criminal (meitantei conan)

A stock character from Meitantei Conan, depicted as a black-silhouetted masculine humanoid figure completely lacking in any distinctive features aside from occasional evil smile.

He is used to represents the mystery culprit while they are committing crimes, destroy the evidence, or even attempted to harm the protagonist and others. The intended usage of this character is to hide the identity of culprit until the mystery is solved.

Due to his ubiquitous appearance throughout the series, along with the occasional discrepancy between him and the culprit's actual look, he has gained memetic status in Japan, where he was often called as the "true culprit" behind each crimes and often used as a "generic" villain by various artists for humorous purposes. This has reached the point that he was given his own spin-off which received an anime adaptation in 2022.