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{{trope}}
[[File:Bunch_of_slimes_5649.jpg|link=Dragon Quest (Video Game)|frame|[[Mascot Mook|Slime]], [[Distaff Counterpart|She-Slime]], [[Metal Slime]], [[King Mook|King Slime]], Bubble Slime, [[The Medic|Cure Slime]], Gem Slime, Jelly, Slime Knight, [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Metal King Slime]], the list goes on...]]
 
 
{{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 Onon 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|Palette Swaps]], meaning only the colors change but models are recycled, but they don't have to be. As long as they're recycled versions of previous enemies, the changes between the different versions could be anything. You might have normal [[The Goomba|Goombas]], [[Airborne Mook|winged Goombas]], [[The Spiny|spiked Goombas]]... Even [[King Mook|King Goomba]] is a type of Underground Monkey.
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* ''[[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.
** Keese themselves come in several elemental varieties in the 3D titles. Along with regular Keese, there are [[Playing Withwith Fire|Fire Keese]], [[An Ice Person|Ice Keese]], and as of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword|Skyward Sword]]'' [[Shock and Awe|Thunder Keese]] and [[Black Magic|Cursed Keese]].
** ''[[The Wind Waker]]'' and ''[[Twilight Princess]]'' avoid this with every enemy except for Darknuts, whose armour changes colour to indicate different levels of strength, and the various Chu types, the ''Zelda'' take on the classic slimes. There are some minor palette swaps as well, but these take the form of giving the enemies extra armour and better resistance to the player's special attacks.
** In the ''[[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games|Oracle]]'' [[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games|games]], most enemies come in red and blue, indicating respectively a better attack and a better defense. This and various other instances of [[Palette Swap|palette swaps]] throughout the series are nods to the [[The Legend of Zelda (Videovideo Gamegame)|very first game]]'s use of two palettes for most enemies, usually a red/orange palette and a blue palette, where one would take more damage to kill than the other.
** In ''[[Spirit Tracks]]'', there are five types of rabbit you can collect, matching the environment in which they're found, including one that lives in the sea.
** Chu-Chus in ''[[Twilight Princess]]'' come in a variety of colors, but not to differentiate strength. Rather, if you fill the remains of one in a bottle, it's color determines the effect of using it. If two different-colored Chus combine, the result is the default color, which was pretty worthless.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (Video Game)|Four Swords Adventures]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: theThe Minish Cap|The Minish Cap]]'' feature Fire and Ice Wizzrobes alongside the standard kind. ''Four Swords Adventures'' also includes Force Gem-sucking Wizzrobes.
* ''[[Legend of Mana]]'' notably had Underground Crabs in the very first dungeon.
* ''[[Okami]]'' has the same set of tactics with occasional additional attacks for the successive areas of enemies. Difficulty is achieved late in the optional extras with nigh-endless waves of enemies.
* Games based on ''[[Bionicle]]'', since the toys are pretty much like this. "You are attacked by an Air Burnak." "You are attacked by a Stone Burnak." "You are attacked by an Ice Burnak."
* ''[[Cave Story (Video Game)|Cave Story]]'' has a nice variety of enemy types, but recolors the critters (those beanbag-looking hopping things) and bats in several different caves.
* 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 (Video Game)|Jabless Adventure]]'', there are [[Everything's Worse Withwith 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|Palette Swapped]] and appear in darn near every area of the game.
 
== Beat Em Ups ==
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*** Amusingly, Prime 3 also did this with ''energy pickups''. First, you have the classic energy balls, then phazon after acquiring the new suit, and finally anti-phazon in the last section of the game.
* FPS games regularly do this with at least one of the more basic enemies (but tougher opponents sometimes get the same treatment). In the older era, this was done by changing the colouring of otherwise identical sprites, in 3D games it takes the somewhat more advanced and differentiating form of using different skins for the same model (or even different models for the same enemy). Common expressions of this includes;
** Different weaponry and/or levels of toughness of the opponents (e.g. the processed humans of ''[[Quake II (Video Game)|Quake II]]'', the Cabal followers of ''[[Blood]]'', Barons of Hell and Hellknights in ''[[Doom]]'' and ''[[Doom]] II'').
