10 Best Meet The Real Villain Moments In Movie History

But villain reveals don't get much more ingenious than the big twist at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

After Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is murdered early in the film, the audience is led to believe that the culprit is Norman Bates' (Anthony Perkins) never-seen, mentally ill mother, and that Norman has simply helped cover up her crime.

But at the end of the movie, as Mother continues her rampage, we finally get to see her once and for all, only to realise that it was in fact Norman all along.

As it turns out, Norman murdered his mother an entire decade earlier, mummified her corpse, and has been treating her as alive ever since, while recreating her in his mind as an alternate personality.

While the film's infamously expository explanation of Norman's condition gets rightly ridiculed today, the reveal itself is still a virtually unparalleled bait-and-switch, and having released more than 60 years ago feels incredibly ahead of its time.