Colour Coded For Your Convenience - Television Tropes & Idioms

The killer and detective in Death Note are lit by vivid red and blue lights respectively during internal monologue, regardless of the natural lighting of the scene. Later on, Matsuda gets yellow, and both Mogi and Aizawa get green. Even outside their monologues, Light tends to wear darker colours, while L is in an off-white T-shirt and jeans.
- Also, the ruthless and slightly unhinged Mello wears all black, while his calmer, less aggressive rival Near wears all white and has white hair.
- Then there's Misa Amane, Mello's fellow goth of the series. This trope is played even straighter with Misa, since she tones down the Lolita image considerably when she loses her memories of being a serial killer.
- However, an aversion is Naomi Misora, undoubtedly one of the good guys, who always wears black and had a fondness for leather.
Though they're both main characters, the paired opposites Fay and Kurogane in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle have marked preferences for clothing in light blue/white and black/red, respectively.
The demons in Ah My Goddess have red Facial Markings, while the goddesses have blue. When Belldandy was temporarily given demon magic, her aura turned red from its normal gold. Additionally, Urd's angel is half-white/half-black, reflecting her half-demon heritage.
In Afro Samurai, the hero wears a white shirt; his robotic doppleganger wears black.
The main protagonist's Humongous Mecha in the Gundam metaseries is always white, with red, blue, and yellow highlights.
- The fact that the same applies to the eponymous hero of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's costume is pretty much intentional.
- Allied and antagonist Mobile Suits, though, vary in color schemes between series (though you can bet there will be at least one enemy Ace in a red one), and sometimes there are enemy "Gundams" that share the hero's paint job.
- And recently there has been cases of pink mobile suits that have been "coincidentally" piloted by girls.(Strike Rouge and Tieren Taozi anyone?)
- Gundam 00 plays this sraight with GN particle emissions. Celestial Being uses drives that give off blue-green particles, whereas the antagonists give off red and gold particles. justified in that Celeatial Being uses "true" GN drives, whereas the antagonists use incomplete, reverse-engineered GN drives.
  - The TRANS-AM System, however, gives the good guys' mobile suits a red-ish hue. It is most likely a reference to Char.
In the xxxHolic anime just about every extra there is completely white. You can only see their outlines and a few minor details on them (such as clothes and hair).
In Full Metal Alchemist, the Homunculi all have default outfits that are very dark shades of a certain colour. So dark in fact, that they appear black in all but the best lighting conditions. Also, they all have dark hair.

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One of the more egregious example was when black kryptonite created an evil version of Supergirl — who popped into existence wearing a black version of the Supergirl costume.
Batman dresses in black. Robin dresses like an explosion in a paint factory. Lampshaded when Batman explains that one of the reasons Robin wears bright colors is because he plays good cop to Batman's bad.
- With the recent Deus Angst Machina Tim's life has become, he changed his costume, which is now less colorful than before — and even his first costume was less bright than that of his predecessors, fitting his more subdued personality.
- Parodied in the final panels of this Something Positive strip.
The long time Pink chestplate and Pink striped pants of Gambit from the X-Men are surely only there to fuck with our heads.
Rogue of the X-Men wore green when she was a villain, later had often parts of green in her costume and a few years ago took on her old green costume which got her some concerned looks of her teammates.
In the trilogy of Hulk: Grey, Daredevil: Yellow, and Spider-Man: Blue, these elements (the colors in the titles being one of the dominant colors of their costume at the time) are explored through the lens of each hero's earliest years. When the Hulk, the original comic book Anti Hero, was a mass of confusion and rage that didn't know whether it was good or evil. When Daredevil, the Man Without Fear, was so afraid of someone losing their father like he did that he put on a costume and beat up criminals. When the jovial, wise-cracking Spider-Man was feeling lower than he ever had in his life.
Lampshaded in the SpiderGirl comic The Buzz. When Spider-Girl first encounters Buzz (red, blue and yellow) fighting Doctor Jade (green and black) she immediately and correctly idenitifies Jade as the villain and Buzz as the hero based on their costume colours.
Spider-Girl: I'm not the type who usually leaps to rash conclusions, but you are dressed in green, and bad guys have traditionally favoured secondary colours since the advent of colour comics.

