Good Colors, Evil Colors: Difference between revisions

* [[Good Is Not Nice|Batman]] dresses in black. [[Kid Sidekick|Robin]] dresses like an explosion in a paint factory. Lampshaded when Batman explains that one of the reasons Robin wears bright colors is because he [[Good Cop, Bad Cop|plays good cop to Batman's bad.]]

** With the recent [[Deus Angst Machina]] Tim's life has become, he changed his costume, which is now less colorful than before—and even his first costume was less bright than that of his predecessors, fitting his more [[Ascended Fanboy|subdued]] [[Badass Bookworm|personality]].

** Also in ''[[Kingdom Come]]'' at the end, {{spoiler|when Batman turned Wayne Manor into a hospital, he wore all white.}}

* The long-time [[Real Men Wear Pink|pink chestplate and pink striped pants]] of Gambit from the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] are surely only there to fuck with our heads.

* ''[[Beauty and the Beast]]'': Both Belle and the Beast occasionally wear blue, [[Big Bad]] Gaston always wears red, and all of the villagers wear brown or green.

* ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)|The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]'': [[Complete Monster]] Frollo and his henchmen always wear black, Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Phoebus, Clopin, and the Gypsies all wear bright colors, and at the end of the film both Phoebus and especially Esmeralda wear white.

* ''[[Megamind]]'' first has [[Villain Protagonist|the titular Megamind]], clad in black and blue (blue skin, too), pitted against the yellow and white Metro Man, and later on, we have Megamind, still in black and blue {{spoiler|pitted against the red and white Tighten.}}

 

* [[Bruce Campbell]] relates an interesting anecdote in his autobiography, "If Chins Could Kill", about how costume designers use this trope to subtly enhance the story, as on the set of "The Hudsucker Proxy" his character started dressing in lighter colors and gradually got darker as he became more sinister.

* In ''[[Heathers]]'', the three main Heathers only wear their own colors and the protagonist, Veronica, wears all black to show her outsider status inside their clique. Heather Chandler wears red, showing her leadership status. Her red hair bow shifting to Heather Duke shows the latter's replacement of the former. {{spoiler|And Veronica snatching it back from her is used to symbolize the end of the Heathers.}}

* Sometimes in fairy tales, more often in illustrations, the heroines are fair ([[Hair of Gold|blonde]]) and the villainesses are dark (brunette or black-haired). Who knew moral standards were dictated by hair color? Averted by Snow White (whose mother wished for her to have hair as black as ebony).

* In the ''Dragonriders of Pern'' books, the eyes of dragons (and fire-lizards) change color according to their state of friendliness (or mood). Calm, happy dragons have green/blue eyes; angry, violent or fearful dragons have red/orange eyes.

* Although the superpowered characters of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' are [[Not Wearing Tights]] and tend to realistically cycle through varied daily attire, there are a few noticeable costuming patterns. Beat cop Parkman tends to wear jackets in [[Visual Pun|various shades of blue]]. Single mom Niki wears normal clothes while her evil split personality Jessica likes all-black femme fatale suits. Boy Scout Hero Peter Petrelli ends up in white quite a bit. And Ubervillain Sylar really, really likes black.

* ''[[Lost]]'': Jacob wears white, Jacob's nemesis wears black (this plot point was apparently foreshadowed since the pilot, when Locke tells Walt about how backgammon has two players, two sides, one light and one dark). Subverted, however, by the fact that this color more reflects their philosophy (humans are good but flawed vs a more cynical view) and neither appears to have an upper hand morally (Jacob {{spoiler|seems to have caused the death of Nadia and basically manipulates everyone in their past to come to the Island}} while Jacob's nemesis {{spoiler|manipulates Locke in order to take his body}}.

** The good guys' colorcoding also fits the trope quite well. [[The Hero]] is almost always red. Blue will almost always be, if not [[The Lancer]], the smart, technique-instead-of-Heart-based character that ''makes'' a good Lancer (less like [[TV Genius]] Billy and more like Kai, Sky, and Theo - experts who get stuck playing second fiddle to the [[Rookie Red Ranger]].) The last two loners, Dillon and Will, are both Black Rangers, though far from all Black Rangers are like this. Also, the three Rangers to wear purple started their careers beating up on the good Rangers (well, we had one Ranger-like [[The Dragon|Dragon]] who didn't defect, one who did, and one good guy who went through a few episodes [[Not Himself]] before becoming a Ranger.) It doesn't reach the point of every character to wear a given color being an [[Expy]] of the last, but colorcoding does sometimes happen.

*** There does seem to be something of a [[Memetic Mutation]] that all Black Rangers are either rebellious loners or extremely serious and that Green Rangers are air-heads and/or the comic relief of the team, but there are plenty of exceptions with both colours.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The ''[[Eberron]]'' campaign setting plays with this. Whereas dragons all have "Always [[[Character Alignment]]]" in the core books, in Eberron this is changed to "usually" or "often". Surprise your party with a [[Chaotic Good|principled revolutionary]] red dragon fighting against a [[Lawful Evil|charming but tyrannical]] gold dragon!

* ''[[Talislanta]]'': Everyone in Aaman wears pure white, because it's a [[Knight Templar|repressive]] [[Path of Inspiration|theocracy]]. Green is the favored color of Cymril, although it hasn't been mandatory since the game's first edition.

* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine|Warhammer 40000 Space Marine]]'', soldiers from [[The Empire]] use lasguns with a red beam, while those faithful to the true gods wield green ones.

* In the ''[[X (video game)|X-Universe]]'' series, the [[Good Republic, Evil Empire]] trope is subverted with [[Grey and Gray Morality]]. That said, the factions that are generally treated as good and evil tend to follow this trope. The [[The Federation|Argon Federation]] uses gunmetal gray, and the [[The Kingdom|Kingdom of Boron]] use bright green. The [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Split Dynasty]] uses rusty red, and the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Paranid Empire]] uses bluish purple. The neutral [[Proud Merchant Race|Teladi Space Company]] leaves their ships unpainted, which translates to dark gray.