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"I know you want your identity safe, but think 'low profile', not 'ringwraith'."
A hood that conceals the face is often a required matching accessory.
One of the oldest required dress codes by the Forces of Darkness. A Black Cloak villain sometimes even refers to himself as "Evil" or "Dark." The higher-up Black Cloaks are usually supernatural beings patterned after The Grim Reaper. The Nazgūl/Ringwraiths from The Lord Of The Rings and the Dementors from the Harry Potter books/films are the quintessential examples. Lesser Black Cloaks are usually cultists of some kind belonging to a Secret Circle Of Secrets or Religion Of Evil.
Often Black Cloaks will wander around in public. Nobody ever seems to question the people who are obviously concealing their identities. As with Stormtrooper armor, it's very easy for good guys to steal the uniform and walk around undetected in enemy territory, at least for a little while. Wearing a black cloak also signifies if a hero is dallying with The Dark Side, or is an Anti Hero.
This is sometimes paired with a Malevolent Mask for extra creepiness.
See Colour Coded For Your Convenience.
Examples
Anime
- Used in Claymore whenever the characters need to go undercover.
- The protagonist's disguise in Code Geass involves a helmet that completely hides the face and a black cloak.
Though it remains a mystery if he really is a good person, or is just wanting power for himself. As of the series finale, he is officially a good guy - one might even call him "Christlike..." For obvious reasons.
- In the manga series that's most faithful to the anime, Lelouch actually does wear a black cloak before having Zero's costume made.
- Nekozawa from Ouran High School Host Club wears one of these partially to be mysterious, and because he is extremely photosensitive.
- Naruto has The Akatsuki, who have painted very stylish red clouds on their Black Cloaks, which, in a minor subversion, don't come with hoods (though some of them wear conical hats).
- You can tell when an Akatsuki is about to die, because they will generally throw off their cloak or it'll be burnt or destroyed.
- Lord Ashram from Record Of Lodoss War.
- Exedore/Exsedol's redesigned form in the Macross universe: his entire body below the neck is shown as a black cloak with retractable tendril-like arms, but he's a fairly nice guy who serves as The Spock instead of being a villain.
- In fitting with mage theme, Mahou Sensei Negima gave us the definitely final boss by the title of "Mage of the Beginning" who wore one of these to emphasize his mysteriousness. He looks like this
 ◊.
- Wiseman aka Death Phantom, Big Bad of the second season of Sailor Moon is a skeleton in a black cloak.
Commercials
- The Scottish Widow life insurance ads, although she's a goodie. We think. Being a widow at that age leads to questions...
Film
- In his progression from innocent farmboy to Jedi Knight, Luke Skywalker started in a white outfit (Star Wars), underwent most of his training in a grey flight suit (The Empire Strikes Back) and wore a black jumpsuit under the traditional brown robe when he proclaimed himself a full Jedi Knight (Return of the Jedi). Also, at the end of RotJ, note that he comes to the celebration at the end with the front of his tunic partly unzipped... resulting in a patch of gray, surrounded by the dark.
- Although the comics and novels that take place afterward state that he stained himself with the Dark Side quite a bit by then, they were primarily written after the fact and may be considered a Ret Con.
- A straight Star Wars example, though, is The Emperor/Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious, who shows up this way in the original trilogy, the prequels, and the Animated Adaptation, Star Wars Clone Wars. Anakin, his protege, originally omits the cloak from his personalized leather Jedi attire, but as he gets darker, he starts donning it as well. He upgrades to the signature black cape and life-support system of Darth Vader after losing to Obi-Wan.
- Lucas has explained this phenomenon in interviews. In Star Wars, warm colors and Earth tones symbolize "humanity" (in the inclusive sense) while pure black and pure white both symbolize impersonality. Hence the Empire is entirely black-and-white to signify that it is coldly institutional. Luke wears black to signify that he has become more reserved and withdrawn from daily tumult with his Force training.
- This explanation falls apart when you think about it: in the prequels, the Jedi wear earth tones and are also some of the most impersonal characters in the entire series.
- The explanation was made years before the prequels came out. In fact, it has been revealed that originally the Jedi were all supposed to wear black in the prequels, but this plan was ditched because they didn't want the viewers to be confused who's who, and wanted to make Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedis immediately recognisable as such. Since the original trilogy had established brown cloaks for the Jedi by accident, they had to stick by that to retain the iconic style they had unconsciously created.
- Occam's Razor explanation: brown cloaks are easier to clean than white cloaks.
- The Neighbourhood Watch Alliance members in Hot Fuzz.
- Those damn Ephors from 300.
- Mostly inverted in The Matrix where the good guys were identified by their distinctive black leather trenchcoats. On the bad guys' side, The Twins in particular not only wore white trenchcoats but where themselves albino.
- And it fits within the setting considering the main characters are computer hackers and other varieties of internet geeks, who of course are going to give their avatars cool outfits with long flowing black cloaks.