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Tron is probably one of the best-known "blue heroes, red villains" works.
- The video game sequel, Tron 2.0, takes this farther with an extended color-coding scheme. Good guys are blue, neutrals are yellow, and villains are red, sickly green, or purple, depending on their affiliation.
- The Space Paranoids portion of Kingdom Hearts II has a similar setup, since it's directly based on Tron.
  - In the Kingdom Hearts II, Sora can change color via his drive forms. Valor Form, in particular, makes him turn red.
The simplest way to tell apart good and bad robots in the not-actually-Isaac Asimov-based I, Robot movie.
- The red light is their "connected to the mainframe" indicator. It just so happens that the mainframe is the cause of the whole disaster.
In the Star Wars movies, the Jedi typically use blue or green lightsabers, while the Sith always use red. Star Wars spacecraft, however, reverse the trope, with the heroes' ships usually firing red laser blasts and the bad-guy craft firing green.
- Also, please note Mace Windu's awesome purple light saber in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith - indicating supreme kickassery. He specifically asked for it so he could find himself in the wide shots.
- The Expanded Universe also expands the colors Jedi can use. Jedi lightsabers can also come in purple, yellow, orange, one color with flickery little bits of another color (yes, seriously, it's canon), bronze, silver, gold, and so on. Sith continue to have red lightsabers, though. (In several novels, it's implied that constructing their lightsaber is an important ritual for a Jedi, while Sith sometimes actually get theirs off of a mechanical assembly line. Sith lightsaber focusing crystals are synthetic, which is why they are red- to contrast with the natural crystals of the Jedi.
  - In the computer RPG Knights Of The Old Republic, you can scour caves for light-saber crystals, amongst the nesting grounds of nasty arachnid critters. Non-red crystals can be found in the crystalline formations around the eggs, but they're scarce and require a lot of searching. If you search the eggs themselves, you'll find a red crystal every time, as they're a by-product of the arachnids' reproductive cycle, but harvesting them destroys the eggs, so each one you recover comes at the cost of destroying an innocent life. A bit of a Broken Aesop, considering how many of the adult arachnids you have to slaughter your way through in order to reach the nests in the first place. Especially as you don't gain any dark side points for it.
  - Furthermore, the Jedi classes are distinguished by colors.
  - In the books, though there is at least one instance of a good guy's lightsaber crystal generating a red blade by pure coincidence. Luke got a Darth Vader flashback, but squashed it quickly.
Every version of The Three Musketeers ever filmed features (good) Musketeers in blue and (bad) Cardinal's Guards in red. Historically, both groups wore blue, and in both real life and the original Dumas novels, the two groups simply had a fierce rivalry rather than being a good/bad dichotomy.
The adaptation of Logan's Run the Sandmen all wear black and silver uniforms.
In the Mighty Ducks trilogy, the opposing team always wears black in the climactic match.
In the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the protagonists have white smoke when they teleport, and the antagonists have black smoke.
Although all of the main characters in Equilibrium, both evil and good, wear black for the majority of the film, the climactic final battle sees the protagonist in a stunningly-white ceremonial uniform, while every one of the antagonists he fights - from the motorcycle-helmeted goons to the Big Bad himself - is dressed entirely in black.
Used in The Great Race. The hero, The Great Leslie, wears white. And all his gear is white. His car, his rope, his grappling hook, his pipe, his clothes. He even gets hit with a white pie in a pie fight. The villain, Professor Fate, wears black and his car is black.
The only time that John Woo subverts his usual "white villain, black hero" color scheme is in the final church shootout of The Killer, which has Hitman With A Heart Ah Jong in a white suit and the villain Johnny Weng and many of his men in black suits. But then again, Ah Jong is the one who ultimately dies, and Weng has to be finished off by Jong's friend, Cowboy Cop Inspector Li.
American Ninja: Ninja Joe is decked out in a black ninja outfit for the final battle. The enemy ninja army are also decked out in exactly the same black ninja outfit. The only way to identify Joe is by his red belt, which from many angles can't even be seen. I guess it's a cunning plan on Joe's part.
In Pixar's WALL-E, the bureaucratic robots (AUTO, Gopher, the "cyclops" doorkeeper) have red glowing eyes and use red forcefields. EVE, a friendly robot, has blue glowing eyes and uses a blue forcefield. (WALL-E himself is school-bus yellow, indicating his naive, somewhat clumsy character.)
- Oh, and the stylist/beautician robots (with female voices) are pink.
Used and lampshaded in Destination Moon. Each of the astronauts has a differently colored spacesuit so the audience can tell them apart when their faces are not visible. One of the character specifically says that the suits are brightly colored to stand out on the moon's surface, and different colored so that they can tell each other apart.

