Dark Is Not Evil/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Addams Family are composed of a variety of Horror Tropes, and appear highly sinister, but they hardly ever do anything that could be considered evil. They are, in fact, for the most part perfectly friendly and decent people (probably the healthiest family on TV when it first aired), if more than a bit weird and possessing unquestionably morbid and bizarre tastes.
    • Similarly, The Munsters are a family of popular Hollywood monsters that act like your average Dom Com type family.
    • The Addams Family movies did see the odd bit of evil, or at least questionable, actions from the family, mostly from the children. It tended to take the form of IRL trolling or excessively severe punishments meted out on the family's enemies.
      • Some of the darker gags in the movie (like the family dumping boiling oil on Christmas carolers) are based on the original Charles Addams strips rather than the tv show, so any charge of Flanderization is probably inaccurate. As well, much like the characters in The Nightmare Before Christmas, they do equally "nasty" things to each other (Wednesday electrocutes her brother for fun, and he seems to enjoy it) and don't seem to suffer any ill effects. Plus, the counselors at the camp really deserved it.
    • Not only are the Addams family decent people, but they show an extraordinary amount of hospitality and generosity. Gomez, being the philanthropist that he is, regularly gives away surprisingly large sums of money to benefit the community. Who could ask for better neighbors?
    • Morticia and Gomez got away with public displays of affection at a time when television couples were universally portrayed as sleeping in separate twin beds. (Married television couples, that is.) It tells you something about The Sixties that their most healthy pop culture relationship was the one between a pair of ghouls...
    • In the Netflix adaptation Wednesday (which is far less comedic) Goody Addams, the protagonist’s lookalike ancestor. Think of every Trope showing how creepy Wednesday is, and then add Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl to it and you have a good description of Goody Addams. She’s not exactly a nice girl either, having killed Joseph Crackstone and cursed his soul, imprisoning him in a personal Hell where he has suffered for four centuries. Despite this, Goody could practically be a civil rights icon for “outcasts” (supernatural beings), what she did to Crackstone was well-deserved given his atrocities, and in the present is the source of Wednesday’s clairvoyant visions, making her the Big Good of the series, at least for season one.
  • Irish children's programme The Morbegs had a whole episode centred around the "festival of darkness" that the Morbegs brought to Ireland from Morbegland. The human host of the day was afraid of the dark, but as the Morbegs said, "Don't fear the darkness! It's not bad, it's just different!"
  • The British show Being Human (UK) plays with this, as the main characters are a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost, all of whom just want to do their jobs, go down the pub and be friends.
    • Although it's shown that most of the other vampires are very dangerous. While other werewolves just seem to try to get along on their own, Tully at least is shown to somewhat unbalanced (although this is probably owing more to being lonely than being a werewolf).
      • And pretty much all the ghosts shown are perfectly nice people.
  • It's safe to say that 99% of the demons in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel verse are evil but they make a good point of showing that some of even the more evil-looking demons are actually good guys. Clem (the loose-skinned but amiable slacker demon from Buffy) is an obvious example. As well as Lorne from Angel, green with red eyes and horns. Skip from Angel, though originally fitting the trope, later counts as a subversion.
    • Angel himself is a vampire, but he's (usually) a good guy, and he's the hero of his series.
  • In the Supernatural episode "In My Time of Dying", Dean is on the verge of death and has become something like a ghost wandering the hospital. He sees a ghostly specter that seems to be trying to kill him and another patient. He meets a girl who seems to be in his same situation, but it turns out to be the Reaper he saw. She took a human form to be able to talk to him, and she turns out to be very sympathetic to his situation, but gently explains that he might become an angry spirit if he doesn't follow her into the afterlife.
  • Rescue Ink is a show about Badass Biker type guys with hot rods and tattoos, some even with past jail time... who rescue helpless and abused animals.
  • The WWE superstar Mark Callaway is best known for being "The Undertaker", a wrestling gravedigger/zombie/death incarnate/cult leader/biker. Although he started off (and every so often returns to being) a Heel, currently he's often treated as a Face, being one of the longest-tenured and popular currently active wrestlers.
    • What impression do you get about this guy? If you guessed he belongs on this page, you'd be correct.
  • In The Dresden Files, one episode features a young boy who is being followed around by ravens who turn into creepy-looking black-clad people. Turns out the ravens are the good guys, and they're following him to protect him from the real bad guy, the boy's teacher.
  • Kamen Rider Raia from Kamen Rider Ryuki has a Contract Monster named "Evildiver", and thus by extension most of his equipment is prefaced by the word (Evilvisor, Evil Whip). However, he's actually a very honorable and noble person who is one of Ryuki's few allies in the Rider War.
