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Ambiguously Brown / Video Games

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Ambiguously Brown in Video Games.

  • Ace Attorney:
    • Godot and Juan Corrida were this in Japan, although they were made Hispanic in the American translation.
    • The jury's still out on Damon Gant and Colias Palaeno, although given the former is an ardent swimmer and the latter is a different color from even his countrymen, they're probably just tanned.
    • Both Zak and Magnifi Gramarye as well. Made more ambiguous by the fact that Magnifi's daughter is clearly white, and his grandchildren (one of whom is Zak's child) are even whiter. Some fans have speculated that the Gramaryes are Romani. Also, Zak's real first name is Shadi, a distinctly middle eastern name.
    • Lotta Hart is pale, but not pink — unlike the other characters. Americanisation gives her a stereotyped Deep South accent and dialect to match that afro. With that and the name, she ends up coming off as a stereotyped, pale caricature of blackness.
    • Marlon Rimes is a caricature rapper with a black bone structure but an ambiguous complexion. He mixes street slang with pirate talk. He goes super-Saiyan and looks whiter, but reveals dreadlocks and rapper bling. Turn on the 3DS' 3D mode for even further ambiguity.
  • Advanced V.G.: Judging by her name, you'd think Jun Kubota was Japanese, but her caramel complexion and green eyes makes her appear to be a foreigner. Or, it may imply that she's of mixed heritage. But, since no one ever comments on it, it's unlikely that we'll ever know.
  • Anachronox:
    • Exposition Fairy and Servile Snarker, Fatima has dark skin and blonde hair. Given the game's futuristic setting and its diverse selection of not only aliens but humans as well, these are rather quaint features by comparison.
    • Assassin party member Stiletto is of Asian/Brazilian descent, an ethnic blend which is actually pretty common.
  • ANNO: Mutationem: Absalom has fairly dark skin, which is contrasted by his light gray hair. He's mentioned to be from the Middle East, the rest of his origins aren't known.
  • Mr. Big from Art of Fighting and The King of Fighters. Either he's a tanned white guy or a very light skinned black guy. His official birthplace is listed as Australia, if that's of any indication.
    • K' from the NESTS Chronicles of KOF's early sprites have him with the same complexion as Heavy D! (who's Black American), but later depictions lighten his skin. Whip, a clone of K's biological sister is largely depicted as light skinned with the exception of her art for KOF XI (see here◊). To make this even more confusing, Krizalid (K's own clone) and Original Zero (not a clone, but still a high ranking member of NESTS) share K's skin and hair colors while Kyo's other clones are both darker skinned than the original. All considered, it's possible K's current looks are from the experiments he went through under NESTS custody and aren't what he really looks like.
  • Assassin's Creed:
    • Desmond Miles' ethnicity isn't immediately apparent from looking at him, but this is intentional, allowing him to have Syrian, Italian, Anglo-Welsh, and even Native American ancestors. For the record, Desmond's face model, Francisco Randez, is of Spanish descent. The same also applies to his father William since he has tan skin.
    • Invoked in the case of Assassin's Creed III where the half-English, half-Mohawk Ratonhnhaké:ton who is 'advised' by his mentor Achilles Davenport to pass himself off as a Spaniard or Italian, due to the constant discrimination against his people, hence his English name of Connor. Of course, the impracticality of trying to pass as Spanish or Italian with a name like Connor is brought up all of once.
    • Connor's father Haytham Kenway is the son of the clearly white Edward Kenway and Caroline Scott in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag but he has a swarthier complexion than most British characters in the franchise and an Arabic first name.
    • There's no shortage of diversity in the Hellenic-influenced Ptolemaic Egypt in Assassin's Creed Origins though Bayek has a considerably darker skin tone than most Egyptians since his actor is Black British and his wife Aya has a Mediterranean phenotype since she is the ancestor of the Eagle Bearer in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.
  • Kiesha Phillips of Backyard Sports. Unlike, say, Ernie, you cannot tell if Kiesha is African-American or not.
  • Jade of Beyond Good & Evil was deliberately given an ambiguously brown design so that she could appeal to players of all ethnicities.
  • Escher from Chaos Rings. He has dark skin but blue or grey eyes and has white hair.