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In David Eddings' novels, the good guys and their Mac Guffin are blue, the bad guys and their Mac Guffin are red. Every. Single. Time.
- Lampshaded by Silk, who was disappointed that the Cthrag Sardius (the Mallorean's Mac Guffin) couldn't have been green for a change.
- Deities tend to be color-coded as well, appearing in a particular shade of light whenever they show up.
- The Elenium does subvert black armor = evil with the Pandion Knights, however, who are on the side of good, even if the main protagonist tends toward Anti Heroism at times. The Corrupt Church still wears red, of course.
  - Also in the Elenium, while Bhelliom the Mac Guffin is blue, to control it you need a pair of rings both of which have red stones.
The Big Bad Sauron in Lord Of The Rings carries a black banner with a red eye on it.
- Interestingly enough, though, when Saruman goes to the dark side he does not become black but calls himself "the Many Coloured".
In the original novel The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, it's specifically pointed out that Dorothy is seen as a Good Witch by the Munchkins because she wears blue (the color of Munchkinland) and white (symbolizing witchiness). As one of many parallels, Wicked The Musical has Nessarose (a.k.a. The Wicked Witch of the East) specifically wear blue and white as her Boarding School uniform colours, before she turns evil. She's also a Pale Skinned Brunette, no matter what actress is playing her.
- Wicked - particularly the musical - is build around a subversion of this trope; everyone assumes Elphaba is evil because of her lurid green skin. She is, in fact, the misunderstood heroine.
Bruce Campbell relates an interesting anecdote in his autobiography, "If Chins Could Kill", about how costume designers use this trope to subtly enhance the story, as on the set of "The Hudsucker Proxy" his character started dressing in lighter colors and gradually got darker as he became more sinister.
In Heathers, the three main Heathers only wear their own colors and the protagonist, Veronica, wears all black to show her outsider status inside their clique. Heather Chandler wears red, showing her leadership status. Her red hair bow shifting to Heather Duke shows the latter's replacement of the former. And Veronica snatching it back from her is used to symbolize the end of the Heathers.
The very first Discworld book is The Colour of Magic. That color is "octarine", described as a greenish purple, visible only to people with magical talent, due to the presence of octagons as well as rods and cones in their retinas. Terry Pratchett seems to have finished playing with this idea, though, and books go by without it showing up.
In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel The Killing Ground, when the Grey Knights have determined that Uriel and Pasanius are not Chaos-tainted, the ceremony afterwards includes not only arming them again, but giving them white cloaks, explicitly a symbol of their purity.
Traditionally in fairy tales, the heroines are fair (blonde) and the villainesses are dark (brunette or black-haired). Who knew moral standards were dictated by hair color? Averted by Snow White (whose mother wished for her to have hair as black as ebony) and Rose Red.
In the Dragonriders of Pern books, the eyes of dragons (and firelizards) change color according to their state of friendliness (or mood). Calm, happy dragons have green/blue eyes; angry, violent or fearful dragons have red/orange eyes.
- Of course, that's not counting the way the entire SPECIES is [[Color Coded For Your Convenience]], with color determining size, rank, and mating behavior (and as a consequence, the riders are also color-coded, since everyone's place in the hierarchy is based on what kind of dragon they ride).

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In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Buffy and Faith are The Hero and The Rival. Buffy wears pale colours and pastels, linen and cotton; Faith wears black and red, and a lot of leather. Their make-up palettes echo this. In the episode "Bad Girls", Buffy starts to be seduced into following Faith's example, and is shown wearing black.
- Also in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Willow has light-red hair and green eyes. When she goes dark in Season 6, her eyes and hair turn black. We can literally watch her transformation back as her hair and eyes gradually take their natural color again later. Later, in Season 7, when she does a strong spell but DOES NOT goes bad from it, her eyes and hair are pure white.
In American Gothic, Spirit Advisor/angel Merlyn is always depicted dressed in white, while Sheriff Lucas Buck (the Devil Incarnate) is quite often dressed in black. What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?
The Sci-Fi Channel's Dune miniseries is heavily color-coded. Not just the costumes, but the background lighting and set coloring followed this convention. The Harkonnens are all red all over. The Imperial Corrinos are purple and gold. The Atreides primarily wore tan and white. Fremen wear brown and dark orange. Spacing Guild members wear black robes to fit in with their "neutrality" and almost priestly function.
In the Doctor Who serial "Trial of a Time Lord", the Sixth Doctor's multi-colored suit is in stark contrast with his antagonist ~~Knacker's Yard~~ ~~Farmyard~~ Valeyard's black with dark green trimmed robes. Made all the more jarring when it is revealed that the Valeyard is actually his possible evil self. And of course, in all thier stories, the Master is always wearing black.
Firefly has browncoats and purplebellies. Though it usually comes up in conversation only. The two creepy bad guys are known as the "hands in blue", as well.

