Warning: Some spoilers follow for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
At their core, mysteries are actually a comforting story shape. There is crime, crime is solved, crime is punished. Murder mysteries, police procedurals, and whodunnits are the morality plays of our age. And just like medieval morality plays, they’re kinda hacky. From Hercule Poirot to Benoit Blanc, the sleuth’s job isn’t just to solve a crime, it’s to restore moral order. To make sense of a senseless world. And what could be more orderly than a well-utilized trope?
You’d think the mystery genre would be all about surprising the audience. But you’d be wrong. Diehard crime-fiction fans know the genre’s main appeal is less about shocking plot twists and more about pattern recognition. It’s about playing with clichés, not defying them. Agatha Christie wrote 66 mystery novels as well as short stories and plays with murders aplenty. There were 69 episodes of Columbo, 12 seasons of Bones, 14 Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, and seven spinoffs of Law & Order, with more always looming in pilot season. There are only so many stories to tell, and after a while the savvy mystery consumer is really there to see how the various plot twists get repurposed to make a “new†story. Here are the best whodunnit twists, ranked by audacity and artistry. And again, we are spoiling every trope used in Glass Onion. Tropes are toys, and Rian Johnson is playing, honey.
Honorable mentions: forging a will, the watch broke when the body fell, that creepy guy isn’t a murderer, he’s just creepy, blackmail backfire, couldn’t hear the gun because of fireworks, and big ol’ fake beard.
10) The Detective Is Bluffing!
As seen in: Columbo’s “Short Fuse,†A Shot in the Dark, Murder Mystery, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Sometimes all a detective has is their wits. Their guile. Their ability to bullshit. The detective bluffs either by pretending they know whodunnit in order to coerce a confession (as in A Shot in the Dark) or by putting themselves in harm’s way (as in Murder, She Said). They know whodunnit, but are lacking any hard evidence, so they must make themselves deeply murderable. “If we can’t get them for the main murder,†they think, “then surely we can get them for the attempted murder of me!†A gorgeous version of this ploy occurs in a Columbo episode in which Columbo gets a confession out of Roddy McDowall with the use of nitroglycerine-soaked cigars on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.
9) Real/Fake Weapon Switcheroo
As seen in: Psych’s “Lights, Camera … Homicidio,†Knives Out, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ “Framed for Murderâ€
A play or movie set is the perfect place for a murder mystery. So many egos, so many people lying about their age or background, and so many available weapons. Okay, if the props department is doing its job, none of the stage weapons should be able to kill someone. But what crime stories often presuppose is … what if they could? All it takes is one malevolent on-set presence to swap the fake sword for a real one. Or a nail gun, in the case of Psych’s telenovela episode.
8) I’m a Jewel Thief, But I’m No Killer!
As seen in: Pocket Full of Rye, Doctor Who’s “The Unicorn and the Wasp,†Clue
If you’re hiding something during a murder investigation, it seems like a pretty easy inference to make that what you’re hiding is you having committed the murder. But many whodunnits like to add a layer of complexity to the case by giving red-herring characters other shit to hide. A classic in the many cozy mysteries of between-the-wars-era England is making one of the party secretly a notorious jewel thief. She (and it is usually a she) is casing the country estate when a completely unrelated murder investigation breaks out. She can’t clear herself of the murder without incriminating herself for many, many burglaries. Bummer. This trope is so beloved it even shows up in the affectionate pastiche Doctor Who episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp,†in which the Doctor solves a murder with the real Agatha Christie. The Doctor gets to have all the fun.
7) That Was No Maid!
As seen in: Gosford Park, Clue, Murder in Three Acts
Related to the previous twist, often someone will disguise themself as the help in order to further their agenda — murderous or otherwise. Maybe they’re an actor preparing for a role (Gosford Park). Maybe they’re the aforementioned jewel thief, casing the joint (A Pocketful of Rye). Maybe a butler’s uniform is the perfect way to hide in plain sight and deliver the poison (the Ustinov Poirot jawn Murder in Three Acts, among others). That one is particularly hilarious, because the person disguising himself as the help is Tony Curtis. We are to believe that multiple people interact with Tony “Antoninus from Spartacus with a Brooklyn accent†Curtis without noticing that it’s him.
6) I Poisoned My Own Drink!