** Somewhat different abilities between the enemy types (e.g. the semi-invisibility of Spectres in the ''[[Doom]]'' series, the personal teleporters of Alien captains in ''[[Duke Nukem 3D (Video Game)|Duke Nukem 3D]]'')
** Just plain diversity, especially common in regards to enemies meant to be more or less regular human beings. This in order to avoid the effect of feeling that the enemies faced are the same individual cloned countless times, usually to the effect of creating the impression that such cloning rather took place on [[You All Look Familiar|three to five different individuals]] instead.
** In ''[[Turok (Video Gameseries)|Turok]] 2'', Blind Ones, Fireborns, and Troopers are skin swaps of Sentinels, Endtrails, and Mantid Soldiers, respectively. The former two are literal underground mooks.
* In the first two ''[[Halo]]'' games, the Elites got different-colored armor based on their military rank ([[Authority Equals Asskicking]] by the way). The higher classes, such as Honor Guards, and Councillors, as well as Generals and Field Marshals in ''[[Halo: Reach]]'', also have more ornate armor. In ''Halo 3,'' the Brutes got a similar treatment, with each higher rank having more elaborate armor, and sub-ranks (Major, Minor, Ultra) being represented by palette swaps. The [[King Mook|highest class]], Brute Chieftains, have red or gold-accented black armor and warbonnet-like helmets.
* The later levels of ''[[Pathways Intointo Darkness]]'' feature Ghasts (aka Earthquake Zombies), Venomous Skitters (which as their name implies, inflict [[Standard Status Effects|poison status]]), and Greater Nightmares(who are armored and shoot homing projectiles).
* In ''[[Borderlands (Video Game)|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 ==
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== Maze Games ==
* It all started with ''[[PacmanPac-Man]]'', where the color coding of ghosts let the designers get away with only having one enemy type -- the colors indicated different AI strategies in how they pursued the heroic circle.
** Many early arcade games did this, due to the hardware limitations of the day. Some examples include ''[[Berzerk]]'', ''[[Missile Command]]'', and ''Pengo''.
 
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** 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 bit -- some of the more recognizably human of the undead monsters you fight use the same model types available for Undead characters (Justified as they share a common origin -- reanimated by the Scourge).
** It is found already with the creeps in ''[[War CraftWarcraft]] III''
* ''Lord of the Rings Online'' -- similarly to [[World of Warcraft]] above -- re-skins meshes all the time. I have lost count of the different types of boars, worms, and wargs.
** 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.}}
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** ''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 (Video Game)|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 (Videovideo Gamegame)|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 (Video Game)|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.
*** [http://progressiveboink.com/archive/redsnifit.html And yet there was only ever] [[Unique Enemy|one red Snifit.]]
** The ''[[Paper Mario (Video Gamefranchise)|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 (Videovideo Gamegame)|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.
*** It also affects the powers Yoshi gets from them: Green does nothing, red gives him a one-time flame attack, yellow makes him damage nearby enemies upon touching the ground, and blue lets him fly. Flashing shells give all powers at once.
*** For that matter, Yoshi himself: A green Yoshi eating a shell only gets the shell's power, but a non-green Yoshi also gets the power from his own color (so a blue Yoshi can fly with any shell).
* ''[[Wario World (Video Game)|Wario World]]'' does this a lot. There's a few unique enemies, but generally there's about four or five standard enemy types, and each world just changes the theme of them. You've got Magons, which then get reused as Skeletal Magons, Clowns, Snowmen, Wolves, Puppet Magons and Mummy Magons. You've got Cractyls which come as Bone Cractyls, Pigeons, Snow Bombers, Hawks, Masked Crows and Mummy Hawks. And the same for another four or so types of enemies.
* Played straight in ''Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap''. Red foes are weak, green are stronger, and blue are the strongest, often with the blue variants being given surprisingly powerful attacks after the player had gotten used to fighting the weaker variants.
* 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 (Video Game)|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|Palette Swapped]] at least three times, each with a slightly different behaviour.
* 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! (Video Game)|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 ==
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** ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' inherits this approach, including the tileset option. For example, color is usually the only way to differentiate between rocks of different ores (which can be very important when you need to smelt metals) without checking what's on the specific tile.
** In ''[[Nethack]]'', this can also lead to [[Yet Another Stupid Death]], in ways both obvious and surprising. Not only might the player not distinguish between a dwarf lord and a mind flayer, in some contexts ''the game itself'' doesn't distinguish between them. Ooh a blessed scroll of genocide! You'd better cap the mind flayers, having to remap levels is a bitch. What's that? You were playing as a dwarf? Congratulations: you have succumbed to death by palette swap. (Blessed scrolls genocide a class of monsters, in this case h, Humanoid)
* The sprite based [[Roguelike]], [[Dungeons of Dredmor (Video Game)|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 (Video Game)|Super Mario RPG]]'' has this with a LOT of enemy types. Sometimes in quick succession.