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So you know all those Gospel songs about a train to Heaven, and you want to flip it around, talk about a train to Hell (only, of course, without being that explicit). What's the fastest, easiest way to ensure that people get what you're talking about from the first few words of your song? Call it a Long Black Train.

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This troper once saw paired productions of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra where each of the major political factions had costumes of a single color palette to make the action easier to follow. She recalls that Antony's (the hot-headed military man) faction was red while Octavian's (the calculating politician) was blue and Crassus' (the weak truce-keeper) was white.

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Many Turn Based Strategy games have allies in blue and enemies in red, especially if there's a "radar" where individual characters are represented as dots. Fire Emblem and Super Robot Wars are both examples of this.
- Advance Wars, however, colors the player's units red in its campaigns, and enemy units (assuming there is only one enemy faction in the scenario) are usually blue or black.
Command And Conquer: Red Alert. The Soviets are red, the Allies blue.
- Justified in that Soviets were, of course, communist, hence "Reds."
- And in the Yuri's Revenge expansion pack for Red Alert 2, the renegade faction led by Yuri is purple.
- The earlier Dune games (made by the same people as Command And Conquer) took this trope to a ridiculous degree by having blue Atreides (good guys) and red Harkonnens (bad guys) when the books the game is based on clearly state it's the other way around. Apparently that's not allowed.
Total Annihilation used the trope in a strange manner - the "good guys" in the campaign (i.e. the ones you're playing) are always blue and the enemy is always red, no matter which of the two sides you're playing, rather than each side having its own colour.
City Of Heroes/City Of Villains - while the characters themselves are not subject to this trope, the intro and character design screens and all the main screen interface elements are, to the point that some players refer to City Of Heroes as "Blue Side" and City Of Villains as "Red Side". Additionally, Pocket D - the extradimensional night club accessible from both games - is red from the middle of the dance floor all the way to the villains' entrance, and blue from the middle to the heroes' entrance.
- It occasionally goes beyond that into powers. The Energy Blast powerset is blue-white for heroes and red for villains, and the same goes for lightning.
- The developers have noted this, and mention that the armour and banners of the alien-fighting Vanguard group, who will work with both heroes and villains, are grey and purple to indicate their (supposed) neutral morality.
In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a character, Gurdy even draws attention to this after your character catches him swindling a naive professor out of a lot of money. He indicates his bright red clothing and compares himself to a poisonous flower, saying that his bright red colors warn the wise not to deal with him.
In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the hero, Phoenix, wears blue, while the primary antagonist for the first game, Edgeworth, wears red. Or, well, maroon. Edgeworth doesn't stay a villain, but it continues to fit his role as The Rival.
Final Fantasy has white mages that cast healing and protective spells and black mages that cast offensive and spells that cause ailments.
- Less well explained (or rather not at all explained) are Red Mages (white and black combined), Blue Mages (enemy magic) and more recently Green Mages (buffs and debuffs). However, also played straight in Final Fantasy VI with white healing spells, black damage spells, and gray status altering spells.
In Star Wars Battlefront 2 the player's team is always designated as blue and the team they play against is red. However the colour corresponds to which ever team the player chooses, not the teams themselves.
Team Fortress 2 has the names of the two sides, Builder's League United and Reliable Excavation Demolition, shorten to BLU and RED, respectfully. Guess which color each uses... although neither is good or bad.
- Technically, both are bad, in a "went-bananas-a-long-time-ago-completely-psycho" way.
World Of Warcraft colors the nametag of each player according to this, blue being allies (or PvP-disabled enemies in some zones and servers) and red being hostiles. Inbetween we have green for allied NPCs and yellow for neutrals, aswell as orange for unfriendly (which is mostly the same as neutral, except that you can't talk to them).
- There are also special colors for classes, item rarity, and spell types.
