at Kaede House, and the characters are moving on dealing with her loss. This deliberately plays on the viewers lack of closure, and the desperate human need for it. The answer of who is at the door, or rather who isn't is very cleverly Hidden in Plain Sight.
• Fairy Tail:
  • During the Grand Magic Games arc, it at first seems that only one person had come back from the future to give warnings about what will soon happen, but that that person had given Princess Hisui and Captain Arcadios conflicting information for some reason. During the two's conversation late in the arc, Arcadios calls this informant a woman, causing Hisui to tell him that her informant was a man. It turns out that Future!Lucy wasn't the only one who came back through the Eclipse Gate... Rogue's Ax-Crazy future counterpart had also managed to find his way to the past, but for a much more sinister purpose.
  • Invoked with Silver, Gray's father, as well. Silver pretends to actually be the spirit of Deliora, the demon responsible for Gray's childhood trauma, inhabiting the corpse of his father. In actuality, Silver was brought back to life as his own self by the necromancer Keyes, and was a good person who wanted Gray to put him out of his misery.
  • A slightly more minor example in the form of Weisslogia and Skiadrum not being dead despite Sting and Rogue remembering having killed them. Apparently dragons can alter the memories of humans somehow. (They then both proceed to die a few minutes later, making everything a bit of a moot point.)
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • The manga drops a bunch of hints that Ed and Al's father Van Hohenheim and the Big Bad and leader of the Homunculi, Father, are one and the same. Nope. While they do have an important connection, they're definitely separate people. When Alphonse reunites with Hohenheim, he explains the situation to his father. Hohenheim then asks him if he's sure he wants to tell him, given that the leader of the Homunculi looks just like him. Alphonse is silent for a moment, refusing to back down, and Hohenheim says he's relieved that his son trusts him.
  • When Edward is about to go fight Gluttony, Riza Hawkeye gives him a pistol, telling him it may just end up saving his life. Much later, when his alchemy is switched off by villainous Anti-Magic, he realizes he still has the gun and pulls it out, but is never able to shoot anyone with it.
  • When they first meet, Barry the Chopper drops a potential bombshell that Al may have never really existed as a human; that Ed created all of his memories and personality and stuck them onto a suit of armor. It's eventually revealed that this was just Barry screwing with Al's head.
• In the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode "LOST HERITAGE", the members of Section 9 try to stop an assassin named Yu from killing a Chinese politician. After discovering that Yu has carefully imported a sniper rifle from overseas, they spend the bulk of the episode under the assumption that he plans to shoot the politician from a distance. Then, just before the killing is scheduled to occur, Togusa finds a teenage boy Bound and Gagged in a bathroom stall, with his school uniform having been stolen. It turns out that the sniper rifle was a clever misdirect, and Yu's real plan was to disguise himself as a high school student so that he could get close enough to the politician to stab him to death.
• Early on in Gosick, a government official is murdered, and Victorique is able to deduce that the killer is a blonde girl with an injured hand. Around this time, Kazuya becomes friends with Avril, a blond-haired New Transfer Student from England. He soon notices that Avril's right hand is bandaged, and she becomes very tense when questioned about it. This is actually Foreshadowing for a completely different crime. It turns out that "Avril" is actually a Phantom Thief named Kuiaran the Second, who kidnapped the real Avril and assumed her identity so she could infiltrate the school. Kuiaran's hand wound came from being bitten by the real Avril while she was tying her up.
• Gravion: Early in Zwei, Eiji encounters a picture where Raven is shown to be together with Ayaka, so they must be two different entities. Raven is Ayaka, however, because the Raven mask will make anyone take on the Raven identity, and Ayaka is his latest host, the one who wielded it when the portrait was taken was most likely Luna's father.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • In the beginning of "Remote Island Syndrome Part 1" in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, we see an adult woman ripping apart papers and letting them fly from the balcony. Does this have anything to do with the following plot? No. In fact, the "murder mystery" that follows is one great big red herring; it's just a game set up to prevent Haruhi from getting bored, which could have inadvertently caused a real murder mystery to take place.
  • The "Where Did The Cat Go?" mystery from the novels centers on a red herring: the cat's location seems to rule out certain suspects, until the brigade-eers realize there are two cats....
• The iDOLM@STER: The first episode was misleading people into thinking the adaptation of the game would be a literal adaptation, since the Producer's lines weren't voiced, only subtitled, as in the game.
