Ambiguously Brown / Western Animation

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Ambiguously Brown in Western Animation.

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• Adventure Time:
  • Simon Petrikov/The Ice King, back when he was human, though his surname is Russian.
  • Also Moseph Mo Maestro Giovanni. Given the name he might be Italian.
  • Marceline has light blue skin, like her demonic father, but a flashback shows that her mother was a dark-skinned (possibly black?) human. In Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, her alternate, gender flipped, and completely mundane version Marshall Lee is clearly black.
• The Amazing World of Gumball takes place in a world that has all kinds of different anthropomorphic creatures, from Funny Animals to Animate Inanimate Objects, which is why it’s hard to classify what count as “races” in this world. However, many fans believe that Darwin, an anthropomorphic fish, is supposed to be black, partly because his voice actors are always black as well.
• Ally from Amphibia might be Latina like her voice actress, but also looks like she could be East Asian.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: While Frylock is just a red box of French fries, there are some hints that he might be of African-American descent. His voice actor Carey Means is black, not to mention Shake lampshades this in "Boost Mobile".
  Shake: You sound black. Where are you from?
• Arthur:
  • A lot of fans think Francine is black but this has never been brought up in the show. She's Jewish and implied to be of Polish descent but is also second cousins twice removed with jazz musician Joshua Redman, who is of both Ashkenazi Jewish and African descent. The fact that she's technically not human doesn't help either.
  • Even though his skin color is redder/less brown than Arthur himself (which, again, isn't saying much in this show), Allan/Brain is apparently black; one episode features a visit from his cousin from Africa, and in the Christmas special it's revealed that his family celebrates Kwanzaa.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, it's never revealed what Nation Guru Pathik is from; he spent most of his life living alongside the Air Nomads and identifies with their culture but is not an airbender himself. He's modelled on a Hindu holy man, looks South Asian and has a slight Indian accent, but the world of the series doesn't contain a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to India and nobody else who looks like him appears in the series.
  • Expanded in The Legend of Korra season 3, where more brown skinned characters start showing up across the earth kingdom with no clear ethnic analog, including a prominent new character named Kai. In season 4 this also includes several members of Kuvira's military force, who are not persecuted under her policy to purge ethnic immigrants. All this suggests they are seen as ethnically native (and common) in the Earth Kingdom, despite not being shown beforehand.
  • This trope is also invoked inside Republic City. As a consequence of it becoming a melting pot of various cultures, it is no longer possible to determine someones ethnic heritage solely based on their appearance. This leads Bolin to be a bit unsure of Korra's ethnicity after she claims she can earthbend, and to apologize for assuming based on her wardrobe.
• Big City Greens has an Amazing Technicolor Population, so it’s hard to tell what counts as individual races. Apparently, Gloria is Japanese-American, but she has purple skin. Andromeda, who also has purple skin, is commonly theorized to be black, since that’s what skin color her voice actress has.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • Darryl. It's even lampshaded when Bob suspects that he might have been bullied for being a minority, but can't seem to figure out which race he actually is. Bob guesses that Darryl is black, but Darryl never confirms or denies it. The only other possible hint regarding Darryl's race is that his voice actor, Aziz Ansari, is of Indian descent.
  • The Belchers themselves are noticeably darker skinned then the white characters and they all have black hair. Word of God is that "Belcher" is from a French or French-Canadian ancestor, and the rest of their family are "Greek-Armenian-Italian-Jewish-German."
    Mr Fischoder: Are you an immigrant, Bob?
    Bob: No.
    Mr Fischoder: Oh. I just assumed you were since you're, you know, swarthy.
    Gene: What's swarthy mean?
    Bob: It means dark and hairy.
    Gene: That's you! And me in the future!
• The main family in the Caleb and Sophia videos are a light shade of brown, but no hint is ever given about their ethnicity, other than the father's bizarre accent, which no one else in the family has.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Gaia is an interesting, justified example. As the Spirit of the Earth, she was drawn racially ambiguous so as to embody as many of Earth's ethnicities as possible. Thus, she has olive skin that can denote anything from a southern European to a northern Indian, wavy black hair, high cheekbones, and almond-shaped blue eyes.
• Carmen Sandiego portrays the title character as a dark-skinned redhead and actually makes it a plot point that she doesn't know her ancestry. For the entire first season all she knows is that V.I.L.E. found her as a baby in Argentina with a Russian doll.