  - Outside of gameplay mechanics, there are also elements of this trope in the storyline. Blood Elves took to wearing red in mourning of their fallen brethren. As a result, the High Elves (who the Blood Elves have had a bit of a falling out with) never wear red. There are also elements of color coding in the dragon flights. Red, Green, and Bronze Dragons are (for the most part) good. Black dragons are evil, and Blue Dragons are only evil in Northrend.
Sanger Zonvolt and Elzam Branstein from Super Robot Wars are both enormously Badass and both temporarily work for the Necessarily Evil antagonists in Original Generation. Accordingly, they favor black Humongous Mecha with yellow trim and black Humongous Mecha with red trim, respectively. Especially noticeable in Elzam's case since he goes through nearly half a dozen mechs in a given continuity, and paints every one of them black and red. And names them Trombe.
Isn't it interesting that all the protaganists in Mega Man ZX and ZX Advent have green eyes, and all the non-pseudoroid antagonists (including Master Thomas) ALL have red eyes? Giro has blue eyes, too, though that's kinda irrelevant.
Ever since Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, blue has been the colour of the humans (later the Alliance) and red of the orcs (later the Horde). Warcraft III subverted this by making the orcs commit a Heel Face Turn but keep their traditional red colour, as well as bringing in the undead Scourge (purple = evil), night elven Sentinels (blue or teal = good, natural) and demonic Burning Legion (green, purple, red = evil).
- The third game also gives the option to turn your units blue, allies teal, and enemies red, literally colour-coding them for your convenience.
Gears Of War includes lights on the guns which change color whether a COG (Blue) or Locust (Red) is wielding them.
Dark Reign has the player's units as orange, and the enemy as red.
The player characters in Resident Evil 5 have weapons equipped with red laser sights. When you encounter enemies wielding machine guns, they have green sights fitted to them.
Count Bleck, the Big Bad of Super Paper Mario, wears all white - though all of his powers are black or violet. Perhaps he has trouble finding anything dark in his wardrobe, back in his all-black◊ castle.
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds not only puts soldiers in different coloured suits to represent what side they're on (with instant repaints and costume changes upon being converted by a Jedi), but also has a specific code for the weapons each unit has:
- Red: anti-infantry.
- Blue: anti-mech and anti-heavy weapon
- Green/projectile: anti-building; does splash damage in most cases (except the pummel, which is basically a glorified battering ram).
- Yellow: only fired by heroes and bounty hunters; considering the abilities of the bounty hunters, probably indicates Jedi-killing.
- Gungans keep the same colours, but instead of beams, they're hurling energy balls.
In Eve Online, friendly targets are highlighted with a blue background while hostiles are highlighted with red. Thus, the two most common rules of engagement are called Not Blue Shoot It (defaults to hostile) and Not Red Don't Shoot (defaults to friendly).
Almost entirely averted in Tsukihime where you're more likely to run across whites, grays and blacks. However, Nanaya Kiri could detect the auras of others. Really strong individuals do not have the colorless auras of normal people. Red is for inhuman monsters that need to die and fast. Silver and blue are noble and not targets. Many inverted characters, such as SHIKI or Akiha also have red as a theme whereas Shiki is lightly tied to the color blue, mostly his eyes.

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El Goonish Shive's Big Bad wore black. Granted, it's probably pretty hard to find fire-retardant material in other colours, but it still counts.
- Yeah, but when you consider that the story arc was called "Painted Black", it probably has nothing to do with a lack of colored fire-retardant material. (Although the author did experiment with other colors in his notebook, the final black design was the only one that looked good.)
Order Of The Stick, the Trope Namer; see quote at the top of the page.

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Doctor Horribles Sing A Long Blog has this in spades. Both inverted and played straight in that Dr. Horrible (the villain/protagonist) wears white while Captain Hammer (the hero/antagonist) wears black. Dr. Horrible's white outfit also represents his innocence and kindness, which is sharply contrasted when he switches to a blood red lab coat to represent the blood on his hands, and as a standard villain color to demonstrate that he's taking his villainy more seriously.
The Dark Overlords from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes, as probably expected, dress in dark clothing.
A brilliant Lampshade Hanging from Homestar Runner: in the show-within-a-show Cheat Commandos, a spoof of such Saturday morning cartoon series as G.I.Joe, the enemy organisation is actually called "Blue Laser".