• At one point in Part 3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Joseph uses his stand powers to divine that Kakyoin is The Mole. Turns out it's actually the next enemy stand user, Rubber Soul, using his stand powers to masquerade as Kakyokin.
• Similarly, The Kindaichi Case Files, as a fellow mystery manga, makes use of the red herring. Perhaps two of the best were in "No Noose is Good Noose," indicating two different innocent suspects as the killer. The fact that Utako Mori's name is an anagram for "komori uta," the killer's trademark phrase? The presence of Takashi Senke in the background of one of the photos of suicided students, indicating a possible motive? Both mere coincidence, with no purpose other than to draw smug readers away from the real clues. Although the second served a doubly sneaky purpose. Those who remember that red herring may be more inclined to dismiss Senke as a suspect in "The Forest of Cerberus," only this time, he is the killer!
• Early in the second Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! novel, a random punk tries to hit on Rikka while Yuuta is getting something, and manages to get her name and school before Yuuta steps in. Near the end, Rikka gets kidnapped outside of the school and the kidnapper contacts Yuuta by phone and talks about taking Rikka for himself if Yuuta can't find her in time, with the voice distorted to the point that Yuuta wasn't able to recognize it at all. It turns out to be Satone, however, who actually wanted to break them up so that she could take Yuuta for herself.
• In the first episode of Lupin III Part 4, Inspector Zenigata accuses a civilian of being Lupin in disguise after the man volunteers to return the priceless crown that Lupin is targeting to its storage location. This is disproven when the real Lupin shows up to swipe the crown, only for it to turn out that Zenigata was half right after all. A cutaway shows the real civilian Bound and Gagged in an unused room somewhere, while the seemingly innocent man Zenigata had earlier suspected is actually revealed to be Fujiko Mine Disguised in Drag.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Chrono's deceased father is brought up a few times. Meanwhile, a mysterious masked person whose hair color happens to match Chrono's appears to occasionally help out the villains. Turns out that there's actually two of them, and they're the Cat Girl familiars of Chrono's mentor, sent to make sure the villains succeeded in their plan, then absorb them so that the Book of Darkness can be sealed away along with Hayate.
  • Deliberately planted by the antagonist in StrikerS Sound Stage X. After spending a good portion of the plot hunting down the instigator of the latest incident, the Time-Space Administration Bureau officers eventually learn from Jail Scaglietti that Toredia Graze, their prime suspect, has been dead for four years. The real culprit, TSAB Enforcer Runessa Magnus, impersonated Toredia while contacting his associates.
• In Macross Frontier, Sheryl Nome is well... Sheryl Nome. Publicity for the series included judicious use of her full name, with the surname shared by Mao and Sara from Macross Zero, Mayan High Priestesses with a unique blood type that gave them some fairly unique powers bordering on ESP if taken at face value (though how much of that was actually done by the Bird-Human is anyone's guess). Many fans assumed that this was a big hint for the plot of the show and that Sheryl would turn out to be something like Mao's granddaughter. The latter part turned out to be true, but did this really affect the plot at all? Not one bit. It truly never comes up, and becomes simply another Shout-Out to one of the previous shows (Frontier was laced with these).
• Metal Armor Dragonar: Judging by the 1st Opening, we were told Light would hook up with Diane. Nope, she hooks up with Ben, and in the ending, she marries him.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury PROLOGUE, we’re introduced to Ericht Samaya, a four-year-old girl, and the Gundam Lfrith, who escape the destruction of their home along with her mother Elnora. In the series proper, we’re introduced to Suletta Mercury and the Gundam Aerial. You expect Suletta to be Ericht as Suletta’s mother, Prospera, is actually Elnora. However, everything is thrown for a loop when it’s revealed the events of PROLOGUE happened 21 years prior, meaning Suletta should be 25, not 17. The truth is wilder and more horrifying in reality: Ericht isn’t Suletta, Ericht is Gundam Aerial and Suletta is one of her clones.
• When ghosts escape from prison because of the door wards failing — in the Arcanum arc of Muhyo and Roji — Biko, an artificer who makes wards, is implied to be the culprit after an envelope with Enchu's seal turns up in her house. The real culprit is her teacher Rio.
• My Hero Academia: Chapter 335 ends with the confirmation that, indeed, All For One had an inside agent infiltrated in the UA. The last panel of the chapter shows a still image of Tooru Hagakure, seemingly to hint that it's her. There were a few past situations where she was involved that may have made her suspicious- most notably, she was unconscious in the hospital after the attack on the training camp, and so couldn't have warned All For One about her classmates trying to rescue Bakugo- until Chapter 336 revealed that she was actually following Aoyama, noticing he was acting strangely. Turns out, Aoyama was The Mole all along, as All For One is blackmailing him and his parents.
