In a TV movie on the making of the Vietnam Memorial several people object to the design because it's made of black marble, which they keep referring to as the color of evil and loss and whatever. They stop doing that when an African American man, in uniform, stands up. Tells of his rank, his years of service, his combat experience, and his medals. He then says the next person who calls black evil or the color of loss is going to have to take it outside with him.
The Addams Family comprises of a variety of Horror Tropes, and appear highly sinister, but they hardly ever do anything that could be considered evil. They are, in fact, for the most part perfectly friendly and decent people (probably the healthiest family on TV when it first aired, and perhaps the most Happily Married too), if more than a bit weird and possessing unquestionably morbid and bizarre tastes.
Starting midway through the third season of Babylon 5, the heroes switch from blue-and-brown uniforms to black and silver ones after declaring independence from the increasingly-oppressive Earth Alliance.
Of course, just as many characters who wear dark wardrobes really are evil or even good people allied with bad people. It is a morally complicated show.
The alien enemies are, however, called "Shadows", and they do seem to be quite evil. Of course, both they and their counterparts the Vorlons, who style themselves as shining angelic shapes when out of their encounter suits, are really Ancient Astronauts with Blue-and-Orange Morality.
Babylon 5 also has two racial examples as minor members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. The Brakiri are nocturnal, have a mildly creepy humanoid appearance, and have a scary necromantic religion, but they are basically good people. The pak'ma'ra are Cthulhumanoid carrion-eaters who are unpopular because of their lack of inhibitions about eating any corpse that falls into their hands even if it was sentient and its people wanted to give it a more formal funeral, but similarly they are among the good guys.
The British show Being Human plays with this, as the main characters are a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost, all of whom just want to do their jobs, go down to the pub and be friends.
Although it's shown that most of the other vampires are very dangerous. While other werewolves just seem to try to get along on their own, Tully at least is shown to somewhat unbalanced (although this is probably owing more to being lonely than being a werewolf). Pretty much all the ghosts shown are perfectly nice people.
Billy the Exterminator: Billy's outfit is all-black and prominently features a skull-and-crossbones, yet Billy is a huge Animal Lover and is very nice to and popular with the children that he encounters.
One of the reasons for Billy's outfit is that he used to work in apartments with residents who didn't speak English, and so the skull-and-crossbones made him easy to identify.
Black Mirror: "Nosedive" overlaps this with Bright Is Not Good. It's set in a dystopian Crapsaccharine World where everyone rates each other on social media and this rating affects everything in your life, from where you can work or live to your priority for hospital treatment. Everyone is petty and sociopathic and wears bright, inoffensive pastel colours... except for the one prisoner who appears in the cell opposite the protagonist's in the ending, wearing a black suit. The two engage in an exchange of insults that has a lot of flirtatious undertones, and seem positively giddy that they can finally say whatever they want to each other: yes, this show made two strangers shouting "Fuck you!" at each other heartwarming. Also, the protagonist cries tears of black mascara in the end when she has her realisation about the society she lives in. Black is the thematic shorthand for truth and reality in a world where everything and everyone is bright, colourful and fake.
The Main Characters themselves, with the exceptions of Hughie and Starlight are darkly dressed and unpleasant but are most certainly the real superheroes of the world. Billy Butcher, Kimiko (who often looks like Sadako) and Frenchie in particular would be villains in any other setting, with Billy especially frequently pushing the boundaries of this trope (as many of his allies call him out on) but Butcher still has a Hidden Heart of Gold and is a Friend to All Children who is far more heroic than Homelander (his foil) who is firmly Light Is Not Good.
Subverted with Soldier Boy initally he seems like a dark-coloured jerky Anti-Hero who helps the heroes againist Homelander but as the season goes on and his past with Payback is revealed, it becomes clear Soldier Boy is really a Sociopathic Soldier with a bad case of Might Makes RightTestosterone Poisoningnarcissism. Played with though as awful as Soldier Boy is/gets as the Arc Villain he's still a Noble Demon who is much less despicable than Homelander his son or Stormfront.
