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  • Andor: Members of the Imperial Security Bureau always wear white uniforms, while their job is to repress resistance against the Empire.
  • Jasmine the Big Bad of Angel Season 4 is an angelically beautiful woman who primarily wears white, is motherly and kind and turns LA into seemingly Utopia of love and peace. However she’s still a Eldritch Abomination in human form who consumes dozens of people at once and beneath her glamor she’s maggoty and rotting. When things don’t go her way Jasmine reveals herself to be a petulant and cruel Jerkass God. Angel himself points out, for all her seraphic goals and Utopianism Jasmine deprives people of freewill, which therefore makes her evil in his eyes.
  • Babylon 5 has Vorlons, who look like angels and seem to be helping the younger species fight off the evil Shadows. However, it turns out that the conflict is not between good and evil, but order and chaos. Neither extreme is beneficial for the younger species, who are exploited as pawns in a deadly game. Ultimately, the younger species band together to kick both the Shadows and the Vorlons out of the galaxy.
  • In Battlestar Galactica (2003), the visions involving the Final Five are decidedly ominous even though the Five are clad in white robes and surrounded by white light. In addition, D'Anna is instantly struck down after trying to approach one of them. Yet the actual Five straddle more along the lines of Good Is Not Nice.
  • The Blackadder II episode "Beer" introduces Edmund's relatives the Whiteadders, whose piety and holiness stands in stark contrast to arch-cynic Edmund. However, it turns out that they're even more evil. Or at least she is; he's under a vow of silence and goes along with whatever she says, presumably for fear that she'll turn on him and burn him as a heretic. Until they both get rat-arsed on the eponymous drink.
  • Homelander from The Boys (2019) is a grand example of this, overlapping with Bright Is Not Good. With his blonde hair, blue eyes, handsome face and bright costume which has white on it (having the American Flag as his cape). Homelander seems with his boy scout mannerisms and willingness to baptize others as a practicing Christian as much an Ideal Hero as Christopher Reeve's Man of Steel. In actuality however this all just a facade, Homelander is no Superman, no Jesus Christ, nowhere close. He's a horrifically vile murderer, terrifying Smug Super bully and despicable rapist. He absolutely doesn't give a shit for the Muggles whom he is supposed to protect, only wanting his heroic public image to stay intact. This contrasts brilliantly to his foil Billy Butcher, who is Dark Is Not Evil, being foul and grim on the surface but unlike Homelander deeply heroic and compassionate on the inside.
  • There was a series called Brimstone. It had the same idea as Reaper, in which someone is forced to hunt Hell's souls because the Devil owns his soul, with Lucifer being a absolute Magnificent Bastard who manipulates several parties against each other for his own Mephistolicious entertainment. Point was towards the end of the first season, his royal hoofedness shows up in front of the hunter of sinners, and gives a speech about how even the most damned souls can be redeemed. He then looks in the mirror and realizes he looks like Satan, and says to the hero that the first Angel someone sees is the way they perceive every Angel from that point on. Seeing as the show only had one season we never found out if this was Lucifer mucking with the guy or not.
    • One character (The Mole) pointed out that she had been a loyal worshipper of Baal, but had been condemned to hell because Christianity had "won" (in the Series, at least).
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Season 4 gives us The Initiative. They're a government agency with sleek, white labs that captures and experiments on supernatural creatures, likely to make the US more powerful.
    • One of the titles Glory's minions call her is "The Shining Light". She's also blonde-haired in her human form.
    • Darla too, though more so on Angel where she features more. She's a blonde who is usually dressed in high fashion outfits in bright colours. When she is resurrected on Angel, she becomes a vampire again while wearing a pure white dress. Averted when Darla post Heel–Face Turn appears as a spirit to her son Connor pleading with him not give into evil by killing a innocent girl, she’s a case of Light Is Good there.