• The Mysterious Cities of Gold: During the second season, someone who looks like Zares is seen snooping around Ambrosius's airship. Later on the season, that same person captures Mendoza and steals an artifact from Ambrosius thanks to Mendoza's aid, leading fans to think Mendoza is a traitor. Eventually it is revealed that person isn't Zares, but the Traveling Prophet. He just happens to wear similar clothes to Zares', and he needs that artifact to cure his radiation poisoning.
• Naruto:
  • Itachi at one point claims that he let Sasuke live so that he could take his eyes as an adult. It is later revealed he was lying and let Sasuke live because he could not bring himself to kill him. Not just that. Everything the reader was ever told about Itachi is a lie or a coverup. The truth about him has only started coming out in the chapters following his death. It's so dramatic that for most of the series he appeared to be the unquestionable Big Bad of Sasuke's storyline, when in fact he's apparently the Big Good. And who turned out to be Sasuke's personal Big Bad? Loveable, goofy Tobi.
  • Tobi himself. He claimed to be Uchiha Madara, but during the Fourth Great Shinobi World War it was revealed, via the Edo Tensei, that the actual Uchiha Madara was Dead All Along. Then it turns out that the real Madara is the mastermind behind the entire plot, as he used Tobi to act out his plans, and is arguably the real Big Bad. Tobi, was later on revealed to be who fans speculated him to be all along: Obito. And then Obito hijacked Madara's master plan, promoting himself to the role of Big Bad. But after the defeat Obito, Madara right back resumed being the Big Bad.
  • Masashi Kishimoto explains in this 2017 Jump Festa interview that he already decided that Naruto/Hinata would be the main Official Couple since the early stages of the manga, but he "did throw in some nuggets" specifically to troll the Naruto/Sakura shippers. According to the voice actors of Team 7, Sakura marrying Sasuke had been planned since the start of the anime because Kishimoto told them.
• Occult Academy: The principal of the school, Chihiro, is set up to be the main threat as throughout the series she spies on Maya and disapproves of her snooping around. Then the Wham Episode hits and it turns out that a seemingly sweet and innocent girl named Mikaze, that Fumiaki was dating, was the true villain all along. What's more Chihiro is actually an ally that was looking after Maya at the behest of her father.
• One Piece:
  • One Piece uses a Red Herring to take advantage of a recent reveal while hiding another one. When Garp visits Ace in prison and expresses his desire that he had wanted Ace and Luffy to grow up to be Marines, Ace response by reminding Garp this is impossible because "Luffy and I both have the blood of an international criminal mastermind running in our veins." At first glance, this appears to follow the revelation by Garp that Luffy's father is Dragon the Revolutionary. In fact, it does so while simultaneously hiding the later reveal that Ace's father is the Pirate King Gold Roger.
  • Once upon a time, it was widely believed that Shanks was Luffy's long-lost father, and for good reason. There were too many seemingly genuine clues to this for it not to be intentional on Oda's part, which makes The Reveal of Luffy's father more shocking. This was certainly helped by the fact that the earlier art style made Luffy and Shanks look a good deal more alike than they do now. Don't lie: you would've laughed at anyone who would have theorized this, if only because Shanks seemed like the more rational choice. Oda probably loves this trope considering how unpredictable One Piece is.
  • The identities of future crew members have sometimes been hidden this way. Vivi, a character who'd been introduced in the Reverse Mountain arc, traveled with the Straw Hats since Whiskey Peak, becoming fairly close with the rest of the crew. At the end of the arc, Vivi is formally invited to join the crew, and even ditches her speech in order to meet up with the Straw Hats... and say she can't come. Shortly thereafter, Nico Robin, a former enemy who'd been introduced not long after Vivi, appears on the Going Merry and invites herself into the crew.
  • Water 7 started with the crew looking for a shipwright and finding a company of six, several of whom getting along fairly well with the crew, while clashing with Franky, a gang leader. Then Kaku and Lucci turn out to be undercover CP9 agents and Franky is revealed as a shipwright with his own tragic backstory, who also opposes CP9. Franky fights alongside the Straw Hats on the sea train and at Enies Lobby, and at the end of the arc, he joins the crew. Galley-La foreman Paulie was the biggest red herring of the bunch, with his quirky personality and even qurkier fighting style that made him seem like an obvious fit for the Straw Hats.