    • Maya and Meena from Dragon Quest IV. Considering their designs and abilities evoke stereotypical occupations for Roma (fortune telling and dancing) they might the Dragon Quest IV version of that ethnicity.
  • Owen from the Clue Finders is ambiguously light-skinned.
  • Cyberpunk 2077:
    • The default female V, shown on the game's boxart, merchandise and promotional materials has a noticeably darker skin than her male counterpart. It's unlear if she's of another race/ethnicity or just tanned. Doesn't apply in the game proper, where either V can be of any race/ethnicity.
    • Panam Palmer has a darker skintone, dark eyes and hair, but European last name and features. She belongs to a Nomad clan, which means she travels a lot across the deserts of southern United States, meaning that her darker skintone might just be a tan. Doubly strange is that she's the only romance option that doesn't have an explicitly stated ethnicity (Judy is Latina, Kerry is Filipino, and the artbook confirms that River is Native). Her voice actress, Emily Woo Zeller, is of Chinese ancestry (other characters' English voice actors correspond to their characters' ethnicities).
  • Chordia◊ from DanceDanceRevolution Hottest Party has light brown skin; Gliss◊ and Sharp◊ are in the same range, but they look more obviously tanned. The game has much darker black characters too, so it's not an aversion to darker skintones.
  • Ellie Langford from Dead Space has brown skin, hazel eyes, dark brunette hair, and an English accent. Her ethnicity is never discussed, but she seems mixed-race. (Like her voice actress, whom she is also modeled after)
  • Devil May Cry:
  • Disgaea tends to not bring up characters' ethnicities, but occasionally dips into this:
    • Disgaea 2 has both True and False Overlord Zenon, whom might be a case of Hades Shaded given their overall power.
    • In Disgaea 3, a minor example happens with the final tier of the Lady Samurai Class, giving her a much darker skin tone compared to her prior tiers. Story character Sapphire Rhodonite also has a somewhat darker skin tone compared to the rest of the cast. Sapphire is also the Princess of D3's Human World and a One Woman Army in her own right, so it is possibly a tan from all of her training.
    • Disgaea 4 has Valvatorez's faithful steward, the Werewolf Fenrich. While he does mention his race having human ancestry, nothing else is brought up regarding this.
  • Don't Starve:
    • Features a few, especially since ethnicities aren't confirmed. Warly was one of the first dark-skinned characters in the monochrome cast. After being added to Don't Starve Together in promotional material he is seen with both his hair and skin noticeably darker. He is generally speculated to be Black or mixed-race due to that and his facial features.
    • Wheeler is a more straight example, having the same in-game skintone as Warly but without the notable facial features. Her hair is dark brown and wavy, but her quotes don't indicate anything further. It's speculated her design may have been partially inspired by Carmen Sandiego due to the similarities, who is also Ambiguously Brown.
    • Wanda is another example; she has darker skin and hair than the previous two but still no indication. It's speculated she could be South or West Asian.
  • In Dragon Age we have Fenris is from Tevinter has a medium skintone but otherwise no racial features definitively from one race. Complicated from the fact that Tevinter is a fantasy counterpart culture... based on the Roman Empire, which was ethnically diverse, and by that Fenris is shown to have family that's white as a sheet (although Fenris is an Elf so who knows). This causes a lot of contention in the fandom, to say the very least of it.
  • In Duolingo, Oscar has a medium skin tone of an unconfirmed race.
  • Earthlock: Olia Alagbato is darker-skinned than the other human characters, and the -gb- in her name is often found in West African names (e.g. the politician Laurent Gbagbo). On the other hand, she's a very light brown, and her hair is bright red.
  • Fallen London:
    • Most people from the Elder Continent are dark-skinned, but the Elder Continent not being a clear Fantasy Counterpart Culture of any single country and the Prebysterate deliberately obfuscating details about their origins leave their ethnicity ambiguous.
    • An art update made a few characters' in-game portraits noticeably darker-skinned than before. The Artist's Model went from pale-skinned to tan or brown-skinned and the Bishop of St. Fiacre's lost all his hair and went from mostly white-looking to being just as dark-skinned as most Elder Continent people. The Bishop of St. Fiacre's case is further complicated by him secretly being a Snuffer wearing the face of a dead human and hence possibly having no true ethnicity.
