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{{trope}}
[[File:
▲{{quote|'''Skywarp:''' At least I'm not ugly.<br />
'''Thundercracker:''' [[Hypocritical Humor|Ugly? You and I look the SAME!]]|''[[Transformers: War for Cybertron]]''}}
Sprites and textures are expensive. Original ideas for monster types are even more so. As a result, there is a tendency to keep the number of distinct enemy types small. In an RPG or similar game where the player is expected to become more powerful over the course of the game, this is a problem, as the monsters stop being challenging about the time you [[Get on the Boat]].
The solution many games go for is to have a small set of monster types, but have them appear with different graphics. Often, this change of design will be accompanied by a new adjective to go with their name (if the monster was based on a mythological or cryptozoological creature, subsequent names will be alternate names for the creature ([[Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti|Bigfoot to Sasquatch to Yeti]]), or the name of a similar creature (Cockatrice to Basilisk)). Typically, all such monsters will be vulnerable to the same strategy, or a variation thereupon, but later colors will tend to be more powerful. Elemental variations are a common version of this trope as are variations in size and adding or removing features like horns or [[Flying Mook|wings]] or [[King Mook|crowns]].
Underground Monkeys are often [[Palette Swap
Results in the somewhat strange phenomenon that as you travel a diverse world, rather than seeing a diversity of creature types, you see ''the same'' creature types, in a diversity of versions: in [[The Lost Woods]], you find the Wolf, the Giant Rat, and the Forest Dragon; in the [[Slippy-Slidey Ice World]], you find the Arctic Wolf, the Snow Rat, and the White Dragon; in the [[Temple of Doom]], you'll face the Dire Wolf, Plague Rat, and Zombie Dragon.
The most common Underground Monkeys are those whose names begin with one of [[Fire, Ice, Lightning|fire, ice or lightning]]. In games which play [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]], the colors may also indicate elemental weakness.
Named for a [[Running Gag]] in [http://rpgworldcomic.com/d/20030423.html RPG World], wherein the Underground Monkey is suspected of being attracted by [[Genre Savvy]] characters.
{{examples}}
=== Action-Adventure Games ===
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' also produced several colors of its major enemies, indicating their strength. Versus Books' [[Strategy Guide]] for ''[[Majoras Mask]]'' characterized the White Wolfos as being "like regular Wolfos, only, um, whiter."
** The Bad Bat is an outdoor version of the Keese.
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* While the main-series [[Kingdom Hearts]] games largely avoid this by simply scaling the strength of enemies found in later worlds, 358/2 Days plays it straight, with up to 3 different versions of many mooks where the only difference is size, a design choice that may have been mandated by limited space for the game data.
* ''[[Resident Evil]]'' series has several: the Brain Sucker in ''3'' is an upgraded skin-swap of the Drain Deimos, the Sweeper in ''Code Veronica'' is a poisonous version of the Hunter, ''RE 2'' has Super Lickers, the Iron Maiden in ''RE 4'' is a [[Demonic Spiders|more demonic]] version of the Regenerator, etc.
* In ''[[Jabless Adventure]]'', there are [[Everything's Worse with Bears|regular forest-dwelling bears]], a SCUBA-diving bear, and a volcano-dwelling bear with a flamethrower. There's also the slimes, which get [[Palette Swap
=== Beat Em Ups ===
* ''[[Double Dragon]]'' did this. While it certainly wasn't unusual or unexpected for a game of the arcade era, the fact that all of your opponents were human meant that different coloured characters got rather stupid toward the end. Whilst a man with brown or pink skin made sense, the same character with better fighting skills and blue, grey or green skin later in the game was cause for raised eyebrows.
=== Fighting Games ===
* The queen of palette-swap fighting is arguably ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]''. Every enemy in the game is just a crystallized palette swap of the 22 characters you can use in the game, and all the bosses are just those same characters, only normal. And it has a single-player mode that can last up to 40 hours or more if you have to beat every bonus chapter. So you better hunker down and get ready to fight Tidus about 500 times or more. The only enemy that is at all different is the [[Final Boss]], Chaos.