  • This is touched on in Carnivàle, as there seems to be no moral dimension for being the Creature of Light or the Creature of Darkness; the latter just seems to spread calamity around himself whether he wants to or not. The current Creature of Light is a decent, albeit extremely reluctant guy, but his predecessor is ruthless, manipulative and cruel. Interestingly, he's not beautiful in the slightest, despite being associated with Light, and prefers to hide behind a curtain or make himself invisible to keep the shroud of mystery around himself.
    • Samson also mentions it in his pilot monologue: "...A false sun explodes over Trinity..." This is a reference to the Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb (a perfect Real Life example of this trope).
  • In Chernobyl, the destroyed reactor sends up a luminous beam of blue light up to the heavens, which is described as beautiful by uninformed citizens watching from a bridge three kilometers away. When Professor Legasov sees the blue glow in daylight, he is horrified. It's radiation so strong that it is ionizing the air, and anyone who gets close to it is almost guaranteed to die a hellish death from Acute Radiation Syndrome. Even Legasov and Director Shcherbina, despite not getting inside the reactor building themselves, are guaranteed an eventual death by cancer for spending so much time near it.
  • Daredevil (2015):
    • In Season 3, Wilson Fisk wears predominantly white three-piece suits after he is released from prison, just like he does in the comics.
    • Vanessa Marianna predominantly wears white and gray shades of clothing. Then in Season 3, upon her return from exile abroad, she orders the murder of Ray Nadeem.
  • The Defenders (2017): Amongst the Hand leaders, Alexandra and Sowande prominently dress in lighter colors, white being the most prominent. Sowande, who runs a gang that recruits desperate black men from Harlem to do the Hand's dirty work (and then kill them when they are no longer useful), is even nicknamed on the streets as "White Hat" owing to his white wardrobe.
  • The Tarrs in Defiance. Like all Castithans, they have white skin and hair, as well as golden eyes, dress all in white or light grey, and have an entirely white house. However, they're basically the town's equivalent to the Corleones. The Castithans themselves also count; when they led the Votan they kept the other races in subservient positions and attempted genocide on the Irathiants, herding them into caves and then gassing them.
  • Doctor Who:
  • The antagonist in the Farscape episode "Crackers Don't Matter" wanted Moya to generate as much light as she could, and used hypnotic patterns in the light generated within the ship to set the crew against each other. We don't find out what he wants the light for, only that it has something to do with what his species wants and they seem to be a threat to everyone else (even though, after he's killed, we never see anything like it again).
  • Stella from Fate: The Winx Saga is the only blonde in the Winx girls, and frequently in light-coloured outfits. She's however an Alpha Bitch, self-centered and emotionally abusive to Sky. Thankfully she becomes a Defrosting Ice Queen.
  • The Alliance in Firefly puts on a pretty face, makes everyone believe that what they are doing is for the greater good of all mankind, when in reality they're drugging entire planetary populations into starving themselves to death for "peace" (though this was unintentional), dispatching agents authorized to kill entire settlements of non-combatants to cover up embarrassing secrets and cutting up the brains of children to turn them into psychic assassins.
  • First Kill: Elinor is a depraved bisexual vampire who seduces and fatally feeds on men or women with no qualms. She's a beautiful fair-skinned blonde young woman who's outward manner is entirely sweet.
  • The Future Is Wild has bioluminiscent sharks appropriately called Sharkopaths.
  • Game of Thrones
    • House Lannister deserves an honourable mention. A smaller house of Blondes from the sunny south that dons the very heroic colour scheme of red and gold and have a lion in their crest would have easily passed as the good guys in any Anglophone High Fantasy story (especially when contrasted to the rugged, gloomy-looking, black-favouring Starks)... instead of the dysfunctional, incestuous, backstabbing schemers that they actually are.
    • The Red Woman preaches the faith of the Lord of Light, which for some reason demands sacrifices in the form of burning people alive, uses shadow magic and ominous threats and rather fanatically insists on a "one true god" while people in Westeros speak of old and new gods and seem fine with people believing in one or the other.
    • White Walkers are not really cool guys.