  • Citra Talugmai/Montenegro, the Jungle Princess from Far Cry 3, is apparently the sister of Vaas Montenegro, a brown-skinned Latin American. On the other hand, their complexions are different, as are their accents, so possibly they're Not Blood Siblings, or they are siblings, but she engrossed herself with the Rakyat culture more than her brother, who ingratiated himself with Hoyt Volker and the Privateers. Hurk briefly describes Citra as a "Malaysian (he'd) Like to Fuck", but Hurk's not all that intelligent, so he might have been just generalizing based on the location of the Rook Islands. For what it's worth, Citra's voice actress, Faye Kingslee, is Australian, with mixed Chinese and Irish parentage, and she grew up in Malaysia.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy II has Firion and Minwu, mostly in artwork, as their in-game sprites gave them the same skin tone as the rest of the cast. The PSP remake also adds in Deumion.
    • Final Fantasy VI's General Leo is quite clearly a dark-skinned blond in his character portrait and concept art, though his combat and overworld sprites don't show it (likely due to a limited palette; the iOS adaptation darkens his skin there, too.) Like Barret in FFVII, Leo is the only dark-skinned character in the entire world, and his racial origins are not commented on (some of the concept art gives him exaggerated African features, almost to the point of caricature; but his in-game character portrait is ambiguous.)
    • Final Fantasy VII has Rude, who has light brown skin and is presumed to be a black man, although the designers intended him to be resembling a person of South American heritage.
  • Since almost all the peoples of Golden Sun games are Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, this trope is mostly avoided. By learning what their home culture is based on, you can figure out anybody's race. The only known exception to date is Sheba, who is a foundling of unknown origin (widely speculated to be Anemos) raised in an Egypt-counterpart (so it might just be a tan).
  • Guilty Gear:
    • Venom and Potemkin. Venom is British, but fans have theorized that he's of Egyptian descent, probably judging from the imagery involved in his character design and attacks. It's also worth noting that in the first game, Potemkin was a slave.
    • Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN gives us Ramlethal Valentine, who has light brown skin and white hair and eyelashes. Considering she isn't even human to begin with, it's clear that her appearance is merely a stylistic choice and corresponds to no actual ethnicity.
  • Kay from Haven (2020) has noticeably darker skin than the other characters, and a friend of his mate (who can only be seen in the demo) appears to be a dark-skinned blond.
  • Orchid from Killer Instinct. She's always had a brown skin tone compared to her brother Jago; conflicting information about Killer Instinct's story either has her as Tibetan or Middle Eastern. Note that her skin tone in Killer Instinct 2 is the same as the Chinese Kim Wu.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Xemnas/Xehanort/"Ansem" (actually Xehanort's Heartless), all three being permutations of the same man, who is White Haired And Black Hearted with orange/brown/it varies eyes and dark skin. Xehanort himself is a result of Terra's body being stolen by the original Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Both the original Xehanort and Terra had brown skin (although Xehanort's was darker), and besides the fact that Terra was constantly tempted by darkness, he was a good guy at heart, negating the unfortunate implications of having the two dark skinned characters be associated with evil. In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep they explain that the dark-skinned blond effect is a result of traveling between worlds without adequate protection.
    • Probably more coincidence than intentional, but the two main monsters of the games, the Nobodies and the Heartless, are white and black, respectively. Xehanort's Heartless is noticeably darker than Xemnas.
  • The Legend of Heroes - Trails:
    • Trails in the Sky: Scherazard is significantly darker skinned than the grand majority of characters in the series. While this mostly goes unstated, Renne does point it out and implies Scherazard may come from an ambiguous 'south' of Zemuria.
    • Trails from Zero: Abbas has noticeably darker skin than most everyone he shares a scene with, but any kind of ethnicity is never remotely hinted at.