=== First-Person Shooter ===
* ''[[Metroid Prime]] 2'' recycled a lot of enemies from ''Prime 1'' with new models. Some were barely changed (like the recoloured Triclops) while others were given a complete overhaul, the Beetle becoming the much smaller Splinter, the Elite Pirate the Ingsmasher, Baby Sheegoths becoming Grenchlers, Chozo Ghosts becoming Pirate Commandos, etc. There's also a few examples in the games themselves, like the normal / ice / plate Parasites in ''Prime'' and the light / dark creatures in ''Echoes''.
** The Ingsmashers simply reused the elite pirate combat codes from Prime 1 with only a small tweak being the shield thingy.
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* In ''[[Borderlands]]'', when you're done with your first playthrough and start on a second one, the enemies get more health and different names, but their models don't change. Played straight in the first exapansion and the final expansion, which featured [[The Undead|zombified]] and [[Unwilling Roboticisation|"-trap'd"]] enemies. The zombies had noticably different AI, but the claptrap-ised enemies just had different skins and dialogue.
=== Hack and Slash ===
* ''[[Diablo]] I'' and ''II'' were full of this. Every single enemy in the games, apart from quest specific bosses, came in various levels of strength denoted by colour and had otherwise identical sprites as others of its type. It's mentioned in the first game manual that this is because the Prime Evils, the leaders of the demons, would alter their servants forms to better deal with whatever threat they were facing at the time.
** ''Diablo III'' will probably be the same. Trailers indicate that it will also allow monster subtypes to vary in size.
=== Maze Games ===
* It all started with ''[[Pac-Man]]'', where the color coding of ghosts let the designers get away with only having one enemy
** Many early arcade games did this, due to the hardware limitations of the day. Some examples include ''[[Berzerk]]'', ''[[Missile Command]]'', and ''Pengo''.
=== Metroidvania ===
* ''[[Super Metroid]]'' had half a dozen different colours of Space Pirates, of increasing power. From the wimpy grey Pirates in Old Tourian to the nasty red variant in Maridia that required the plasma beam to harm. There were also a pair of gold Pirates that served as sub-bosses before Ridley's lair.
* ''[[Monster Tale]]'' applies it not only to the enemies but also to one of the heroes; Ellie's partner Chomp has three basic body types (Child, Teenager, and Adult), and all of Chomp's various forms are variations of those - one may be the basic form plus wings, another plus a tail, with spikes, with just one eye, etc.
=== MMORPGs ===
* ''[[Guild Wars]] Eye of the North'' has plenty of enemies recycled from the three previous campaigns, but the most egregious example is re-using a species of monsters called "Mandragors". These insect/plant hybrids are found in the deserts of ''Nightfall'', burrowing under the sand. In ''Eye of the North'', identical monsters with the same name live in cold climate and burrow under snow, without as much as a [[Lampshade Hanging]] to explain it.
** See also: the frogmen (though this is lampshaded by the fact that each color appears to designate a different tribe. This doesn't stop them from being modified versions of the Heket from Nightfall, though)
** At the same time, ''[[Guild Wars]]'' will often subtly alter the mesh of different "species" of the same sort of enemy (the Tengu, the minotaurs, the Nightfall insects, and so on)
*** Specifically, ArenaNet will keep the skeleton of a mob intact to make use of its animations, but rework the attached mesh. The most obvious example of this is the Margonites. Several use basic class skeletons, but others used include the Damned Cleric, Mursaat, Seer, and even the Undead Lich, an end-game boss.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' changes the colour and increases the size of a monster to indicate that it is a higher level. Nearly every zone has some version of a wolf or boar to kill. [[Everything's Worse with Bears| Hostile bears]] are common too.
** As humanoids go, nearly every zone has some version of a gnoll or murloc. They are just ''[[Goddamned Bats|everywhere]]''!
** [[Giant Spider]]s are everywhere in this game, and will be a nuisance for any character from the Starting Zone to max level. Played extra-straight with the monster (and quest) Terokkarantula. Tougher than the smaller spiders nearby, as would be expected by it's named nature and elite status, the player who hasn't been there before is probably STILL not expecting a spider that's larger than a good-sized HOUSE.
** Somewhat averted in expansions as the developers go through a good deal of work to create a few "unique" creatures for each expansion (especially the alien planet Outland). Still, you're unlikely to hit a zone that doesn't have at least two or three models you've seen before.