  • Light seems to be a major theme of Heroes villain Adam Monroe, even after he becomes a Fallen Hero. So much so that the episode where he is killed is called Dying of the Light.
  • In one of the Season 6 'Immortal of the day' episodes of Highlander: The Series, the villain is the head of a global charity organization, always seeking donations and preaching hope, charity and mercy. When he ambushes the main character in a carport with two henchmen, this bit of dialog happens:
    "What about hope, charity and mercy?"
    "This is Mr. Hope, and this is Mr. Charity. Mercy has the day off." *shooting commences*
  • It wasn't played up a lot in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it was a role in Charlie's play, not his actual persona, but this kicks in when you realize Dennis of all people was cast as Dayman in Charlie's play/demonstration of his memories of being implicitly molested. Dayman himself isn't evil being "a master of karate and friendship for everyone" (that would be Nightman), but Dennis is the person playing him.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • The main villain of Kamen Rider Kuuga, N-Daguva-Zeba, looks nearly identical to Kuuga's Ultimate Form except that he's nearly pure white where Ultimate Kuuga is nearly pure black. Even in his human guise, Daguva is a teenager dressed completely in white.
    • Kamen Rider Ryuki's Odin is a mindless servant of Shiro Kanzaki, who serves as his personal proxy in the Rider Battle. His golden armor and familiar GoldPhoenix give him a regal appearance, which contrast with his purpose of rigging the tournament in Shiro's favor.
    • The Orphnochs of Kamen Rider 555 are all entirely white when in their true form, and while many of them are heroic, plenty of them are complete monsters, from Kitazaki to Murakami. In Paradise Lost, there's also Kamen Rider Psyga, whose suit is noticeably white compared to all of 555's other Riders, despite its user, Leo, being a professional assassin who treats his job like a game, hounding down members of the Resistance more for his amusement than for pay.
    • Kamen Rider Kiva has the white armored Kamen Rider Ixa, who is modeled after a Knight Templar. The two primary users of this suit, Keisuke Nago and Iritate Kengo, behave like a Knight Templar and a Jerkass respectively. In Nago's case, he indiscriminately killed a Fangire despite said Fangire's desire to live peacefully among mankind, while Kengo is a little bit too eager to take Wataru's life, despite them previously being friends. They both get better through Character Development though.
    • Kamen Rider Double has Katsumi Daido, AKA Kamen Rider Eternal, a pure-white Rider, who is a zombie soldier who seeks to turn everyone in Fuuto into Necro-Overs just like himself. The only other user of Eternal's power, Jun Kazu, the Utopia Dopant, is a member of Foundation X who sought to resume the Gaia Impact after it was interrupted.
    • Kamen Rider Wizard: Wiseman, leader of Phantoms, is nearly pure white aside from the purple gemstones on his body. He's also this doubly so in his alter ego as the White Wizard, who is white with bright gold highlights.
    • Several characters in Kamen Rider Ghost have the power to transform into the white and gold Gamma Ultima form. None of these characters are good guys.
    • Kamen Rider Build: Kamen Rider Evol's final form is Black Hole, which is predominantly white and has a creepy Slasher Smile on top of that. It's in this form that Evol also has the power to create planet-destroying black holes.
    • Kamen Rider Zero-One: Ark-One's costume is nearly pure white aside from its glowing red eyes and literally runs on The Power of Hate. That being said, the only thing Aruto uses it for is to defeat a destructive terrorist with much worse goals than him.
    • Kamen Rider Revice: Kamen Rider Evil/Live is wielded by a Jekyll & Hyde pair and flips forms to match whoever's in control, with black or white armor to match. Live's upgrade, Holy Live, switches to an even brighter white and blue palette, and comes after the Jekyll of the pair successfully separates from and kills his Hyde. Without his evil side, however, Live quickly turns into a Knight Templar who's far more dangerous than the relatively petty acts of villainy that Evil got up to.