Literature
Live Action TV
- An episode of Highlander The Series had Duncan being attacked in his dreams by a Black Cloak. He went to a mystic who specialized in this, who gave a lot of psychobabble about the darkness within, and told Duncan not to fight it and try to understand it. It turned out that the mystic was the Black Cloak, and it was a scheme to get Duncan to drop his guard.
- Typical villains in various Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel The Series episodes.
- The Ghouls from Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue.
- In Big Wolf On Campus, the protagonist falls for the trope when he sees a Black Cloak attacking an old man. As it turned in, it was just death doing his job, which he had to pay up for.
- The new-series Doctor Who episode "End of the World" has a group of Black Cloaks who, at one point, seem to be behind the evil plot; however, they're really a decoy for the true villain.
Music Videos
- The cult members in Linkin Park's music video "One Step Closer" dress like this. Partially subverted, since curious onlookers do notice a Black Cloaked individual's strange garb and decide to follow him to his hiding place. Hilarity Ensues.
Video Games
- Organization XIII from the Kingdom Hearts games, though they tend to pull down their hoods and show their faces unless they're being intentionally mysterious. For unexplained reasons, however, Mickey Mouse is also wearing one of these through half the game. Might be explained away as a disguise, except for, y'know, THE EARS...
- DiZ says somewhere during Chain of Memories that the cloaks have some darkness-resistant properties, but which exactly and how much exactly we hear not. However, this might explain Mickey wearing one while travelling the darkness as well as helping Riku suppressing Xehanorts Heartless
- A scene in 358/2 Days reveals that it's not the cloak that suppresses Xehanort's Heartless, but a black blindfold.
- The Shadowlords from Ultima V.
- The Black Cloak Society from King's Quest.
- The Testaments from Xenosaga. Albedo Piazzola is a White Cloak who is arguably creepier than any Black Cloak this troper has ever seen.
- The Sephiroth clones from Final Fantasy VII, though they're more innocent victims forced to take after their namesake, only doing evil when directly manipulated by him.
- Arcanum's final boss Kerghan is a Black Cloak (well, the cloak is red and gold, but its the same idea) as are most of the Molochean Hand assassins trying to murder you.
- Fire Emblem games almost always have a Big Bad wearing a purple cloak, functionally the same as black. They always use dark magic and quite often play the Dragon to, well, a dragon.
- The purple is likly for art reasons, as a black cloak would mess with the outline
- Also, all dark magic users, even good ones, wear cloaks of this kind, though of varying and often nondark colors (normal enemy shamans wear red, for instance).
- Los Illuminados of Resident Evil 4
- Tyrael from Diablo is a brown cloak, and oddly enough, he's one of the good guys.
- Although The brown-cloaked figure seen in the cinematics is actually Baal pretending to be Tyrael. And he's definitely not one of the good guys.
- And there's the Dark Wanderer, dressed similarly in almost black, although he doesn't much bother to hide his face with the hood. Maybe because it's not his, anyway.
- The Seekers from Gothic 2.
- Princess Zelda in The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess. In this case, it's a cloak of mourning for her fallen kingdom.
- The Ethereals of X-COM: UFO Defense take them in orange. The image under their autopsy research entry is the only time we see their faces. Subversion: Without the cloaks, they don't look very badass.
- In the DS adaptation of Final Fantasy IV, when monsters are represented over the gameworld (normally during a cutscene) it is through a black cloacked figure.
- Happened in the orginal and the Sequal too. Though in those the cloaks are more Blueish.
- The Cult of the Damned from World of Warcraft.
- Darth Revan sports one of these, as well as a face-concealing mask, hakama-pants, and complex armor. Darth Nihilus's costume is all in black and also includes a hooded cloak; Traya as well. Most other Sith in those games aren't quite so concealed - Dark Jedi mooks have hoods and cloth covering their noses and mouths, but no capes.
- Of course, the real reason for Darth Revan's mask was that he/she's your player character and you're not supposed to find out about that just because of a few visions.
- Purge in Space Channel 5 Part 2 wears a Black Cloak, although he ditches it later.
- Members of the Black Hand in the Dark Brotherhood in the video game Oblivion wear black cloaks and hoods, as do necromancers. Oddly, even brand new black hand robes appear to have significant green staining.
Web Comics
- Parodied multiple times in Adventurers!. In one case, a character has both this and is sitting in complete obscuring darkness; when asked why, she states that she really needs to get around to replacing some lightbulbs.
Web Original
Western Animation
- The evil Wizard named NoHeart from the Care Bears children's cartoon was a Black Cloak.
- Skeletor is depicted this way, especially in the newer version of He-Man.
- In the newer version he spends half of the first episode just in a black cloak with his face hidden in the shadows, presumably for dramatic effect, even thought everyone watching knows exactly who he is and approximately what he's going to look like.
- Raven from Teen Titans is technically heroic, but as a half-demon destined to destroy the world, she qualifies as "dark."
- Perhaps ironically, when she is corrupted by a dragon trapped in an ancient tome, she switches to a white cloak.
- The Hooded Claw from The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop.
- Scavenger's first appearance in Transformers Armada has him wearing a cloak that hides most of his body. Why does a robot have a cloak?
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