** An extra
** It is found already with the creeps in ''[[Warcraft]] III''
* ''Lord of the Rings Online''
** They have even ''[[Lampshade Hanging|hung a lampshade on]]'' the practice with a quest in Evendim, in which you are sent out for your umpteenth "kill me some boars" quest. {{spoiler|It doesn't actually tell you to kill the boars, just look for some. This is important in that there are no boars in Evendim.}}
*** Which was further [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshade Hanged]] in a later introduced dungeon in Evendim, {{spoiler|where you actually ''can'' encounter boars. If you kill one, a quest starter item will drop giving you the quest to ''finally'' bring the original questgiver his boarmeat.}}
* ''[[
** ''Everquest 2'' has some sort of skeleton or zombie in almost every zone.
* Perhaps parodied with ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' with the [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Perpendicular_bat perpendicular bat]. Its description when you fight it is "This bat is perpendicular to the ground! That makes it totally different from a regular bat!" ''Definitely'' parodied with the [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Completely_different_spider completely different spider], which is nothing of the sort.
* ''[[Adventure Quest]]'''s many different Zards definitely qualify.
* Prior to the first update in [[RF Online]] there were a fair number of reskinned creatures, although the story behind them made more sense. When the new "Episode" addons were introduced, many of the creatures were recolored and resized for the newer areas. In fact even the players became this, as equipment above level 50 would be a reskin of an earlier piece of equipment. The newest update migated this somewhat with Elfland, where the reskinned enemies were few and far between, and a lot of new models were made for it. [[Level Grinding|Too bad you wont get a chance]] [[One Hit KO|to enjoy it]].
* ''[[Mabinogi (video game)|Mabinogi]]'' is a particularly egregious user of this trope. There are a very limited number of enemy types; and they tend to get recycled constantly. The most blatant example are mongooses in Iria. They exist in nearly every part of the Maiz Prairie region, and are indistinguishable except by tail colour (even their names reflect this), with each colour indicating a different difficulty level.
* [[Ragnarok Online]] mostly averts this, save for the Poring line of monsters, which difficulty ranges from very easy to event bosses capable of taking out GMs.
=== Platformers ===
* Likewise, in ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'', red-shelled Koopas were implied to be "more powerful", at least in that they had enough sense to not stroll off of cliffs like their green counterparts.
** This led to the Green Koopas marching in straight lines unless they came upon some sort of block or another enemy creature (like a Goomba), which would make them turn around. (They also tended to turn around if they walked into ''you'', which was easiest to see when the action froze as [[Death Throws|Mario fell off the screen.]]) Red Koopas behaved the same way, except that they also turned around when they came upon a cliff (instead of just walking off the edge like the green ones.) <ref>Granted, you wouldn't be laughing if a Green Koopa fell on your head, but... yeah.</ref>
*** There was a much greater difference between the Green and Red Paratroopas. Green ones tended to hop along in a straight line ([[Goddamned Bats|leading to major headaches]] as you were forced to decide whether to try to dash beneath them or hop over them, and more often than not wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time); red ones just flew back and forth, "patrolling" a specific area without changing elevation. Sometimes the red ones instead flew up and down without any horizontal movement, and occasionally the green ones did that too. In any event, once you stomped on a Paratroopa and knocked its wings off, it would revert to the AI of its ground-bound counterpart (not that you'd notice if said former Paratroopa fell into a [[Bottomless Pit]]).
** In ''[[Super Mario Bros. 2]]'', Shy Guys came in ''pink'' and red, with pink being the marginally smarter. However, Snifits came in a rainbow of colors, each with different behavior.
*** [https://web.archive.org/web/20120304201907/http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/redsnifit.html And yet there was only ever] [[Unique Enemy|one red Snifit.]]
** The ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' games are prone to this in the later areas. Although each chapter tends to have its own set of themed enemies, a few will return as recolours.
** ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]'' has four colors of Koopas. Yellow drops from ledges like green, moves faster, drops a coin when taken out of its shell, and can jump into a shell to make it into an "invincible" flashing shell (or [[Fan Nickname|"disco shell"]]). Blue doesn't fall from ledges, and recovers much faster than the others after getting knocked out of their shells (they're also much thicker, implying they're stronger) and usually kick the shell away instead of reentering it.
