10 Harry Potter Plot Twists You Never Saw Coming
8. Tom Riddle Is A Living Anagram
In Harry Potter's second cinematic outing, the school is haunted by a spectre of the past, a pure-blood who has opened Salazar Slytherin's fabled Chamber of Secrets and released the beast from within. Students are petrified (literally), Dumbledore is banished and Harry finds a diary containing the personality and memories of a charming ex-student named Tom Riddle (Christian Coulson).
Thus, distracted by giant spiders in the forest, giant snakes in the plumbing and giant Hagrid in Azkaban, the less eagle-eyed viewers will not have seen mild-mannered Tom Riddle's treachery for what it was.
His secret? Riddle is Harry's snake-snouted nemesis, Voldemort, in teenage form. That's right, Tom Riddle's name is a riddle (see what they did there?); a word jumble; an anagram. Rearrange 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' and you get 'I am Lord Voldemort'.
What is truly mystifying however is why Ginny Weasley, a born-and-bred wizard seduced by Riddle and the diary's magic, had never heard Voldemort's real name before. Hogwarts might have been saved another year of murd'rous hijinks if she'd just leafed through the right book!