• Bill from Curious George after being given a Race Lift in the animated series. One episode shows his mother from behind, and she appears to be Caucasian, suggesting Bill is mixed-race.
• In Daria, a fair number of fans thought that Jane is supposed to be Asian, though she's actually white. Interestingly, this might be because her final design is actually a modified earlier design for Ms. Li, the school's Asian principal.
• Athena in the latest Dennis & Gnasher animated series. It's not made clear whether she's half black or heavily tanned. All we know about her ethnicity is her father is white.
• Dino Squad: Fiona has tanned skin but her ethnicity isn't made clear. While her mother somewhat shares the skintone with her daughter, the fact that her father and sister have white skin probably isn't helping.
• Dorg Van Dango: Fretta has a noticeably darker complexion than either of her two fair-skinned children. The Van Dango family's race has never been officially stated either.
• Doug. Many characters seem to have brown skin color, but it's never known if that springs out of a real ethnicity when most are far weirder colors. It's hard to tell if Patti is a dark-skinned blonde intentionally or the brown is stylized like the green- and blue-skinned characters.
• In The Dragon Prince, Callum and Ezran have an Asian^note or whatever their world's equivalent would be called mother, a fact which many fans didn't realize until we see their maternal aunt. Meanwhile Ezran's father, Harrow, is clearly black while Callum's father is presumably white. (This whole issue was initially more confusing because early promotional materials described the pair as step-brothers rather than half-brothers.)
• Jonny 2x4 and Rolf from Ed, Edd n Eddy, though Jonny might be black. Jonny is implied to be black as twice he's been shown to have a curly brown afro when his hair is long, and his short cut is pretty popular with black boys. Rolf is heavily in the air though, with his Ruritanian accent.
• Family Guy:
  • A Cutaway Gag of a trailer for a movie starring Stewie and the Rock is derailed when the narrator starts questioning the Rock's race.
    Don LaFontaine: One's a baby, and the other's... Black. I think. Or at least... part-Black... Or... Hispanic. You know, I think there might be some Filipino in there, yeah, probably some Filipino. I mean, if he's Black, it's definitely... diluted. I mean... one of his parents must be white. What the hell is Jessica Alba for that matter? If I were forty years younger, I'd plow that 'till next July.
  • Peter wrote a romance novel called "The Hot Chick Who Was Italian or Maybe Some Kind of Spanish".
  • Two recurring characters originally introduced as "Foreign guys who've been here long enough to only almost sound American." They're dark-skinned blond and probably supposed to be Europeans of some sort, but all clues as to their origin are deliberately vague or ridiculous.
• In Gargoyles:
  • When the main characters are temporarily turned into humans, Goliath becomes this. This is because the gargoyles' human forms were designed to resemble their voice actors, but it wouldn't have made sense to make Goliath African-American like Keith David, since the rest of his clan were white.
• Ursula of the second George of the Jungle series has brownish skin and greenish eyes.
• Doctor Psycho in Harley Quinn (2019) is shown to have a much darker skin tone than his own mother, yet apparently lacked the N-Word Privileges to avoid getting Punched Across the Room by Black Manta.
• Rhonda's friend Nadine from Hey Arnold! has skin that is a light shade of brown and her hair is blonde. (During the episode "Parents Day," it's implied that she's mixed-race — one of the parent couples consists of a blond white man and a black woman who share Nadine's facial structure.)
• The Hollow: Adam and Mira are both considerably more dark-skinned than Kai, especially Adam. Subverted in that Adam seems to be white-passing in real life, though Mira is Asian.
• Jesse and his family in Infinity Train. Word of God says that they're Apache.
• Viper from Jackie Chan Adventures has darker skin than the Chans, but her ethnicity is never made clear. The Christmas Episode shows her attending a Hanukkah party, implying that she's of Jewish and Israeli descent.
• Rio from Jem has a Latino surname and darker skin than the white characters but Word of God is it wasn't intentional to make him Latino. Future adaptations ignore this and have him as Latino.
• Henry from KaBlam!. He's tan...ish, with green hair. Of course, he and June are cartoon characters even In-Universe, so it's not like he has to make sense.
• Kim Possible:
  • Bonnie Rockwaller, though it's implied she's just a white tanning addict based on her vanity and her family members. The alternative is that she is mixed.