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* In ''Keith Courage in Alpha Zones'', the [[Final Boss]], the Titan Warrior, is a gold [[Palette Swap]] of Mr. Roboto, the boss of Area 4.
* Several of the bosses in ''[[Wonder Boy in Monster Land]]'' do this, such as the Red Knight/Blue Knight/Silver Knight, the [[Grim Reaper]] / God of Poverty, and the Giant Kong/Snow Kong.
* In ''[[Purple]]'', basic mooks like slimes, bats and cannons get [[Palette Swap
* In the first ''[[Donkey Kong Country]]'' game, Krusha came in two varieties. The first kind was blue with green camo and was only beatable by either of Donkey Kong's main attacks or a barrel (Diddy Kong's attacks were laughed off). The second kind only appeared once in the SNES version, in the very last level before King K. Rool. This version was grey with purple camo. The only thing that could beat him was a barrel, making him the strongest of the Kremlings.
* ''[[Descent]]'': The Super Hulk or Super Mech is a red version of the Medium Hulk that is much tougher and armed with homing missiles. The Fusion Hulk is [[Degraded Boss|a scaled down version]] of the first boss armed with a Fusion Cannon. In the second game, the Spawn is a green version of the Red Hornet, and the Tiger or Red Fatty Jr. uses the same model as the first boss, although it is smaller and has completely different weapons.
* ''[[Bug!]]!'' You fight snail enemies in [[Green Hill Zone|Insectia]] Scene 3, each of which were very slow and took three hits to die. And then when you get to [[Bubblegloop Swamp|Splot]], you see them again. Except that they take ''nine'' hits, and move twice as fast. And when they see Bug, they take out freaking '''[[More Dakka|MACHINE GUNS]]''' from their shells and fire at him!
=== Real-Time Strategy ===
* Nigh-on every non-boss enemy in ''[[Super Robot Wars]] [[Original Generation|OG Saga:]] [[Endless Frontier]]'', presumably to make room for [[Hurricane of Puns|more boob jokes]].
=== Turn-based Strategy ===
* In all of [[Nippon Ichi]] games higher variations of [[Player
* [[Shining Force]] uses this extensively in all of its games.
=== Roguelike ===
* Roguelike games employ this device to a fare-thee-well, since all of the monsters are represented by ASCII symbols, color coding is often the only easy way to tell them apart. Of course, sometimes two monsters have to share the same letter and color. Which leads many players to use alternate graphical "tile sets" which offer more information. Whether or not you should do this is one of the major fault-lines in ''[[Nethack]]'' fan circles. Of course, this also led to isometric sprite based clones (''Vulture'') using mini-map and shortcuts in the original ''Nethack'' style.
** It's interesting that this trope still appears in roguelikes not just in that the monsters look the same but in that there are different variations of the same monster, even though in those there is NO work required in generating sprites for new monsters, so the imagination is the only limit. Given that ''[[Angband]]'' has close to 1000 unique monster types, the reason for this happening in such a game is probably more that the designers started running out of ideas rather than not being able to animate distinct monsters.
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* The sprite based [[Roguelike]], [[Dungeons of Dredmor]], has an absolute ton of these sorts of monsters. Most have different effects - Diggles are just annoying, but Sickly Diggles debuff you and Diggle Commandos are invisible.
=== Role-Playing Games ===
* ''Morrowind'' had a considerable lack of diversity amongst its native fauna, resorting heavily to underground monkeyism to create a wider range of enemies. This was somewhat justifiable in the sense that most of the game took place on a single island, and travelling northwest to the island of Solsthheim introduced you to a set of entirely new creatures.
* ''[[Super Mario RPG]]'' has this with a LOT of enemy types. Sometimes in quick succession.
* In the ''[[Dragon Quest|Dragon Quest/Warrior]]'' series, one of the first common enemies you encounter is the blue [[Mascot Mook|slime]]. Then, you meet the slightly stronger red slime. And as the series progressed, the Heal Slime. Then the [[Metal Slime]]. Then the King Slime. Then the Metal King Slime. Then the [[Mons]] game showed up, and you got Treeslime, and Wingslime, and Halo Slime, and... All the way up to the exceptionally powerful, [[Akira Toriyama]]-inspired (and designed!) [[Nigh Invulnerable]] Platinum King Jewel. It also featured color-coded dragons.