  • Duval's identity was done like this. He started out having a personal beef with the Straw Hat Pirates, but especially Sanji, leading to some speculation that he might be Don Krieg,^note Duval has a similarly imposing build, he shares Krieg's affinity for poisoned weapons, and he wears an iron mask that would've completely hidden Krieg's distinctive sideburns. or at least a customer Sanji beat up in the past. The real answer was far more hilarious: He'd never actually met the Straw Hats before, but he looked exactly like Sanji's poorly-drawn wanted poster. Part of the misdirect is Duval acting as though this problem has followed him for years... But after the reveal the whole situation turns absurd, as at this point in time Sanji had only had his wanted poster for, at MOST, a couple weeks.
• In the Outlaw Star episode "Final Countdown", a terrorist group uses a red herring to its fullest extent. They set up an elaborate plan to crash an advertising ship rigged with a bomb into Heifong with its independence as the ransom. As it turns out, this was just a plan to evacuate the city so that the "terrorist group" (which is more like a group of petty, if clever, thieves) can loot the empty city without fear of being caught. Unfortunately for them, the main characters catch on to this ruse and show them what for.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: The farm skit in "Bitch Girls" is intended to fool certain viewers into believing a larger Time Skip has occurred. Granny, who shows up with the same dress color and facial features as Panty's, is suggested to be Panty having grown old as a result of her mortality, while the real Panty is implied to be Panty Sr.'s relation or a child who happens to bear an uncanny semblance to Panty Sr. This illusion is promptly broken after Brief is shown not to have aged one bit and the whole scene is revealed to be a mere act planned out by Garterbelt to motivate Panty to rescue Brief.
• Certain series of Pretty Cure have characters who are red herrings for the identity of the Sixth Ranger Cure.
  • Fresh Pretty Cure! started the trend with the Cure's dancing mentor Miyuki; even the characters speculated she could be the fourth Pretty Cure of the series. (She wasn't, of course).
  • Suite Pretty Cure ♪ had the heroes' classmates Waon and Seika — and the production staff even created fake artwork that implied they would become Cures.
  • Doki Doki! PreCure topped the others with Dark Magical Girl Regina, who shockingly did not join the heroes as a Cure — in fact, the series' Sixth Ranger was a character that had never appeared before.
• Pretty Sammy: In Magical Project S, when Romio is talking about how she has selected a third magical girl, she shows a picture featuring Konoha prominently in the foreground and Eimi just casually strolling by in the background. Take a wild guess who the third magical girl is. (It's Eimi).
• In early episodes of Princess Tutu, it's quite easy to think of Fakir as the human incarnation of the Raven - his hairstyle looks like black tail feathers and his less than friendly personality. His hair is actually green, and he's a Jerkass Woobie.
• Played with early on in The Promised Neverland. The main protagonists - Emma, Ray, and Norman - have let Gilda and Don in on their plan to escape their orphanage (as it's really a plant that raises kids so they can be fed to demons), but information is soon leaked to the plant's leader, "Mom", meaning that one of the two is a mole. Norman quickly devises a plan: he'll tell Gilda and Don about separate hidden ropes, and the rope that vanishes will prove which of them is the mole. Many shots of Gilda strongly imply that something sinister is going on with her, meaning this trope is played straight when Norman and Ray don't find a rope in the hiding place they told Don about. However, Norman then reveals that this particular hiding place wasn't the one he told Don about, but rather the one he told Ray that he told Don about, meaning that Ray is the traitor. Naturally, this blindsided almost the entire fanbase.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has two major examples: The witch in the prologue has some marked design similarities to Sayaka's Magical Girl outfit. Turns out that Sayaka's actual witch form has considerably fewer design similarities. In a more meta example, concept art shows Madoka and Homura both with bows, leading to speculation about Homura being future Madoka. And then Homura is revealed not only to be her own person, but to have a completely different weapon. (As it turns out, the art's still meaningful - Homura can use Madoka's bow, and in the timeline where the latter ascended ends up inheriting it, wielding it in favor of her own weapon to signify a "lighter" aspect of magical girl-ness.)
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei introduces the perpetually injured and covered in bandages Abiru by having Nozomu investigate a possible domestic abuse situation. After following Abiru's father around as he goes shopping (his paranoia making him think that every single thing he tries to buy is going to be used to abuse his daughter,) he eventually finds out that Abiru's injuries actually come from her obsession with pulling animal tails.