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The guns on GI Joe shoot red or blue lasers, depending on the affiliation of the shooter.
- Sometimes, the laser guns would even change their color to accommodate the wielder. A Joe could pick up a discarded Cobra rifle and still be assured of it firing his own team color (though this was probably an animation error rather than intentional).
- This is parodied in the Homestar Runner "Cheat Commandos" toons, where the bad guy organization is literally named Blue Laser.
The characters in Disney's Aladdin were specifically designed around this trope, on the notion that water is a life-giving force in the desert. Genie and Jasmine sport blue. The Sultan wears much white and gold, with a splash of blue. Jafar and Iago sport red (though Iago had blue wingtips; perhaps a foreshadowing of his side-switching in the sequel). Aladdin and Abu sport purple, because they're in transition from being thieves (red) to heroes (blue). After Jafar gains control of the Genie, Genie often goes purple. And when Jafar puts Jasmine in Go Go Enslavement, she wears a reddish-orange.
The original Transformers was incredibly heavy with this. In its early years, the Autobot ranks were crowded with bright primary colors (come on, Optimus is covered in red, white and blue), while the Decepticons ranks are crammed with the more murky shades - especially popular was grey, black, purple and dark blue (with the white, red, and blue Starscream standing out as the big exception). In its later years, colors diversified a bit more, although 1987's range of toys adhered quite closely to a pattern of grey, black and red for Autobots, and teal, blue and purple for Decepticons.
- It's notable that Hasbro recognised that the Decepticons are predominantly purple, and actually recoloured toys that were largely purple to other tones. The most prominent example was Armada combiner Depth Charge, who started as a purple and black tribute to Shockwave, but wound up covered in earth tones when brought to North America.
- The Transformers cartoon series took the color-coding pattern to the next step, introducing a basic convention of blue eyes for Autobots, and red eyes for Decepticons. This was an unswerving constant in the first year of the cartoon, but was subverted come the second year by the yellow-eyed Decepticon thrust, and while the basic pattern was employed through to the end of the show, more and more exceptions continued to appear. Something that was maintained a lot more consistently, however, was the color-coding applied to the team's paraphernalia: Autobot laser blasts, spaceships, headquarters and machines and devices of all shapes and size were a golden orange in color, while the Decepticons favored their iconic purple.
- In Transformers Animated, the red and blue eye concept was revisited with much stricter use (the lone exception being the purple-peepered Decepticon Swindle, who is only given those eyes because he had them back in the 80s, and was a favorite character of the show's art director). Autobots come in a variety of colors, but all of the Decepticons are primarily purple (except for the Starscream clones, which are given the color schemes based on the Starscream-recolor characters in Generation 1.
In Code Lyoko, the villain XANA is most often identified by the color red. Most notably, the towers activated by XANA are surrounded by a red halo (blue is neutral, green when activated by Jérémie, white by Franz Hopper). There are many other examples, like the Digital Sea turning red when XANA's creatures are about to attack.
- William originally wore a white, grey, green and blue costume on Lyoko, but it changed to a black and red one once he became The Dragon under XANA's control.
- Ulrich's swords normally glow blue whenever he strikes or parries, but they glow red in the hand of any warrior controlled by XANA, making such swordfights look like direct shout outs to Jedi vs. Sith duels.
Even before she turned evil, Lydia from Barbie and the Diamond Castle dressed in muted red and purple, as opposed to the other muses, who wore blue and royal purple.