Played straight with Black Noir, in stark contrast to the utterly vile Dark Is Evil comic version. He was once a good man who received horrific brain damage from the aforementioned Soldier Boy leading him to being Reforged into a Minion by Vought. Yet despite his status as The Heavy, his former better nature still lingers on, sparing innocent children he encounters on his assassinations and becomes a tragic Anti-Villain in Season 3 when Soldier Boy comes back into the picture.
It's safe to say that 99% of the demons are evil but they make a good point of showing that some of even the more evil-looking demons are actually good guys. Clem (the loose-skinned but amiable slacker demon from Buffy) is an obvious example. As well as Lorne, an interdimensional green demon with red eyes and horns who was from a Proud Warrior Race... and the White Sheep of his clan. Skip, though originally fitting the trope, later counts as a subversion.
Angel himself is a vampire, but he's (usually) a good guy, if very, very broody, and he's the hero of his series.
In Charmed, the three (at a time) main characters are dark-haired witches, but they're the heroes in the series, fighting against the forces of evil.
Of course, they go by the Wiccan definition of the word "witch", and Wiccan philosophy centres around doing no harm.
Cloak & Dagger (2018): Tyrone has darkness-based powers that give him the ability to teleport and see the fears of people he touches (to contrast Tandy's light powers). Not only is Tyrone the more morally upright of the pair (being a literal choir boy), but his powers are more defensive in nature. Even his ability to see fears isn't always a bad thing—it lets him see what motivates people and empathize with them.
In one episode of Criminal Minds a body shows up in a forest near a small town. The pentacle and candle wax nearby suggest Satanism, and the finger of suspicion falls on the local teenage Satanist group the Lords of Destruction and their college-age leader. As it turns out, not only are the LOD innocent, they're the most normal and well-adjusted kids in town, since they're the only ones who didn't spend the last year watching a stranger's body decay for fun.
Played straight in an episode of CSI, when a teacher is telling Grissom about a student who creeps her out badly. She points toward the lockers, and Grissom assumes she means the Goth boy there. The Goth boy walks away with an airy "Hey teach," as he passes them, revealing the preppy boy behind him who's the one the teacher was really referring to. It turns out there's a very good reason the teacher was creeped out by Preppy Boy.
The Ninth, played by Christopher Eccleston, wears a black leather jacket and had a very short military-style haircut — prior to this most Doctors wore very colorful outfits and funny hairdos. Despite his dark appearance, he's still as quirky as any other incarnation of the Doctor. He's not exactly evil, but he's definitely much darker than the other incarnationsin personality as well as appearance. This darker side is most apparent in "Dalek", and when this darker side manifests itself, it's almost scary:
Dalek:I am alone in the universe. The Doctor: Yep. [bitter smile] Dalek:So are you.[the Doctor's smile slips]We are the same. The Doctor: We're not the same! I'm not... no, wait. Maybe we are. You're right, yeah, okay. You've got a point. Because I know what to do. I know what should happen. I know what you deserve. [sadistic grin]Exterminate! [yanks down the shock lever] Dalek:[screaming]Have pity! The Doctor: Why should I? You never did! [turns it up further]
The Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, is a stark contrast to the goofy, light-hearted Eleventh (Matt Smith). Twelve has a stoic, intimidating face with a constantly-furrowed, bushy brow and perpetually unhappy expression. Gone are the bow-ties and fez hats: Twelve prefers a dark blue Badass Longcoat. His goofy sense of humour has been replaced by a very dry wit. And like Nine, his personality has darkened into The Stoic. Twelve's first Dalek story, "Into the Dalek", hearkens back to Nine's encounter, with the "Not So Different" Remark raised once more. Despite this drastic change, and his own doubts about his nature, Twelve is still fundamentally a good person and notably remains Friend to All Children (though he's more prickly about it), and he still cares deeply for the people he considers his friends. It's just a shame that who counts as "his friends" was limited only to Clara as of the end of Series 8. He's a Knight in Sour Armor — if you were to meet him, (a) he'd do everything he could to save your butt, and (b) you'd still want to punch him much of the time. "Mummy on the Orient Express" is a prime example of this, as he didn't display the least bit of sympathy when someone was targeted by the mummy (it can only be seen by its target and kills precisely at the 66 second mark) and kept telling him to describe it so that others could be saved, and later lies to manipulate the person he expects its next target to be to get them where he needed them to be. But it turns out that he needed to do that so he could redirect it to target him, risking his life on being able to figure out how to stop the creature in 66 seconds or less. And he does. In his later two seasons he stops insulting people just for the hell of it and ultimately goes down as one of the kindest Doctors of all — but he still ain't warm and cuddly. As he puts it in his Final Speech prior to his regeneration, "Always try to be nice but never fail to be kind."