* In the ''[[Dragon Quest (Video Game)|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 (Video Game)|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 (Video Game)|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|Palette Swaps]].
** ''[[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.
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*** But not [[Bag of Spilling|how she came to lose it again]]...
* In the ''[[Fallout]]'' games, a common practice was to have different individuals represented by a sprite of the same person (usually the male and female sprite used for the [[Player Character]], no less) stuck in a different suit of armour or clothing. The second game in the series contained a couple of self-conscious [[Lampshade Hanging]] jokes on this theme, including the henchman of a crime boss confiding that he suspects there must have been a big cloning accident at some point in the past, and an [[Easter Egg]] location in which a pair of sprites originally intended to be player characters but retooled to only fill [[NPC]] duties lament over their fate.
** ''Fallout 3'' is a more modern 3D game and as such gives every human character different appearances. And while all Feral Ghouls look the same, the different species of Ghoul are easily identifiable. Ferals are the standard, Reavers get a different face ''and'' abilities and Glowing Ones... well, [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|glow]]. Normal Super Mutants, Overlords and Behemoths are ''very'' easy to tell apart and are fought with different strategies; unfortunately the Brutes and Masters only have slight armor and HP varieties from the standard ones. Other monsters in the game usually only have one type. Then comes the ''Point Lookout'' expansion, which adds swamp versions of Ghouls and Mirelurks... and ''they'' are definitely just [[Palette Swaps]] with slightly different effects on their abilities.
* In ''[[Brave Story]]: New Traveler'', the ''exact same enemy'' can come in multiple different colors, so the difference between genuinely different enemies is at least slightly greater, with a few exceptions. This editor isn't quite sure ''how'' to label this.
** Multi-Colored Monkeys?
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** Note that this is a [[Justified Trope]], due to the [[The Heartless|nature]] of the Shadows.
** ''[[Persona 2]]'' also has a small handful of these, thanks to palette swaps and the occasional replacement part in monster sprites (several Chariot Arcana demons the most obvious of the latter, using the same giant brute body with different heads and colors).
* The ''[[Monster Hunter (Video Game)|Monster Hunter]]'' series uses this repeatedly. A prime example is the Kut Ku, one of the easiest wyverns in the game, which appears later on as the Blue Kut Ku, a stronger (and blue) version identical in every other way. Not only does the game do this with the enemies, but the armour then made from the enemies looks exactly the same apart from a colour swap to fit with the wyverns' colour.
** 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.
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*** And also Pachirisu and Emolga.
**** Pikachu and Raichu, Pichu, Plusle and Minun...
* Taken to a more extreme level by the ''[[Wizardry (Video Game)|Wizardry]]'' games, particularly VI and VII, wherein enemies were given graphics by type-all slimes use the same graphics, as do all demons, all bugs, etc, including non-hostile NPCs and bosses. Further complicating matters is that unless a party member has a high mythology skill, all you'll see attacking you is generic "birds" or "crawling wastes". Experienced players can usually determine what particular monster is attacking them by the area they're in or the attacks the monster uses. Occasionally leads to party kills when the player mistakes a very nasty enemy for an easy one.
* ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'' includes the "Debugger" and "Debuggest" robot-bug enemies; "Rolies", "Polies", and "Rolypolies"; "Cave Apes" and "Goons"; and "Mutants" and "Metal Mutes", among others.
** Don't you mean Roundil-*is shot*
** It also features ''literal'' Underground Monkeys. With ''wings''.
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** Ditto on [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 (Video Game)|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.
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* 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| "There's also supposed to be a camouflage-coloured ninja, [[Incredibly Lame Pun|but no one has ever seen him]]".}}
* Present throught out the ''[[Tales Series(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 (Video Game)|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 underground -- the Mongbats -- but they resemble nothing else in the game.
** ''[[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.
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** 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 [[Colour-Coded for Your Convenience]]!"
*** Ironically, the comic does this itself with goblins/hobgoblins/ghouls.
** Rothé are bovines [[Call a Rabbit Aa 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 and Dragons]]'' features ''templates'', giving uncreative GMs the opportunity to color-code ''any'' monster into a water monster, a fire monster, slime monster, etc.
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