Close Western Animation

"Red state" and "blue state" to refer to U.S. states where Republicans and Democrats, respectively, predominate in presidential elections. Note that this has only been standard since the 2000 election; before that, election maps were often colored red and blue, but which color represented which party switched regularly. It is left up to the individual reader to decide whether this is an example or a subversion of the usual blue/good red/evil convention. This may very well be an example of Adaptation Decay, given that red has traditionally stood for socialism and blue for aristocracy. (At least one assignment of red to the Republicans in the 1980s was intended as a slight by a liberal news director: he gave the conservatives the color of radical Communism.)
- Recently there has also been an emergence of "purple" states, where the vote totals tend to be a lot closer and thus seeming that the state is not really red or blue, but a combination of the two.
  - Strictly speaking, purple indicates a state that splits its electors (meaning each voting district gets one elector, and the electors are chosen independently), and it sent some of each.
Blue was the color of the Left, and red was the color of the Right, in the American Revolution. (The French Revolution is a more famous example of left-leaning revolutionary "Blues", but the French monarchists used white and gold.) That changed when Karl Marx took over the color red in the 1840s, but Communism is no longer much of a concern in modern American politics — allowing American "heraldry" to return to its original form.
- In Canada, the colours are reversed; that is, Red = Liberal Party and Blue = Conservative. This Troper lives in an area of Canada where many American expats and/or tourists gravitate towards. Hilarity Ensues.
The U.S. military services use "blue" as a map color code and all-purpose slang for friendly forces, with "red" for enemies. Shooting at friendly forces (by accident or mistake) is referred to as a "blue-on-blue" engagement. Conversely, incidents of fighting between rival insurgent factions in Iraq have been described as "red-on-red."
- This is probably the origin of red and blue being the common team colors in multiplayer games that only have two hardcoded colors.
- This dates from early US Navy wargames in which their primary antagonist was seen as the Royal Navy (of the British empire). The British Empire "coloured the map red" and manned the "thin red line" — Britain is represented as red, so US forces became blue. This predates Communism as any meaningful international force.
- US forces practice military doctrine against a hypothetical enemy force ("OPFOR") using Russian doctrine referred to as Krasnovians — it is Russian for "Red-landers". OPFOR always wins.
- On aircraft carriers in the US Navy, deck crew members are color-coded by their jobs (purple = fuels, red = weapons, yellow = plane directors and so forth). This allows them to tell at a glance who is who.
- The combat flight simulator Il-2 Sturmovik inverts this color scheme: red is used for the Allies, blue for the Axis. The fact that the game was originally developed in Russia may have something to do with this.
This troper has honestly picked the color blue in video games before because, as he puts it, that's the color of the main characters in every game ever. He played Star Craft a lot growing up.
As in Canada, red is the color of the UK's leftist Labour party and blue for the rightist Conservatives, plus yellow for the moderate Liberal Democrats.
This troper, when playing a racing game, always picks red as his car color when given the chance.
- And this troper does it to make his car go faster.
  - At least three times as fast.
Real life armies often used colors to make it easier to tell sides apart. Brightly colored uniforms weren't a serious liability when guns were inaccurate and battles had to be fought at close range. This tradition didn't change until South Africans decided to go with "dirt" for their official color.
- Of particular note is the fact that the British Army traditionally wore red, the post-Revolution French troops wore sky blue, and the American Continental Army wore a darker shade of blue. Which is probably why red is bad to everyone but the Brits.
It doesn't hurt the Nazis' frequent presentation as cartoonish villains that their flag was red, white and black.
- "Are we the baddies?"

Close Real Life

In Yes Precure 5, the protagonists wore colors based on their elements, personality, and even looks like their eyes and hair (pink for Nozomi's heart, red for Rin's fire, yellow for Urara's light, green for Komachi's earth, and blue for Karen's water). Additionally, in The Movie, their Evil Counter Part group wore black spandex suits to contrast with their white dresses.
The Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch mermaid nations are colour-coded with tail colour, eye colour and hair colour. Eye colour and, obviously, the tail thing do change when they become humans, though.
Each kid in Digimon has their own color, or color scheme, usually shown on their Digivice, Crest, or other evolution tool. While Digimon Adventure mixed it up some (Green is The Chick), other series usually followed the formula. Characters who performed a Heel Face Turn are usually black/gray/purple (Tailmon, Ken, Impmon, Kouichi, Ikuto/Falcomon), one girl is always pink (Hikari, Shuichon, Izumi, Yoshino), etc. Several characters (especially in Digimon Frontier) dress in their color scheme.
In Shichinin no Nana (Seven of Seven), the eponomous Starfish Character becomes seven nearly identical clones. While they can sometimes be identified by facial expressions, props or mannerisms, they invariably include a prominent color as identification of which of the clones they are, except when impersonating the original (and even then, sometimes). The Meganekko is dark green, the Heavy Sleeper is orange, the Emo one is lime green, the Genki Girl is yellow, the Tsundere is red, and the underage Bottle Fairy in-training is purple. The "original flavor" Nana is blue and her evil side is black.