This theme is extended into the video game Doctor Who Legacy with regards to Personality Powers — where other Doctors wield fire, electricity, ice/time, or nature-based energies, Nine and Twelve (as well as Eight, who doesn't fall under this trope) wield The Sacred Darkness.
The Shadow Proclamation, despite the name and the habit of their members to wear black, is a group of Space Police who appear to be good guys. They may, however, qualify for Good Is Not Nice given they have the Judoon as enforcers and, in their first proper appearance, demand the Doctor hand over the TARDIS so they can go to war.
"Planet of the Dead": Lady Christina de Souza is a thief dressed all in black with black hair. She's also the one-shot companion for this episode and is very useful to the Doctor, although morally ambiguous.
"Demons of the Punjab": The Thijarians are tall, imposing aliens in black, spiky armour regarded as the greatest assassins in the universe... but it turns out they've given up assassination after the loss of their homeworld and now stand witness for the deaths of people who would otherwise be unmourned.
In The Dresden Files, one episode features a young boy who is being followed around by ravens who turn into creepy-looking black-clad people. Turns out the ravens are the good guys, and they're following him to protect him from the real bad guy, the boy's teacher.
First, there is House Stark itself — a family of unshaven, dark-haired frontiersmen from the bleak, murderous North who dress in dark pelts and have a snarling wolf for a sigil... yet they're, unambiguously, the primary protagonists and heroes of the story, being one of the last families in Westeros that still puts Honour Before Reason.
Like in the original, the Night's Watch fits the bill perfectly. Conscripted outlaws, thugs and dishonoured nobles who wear all black and don black armour don't paint a very friendly image, yet they are a neutral force that forms the first line of defence against the chaotic powers that lurk beyond the Wall.
Melisandre likes to portray the religion of Light as Light Is Good, but is actually at best a fickle and extremely ambiguous magic force.
Brynden "Blackfish" also dresses mainly in black armour and is a bit of a bully, but he is far from evil.
Daenerys' main dragon is black and red, and she primarily wears ominous dark-colored outfits when she becomes queen. Yet despite a few slipups, Dany is one of the most genuinely heroic characters on the show, albeit someone with a dark reputation, since she liberated slaves in Essos, and conquered and toppled long-established states, and comes at the head of an invading army, while her father Mad King Aerys, and elder brother Rhaegar, are condemned as villains in Westeros. Likewise, as someone who brings dragons to Westeros, she is also associated with her great ancestor Aegon the Conqueror, and the dragons are a tool of great violence and subjugation, and remembered, by the likes of Renly, for burning whole villages.
In The Haunting of Hill House (2018), most of the ghosts haunting the Hill House are trying to scare the Crains away. For example, William Hill (the "Tall Man") seems to just be driven by curiosity and a desire to get his hat back and didn't intend any harm to Luke in haunting him. By extension, the spirit of Nell as the Bent-Neck Lady.
Despite his nickname correctly conveying his Knight in Shining Armor personality, Paladin on Have Gun – Will Travel dresses in a black outfit that's more along the lines of what a villainous gunfighter would wear in a traditional Western. In fact, a flashback shows that it was originally worn by a gunfighter who Paladin mistakenly thought was a villain and killed him, and he wears the outfit as a form of atonement.
Ice Fantasy: Yue Shen is a Toxin Healer, can manipulate poisons, and wears dark clothing, but she's not evil.
Kamen Rider Raia from Kamen Rider Ryuki has a Contract Monster named "Evildiver", and thus by extension most of his equipment is prefaced by the word (Evilvisor, Evil Whip). However, he's actually a very honorable and noble person who is one of Ryuki's few allies in the Rider War.