    • In Ryuki's American Adaption Kamen Rider Dragon Knight Kamen Rider Onyx a black version of Dragon Knight was assumed evil since its Japanese Version Ryuga was evil, and the Evil Twin trope in general, and that Kit had nightmares of the armor trying to destroy him, or himself as Onyx venting Len and Kase, making him understandably reluctant to use it when Eubulon handed the deck to him. However when Kit took the Onyx deck and armor it didn't corrupt him as he feared it would and it showed as Kit used it to fight Xaviax's forces until Adam his mirror twin gave him the Dragon Knight deck in the finale (after the final battle. He actually spends the entire final arc as Onyx, and never wears the Dragon Knight armor again after Xaviax takes it in back in "Xaviax's Wrath.")
    • Interestingly, it's a straight reversal of the usual situation: Adam is the Evil Twin who'd betrayed the Riders before, and is now The Mole, pretending to have been a victim of Xaviax's manipulations and not truly a traitor. Kit is The Hero and holder of the Dragon Knight powers for most of the series, though Adam was the first Dragon Knight offscreen. This means we're rooting for the black-repaint-armor-wearing alternate dimension twin of the first Dragon Knight to beat the original in heroic red when the two properly fight each other. (Also a reversal of the first Dragon Knight vs. Onyx battle - when Kit was still Dragon Knight, we're introduced to the Onyx gear when Onyx drags Kit into the mirror world and attacks. However, that proves to be All Just a Dream.)
    • While Ryuki and Dragon Knight have very different plots, Raia's counterpart Sting is also a true hero in a series where most Riders are out for themselves. The Japanese name for his Advent Beast, Evildiver, is kept (most monster names aren't mentioned onscreen, but we get a very good look at the Evildiver advent card more than once.)
    • Dark Kiva Kamen Rider Kiva is used by three people: King (the Big Bad), Otoya (who's good through and through), and Taiga (who is antagonistic but not evil and eventually becomes a good guy). Kivat the 2nd, who provides the Dark Kiva powers, isn't a bad person himself; he only goes along with King because he's loyal to the guy's wife, and pulls a Heel Face Turn when she does, further prompted by seeing his Kid From the Future Kivat the 3rd partnered with Otoya's Kid From the Future Wataru.
      • Kiva stands for King Vampire but he's the good guy. Also, all his buddies are based off horror movie monsters but help him with protecting humans. Mind you, they weren't so good in the past, but over flashbacks we get to see how they became good guys.
    • Kotaro Minami AKA Kamen Rider Black. He's chosen to be one of the leaders of the Gorgom cult to eventually rule the world and his transformed form is majorly black colored. Instead, he uses his power to destroy Gorgom and protect humans. His rival Shadow Moon provides a nice contrast with silverish white color scheme.
    • Kamen Rider Kuuga has his Ultimate Form which, in its 'normal' state (fueled by anger) could cause The End of the World as We Know It and could destroy the planet with one Rider Kick. Also, it and his previous form (Amazing Mighty), are black in color. However, Kuuga uses them to fight the Gurongi and save the world.
      • It also gives the finger to Red Eyes, Take Warning, as when it's not fueled by anger, Ultimate Kuuga's eyepieces go from black to the standard red.
    • In Kamen Rider Decade, Rising Ultimate Kuuga is gold, but looks freaking scary and is covered with Spikes of Villainy. It was a bad thing only at first when the bad guys had forced him into that form and are controlling him. When he is himself again, we again get to see him go from evil black-eyed to benign red-eyed, and he goes on to help the other Riders do battle with Shadow Moon and later the Neo Organism.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures: In "The Mad Woman in the Attic", Eve is a redskinned alien girl with a disturbing hairdo who mind-controls her "friends" into endlessly riding the rides of an abandoned fairground. And then we find out she's an orphan and refugee from the Time War who doesn't know any better, and that she's actually sweet and kind.
  • Played fatally for laughs in this SNL skit. Heaven's commitment to helping prayers is indeed doubtful when the messenger is Christopher Walken adorned in black.
  • Played straight in a episode of CSI, when a teacher is telling Grissom about a student who creeps her out badly. She points toward the lockers, and Grissom assumes she means the Goth boy there. The Goth boy walks away with an airy "Hey teach," as he passes them, revealing the preppy boy behind him who's the one the teacher was really referring to. It turns out there's very good reason the teacher was creeped out by Preppy Boy.
  • In Charmed, the three (at a time) main characters are dark-haired witches, but they're the heroes in the series, fighting against the forces of evil.
    • Of course, they go by the Wiccan definition of the word 'witch,' and Wiccan philosophy centres around doing no harm.
  • Despite his nickname correctly conveying his Knight in Shining Armor personality, Paladin on Have Gun — Will Travel dresses in a black outfit that's more along the lines of what a villainous gunfighter would wear in a traditional Western. In fact, a flashback shows that it was originally worn by a gunfighter who Paladin mistakenly thought was a villain and killed him, and he wears the outfit as a form of atonement.
  • Abby Sciuto, NCIS's perky goth forensics lab analyst, who sleeps in a coffin, wears black all the time, listens to heavy metal, and couldn't be sweeter.
  • Starting midway through the third season of Babylon 5, the heroes switch from blue-and-brown uniforms to black and silver ones after declaring independence from the increasingly-oppressive Earth Alliance.
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