  • The Seniors (Sr. and Jr.) are dark and have Spanish accents. Junior is canonically a tanning addict; in his first scene he's under a tanning lamp the size of a hot air balloon ^note Fridge Horror when one wonders how he'll reach his dad's age without succumbing to skin cancer. According to the series bible, the Seniors are Castilian.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Zane. He has brown skin and purple hair, making it impossible to guess what ethnicity he is. His voice actor, Carlos Alazraqui, is Latino, but he's a white Latino from Argentina.
• Henri Lefebvre from Liberty's Kids has noticeably browner skin than his two definitely-white companions, and everyone else on the show who is unambiguously white, but his ethnicity is never explained, his only backstory being that he is from France, his parents died from the plague on the way to America, and then the captain made Henri his debt slave until Moses and James rescued him. This is especially odd for a show that frequently dealt with issues of racism in the Revolutionary War period, with conversations about slavery, violence against Native Americans, and even Antisemitism in the colonies.
• Jasper Jones of Littlest Pet Shop (2012) has brownish skin, dark-brown hair and brown eyes, a white dialect and facial features, a Persian-originating given name and an English surname that was adopted by numerous freed African slaves from their estate managers and owners.
• Kiva Andru from Megas XLR, who doubles as dark-skinned redhead.
• Metalocalypse: Dethklok's new producer Abigail is definitely this. Leonard Rockstein/Doctor Rockzo, the Rock and Roll Clown (he does cocaine) appears to be at first, but is confirmed as Caucasian in "Cleanso".
• Mike Chilton, his sister Capri, Tennie, her father Bracket, Kaia and some of the Terras on Motorcity. Word of God has confirmed that Mike is mixed race.
• Billy Jukes from Peter Pan & the Pirates. The taller twin from the Lost boys as well.
• Recess: Guru Kid, the Diggers, Skeens, and Miss Grotke. Miss Grotke does have curly hair so she could be at least part black.
• Rick and Morty: Rick last name "Sanchez" is a Latin American name and he has a very slightly different skin tone from the other characters, but that's about it. When asked about this, Roiland stated that he considers it irrelevant. In the commentary of "Auto-Erotic Assimilation", Rick was confirmed to be of Hispanic descent. "Rest and Ricklaxation" shows that his skin tone might have something to do with his lifestyle, as once he's removed of his psychological toxins his hair and skin become brighter.
• The Rocket siblings from Rocket Power. Their skin tone is on a similar level as their tan Hispanic friends, and it doesn't appear to be a suntan, but their dad is white. It is suggested that their late mother was of Hawaiian descent; in The Movie their dad even got remarried to an old flame from Hawaii who was her best friend.
• In Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends one part of the Detail Team is a woman named Neema, who while apparently Greek can pass as a number of ethnicities, which is useful for her job, which requires her to be able to blend into just about any situation anywhere in the world.
• The Simpsons:
  • Judge Roy Snyder. His skin color has changed from yellow to brown repeatedly throughout the series to stay brown.
  • Sherri and Terri. They have the same sort of pale skin as other Asian characters throughout the show, but it's unclear if they are Asian.
  • The ethnic street food vendor from “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”. He has a thick unidentified accent and his skin is a noticeably darker yellow than normal. He appears to be an immigrant from somewhere in the Mediterranean or potentially the Middle East.
• South Park:
  • This show has a particular problem with possibly Asian characters, in part due to its distinctively simple style. When a character is specifically supposed to be Asian, they're usually designed like a white person who's squinting. The head sixth-grader has this look, but his race has never been noted in-story.
    • An early episode specifically notes that Kevin Stoley's parents are from China, and Chef calls out the others for making fun of his "ethnicity." However, Kevin looks identical to all the white characters (without a "squint") and has a rather European-sounding surname. Were his parents white people who lived in China? Was he adopted? But then, how is Chinese his "ethnicity?" Fans tend to just say he's Asian and not question it further.
    • Likewise, Michael of the Goth Kids is animated like any other white kid, but "Goth Kids 3" shows his parents to be a white guy and an Asian woman. To further confuse things, a line of dialogue in "Raisins" could be taken to say that his parents are divorced, implying this woman is his stepmom...but the Goth Kids are somewhat Unreliable Narrators when it comes to angsty back stories, and he specifically calls her "Mom."
  • Big Gay Al also counts. The Wikia page for him just says he's "heavily tanned."