    • Trails of Cold Steel: When Celine is in human form, her skin is noticeably tan, despite her creator Rose being rather fair in her own human form.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • First-time players of The Wind Waker often started out believing that Tetra must be a Gerudo with pointy ears, due to her being dark-skinned and a female pirate like their Majora's Mask incarnation. However she lacks the Arab flavor Gerudos are usually associated with and is a blonde instead of a redhead. It's confirmed latter in the game that she's Hylian. She's the only character with Hylian ancestry in the game with dark skin like that, not even the other members of her crew or her own mother come close to match her tan. It might just be a tan...if she didn't seem to get a lighter skin tone when she is revealed to be Zelda, though the intent could have been to imply her natural tone is the one she has as Zelda and that she's tanned as Tetra. Likewise, Sheik's skin tone in Ocarina of Time is somewhat tanned while Zelda is white, white, white. The answer may lie in some scrapped concept art for the game, as Tetra also had the distinct red eyes of a Sheikah, so her darker skin tone is probably a Call-Back to Sheik.
    • Similarly, Din the Oracle from the Oracle of Ages and The Minish Cap is a dark-skinned redhead. Because of her association with Din the Goddess, and by extension Ganondorf, you might assume she's Gerudo also but she lacks the longer nose, yellow eyes and round ears common to the race. Add to the fact that in The Minish Cap she's sisters with Nayru and Farore who both look like Hylians, as she does too despite her skin tone.
    • Telma is obviously black however she bares a heavy resemblance to the Gerudo race. The problem is that most Gerudo have fled by The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, though they come back in the next two games in the timeline. So, does Telma have Gerudo in her blood or is she just a Gerudo-looking Hylian?
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Old Man who guides you in the opening area has a distinct greyish-brown skintone. Combined with his enigmatic nature, this resulted in some early fan speculation that he was secretly an incarnation of Ganondorf. Gets weirder when it turns out he's actually King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, the father of the pale Zelda. Presumably, his wife was very light-skinned. This game at least establishes to an extent not seen in previous games that dark-skinned Hylians are about as common as light-skinned ones.
  • Electro in Marvel: Contest of Champions has a noticeably darker skintone compared to the other white characters in the game, but is nowhere near as dark as other explicitly black characters like Storm or Luke Cage. Presumably this is a reference to how Electro is a white guy in the comics but was played by Jamie Foxx in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and is splitting the difference.
  • In Mass Effect, the vast majority of human characters are either white or ambiguously brown. There are some exceptions, such as African-descended Jacob, Japanese Kasumi, and Hispanic James and Steve. Specialist Traynor is implied to be Indian due to some comments made in the Citadel DLC.. Everyone else's background is debatable. Expanded Universe material states that In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race, as globalization in the 21st and 22nd centuries broke down social barriers between races.
  • Blast Man of Mega Man 11 has a darker skin tone compared to the other humanoid Robot Masters.
  • Naomi Hunter from Metal Gear Solid is ambiguously brown even to herself. She claimed she had Japanese ancestry but that was proven to be a lie by Master Miller. The truth is she's an orphan who has no idea who her parents are or what her original name might have been, only that she was adopted by mercenary, Frank Jaeger.
    Naomi Hunter: Rhodesia was owned by England until 1965 and there were lots of Indian laborers around. That's probably where I got my skin color from, but I'm not even sure about that...
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • The Mortal Kombat series features the realm/world of Edenia, and there are several brown-skinned Edenian characters that have been featured throughout the franchise. Edenia is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture mishmash of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, which furthers the debate on just what the characters are supposed to be counterparts to in the real world. And as of recent series entries, this also applies to fair-skinned characters.
    • There is also the widely overlooked example of Darrius. He's Seidan like Hotaru (who is clearly Caucasian) and Dairou (who looks more Eurasian, if not straight-up Japanese), yet is obviously Black. It's possible that Edenia, Seido, and the other realms independent of Earthrealm don't even have ethnic differentiation, though.
  • CyberConnect2 and Croire, two dark-skinned blondes, were for a long time the only humanoid characters in the Neptunia series with a skin color other than "generically pale". Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart introduced Moru who, while not as dark-skinned as CC2, still has noticeably darker skin than her peers. Then again, considering she's both a Cat Girl and the Anthropomorphic Personification of Monster Hunter, it's equally possible that it's either short fur or a tan.