** ''[[Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2]]'' takes this particularly [[Up to Eleven]], where the strongest slimes include a [[Henshin Hero]] slime, a [[Kill Sat]] slime, and a [[Humongous Mecha]] slime!
** The majority of monsters in the series have at least one recolor, including regular bosses. In fact, the secret boss of Dragon Quest 6, arguably the single most glorified, powerful antagonist in the franchise, is a palette swap of an earlier boss. It's easier to count the few enemies with unique sprites.
** ''[[Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime]]''. Each of the 100 different members of the [[Monster Town]] is a different type of slime.
* ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' uses this in most incarnations, especially with the [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]] aspect: the blue monster casts water spells and is weak against thunder, the white monster casts ice spells and is weak against fire, etc. ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' made some extra use of this, as a side quest rewarded players for capturing entire "species" of monsters. It was especially common in the earlier, sprite-based games due to [[Palette Swap
** ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' has tons of instances of monsters that look exactly the same, only stronger and with a different name, including several Notorious Monsters.
*** And when monsters of the same species don't look exactly the same, they are palette swaps. In some cases this is justified. For example, rabbit type enemies have different fur color in different climates. It gets a little harder to justify with the Wings of the Goddess expansion, where forest tigers from 20 years ago are neon orange for no apparent reason.
** ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' manages to subvert the spirit of this trope without subverting the letter of it, by making slight differences in the meshes of any given group of monsters (i.e. some toads have claws, others have webbed feet).
*** More prominent example: the Hellhound has a large horn that the Desert Wolf does not.
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** Worse yet, after a certain point, they didn't even bother to change the enemy colors. This left you with about 200 missions of fighting the same, boring avatars.
** Both ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' avert this trope, where (almost) every monster type in the game has a unique mesh, animation, and sound effect. The only exceptions (for VIII, anyway) are for human and humanoid enemies.
*** ''IX'' has a few palette swaps; the ten [[Fairy Battle
* Gameboy games had the lack of memory needed to justify
** Interestingly, this hardware limitation led to an inversion in ''[[Metroid]] 2''. In the original, getting Samus's Varia armor made the sprite change color, which wasn't possible on the Gameboy. To compensate, gaining the upgrade gave the Varia suit the huge shoulders that are now the character's trademark look.
*** ''Metroid: Zero Mission'', which is a remake of Metroid 1, lacks the round shoulders on the Varia Suit. However, near the end of the game, Samus's Power Suit is destroyed, and she obtains a new one. The new one has the large shoulders. The end of Zero Mission takes place in the immediate aftermath of the ending of Metroid 1, and as such explains how Samus came to possess the Metroid 2-style Varia suit.
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** Multi-Colored Monkeys?
*** This was part of the game's world design. Monsters were designed to be "organic" in that one given monster species would have biodiversity. The player could encounter three mobs in the same battle, and each would have slightly different stats. In general, colour had less to do with power than size, with larger mobs being significantly stronger.
* ''[[Persona 3]]'' is another good example of this
** Not only that, but every boss not important to the story is simply a giant version of a normal enemy, a practice that would carry over to ''[[Persona 4]]''.
** Note that this is a [[Justified Trope]], due to the [[The Heartless|nature]] of the Shadows.
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** Some other examples of monster counterparts behave exactly the same but have very different appearances. For example, the Aptonoth looks like an amalgamation of different species of dinosaurs, while the Tundra-inhabiting Popo looks like a very short, trunk-less woolly mammoth. Both species behave pretty much identically, and they both fill the role of the harmless herbivore that gets eaten by everything else.
* ''[[Grandia II]]'' starts doing this about halfway through the game.
* ''[[Pokémon]]'' notably does not perform "[[Palette Swap|PaletteSwaps]]" of its [[
** Played completely straight with some of the ''Trainers'' - While there are no palette swaps, and the in-battle sprites of the Trainer types are all unique, often several types share the same ''overworld'' sprite, so that in ''[[Pokémon Diamond Pearl and Platinum]]'', for example, Ace Trainers and Rangers look the same until you fight them (and the sprite is clearly that of the Ace Trainers). The most egregious example is perhaps the Rich Boys, Psychics, and PIs/Gamblers. PIs/Gamblers wear a fedora and a trenchcoat in battle, while Psychics wear a purple jumpsuit with greenish hair; the overworld sprite used for all three clearly has the Rich Boy's dark purple hair and white suit.