• Good luck telling what most of the many race lifted characters in The Spectacular Spider-Man are supposed to be (except for Ned Lee and Kenny Kong, who are clearly Asian). Race-lifted Liz Allan is at least part Latina, though her exact background is somewhat complicated (to explain why she has a typically British last name despite her ethnicity and slight Puerto Rican accent). Word of God says that Liz is half Puerto Rican (and half white?) For another example, the Warren brothers are supposed to be Indian.
• Star Wars Rebels: According to Lucasfilm executive Pablo Hidalgo, all the human leads on the show are multiracial by Earth standards. There has so far been no confirmation of any of their ethnicities – although it'd make no sense to say something like "Luke Skywalker is of European descent" anyway, considering there’s no Europe in a galaxy far, far away.
  • Ezra Bridger is a tricky one. He looks more-or-less Arabic, yet his eyes are blue: not impossible but highly uncommon in real-world Arabic people. From what we see of his parents, his father had brown skin and curly dark hair, while his blue eyes come from his mother who is lighter but still non-white. Supplementary materials (as well as the background characters) show that Ezra's features are common among the humans of his home planet, so, if anything, his ethnicity would be "Lothalian". In Ahsoka, his live-action actor Eman Esfandi is of Iranian and Ecuadorian descent.
  • Sabine Wren is also ethnically hard to pin down. Mandalorians are a bit more diverse and we've seen clearly white and black members, with the most famous being the Māori Jango Fett and his many clones. The reason this stands out is that in The Clone Wars the entire planet was lilly white and one of their leaders loudly claimed Jango wasn't ethnically Mandalorian at all (a later series established he was adopted). Her father is clearly East Asian, though. In Ahsoka, her live-action actress Natasha Liu Bordizzo is of Chinese and Italian descent.
  • Kanan Jarrus has the darkest skin of the crew but doesn't have a family or even a planet to pin down. The creators have confirmed he was designed without a specific race in mind (although some fans see him as Latino like his voice actor).
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Kelly has dark skin, but mint green hair (and is more similar to wool than hair), has no nose and comes from another dimension. It is the same case with Brunzetta and Princess Quásar Caterpillar, who look like black women but are actually from another dimension (and Brunzetta is apparently thousands of years old).
• Steven Universe:
  • Lars in the unaired pilot had brown skin and dark hair, but in the final show he is noticeably lighter (though not quite light skinned) and has orange hair. Word of God initially just stated he was not quite. Later episodes implied he's Filipino on his fathers side and got the orange hair from his lighter-skinned mother.
  • Jamie, Kevin, and Buck have somewhat dark skin tones and no stated ethnicity, though Buck's father is clearly white. The same goes for the Zoomans, but seeing as they are descendants of a small group of humans from various different ethnic groups who have been breeding amongst themselves for five millennia, it's unlikely they are any ethnicity we would recognize.
• In Storm Hawks, Piper's race isn't stated, but she is the only dark-skinned human in the Storm Hawks.
• Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series. He has the same skin colour as Superman, which is slightly darker than most of the other white characters — but he has fuller lips, a more prominent brow, and a voice that to many sounded like it had African-American accent (his voice actor, Clancy Brown, is white). He was supposed to look like Telly Savalas, a Greek-American actor. In Justice League, he is given a lighter skin tone to rectify the confusion, which led some viewers to think he'd been given a Race Lift.
• Whyatt from Super Why! has olive skin, and it's unclear if he is Caucasian or Latino. It's possible he's biracial, since his mother has fair skin and his father has olive skin.
• Princess Ariel in Thundarr the Barbarian. Justified, since you'd expect there to be different ethnicities 3000 years in the future.
• Quite a few characters on Total Drama, though Word of God has cleared up some of the confusion: Courtney is Hispanic, Noah is Indian, Justin is native Hawaiian, and Katie is white (with a tan). Sierra remains unidentified, although it's been stated that she has German family members.
  • Mostly averted with the Revenge of the Island cast, where the ethnicities of the various minority characters are pretty obvious — with the exception of Mike (who is stated by Word of God to be Italian) and Anne Maria (who is probably also meant to be Italian, since she's a Joisey stereotype).
  • In the Pahkitew Island cast, Dave (who is Indian according to Word of God) and Jasmine (who is popularly believed to be Australian Aboriginal, but this has never been confirmed by the creators). Also Sky, whom many think is Asian but is said by Word of God to be Native American (which is hinted in the show as she is able to speak Cree and her audition tape has a dreamcatcher in the background). Some fans also think that Max looks Asian and that Shawn may be Hispanic, though these are less obvious examples and have never been confirmed by Word of God.