  • Overwatch:
    • McCree, who is from New Mexico and has dark skin, brown hair and rather vague facial features. Fandom doesn't seem to know whether he's Latino, Native American, mixed race or just a tan white guy, and he could be any of these. Pretty odd given that most of the cast are either explicitly part of a given race and ethnicity or they are given very strong hints that unambiguously place them in a race and ethnicity.
    • Reaper is another ambiguous character; while commonly believed to be Hispanic (his names is Gabriel Reyes, he has a common Hispanic skintone, he's from LA where that's half the racial population and he has Latin-American themed alternate skins) some fans believe his appearance looks more African-American or mixed race. In any case this only applies to the Blackwatch skin and flashbacks, since he now has bleached white skin and an unseen-but-horribly-altered face due to whatever transformation turned him into Reaper.
    • Roadhog's real name is Mako (a Māori name meaning shark) and some hints support he might be a Māori from New Zealand, from one recolor skin called "kiwi", using idioms from NZ in one of his quotes and the lead writer Michael Chu suggesting Roadhog had a pet, it would have a kunekune pet (a domesticated pig from NZ). His islander skins, while not accurate to one Polynesian culture, might support this theory.
  • Both Alex and her brother Michael from Oxenfree have tan skin, and from the flashbacks we see, naturally brown hair.
  • Zana from Path of Exile in her original appearance, had fairly dark skin and a Russian-sounding accent. Her physical traits, including her bright red hair, makes her origin impossible to pinpoint. No other character in the game has the same accent as her, and while there are dark-skinned people in the setting, they are Karui (the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Māori people) and Zana doesn't use any of their culture or vocabulary, not to mention no one else has her hair color. The fact she's a master who deals with uncharted realms, this might be the intent. In the Atlas of Worlds expansion, which retconned Zana's original lore, she lost the accent, and explanation for her skin color could possibly be narrowed down to her missing mother. A model update 3 years later changed her to having light skin.
  • Zen, one of the new characters introduced in Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, is this, having light brown skin, green eyes, and somewhat curly dark brown hair. A late game reveal shows that he's actually an aspect of Chronos, the Greek god of time, and The Grim Reaper, so his looks can be chalked up to not being human. There are also a number of artistic portrayals of Chronos having dark skin, so his looks carry some Real Life connections as well.
  • Pokémon:
    • Iris from Pokémon Black and White and Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. She has a darker skin tone than a majority of the other characters, though still lighter than the canonically black Lenora (more so in the anime). Fans usually depict her as black and/or Native American.
    • The Walking Shirtless Scene that is Marlon from Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 has dark skin from head to stomach, but has light skin from waist to toe. This combined with him being a swimmer implies he's heavily tanned.
    • Phoebe, who has a darker skin tone than the rest of the Hoenn Gym Leaders and Elite Four, from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. She dresses in tropical-inspired attire. Hoenn itself is based on the southern Kyushu region, which includes the subtropical Ryukyu Islands, but the later games Pokémon Sun and Moon introduce a Hawaii-based region so she might have relatives there.
    • The player can choose to be this in Pokémon X and Y however your mom is still white, implying you're biracial. The player can also choose to be this in Sun and Moon, though the fact you're from Kanto implies you have some Japanese ancestry in you.
    • Olympia, the Gym Leader of Anistar City, also qualifies.
    • The protagonist of Pokémon Colosseum is a dark-skinned blond from an Arizona based region. It's impossible to tell if that is his natural skin tone or if it is a tan.
    • In Pokémon GO Blanche, the team leader of Teams Mystic is reminiscent of a dark-skinned blond, featuring a skintone that's inbetween Spark and Candela.
    • The mother in Pokémon Sun and Moon always has light brown skin, no matter what skin tone you use for the protagonist (whose canon/default skin tone is light). She is lighter toned than most of the native Alola characters but is still darker than most Kanto characters, which is the region where the protagonist's family lived until recently. It could be a tan but it's impossible to tell.
  • Chell of Portal has a tanned skin tone, dark hair and blue-gray eyes, and given that she never speaks, no concrete word on her ethnicity is ever given. The person she was modeled after, Alesia Glidewell, is of Brazilian and Japanese descent. In Portal 2 she's gotten lighter (and noticeably younger) for some reason.