  • The Light Fae in Lost Girl are only good by comparison to the Dark in that they have some rules about feeding off humans. One of thier leaders, The Blackthorn describes as much in the episode: I Fought the Fae (and the Fae Won)
    "Humans are food. We eat from them or we die. Now the Dark Fae, they tend to kill for pleasure, not just need...We're more like your Native American hunters. We respect the kill. Won't over-hunt. Don't eat the young."
  • The Big Bad in 'Neverwhere'' is the angel Islington, who (at least in the original TV miniseries) wears a white robe and lives in a chamber filled with lighted candles.
  • That episode of Nikita where Alex was interrogated using a mind altering drug and she sees her evil self "Alexandra", representing what her life would have been if she had never met Nikita. Alex wore black jogging pants and sweat shirt while "Alexandra" wore this pure white sable fur coat.
  • In Once Upon a Time, when she was young Cruella De Ville looked and sounded like an innocent, wide-eyed ingenue; complete with cascading blonde curls and a pretty white dress. In reality however, she was a Serial Killer.
  • Paper Girls: The antagonist Old Watch soldiers all wear white uniforms.
  • Person of Interest: Samaritan is an artificial intelligence with a dominantly white interface and a name to trust immediately. It personifies both A.I. Is a Crapshoot and Big Brother Is Watching.
  • Raised by Wolves (2020): The Mithraic religion apparently worships the god "Sol" and has a sun as its holy symbol. Their prayers frequently reference light. However, everything we learn about their beliefs suggests that it's a cruel and merciless religion.
  • The final seasons of Stargate SG-1 saw villains in the Ori, ascended beings posing as gods (fire gods, really, but they do a lot of light stuff) and trying to convert the Milky Way galaxy to their religion (Origin) so they can use their collective faith to power-up and take out the Ancients. Their religion seems pretty Christianity-inspired, including having their own holy book (The Book of Origin) and inducing immaculate conception in a major character.
    • However, the Ori fire motif was eventually contrasted with the soft-white light of the Ancients, who also inserted the concept of "fire is evil" into almost every human culture.
    • But the Ancients themselves, while not evil are Stupid Neutral Neglectful Precursors.
    • In the fourth season, a beautiful, optical illusion-y light was used as an "opium chamber" by Goa'uld. It accidentally snared the main characters after its former users were gone. Although it wasn't the light itself that caused it, the device emitted radiation. The light was just "entertainment" for while the Goa'uld were stoned.
  • Stranger Things:
    • Season 4 gives us Jason the archetypal handsome, blonde, blue-eyed basketball captain with a beautiful cheerleader girlfriend, who wears a white (and green) letterman jacket and is A Hero to His Hometown and seemingly Lovable Jock. His very first scene is him giving a Steve Rogers-esque Rousing Speech to the whole school explicitly honouring those who have died in the previous years, including the unpopular Barb. Yet in his following scenes we see that Jason isn’t all he’s cracked up to be, being aggressive and sneering to unpopular groups like the D&D playing Hellfire club labelling them as freaks. Upon learning his girlfriend Chrissy had been found dead in Eddie’s trailer, all the radiance drops from Jason as he goes on a rampage assaulting and threatening anybody remotely connected to Eddie and even stirs up a Witch Hunt. Even his Freudian Excuse: his love for Chrissy is soured since its revealed he didn’t really know her and was ignorant to her suffering, furiously claiming during his Villainous Breakdown to Lucas before trying to kill him, that if Chrissy needed help, she would’ve gone to him not to Eddie. This makes Jason a good foil to Eddie himself who is Dark Is Not Evil being on the surface intense and troublemaking and even has satanic iconography, yet displays heroic Hidden Depths and real compassion to those whom he cares about.
