7 TV Villains Secretly Introduced Way Earlier Than You Realise
2. Wayne Williams - Mindhunter
Mindhunter's second season sees FBI profilers Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) investigating the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981, and in the season finale, photographer Wayne Williams (Christopher Livingston) is arrested for the slayings.
Though Williams was ultimately only ever convicted of murdering two adults due to the authorities' desperation to close the case as fast as possible, he's believed to have killed at least 23 more.
Williams is the focus of the season's final two episodes, but he actually makes a totally fleeting appearance two episodes prior, visible front-and-center for a few seconds as a photographer chasing the police to a tip-off.
Without the subsequent context, the shot of Williams seems like a totally unremarkable piece of scene-setting, but anyone bothering to rewatch the series will be in for quite the surprise when his mug shows up two episodes before he's actually brought into the narrative fold.