  • In Island (2023), Priya and Raj are Indian (though Raj does have a heavy Canadian accent, implying that he might be biracial). Chase is East Asian, Zee is Hispanic and Axel is Latina, and Nichelle's last name being "Ladonna" (Italian for "the woman") might imply that she's at least part-Italian.
  • Then there's Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race contestants Devin, and sisters Emma and Kitty, all of whom appear to be East Asian, but it's never specified what kind. (Though in Kitty's case, she's likely Japanese due to the hair ties she wears, as well as the pigtails she has, which signify her Genki Girl personality. Also, her name, Kitty, is short for "Kitsune", which is the Japanese word for fox). There's also Brody, Ellody, Jen, and Lorenzo, who are all dark-skinned but never have their ethnicity stated in the show (Word of God says Brody is Hispanic, Ellody is Indian, Lorenzo is Italian, and Jen is white with a tan).
• Alex from Totally Spies!. Her dad is white (shown in Season 4) and her mom looks exactly like her but darker. Her dad gets a complete makeover and becomes brown in Season 6.
• Sari from Transformers: Animated is a dark-skinned redhead although her adopted father Isaac Sumdac is obviously Indian, complete with accent. This may or may not have been intentional, it's revealed that Sari is something of a human/Cybertronian hybrid from a protoform absorbing Issac's DNA. The German dub gives Isaac a Chinese accent. Make of that what you will.
• Sam Alexander/Nova from Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) is shown to be lighter than Ava and Luke, but darker than Danny and Peter. The comics establish that he's mixed race, with a white father and a Mexican mother.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender has Allura, Hunk, and Lance as varying shades of brown. This is a departure from the original source, which depicted the entire team as white.
  • Hunk and Lance were eventually confirmed to be Samoan/African American and Cuban, respectively, removing the ambiguity for them. Meanwhile, Allura is of an alien species, so the ambiguity was likely intentional for her.
  • As seen in a flashback episode of Season 3, Honerva, prior to becoming Haggar, though she regains her true form in Season 6.
  • Adam, Shiro's ex-boyfriend, and Curtis, Shiro's eventual husband also fit this trope.
• Winx Club:
  • Nabu looks like he could be black, white with a tan, or Hispanic. Similar to The Princess and the Frog, this may have been done to avoid controversy since he was engaged to Princess Aisha, the token dark-skinned fairy. Judging by his parents, many fans think he was meant to be Indian-coded.
  • Flora is this to fans as well. There were constant debates as to whether she was a fair skinned black girl or a tanned white girl (and having a sister who's red haired). She's officially supposed to be Latina, going by the Word of God that she was modelled after Jennifer Lopez.
  • Despite being a pale blonde, even Stella could get this, as she seems to be coded as a white Latina/Spaniard. Not only does her Season 1 outfits (such as her princess outfit), her pink princess dress from Season 3, and concept art invoke Mesoamerican and Spanish influence, Word of God confirms she was inspired by Cameron Diaz, who is also Hispanic. Her skin is slightly darker than Bloom and Tecna's, but it also makes sense for a "sun and moon" fairy to have a tan.
  • Princess Galatea is an interesting case. Not only is she a light-skinned blonde, her name literally means "white as milk" and she was even given an Irish accent in the Cinelume dub. That said, she is from Musa's homeland, which is normally painted as Asian-inspired. During the Nick run, her father was introduced as being much more Asiatic in appearance, complete with a kimono, suggesting she is Eurasian coded. By Season 8, however, she practically turns into a clone of Stella.
• WordGirl :
  • WordGirl gets double points for being a generically-brown girl adopted by a different-color-of generically-brown (a redder shade) family, nothing about whom seems ethnic in any specific way (last name being Botsford), and possibly another half-point for actually being a Human Alien foundling.
  • Minor villain Miss Question is this as well, though her curly hair implies she might be black.
• Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: Xavier and Yadina have tan skin, but their ethnicity is unknown. However, "I Am Tomioka Tessai" implies that they may be Hispanic.
• X-23 from X-Men: Evolution is ambiguously brown despite being a clone of Wolverine, who is white. It's explained that the Wolverine DNA sample was incomplete, so the female scientist that made her used some of her own DNA as well. Since she was moved to the comics she's generally depicted with Raven Hair, Ivory Skin, though she occasionally appears darker, such as during her stint as Captain Universe. In Logan she is depicted as Mexican but played by a Spanish actress.