    • The same season has the white-uniformed orderly who cared for Eleven when she was 9, a handsome blonde young man who shows her kindness the rest of her Psychic Children siblings didn’t. He even helps her escape and she repays the favour by removing the Power Limiter from his neck. Unfortunately this proved to be a mistake, as the young orderly is really Henry aka One, the Beware the Superman Straw Nihilist who proceeds to murder all the other children with his own Psychic Powers, getting his white uniformed soaked with blood as Eleven discovers what he really is. After giving Eleven an We Can Rule Together which she refuses, Henry is banished to the Upside Down by her and becomes the Dark Is Evil Humanoid Abomination Big Bad Vecna.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • One episode had Data and the Enterprise computer infected by a program from an archeological artifact, forcing the ship's crew to play out an ancient ritual of a sun and moon exchanging places in the sky — from day to night, in this case. The ritual depicted the soothing, gentle moon convincing the harsh, burning sun to leave the world in peace for a time, to keep the sun from destroying everything.
    • Another episode, "Justice", has the Enterprise discover a utopian planet of healthy happy people who wear white and freely enjoy sex. Everything seems peaceful and perfect until Wesley gets sentenced to DEATH for accidentally breaking a greenhouse window.
    • The Crystalline Entity counts, it’s a beautiful glowing white crystal being that produces a lovely humming noise, most of the Enterprise crew found it wonderful. This doesn’t change the fact it was destroying numerous planets and was actually an ally to Data’s Evil Twin Lore and even fled when he was defeated.
  • In the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "Ghosts of Illyria", the crew are infected with a strange virus that already wiped out a colony of Illyrians. The virus drains the body of Vitamin D, leading to those infected to become more and more desperate to get light, leading to extreme things like Hemmer trying to transport the mantle of a planet into the transporter room of the Enterprise and La'an trying to initiate a warp core breach. Oddly, Una is the only one not infected by this, because she's an Illyrian herself, who is genetically modified — a major no-no in Starfleet — and the Illyrians who died on the colony were those who tried to remove those modifications and were infected.
  • Supernatural makes a point out of doing this with all the angelic characters featuring from Season 4 onwards:
    • Early in the series, an "angel" actually the ghost of a priest made people commit murders for the sake of considering them evil. He manifested himself surrounded by light, something unusual for a ghost. Played with, as all the people he killed fully deserved it, and the ending implies that the "angel" was right about his murders being God's will.
    • Contrast the Winchester's angelic ally Castiel with Uriel in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester!" Uriel is fully willing to destroy the Adventure Towns that Sam and Dean have stumbled upon to stop the demonic baddie of the week from being raised (and a seal to the Big Bad's prison destroyed in the process), and he openly refers to humanity as "mud monkeys." Notably however Castiel would have helped destroy the town if ordered to, it's just he would have felt bad about it.
    • There's also Zachariah and his lackeys. At first, they just seem like smug, superior Jerkasses. And they are. They also want to set off the apocalypse. Or as Zachariah called it, "A cosmic enema." Zachariah also has another wonderful moment later: When Michael needs consent to take over Dean's body, Zachariah gets persuasive. Not content with giving Dean stage 4 stomach cancer and ensuring Bobby will never walk again, he cheerily announces "Okay, then let's get really creative. Let's see how Sam does without his lungs."
    • Zachariah does mention, however, that heaven's plan was being kept secret from the "grunt" angels, implying many of them wouldn't have gone along with it if they had known.
    • In the Season 4 finale, the ending makes a large change as it fades to white instead of black. Guess who's shining radiance is approaching? Lucifer. Also, in the flashforward episode, Lucifer in Sam's body wears a perfect white suit and shoes.
    • Remember the Trickster? Liked teaching people lessons in very cruel ways, stuck Sam in a time loop and killed Dean every single day? He's the Archangel Gabriel. And he's on their side.
    • The Season 6 finale shows that even "good" angels are really evil. Dear God. It turns out that Crowley really is evil and working with Castiel to become the new God and Devil. And he's also working with the Archangel Raphael because he suspects that Castiel will betray him. He's right, and Castiel ends up becoming the new God, but he allows Crowley to live because he needs him. Castiel, though, feels betrayed that Dean didn't trust him to work with demons! In fairness, the Winchesters have certainly done so often enough.