In Ryuki's American Adaption Kamen Rider Dragon Knight Kamen Rider Onyx a black version of Dragon Knight was assumed evil since its Japanese Version Ryuga was evil, and the Evil Twin trope in general, and that Kit had nightmares of the armor trying to destroy him, or himself as Onyx venting Len and Kase, making him understandably reluctant to use it when Eubulon handed the deck to him. However when Kit took the Onyx deck and armor it didn't corrupt him as he feared it would and it showed as Kit used it to fight Xaviax's forces until Adam his mirror twin gave him the Dragon Knight deck in the finale (after the final battle. He actually spends the entire final arc as Onyx, and never wears the Dragon Knight armor again after Xaviax takes it in back in "Xaviax's Wrath.")
Interestingly, it's a straight reversal of the usual situation: Adam is the Evil Twin who'd betrayed the Riders before, and is now The Mole, pretending to have been a victim of Xaviax's manipulations and not truly a traitor. Kit is The Hero and holder of the Dragon Knight powers for most of the series, though Adam was the first Dragon Knight offscreen. This makes KRDK quite likely the only time you've ever seen the original red-clad hero meet a black repaint of himself from another dimension... and you're rooting for the latter, not the former.
While Ryuki and Dragon Knight have very different plots, Raia's counterpart Sting is also a true hero in a series where most Riders are out for themselves. The Japanese name for his Advent Beast, Evildiver, is kept (most monster names aren't mentioned onscreen, but we get a very good look at the Evildiver advent card more than once.)
Also, Len, Kamen Rider Wing Knight. He is a scary guy in black/dark blue armor with bat Advent Beast. Until you get to know him. Actually, Len is a nice guy, who will go to hell and back to save someone dear to him. He just doesn´t show it to most people.
The Dark Kiva armor in Kamen Rider Kiva is used by three people: King (the Big Bad), Otoya (who's good through and through), and Taiga (who is antagonistic but not evil and eventually becomes a good guy). Kivat the 2nd, who provides the Dark Kiva powers, isn't a bad person himself; he only goes along with King because he's loyal to the guy's wife, and pulls a Heel–Face Turn when she does, further prompted by seeing his Kid from the Future Kivat the 3rd partnered with Otoya's Kid from the Future Wataru.
Kiva stands for King Vampire but he's the good guy. Also, all his buddies are based on horror movie monsters but help him with protecting humans. Mind you, they weren't so good in the past, but over flashbacks, we get to see how they became good guys.
Kotaro Minami AKA Kamen Rider BLACK. He's chosen to be one of the leaders of the Gorgom cult to eventually rule the world and his transformed form is majorly black colored. Instead, he uses his power to destroy Gorgom and protect humans. His rival Shadow Moon provides a nice contrast with silverish white color scheme.
Kamen Rider Kuuga has his Ultimate Form which, in its 'normal' state (fueled by anger) could cause the End of the World as We Know It and could destroy the planet with one Rider Kick. Also, it and his previous form (Amazing Mighty), are black in color. However, Kuuga uses them to fight the Gurongi and save the world.
It also gives the finger to Red Eyes, Take Warning, as when it's not fueled by anger, Ultimate Kuuga's eyepieces go from black to the standard red.
In Kamen Rider Decade, Rising Ultimate Kuuga is gold, but looks freaking scary and is covered with Spikes of Villainy. It was a bad thing only at first when the bad guys had forced him into that form and are controlling him. When he is himself again, we again get to see him go from evil and black-eyed to benign and red-eyed, and he goes on to help the other Riders do battle with Shadow Moon and later the Neo Organism.
In The Mandalorian the titular Bounty Hunter is a case of this. At first Din Djarin seems little different from the other facelessHelmets Are Hardly Heroic ruthless cutthroats such as Jango and Bobba and his color scheme is a cold silver and black. The first hint we get that he's actually a more noble character, is that he is pleased that his excess Beskar will help the Mandalorian foundlings. Then when he finds The Child aka Grogu he reveals himself to Bruiser with a Soft Center who protects and raises his new adoptive son. This compassion is so jarring with the usual bounter hunter way, that the cold-blooded Imperial Client is confused by it when Mando asks what they'll do with the child after initally handing him over to them, noting it's "uncharacteristic of one of your reputation". By the end of the season and throughout the next Din is willingly to take what's left of the Empire to protect his green little son.