• In Soul Eater, Kid tries to check out an old manuscript of The Book of Eibon in the DWMA's secure library but finds it was checked out and never returned. The name it was checked out under was simply "M", and Kid notices that the date is the same day Medusa abandoned her cover as the school's nurse. Turns out Maka checked it out by borrowing her father's security ID.
• To cite a very early example, the English dub Speed Racer had a one-off character named Red Herring for completely no reason.
• A somewhat complicated example occurs during the "Phantom Bullet Arc" of Sword Art Online. At the beginning of the Bullet of Bullets Tournament there are three suspects in the tournament who might be the murderous "Death Gun": Pale Rider, Jushi X, and Sterben. All Kirito and Sinon know about them is their names, so that's all they have in the way of clues. (In the anime, the audience has an extra clue if they were paying attention to Kyoji during the opening.) The problem is that each of the three separate suspects' names can be read as a reference to death in English, Japanese, and German respectively. In-universe, this means that given a choice between going after "Sterben" or "Jushi X", the two Japanese teenagers opt for "Jushi X" because that can be read as the Japanese for "Death Gun" backwards, with the X representing a cross. It is only once "Sterben" is confirmed as "Death Gun" via process of elimination that the Japanese nurse reveals (to the non-German speaking members of the audience) that "sterben" is German for "to die" and is a loanword particularly used in Japanese hospitals. However at the outset, Anglophone members of the audience would tend to be more suspicious about the English name "Pale Rider" since that is a Biblical reference to Death as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Members of the Japanese audience would also have good reason to suspect him, because using Christian iconography for Faux Symbolism is fairly common in anime.
• In episode 4 of Tamako Market, it appeared that Anko had a crush on a hyperactive classmate, but in the end it turned out it was on the sweet boy he was walking with.
• In The Three Musketeers, Athos suspect that Manson and Iron Mask are working together. However, news come that Manson has been robbed by Iron Mask, so the musketeers abandon this lead. The robbery was a part of the Iron Mask's plan as he and Manson really are working together.
• Tokyo Mew Mew sets up some Red Herrings to hide the true identity of the local Mysterious Protector. (That it doesn't fully work in the anime version because of his voice is another story...) The Mysterious Protector has blond hair and blue eyes, and there's another character in the cast possessing these traits (Ryou Shirogane). The manga, in addition to pointing out those similarities, briefly uses another character (Keiichiro) to make a red herring via a subversion of the Revealing Injury trope. The real identity of the Mysterious Protector looks nothing like his transformed form, but the abovementioned voice link in the anime version, coupled with healthy amount of Genre Savviness from the audience, renders the whole point moot. His surname "Aoyama" contains the word for "Blue" in Japanese, which gives some hint as to his identity.
• In Umi Monogatari, the Elder Turtle is often wary of Kanon and is convinced she will fall into darkness if not watched. He's wrong. Marin does.
• Xabungle: The Blue Stones that are so important to everyone? That are the equivalent of Gold during a goldrush? Worthless and mundane, and different materials are used as actual money.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • In the Duelist Kingdom arc, Tristan/Honda gets suspicious of Pegasus and suspects that he doesn't really have the power to read minds. Upon inspecting the arena, he, Tea/Anzu, and Bakura find a hole in the wall, and a tower outside. Tristan theorizes that a mook hides in the tower and uses a telescope to look through the hole and spy on players' cards, then relay the info to Pegasus via a receiver. The hole is just a coincidence, and Pegasus really does read minds.
  • Funnily enough, in the Battle City arc, the Phony Psychic Esper Roba uses exactly this trick with the help of his younger siblings.
  • It first happened with Pegasus in his duel by videotape with Yugi in the manga version. Yugi accuses Pegasus of not really using magic powers to predict his moves, instead claiming that Pegasus used subliminal messages to get Yugi to build his deck and play the cards that he wanted. While Pegasus did use subliminal messages, Pegasus proceeds to actually use magic from that point on.
• In The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village, a flashback to Shinobu's youth shows him being the victim of a supernatural child organ harvesting ring using a controversial diet drink as a vector. At the end of the novel it's revealed that the history of this event had been rewritten, obscuring what actually happened. When Shinobu travels back in time the diet drink is mentioned in a broadcast but it plays absolutely no role in the actual events; when history was rewritten, the organ harvesting ring was created as an alternate crisis to be resolved.

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