    • Crowley reminded us early on that Lucifer is an angel. However, Lucifer only created the demons (from human souls) to prove to God just how debased humans really are. Lucifer himself feels nothing but contempt for the demons.
    • Naomi is attractive, has a somewhat cold, but brightly-lit office and is very much a prim angel. She is not really any nicer than Zachariah, just not as obvious about enjoying cruelty.
    • Most demons have Black Eyes of Evil and appear when not possessing someone as thick black smoke. However, certain demons who hold a position of power within Hell have unique eye colours: Azazel has dark yellow, and Crowley has blood red… but Lilith, the very first demon, has eyes of solid white.
  • Super Sentai and its adaptation Power Rangers:
    • Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman: Galactic Empress Meadow, ruler of the planet-ravaging Zone Empire, takes the form of a floating white face surrounded by a brightly-colored rainbow mane. It's later revealed this was invoked by the Zone's true leader Vulgyre, who created Meadow's illusion because his true form as a disgusting Botanical Abomination was too monstrous to attract followers.
    • Nakadai Mikoto AKA AbareKiller from Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger could as well be the poster boy for this trope. He is the white ranger of this series, is a very charismatic and successful surgeon and saved the life of the red ranger of the series by performing an operation on him. This would indicate he is a kindhearted hero who values the lives of others... except he isn't in the slightest, as he stays evil for the majority of the series. After gaining his white ranger powers, Mikoto only uses them for his own twisted entertainment, no matter how many innocent people are hurt by it. His only motivation for this, is because he is bored and misses excitement in his life. He even manages to become the leader of the actual villains, just to alleviate his boredom. This makes him currently the only ranger in Sentai to voluntarily use his powers for evil for the majority of the series. This trope also applies to the villain Lijewel, whose costume has a slight angelic or priestly vibe to it, as well as being predominantly white.
    • This trope also applies to Mikoto's Power Rangers counterpart, Trent Fernandez from Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, but not to the extent as Mikoto himself. Trent pulls his Heel–Face Turn much sooner and is only evil because his powers caused him to turn Brainwashed and Crazy. The whole light vs dark thing is turned on its side, with the White Ranger being Trent's Superpowered Evil Side and the Black Ranger being freaking Tommy. The same series also has the Evil White Ranger Clone, who, like it says, is a clone of Trents white ranger form.
    • Brajira from Tensou Sentai Goseiger is a fallen angel whose true form has four white wings, while his face looks the most human of all the villains. As he is an angel himself, he is able to use exactly the same powers as the angelic protagonists do, only stronger. His ultimate plan involves causing a mass extinction event on earth, so he could remake the planet in his image.
  • Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms: The Heavenly Lord is usually wearing bright colours and lives in a palace in the clouds. But he also has Shao Xin locked away because she wants to marry his son, and he refuses to let Ye Hua see his mother unless he does an Impossible Task. And then there's the way he treats Bai Qian...
  • True Blood's Fellowship of the Sun is a fanatical mega church that is raising an army to make war on all vampires. It's led by a preacher in a white suit. And their version of The Dragon is not above committing rape to make his point.
    • And they recently added Faeries to the list of creatures. Faeries that kidnap their half-human offspring and keep them blissfully drugged.
  • Zogu from Ultraman Gaia initially appears in the form of a giant angelic woman. Appearing when Gaia and Agul are having a great deal of trouble with a swarm of Kaiser Dobishi, she wipes out the swarm and recharges the power of the Ultras...all so she can crush Gaia and Agul at their strongest.
  • Willow: The Crone dwells in the Immemorial City, an eerie place with no night. The entrance into the lair of the Wyrm, the being that she serves, is bathed in light too, while its "milk" also glows. At the end of Season 1 as well she claims the Wyrm will usher in "new light" to the world. None of it makes her less clearly evil.
  • Word of Honor: Wen Kexing frequently wears light colours, but he's the Master of Ghost Valley and will kill anyone stupid enough to get in his way.


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