Irish children's programme The Morbegs had a whole episode centred around the "festival of darkness" that the Morbegs brought to Ireland from Morbegland. The human host of the day was afraid of the dark, but as the Morbegs said, "Don't fear the darkness! It's not bad, it's just different!"
The Munsters are a family of popular Hollywood monsters that act like your average Dom Com type family.
John Reese practically lives in a black suit, but he's very definitely the good guy.
The Machine has a black-themed interface, a scary-sounding name, and tends to use very sinister-seeming methods to collect information. Despite all this, it is very much a Benevolent A.I..
Black Rangers, naturally. Black suits, dark energy auras, (though not quite black, as it's hard to make something glow black) and a tendency (though not absolute rule) to be the one with a big smashy weapon like a huge ax or hammer. Naturally, they're as heroic as anyone else on the team.
Rescue Ink is a show about Bad Ass Biker type guys with hot rods and tattoos, some even with past jail time... who rescue helpless and abused animals.
The Sarah Jane Adventures: In "The Mad Woman in the Attic", Eve is a red-skinned alien girl with a disturbing hairdo who mind-controls her "friends" into endlessly riding the rides of an abandoned fairground. And then we find out she's an orphan and refugee from the Time War who doesn't know any better, and that she's actually sweet and kind.
Played fatally for laughs in this Saturday Night Liveskit. Heaven's commitment to helping prayers is indeed doubtful when the messenger is Christopher Walken adorned in black.
Eleven in Season 2 when she gets her "bitching" dark makeover in LA, she's happy to pay back those who hurt her mother but draws the line at murder and upon returning to Hawkins keeps her dark look while saving the day from the Mind Flayer. Eleven in general can quite frighting with her power when provoked, being very similar to Carrie to the point where she geuinely wonders if she's a monster, but she's still ultimately a good person.
Subverted with Kali, initially she appears to be a case of this being a dark punk Anti-Hero taking revenge on those who took away from her mother and teaching her "sister" Eleven to hone her powers. Except as the episode goes on, it's clear Kali has dissolved into He Who Fights Monsters territory happy to expolit her ablities for her own selfish gain and is really a False Friend to El.
Eddie from Season 4 is an epic case of this. His Establishing Character Moment is him being a rowdy and crass troublemaker in the school cafeteria who antagonises the popular crowd and is harsh and demanding fellow D&D lovers to Dustin and Mike. This along with Eddie's Heavy Metal interests, other demonic allusions (being head of a club called Hellfire), drug dealing and almost slashing Steve with a broken bottle when startled from a hiding place paints a negative picture on the surface. Yet as we see in his touching scenes with his crush Chrissy as well as Dustin, Eddie is really a sweet and funny guy who has multiple Hidden Depths and by the end of the season proves be geuinely heroic. This contrasts well to Eddie's foil Jason, who looks and seems a tradional hero but reveals a uglier and cruelly violent side to his personailty after a Sanity Slippage.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the Star Trek franchise as a whole, got more militaristic black-and-gray uniforms with the only the barely-visible shirts beneath them having the usual colors indicating department. (This after going from mostly-colored uniforms of TNG to just colored shoulders when it began.) Of course, Starfleet is still the good guys, though the series was getting Darker and Edgier at this point.
Zigzagged with the Klingons in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they're still an unpleasant Proud Warrior Race with barbarian aesthetics such as spikey ships and clothing, but TNG unlike the original series and its movies highlight that a good deal of Klingons have the capacity for goodness and honor. Worf in particular despite being as cuddly as a sea urchin, is deeply protective and caring to his crewmates as well as his baby mama and son. Of course there's still plenty of Klingons who play Dark Is Evil straight.
"In My Time of Dying": Dean is on the verge of death and has become something like a ghost wandering the hospital. He sees a ghostly specter that seems to be trying to kill him and another patient. He meets a girl who seems to be in his same situation, but it turns out to be the Reaper he saw. She took a human form to be able to talk to him, and she turns out to be very sympathetic to his situation, but gently explains that he might become an angry spirit if he doesn't follow her into the afterlife.