*** Although the reasoning behind PIs having Rich Boy's look could be the fact that they're supposed to be incognito. Psychics and Gamblers, however, have no excuse.
** Also played straight with the cry sounds. There were only about 30 cry sounds in the original game, and while some were sped up or slowed down, some cries, even by unrelated Pokémon, were identical. Charizard and Rhyhorn, Ditto and Poliwag... Caterpie and Goldeen technically have different cries, but you'd have to listen to them in succession to hear it.
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** There are even some unused variants of certain enemies hidden in the game's coding, complete with differing [[Palette Swaps]] and names.
* The later sprite-based ''[[Might and Magic]]'' games, especially the seventh incarnation, played this trope hilariously straight. How do you tell the difference between a minotaur and a minotaur lord? The nastier version is almost identical - it's just a bit bigger. And bright purple.
** Ditto on [https://web.archive.org/web/20100529041656/http://homepage3.nifty.com/rfish/index_e.html Elona]
* ''[[Albion]]'' does this a little differently. The enemies are different on each continent, but come in a small variety. Stronger versions of certain creatures accompany larger packs. They don't even bother with creative names (Animal3)
* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' has four or five varieties of every monster type in the game. Including bright pink elephants. At least they have slightly differing attack patterns and (sometimes) vulnerabilities.
** [[Lampshade Hanging|When you're drowning in a sea of work with not enough time,...why pour your soul into assets that get used all of... what, once? Really. Have some compassion.]]
* ''[[MOTHER]]'', although otherwise unrelated to this trope, had a tribe of [[Cloudcuckoolander]] monkeys living underground in a desert.
** Actually, ''Mother'' plays this trope quite often. For example, the Lone Wolf, Silver Wolf, and Wolf are all the same sprite with different colors, and the Stray Dog is a wolf sprite colored brown with a chain around its neck.
** The entire trilogy does this, although [[
* The Swedish parody RPG ''Playelf'' has this with ninjas - there are red ninjas, blue ninjas, black ninjas, white ninjas, etc - as well as "hurry up-ninjas" which appears when the players are dithering. But the most awesome ninja...
{{quote|
* Present throught out the ''[[Tales (series)]]''. Monsters that are purely palette swaps are most common in the games that utilize sprite based graphics, while the 3D games usually change their model a little, as well.
* ''[[Boktai]]'' has this in all its incarnations, though sometimes coloration is used as a hint to its [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|elemental affinity]]. This is more egregious in ''Lunar Knights'', where many enemies are colored solely by affinity - namely, the Ghouls, Vorns, Slimes, Hounds, and Chloroformin' come in different colors on this alone. The Slimes, strangely enough, are the only ones in this group that come in [[Light'Em Up|Sol]] flavor.
* ''[[Ultima V]]'' contains literal monkeys found only
** ''[[Ultima III]]'' has multiple enemy types with the same colours where the only difference is the name - however, that's ''literally'' the only difference. No change in stats, health, damage dealth, weaknesses... Just Orcs, Goblins and Trolls, all exactly the same.
* This isn't often used in the [[Shining Force]] games, but when it is, it is jarring. the original [[Shining Force]], for example, had th regular [[Goddamned Bats|Bats]], and their aquatic cousins, ''Sea'' Bats.
* ''[[Hyperdimension Neptunia]]'' has this in spades, especially considering some of the monsters are from other games.
== Non-Video Game Examples ==
===
* ''[[Digimon]]'' as a whole loves this. The anime itself has recolors who are merely a different attribute (such as say, [[Black Rapidmon]], who is a Virus-type counterpart to Rapidmon), different element (such as Yukidarumon and Tsuchidarumon, snow and ground respectively), or just a recolor for the sake of being a recolor.
** The Digimon games add to this by not only having the original recolors included, but several entirely recolored evolution lines, Rookie to Mega, in Vaccine, Data and Virus flavors.