As seen in: Glass Onion, The Mirror Crack’d, The Princess Bride
The ultimate misdirect. The self-poisoning gambit usually works by adding poison to your drink, then “accidentally†giving it to the “wrong†person. You offer your drink to the victim, they drop dead, and everyone thinks a killer is really after you. Who’s the least likely person to commit a murder? The intended victim. Plus you get to deliver a great anguished monologue when you “realize†your drink was poisoned. “Oh no! Someone was trying to kill me, and this poor sap got it instead! There is a grand conspiracy against me!†But like so many conspiracy theories, it’s a complete fabrication of the allegedly conspired-against party’s making.
There are variations. Sometimes a poisoner who feels the noose tightening will give themself a less-than-lethal dose to allay suspicion. And occasionally someone will spend years developing a tolerance to iocane powder so they can outsmart a Sicilian when death is on the line. Okay, that only happened once, but wasn’t it a cool twist?
5) A Lookalike!
As seen in: Glass Onion, Twin Peaks, A Simple FavorÂ
Sometimes it’s a long-lost twin (A Simple Favor, Glass Onion). Sometimes it’s a very convincing disguise (Lord Edgware Dies). Sometimes someone just happens to be a dead ringer for a dead person and they’re willing to exploit that for monetary gain (Nemesis). Whether it’s in a cozy mystery or real life, eyewitness accounts are crazy unreliable. And you can really gum up others’ testimonies if a doppelganger is running around behind the scenes tangling up timelines. Lookalikes can be used for good or for evil. Either way, a terrible wig will probably play a role. The entire mystery genre runs on terrible wigs.
4) Kill Overkill
As seen in: CSI’s “Ending Happy,†Murder on the Orient Express, Bones’ “The Beaver in the Otterâ€
You, the detective, see a body with a knife in its back. All medical knowledge would lead you to believe the stabbing was the cause of death, right? Wrong! Sometimes the guy was poisoned then knifed post-mortem. In this case, the knife is more of a fuck-you gesture. Or sometimes a body is thrown from a window to fake a suicide. This comes up a lot in forensic shows, where sorting out the pre-, peri-, and postmortem injuries is like half the show. Sometimes multiple people take turns stabbing someone, so no one knows who dealt the killing blow. Some people are so reviled they’re embroiled in multiple murder attempts, as in the Simpsons episode “The Great Louse Detective.†At the end of the day, the dead guy is still dead.
3) Gaslighting!
As seen in: Gaslight, The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Caribbean Mystery
You sweet idiot child, why would anyone ever use gaslighting to achieve their nefarious needs? Would someone convince a rich person with already poor mental health that they’re sleepwalking? Or being stalked by a dead lover? Or by a hellhound? Don’t be silly, you frail and easily suggestible darling. To what end? Financial gain? As if people do bad things for money. You’re talking crazy, sweetheart. Why don’t you have a lie down and I’ll bring you some very un-drugged cocoa.
2) A Long-Lost Relative!
As seen in: Doctor Who’s “The Unicorn and the Wasp,†Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, Bones’s “Judas on a Pole,†Glass Onion
God, it was so easy to disappear and change your identity back in the day! We’ve lost so much to technology. Even just in mystery plotting.
As Miss Marple and the victim of Toward Zero discuss, a murder is really the culmination of a long countdown. The roots of the crime often lie in secrets from the victim’s or perp’s past. And it’s the investigator’s job to uncover those secrets. So often a seemingly random suspect turns out to be a long-lost son, or an adopted child’s biological parents, or that guy who supposedly died in the war. A particularly insane example comes from Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, in which the detective assisting Poirot turns out to be the victim’s illegitimate son (and the killer). He was trained from birth to murder his dad and went to police academy to achieve it. You have to admire the grindset whether you agree with his ethics or not. Meanwhile, a different suspect was pretending to be a long-lost granddaughter but really wasn’t related to anyone at all.
1) Faking Your Death to Help the Detective
As seen in: Glass Onion, Sparkling Cyanide, Bones’ “The Pain in the Heart,†The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The trope to rule them all, a faked death is like three plot twists in one. First, this character is dead! How shocking. Sike! They’re fine, and they’ve been snooping for the detective. They saw who “poisoned†them or where the gun was fired. And now they know who’s been getting all stabby in this country estate. It’s all the drama of a death with none of the bummer aftertaste. Plus the detective actually prevents a murder, something they so rarely get to do. If I were constantly having my vacations interrupted by people dropping dead, it would be such a nice change of pace to know that someone explicitly isn’t going to die. Murder in Three Acts (also known as Three Act Tragedy) has an incredible version of this twist. Adding yet another layer to the twist croissant, this time it’s the murderer who fakes their death.
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