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{{trope}}
[[File:whiteonred.jpg|link=Baccano (Light Novel)|frame]]
{{quote|''"Even though we are going to shatter thousands of lives, wearing white is gonna make the blood look so pretty."''|'''Ladd Russo''' (right), ''[[Baccano (Light Novel)|Baccano]]''}}
 
Ever notice [[Rule of Drama|how much more dramatic]] blood looks on a white background? It follows that wearing a white shirt can be more hazardous than wearing a [[Red Shirt]]. The death of a white shirt wearer will be [[Gorn|much]] [[Bloody Hilarious|bloodier]] than that of your traditional [[Red Shirt]].
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== Anime and Manga ==
* Nanoha's near-death incident that occurred sometime between the second and third seasons of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' used both this trope and [[Snow Means Death]] to great effect, as her blood is shown splattered all over her white Barrier Jacket and the snow-covered field.
* Ladd Russo from ''[[Baccano (Light Novel)|Baccano!]]'' finds himself subject to this trope -- see page image. He doesn't ''die'' per se, but he does get his ear clipped off and his left arm [[Nightmare Fuel|completely skinned to the bone]]. Notably, Ladd invoked the trope, explaining that he and his friends all wear white because he thinks blood spatters look best on white clothing. Of course, at the time, he probably didn't think it would be ''his'' blood... And ''then'' there is the Rail Tracer, whose {{spoiler|white conductor uniform}} gets completely coated in blood of his victims.
* {{spoiler|Chidori}} from ''[[Ayashi no Ceres]]'' is wearing a white dress when she is fatally shot in the chest to protect {{spoiler|Yuuhi}}.<br /><br />{{spoiler|Aya}} does so as well when she is stabbed by {{spoiler|Aki, who is possessed by Shisou}}. The only difference is that she survives, along with {{spoiler|Tooya's baby}}.
* For the final arc of ''[[Code Geass]]'', {{spoiler|''Emperor'' Lelouch}} wears a fancy white set of robe. In the very last episode, {{spoiler|he is stabbed through the chest with a big honking sword, [[Thanatos Gambit|just as he planned]]. A lot of focus is put on the blood.}}
* When Kenshin and Tomoe met in the ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' manga and OAV, she was wearing a white kimono. He had just killed a man in front of her. She said "you make rain blood". Do the maths.
** Siilarly, {{spoiler|Tomoe was wearing the white kimono too... in her own death scene.}}
* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro Nini]]'' - Battler Ushiromiya combines this with [[Bring My Red Jacket]]; his habitual outfit is a white suit with a red shirt. Although he doesn't tend to die in as many arcs as some of the other characters, [[Fate Worse Than Death|his luck still sucks a lot]].
* Solf J. Kimblee in ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' starts wearing an entirely white suit after being released from prison. His death? Having his jugular vein and possibly the carotid artery bitten off by a chimera, which Pride lampshades {{spoiler|before eating him and gaining his alchemic power}}.
* Inverted in ''[[Darker Than Black]]''. November 11 habitually wears a white suit, which usually remains spotless. {{spoiler|The one time he wears a ''black'' suit, he gets killed.}}
* The Kurama vs. Karasu fight in ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' is definitely an example of this. Karasu's bombs eventually make Kurama bleed so much the entire front of his outfit and some of the back is dyed red.
* {{spoiler|Hakuron}} from ''[[Haou Airen]]'' is shot to death while wearing a white suit.
* {{spoiler|Rei "Hana no Saint Juste" Asaka}} from the [[Oniisama Ee...]] anime is all dressed up in white when {{spoiler|she falls in the path of a train and to her death.}}
 
== Film ==
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* The ending of ''Ashes and Diamonds'' uses a white bedsheet to similar effect.
* [[Heroic Bloodshed]] movies do this a lot, and the deaths of people who wear white get quite bloody. Usually, it's the villain wearing white, but at least one tragic hero has worn white.
* Shaun in ''[[Shaun of the Dead (Film)|Shaun of the Dead]]'' never changes his white office shirt throughout the [[Zombie Apocalypse]]. "You've got red on you" becomes a [[Running Gag]] because of it.
* {{spoiler|The Consultant}} in ''[[The International]]''. Also, the protagonist's white shirt gets a lot of blood splattered on it from those who get shot around him in that scene.
* In ''[[Bound]]'', a character is shot to death wearing a white shirt ''and'' standing in a room-wide puddle of pure white paint.
* The [[Big Bad]] in ''[[Gladiator (Filmfilm)|Gladiator]]'' wears a full white suit before his climactic duel with Maximus. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Makes his blood readily apparent when Maximus shows that he is completely outclassed]].
* The duel at the end of ''[[Dangerous Liaisons (Literature)|Dangerous Liaisons]]''.
* Several characters from ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'', with the special honor going to {{spoiler|Mr Orange}}, whose shirt, it would seem, does not have a single white spot on it by the end of the movie.
* The final battle in ''[[Ultraviolet]]''.
* In the original ''[[Get Carter]]'', Carter stabs a man who is wearing a white shirt. The scene was considered pretty shocking for its time.
* In ''[[Kill Bill (Film)|Kill Bill]]'', the Bride faces and messily defeats O-Ren Ishii while the latter is clothed in a white kimono and [[Snow Means Death|standing in snow]].
* In ''[[Lethal Weapon 4]]'', Jet Li's character enters the final showdown dressed entirely in a white version of the black suit he's been wearing for the rest of the movie. [[Foregone Conclusion|They couldn't have made it more clear what was going to happen to him.]]
* In ''[[Harry Potter (Filmfilm)|HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince]]'', Harry slices Draco up like a Christmas ham in the bathroom and Draco nearly dies, but [[Unexplained Recovery|he gets better]]. His white shirt was covered in his blood.
* Ah Jong ([[Chow Yun Fat]]) finishes out [[The Killer]] in a white suit, which gets plenty bloody.
* Aptly enough, "Man in White Shirt" from ''[[Tampopo]]''.
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== Literature ==
 
* ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy]]'' - Grand Admiral Thrawn. Crimson blossom of blood; [[Putting Onon the Reich|spotless white uniform]]. Even his ''murder'' was [[Magnificent Bastard|stylish]]. [[Famous Last Words]]:
{{quote| ''But...it was so artistically done...''}}
* In the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] novel ''The Sleep of Reason'', Fitz makes the questionable fashion choice of wearing white trousers. As a [[Genre Savvy]] character like himself should have expected, he ends up with a leg injury. It's not fatal and not even that bad, but it sure seems to [[Overdrawn At the Blood Bank|bleed a lot]]:
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== Live Action TV ==
 
* {{spoiler|Samantha Roth}} on ''[[Twenty Four24]]''. Also, later on in the same season, {{spoiler|Erica}}.
* Variation: when {{spoiler|Tara}} gets shot in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', we can tell because it splatters onto {{spoiler|Willow's}} white shirt. For added effect, she doesn't ''realize'' she was shot; her last words are a confused "Your shirt?" before she falls.
** And in the opening episode of that season, Willow wears a white dress {{spoiler|when she kills a fawn for its [[Blood Magic]].}}
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== Theater ==
 
* In an extension, after each character dies in the musical ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Theatretheatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'', they're outfitted with a red-streaked white shirt for the rest of the show (since they still need to be on-stage as the chorus or to play instruments or whatever, depending on staging). In one production, the dead characters put white makeup on and powdered their hair white/grey and spent the rest of the show as ghosts.
 
== [[Video Games]] ==
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