"Bloodlust": Sam and Dean encounter another hunter, Gordon Walker, who is working a case trying to take out a nest of vampires. The twist is that it turns out that the vampires are the good guys in this scenario and have no interest in killing anybody, while Gordon is an Ax-CrazySoft-Spoken Sadist who just wants all monsters to die and doesn't care at all if innocent blood has to be shed in the process.
Sam himself is an example of this trope as one of the demon Azazel's Special Children, a group of people who developed psychic powers from being fed Azazel's blood at six months old. He does start to verge on Knight Templar in S4 when he embraces his psychic powers and starts fuelling them by working with demons and drinking their blood, but even then, he was still doing it with good intentions, as it gave him the ability to exorcise and eventually kill demons without killing the people they're possessing. Also, Andrew Gallagher, another one of the Special Children who, while mischievous, is a genuinely good person.
"Man's Best Friend With Benefits" introduces James Frampton, a witch who, in his familiar's words, "has used his powers for nothing but good", and who saved the Winchesters' lives in a Noodle Incident involving a lunatic alchemist.
The Antichrist, Jesse Turner, is a genuinely sweet kid who has no idea the kind of damage his mere existence causes. When he learns of the power he has, he runs away to Australia to avoid the Apocalypse.
While ghosts are generally evil, there are exceptions, like Mary Winchester in "Home", the Death Omen Claire Becker in "The Usual Suspects", Molly McNamara from "Roadkill", the ghosts in "Hollywood Babylon" (who were murderers, but only because they were bound against their will by a human occultist), Bobby Singer, and Kevin Tran.
Season 8 introduces a vampire named Benny whom Dean befriends while in Purgatory. While when he first appears in Purgatory he makes clear that he's a monster who's only helping Dean for personal gain, he shows while on Earth that since he last died, he really has grown a conscience and ultimately sacrifices his own life to save Sam and Bobby.
Garth is every bit as friendly as a werewolf as he was when he was human.
It's a subject of hot debate both in- and out-of-universe whether Amy Pond, the kitsune from "The Girl Next Door", falls under this. While she did kill a few people, she had a good reason for it (her son had a life-threatening ailment that could only be cured by eating freshly-killed human brains), and they all arguably deserved it.
The pishtaco Maritza in "The Purge", who uses her fat-sucking ability to help the already obese get rid of excess weight.
Dr. Eleanor Visyak, one of the few benevolent creatures to come out of Purgatory.
Jack Kline, Lucifer's son, turns out to be a wide eyed innocent who loves his adopted family (the Winchesters) and world.
Averted and subverted throughout Teen Wolf, as there are werewolves who are more good/neutral, werewolves who are bad, creatures that are involuntarily evil, people that are purely evil, and so on.
Ye Hua always wears black, but he's one of the protagonists and certainly isn't evil.
Li Jing is Prince (and later King) of the Ghost Tribe, has horns growing from his face, and usually wears dark colours. But he isn't truly a villain; he's just weak and selfish.
Much like the books and games, the eponymous Witcher Geralt of Rivia fits this to a T. He's six foot, wears dark armour and a cloak, has a gravely voice along white hair and yellow eyes which in most fantasy fiction is how the villains would usually look and dress. Except Geralt is actually a Bruiser with a Soft Center, being very caring to his allies such as Ciri and Yennerfer and the innocent in general even if he is feared and hated by most people that he comes across for his status as a mutant and Hunter of Monsters.
Similarly Yennefer is a case of this, after her magic treatment to fix her hunchback she looks the archetypal Femme FataleVain Sorceress which is not helped by the moments she magically messes with people, claims she wants "everything" and desires worship. Though as seen with when protecting the baby in Episode 4, her care for her fellow mages in the battle of Sodden and her love for Geralt she's Not Evil, Just Misunderstood and can be a good person when given the chance. Played with in Season 2, as Yennefer has a Despair Event Horizon at losing her magic (after already being rendered infertile as a cost for her beauty) and strays down the dark path to extent of betraying Geralt, although she becomes The Atoner shortly after.
is a show about Bad Ass Biker type guys with hot rods and tattoos, some even with past jail time... who rescue helpless and abused animals.