*** Taken to an absurd extreme with Soulmon, who is a Bakemon with a wizard's hat. That's the ONLY difference.
=== Tabletop Games ===
* [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|Color-coded dragons]] predate most video games, as they appeared in the [[Tabletop Games]] ''[[Dungeons
** On one occasion, the color-coding is used as the basis of a truly heartbreaking [[Monster Is a Mommy]] story, when a noble silver dragon is born with albinism, and is hunted down and killed by an adventurer who thinks it's a white dragon.
*** One adventure featured a similar story with an albino red dragon, causing the party to prepare to fight it in ''the least effective way possible.''
** This was parodied in the webcomic ''[[Order of the Stick]]'': in one comic, a paladin discovers the titular party has killed a dragon. She then accuses them of possibly killing a creature of benevolence and wisdom, and asks why they thought it deserved death, to which Roy Greenhilt replies, "Erm... its scales weren't shiny?" which placates the paladin. Elan then breaks the [[Fourth Wall]] by winking at the reader and saying, "Dragons - now [[
*** Ironically, the comic does this itself with goblins/hobgoblins/ghouls.
** Rothé are bovines [[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp|resembling musk oxen]]. That have magical variants too: underground "deep rothé" is about 4' at the shoulder, still charging in herds, with infravision and communicating via ''dancing lights'' and "ghost rothé" is bison-sized, white and capable of stampeding ''under magical silence''.
** The Elves of D&D come in high, wood, sea, grey, wild and several other varieties.
** The third edition of ''[[Dungeons
*** Although one 3rd edition ''[[Dragon (magazine)|Dragon]]'' magazine article about creating monsters included "But this one's blue!" in a list of how ''not'' to do it.
** Fourth Edition includes at least one extra variety of every monster in its Monster Manual entry. Many of these fall into
* While discouraged due to the WYSIWYG rule of the game, ''[[Warhammer
** There's now specific models for veteran Space Marines, with custom boltguns that look a bit different and shoulder pads that have embossed icons for non-codex chapters. Of course, these models are more expensive, so some players stick with the old palette swap method.
=== Toys ===
* Other toys use a similar system, often called redecos (when identical molds are used but the color of plastic is altered) or retools (when most parts stay basically the same but are altered to include, for example, new accessories; this can also include a redeco). For example, in the most recent series of ''[[Transformers]]'', [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Storm_Cloud#Classic_Series Stormcloud] is a redeco of [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Powerglide#Universe_.282008.29 Powerglide], while [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Sideswipe_(G1)#Universe_.282008.29 Sideswipe] is a retool of [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Sunstreaker_(G1)#Classic_Series Sunstreaker].
** This even leads to recolors in characters in the
** The most annoying use of this in recent series has been making Galvatron a redeco of Megatron.
* For most of its run, ''[[Bionicle]]'' sets were just recolors of each other with slight differences in assembly and parts. Sometimes, the ''only'' difference would be their [[Cool Mask|masks]] and their tools/weapons. Then, the Mahri Nui saga came along in 2007, and the [[Evil Overlord|Barraki]] were released, each looking very different from each other. Since then, the sets have been largely [[Averted]] this trope.
** Played with in the larger sets. While each large set was in of itself different from other large sets, each early large set could produce two near-identical creatures. Justified in that back then Bionicle toys were more akin to Rock'em Sock'em robots, and the kids were expected to play against eachother so the toys had to be identical to make it fair. Newer large sets averts this since they lost the Playability of the older sets in lieu of posability.
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
* Gets parodied in the ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' "Years of Yarncraft" (spoofing [[World of Warcraft]], of course) [https://web.archive.org/web/20130515033924/http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080814 here], [https://web.archive.org/web/20141119173651/http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080817 here] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20090104105111/http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080920 here].
* As mentioned in the trope description, the [[Trope Namer]] is [[RPG World]], and was originally a [[Lampshade Hanging]] by showing a number of "Underground (animal not usually found in caves)" enemies in succession.
=== Real Life ===
* [[Truth in Television]]: Members of the same biological genus are usually similar enough that the main differences are color and location. Things like size, basic body shape, and diet are all almost identical.
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[[Category:Role Playing Game]]▼
[[Category:Video Game Characters]]
[[Category:Amazing Technicolor Index]]
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[[Category:Esoteric Trope Names]]
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