  • Sheva Alomar in Resident Evil 5, modeled after South African-born Michelle van der Water, looks somewhere between fair-skinned black and Indian ethnicity, has an Indian-sounding name, and a quasi-British/Australian accent, although voiced by American actress Karen Dyer.
  • RosenkreuzStilette features its resident dark-skinned, voluptuous Time Master Sichte Meister, the active commander of RKS. Her portraits show her as tan-skinned, but her sprites show her as brown-skinned instead.
  • Much like it has (very nearly) Purely Aesthetic Gender, The Sims series features Ambiguously Brown characters, although it also features Ambiguously White characters because there are no real-world ethnicities; everyone is Simlish. If you want to set up a character as from a real place, it's as simple as naming them right, but NPC names often do have mismatches between first and last name or between name and appearance. The Sims 3 however shows a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Egypt and China, with the sims of the region looking the way they might in the real world. Some of the premade characters are implied by their names and biographies to be a certain ethnicity, but there are just as many who are not and fit this trope.
  • Beatrix LeBeau in Slime Rancher has vividly technicolor pastel-green hair but fairly dark skin. Though very little about her past is actually known, a couple of e-mails mention her and her friend Casey travelling to Africa so it's possible that, with a name like LeBeau, she's from a French-African country like Senegal or DR Congo.
  • The SCV driver from StarCraft. It doesn't help that the picture's damn tiny◊, but he is kind of dark-ish looking. However, the campaign-only "Civilian" unit, who is completely white, and the SCV have Stop Poking Me! lines which imply they're the same person, who gets drafted into the military as a worker.
  • Story of Seasons:
    • Denny◊, from Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness. Is he black, or just tan from fishing so much? Who knows.
    • Harvest Moon 64 and its related games also have Kai◊, who practically defines this trope. He's a dark skinned man who works at a vineyard in 64 and always wears a bandanna (or hat in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town). In Back To Nature and Friends Of Mineral Town he only appears in summer seasons so his skintone might be a tan, though it doesn't fade if he marries Popuri or the female protagonist in More Friends Of Mineral Town so it's probably not.
    • Selena from Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade. She's a belly dancer, her artwork is darker then the other characters but her model isn't much darker then anyone else in the game, and her Japanese name (Sheila) isn't much help. Her child with Luke in the latter game also has a darker skin tone then the other children. Although visiting her home island and meeting her parents Samson and Sue, it is heavily hinted that she's Pacific Islander in descent, often speculated to be closely related to the Okinawan people.
    • Shea from Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness counts. His backstory is unknown besides the fact he was Raised by Natives.
    • Several characters are heavily ambiguous and have unnatural hair colors. Nadi, Amir, and Sanjay come to mind.
  • Street Fighter:
    • The Dictator's true ethnic background is completely unknown. He has always been depicted as darker-skinned than most of the "white" fighters and simultaneously lighter-skinned than most of the "black" fighters. The Dictator was initially believed to be Asian as in his debut game, he was fought in Thailand and had Asian facial features. In the later games, however, the Dictator is fought in different countries and has indeterminate facial features, including white monochromatic eyes. He frequently changes bodies, and both of his names, "Vega" and "M. Bison", are not Asian-sounding. Thus, pinning down an ethnicity for the Dictator is very difficult, if not impossible. Overlaps with Mysterious Past, as not even his country of origin is known.
    • Dudley is English in nationality, but his ethnic background is hard to determine. He is dark-skinned, but his facial features resemble those of a stereotypical white Englishman.
    • Q from Street Fighter III: Third Strike is covered from head to toe in a stereotypical detective trenchcoat and an iron mask, and has very little visible skin, with only his neck showing, and sometimes his legs during some of his more powerful kick attacks. What little can be seen appears to be dark in-game, and his ending implies that he might be David, the CIA agent in charge of investigating Q, who is very much dark-skinned. However, most official art depicts him as having light skin, and one piece even shows a tuft of blond hair at the nape of his neck.
