Recently I watched https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_Jury.

Fitch (Gene Hackman) is the predictable bad guy. Nicolas (John Cusack) is introduced in a believable way „don‘t want to be in the jury“, asking friends for escape strategies.

Very soon several events shade doubt on his agenda, e.g. when meeting this woman first in a store, later in his home. You know sth. is going on, but have no clue about it. The whole story is logical from the various perspectives … until the very end …

You could say, Nicolas is predictable unpredictable, and so are his actions. Nothing is mentioned about the second story running in parallel, „colliding“ at the very end, making things evident in hindsight.

There may be more films to learn from. Many follow a sumilar scheme, but not all.

Take Monk as an anti-example. This character is perfectly predictable, introducing a new facet of his behavior every now and then, while the relevant story follows a similar collision path, only revealed in the last scenes.

Recently I watched https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_Jury.

Fitch (Gene Hackman) is the predictable bad guy. Nicolas (John Cusack) is introduced in a believable way „don‘t want to be in the jury“, asking friends for escape strategies.

Very soon several events shade doubt on his agenda, e.g. when meeting this woman first in a store, later in his home. You know sth. is going on, but have no clue about it. The whole story is logical from the various perspectives … until the very end …

You could say, Nicolas is predictable unpredictable, and so are his actions. Nothing is mentioned about the second story running in parallel, „colliding“ at the very end, making things evident in hindsight.

There may be more films to learn from. Many follow a similar scheme, but not all.

Take Monk as an anti-example. This character is perfectly predictable, which is part of enjoying, introducing a new facet of his behavior every now and then, while the relevant story follows a similar collision path, only revealed in the last scenes.

Or take Columbo. The crime, the criminal, the victim, the motives are completely revealed at the beginning. So the criminal is perfectly known and somewhat predictable, inspector Columbo is absolutely predictable. The sensation arises from the kind of chess game good vs. evil, waiting for relevant contradictions, hence evidence. It‘s so well designed as a story, though you know almost everything from the start, that I enjoy it again and again.

So, draw your conclusions about working with the predictable unpredictable.