Lucas practically shines a spotlight on Palpy, and declares him to be "secret bad guy" during the funeral scene in Episode I. Thus tipping off even people who never saw the OT.

I'm surprised Robot Chicken hasn't made fun of this yet. If you have an overly complicated decades long plan for galactic domination, at least wear a mask and distort your voice when communicating with your minions.

All it takes is someone accidentally lighting up your face, and everything's blown. Superman has a better disguise than this guy!

I do wonder if Palpatine is someone Sidious killed and then assumed his identity. He had to have had a long history on Naboo to be so entrenched in it's politics.