    • C. Viper is darker-skinned than the other female fighters in the series; she is speculated to be either Latina or a mixed ethnicity.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • During the Nintendo 64 era, Princess Daisy had darker skin than other human characters (possibly to distinguish her more from Princess Peach) as she's from a country with Middle-Eastern and Asian influences according to Super Mario Land. She was like this even as Peach's Super Smash Bros. Melee Palette Swap costume and in her trophy from the same game. She was given her light skin-tone starting with Mario Party 4 in 2002 (though, in turn, she received a slightly altered attire and a haircut). However, some post-2020 media has given Daisy a tanner complexion and brunette hair (while still keeping her blue eyes) but it's unknown if this design is supposed to be her official design moving forward.
    • There is also a non-human example with Morton Koopa Jr. of the Koopalings, who has inexplicable brownish skin, unlike the yellowish skin that Bowser and the other Koopas have. Made even weirder by the fact that his head is of a literal white color.
  • Raven from Tales of Vesperia has darker skin than the other party members, not to mention, many other people on Terca Lumeris. It's never really established why though. Considering Yaeger's skin turned darker after He supercharged his blastia heart, it may be a result of that and not an indication of race.
  • Tekken:
    • Christie Monteiro has a pretty divided fanbase on what ethnicity she actually is. Serves as Truth in Television, as she hails from Brazil, home to a myriad of ethnic blends and mixes, or pardos. She could very well be mulatto (Black + White), cafuzo (Black + Indian), Caboclo (Indian + White), Jucara (Black + Indian + White), Ainoco (Japanese + White), among possibly many others.
    • There's also Jinpachi Mishima. He's Japanese, but his skin tone is noticeably darker than all of his descendants — in his debut appearance, it was almost as dark as Marduk's (his human form, that is; when you fight him as the final boss, it's more of a reddish-purple or fiery orange, depending on which version of the game you're playing). He could be of mixed ancestry, as he's the only Mishima whose parents remain unidentified, or it could just be a tan. Presumably, Heihachi's mother was especially pale.
  • For most of the Uncharted series, Chloe stood out as the seemingly only non-white major character.The official response was that she was mixed race without specifying what those races were. She’s Australian and has a British last name even though she’s mixed race, further adding to the confusion. Finally in Lost Legacy, it was confirmed that her dad was Indian and her mother a white Australian woman and she just uses her mother’s last name.
  • Uncommon Time has only one dark-skinned character, Teagan. To make things even weirder, she seems to come from the same area as the protagonist, who has light tan skin. It's never explained why she's different than the other characters.
  • Unpacking: The protagonist's girlfriend/wife is shown as having darker skin in the final photograph. The exact shade is difficult to make out due to the setting sun, but she's a much warmer colour than the protagonist.
  • The Walking Dead (Telltale): Clementine's race is hard to distinguish visually. She has light olive skin, wavy brown hair, a narrow nose, thin lips, and almond-shaped eyes that are light brown. Her race is never discussed at any point in the game, but it's prompted a lot of debate among fans. Judging by their picture, both her parents are black, though her mother Diana has light skin. Diana was originally going to be Clem's stepmother, but this was changed in the final game. Clementine's appearance is based on Derek Sakai's daughter, who is Asian. The developers have stated that Clem is definitely African-American, though they have not stated that this is all she necessarily is.
  • We Happy Few has Victoria Byng, whose skin is a slightly darker shade than most of Wellington Well's inhabitants. The final DLC, "We All Fall Down", reveals that she's mixed-race (British father, Indian mother).
  • Wintermoor Tactics Club: Jacob. He's clearly not white, but it's also implied he's not black; the black member of the New Wave Appreciation Club identifies Alicia as one of the only other black people on campus alongside Septavia, but doesn't mention Jacob. This is as close to a statement on his ethnicity as we get. The epilogue claims he grew up to become Banksy, which is interesting because Banksy is British and Jacob distinctively isn't.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes place in a world where everyone is artificially created, yet they have different skin colors. It’s because they’re the souls of people who previously lived in Bionis and Mechonis and Alrest. Taion has darker skin compared to the rest of the main cast, but since it’s unknown what anyone’s ethnicity is, it’s hard to tell what race he is specifically. note 
  • While Yggdra Union's cast tends to have easy-to-identify "ethnicity", Ortega is a notable example; it's hard to tell whether he's supposed to be black or Hispanic. For the English version, he is cast as an unflatteringly stereotypical Mexican, complete with a whiny voice that doesn't fit his Boisterous Bruiser personality and appearance.

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