Close Anime and Manga

Magic The Gathering is entirely focused around the five colors of magic: white, blue, black, red, and green. Basically, white is order and the community, blue is intellect, black is self-centeredness, red is passion and fire, and green is nature. No one color is always good (white, for example, includes Knight Templars), and no one color is always evil (though there's only been one pure-black protagonist in the entirety of the game).
- Note also that white and black are enemies, as are red and blue. These aren't the only enemy color pairs in the game, but they're the most iconic. However, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule; there have been cards that combine white/black, cards that combine red/blue, and cards that have all five colors, along with every other combination possible.

Close Card Games

Writer Lore Sjöberg has referred to purple, green, and orange as the "Marvel villain palette".
- DC Comics are quite fond of this as well: Joker wears purple and has green hair; Luthor has a green and purple battlesuit; Catwoman's "classic" costume is green and purple; Mirror Master's is green and orange...
In the Cross Gen universe, red represents destructive energy and gold represents creative energy. Both colors appear on the Sigil (the power-granting symbol of the creator), but which side gets used more is a good indicator of the Sigil-Bearer's morality. Anti Hero Sam, the most powerful Sigil-Bearer, uses both sides about equally. Villains like Ilahn and Mordath use the red side pretty exclusively. Orange, a combination of red and yellow, represents ascended Atlanteans and mentors. Blue, the opposite of orange on a standard color wheel, represents the Negation. It's a whole cosmology. That glows.

Close Comics

In The Hunt For Red October, the Soviet subs have a black colour scheme, while those of the Americans are grey.
In Pans Labyrinth, the Fascists wear blue (as they did in the actual war) and the heroic Socialist rebels wear shades of brown and green.
The Wind That Shakes The Barley. The good Irish rebels mostly wear green, black, and brown, while the monstrously evil Black and Tans wear... well, guess. In the second part of the movie, the Anti-Treaty side of the Civil War keep their old colours, while the Free Staters wear green. And tan.
In Rushmore, the official colors of Max's drab new public school are black and gray.
In the opening scene of Ran, each prince is dressed in an outfit of a different color: Taro in yellow, Jiro in red, and Saburo in blue. This probably plays the trope straight, since Jiro turns out to be the most treacherous of the three brothers and Saburo the wisest and most honorable. Later on, when they end up fighting a war over their father's inheritance, you can probably guess what color each prince's soldiers wear...

Close Films

In the Harry Potter books, the stunning spell, the main offense of the heroes, is red, while the killing curse, the main offense of the villains, is green. Similarly, the colors of Gryffindor house, whose named members are all protagonists, are red and gold, while the colors of Slytherin, whose named members (and unnamed members, and potential members, and former members, etc.) are all antagonists, are green and silver.
- JK Rowling subverts this by making Harry's eyes green and Voldemort's eyes red. However, the movie made Voldemort's eyes neon green, so when Harry is possessed by Voldemort in the 5th movie, his eyes just change brightness and shape. (Of course, Radcliffe didn't want to wear green contacts, so his eyes appear blue.)
  - He actually couldn't wear the contacts due to some sort of eye irritation or something when he wore them.
- Also, other spells have those colors too; offhand, Expelliarmus is described as green, and that one (the Disarming Charm) is favored by one of the protgonists to the point that the Death Eaters treat it as that protagonist's signature spell.
The general multi-color breakdown described above is followed throughout The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant with surprisingly few deviations.
Victorian literature often had characters color-coded by their hair. Blondes were prim, proper, and respectable, while brunettes were rash, lustful, and vulgar. When this contributor once idly mused on the ramifications of a redhead in a college assignment, it came back from the teacher with a note in the margin: "Red means 'watch out!'"
- Red hair means Fallen woman/Prostitute/generally troublesome girl. The Victorians actually believed this, to a point. This is mostly because one way of identifying a prostitute was that she would have dyed her hair red. This is true without exception in Victorian literature. See John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman for an actual examination of this trope within a fictional context.
In the universe of the Dragonlance novels, wizards are suppose to join the The Three Orders of Wizardry and get Colour Coded For Your Convenience, choosing to become a member of either the order of the White Robes (who are expected to use protective spells for good purposes), Red Robes (who follow cosmic neutrality, and whose ambiguity is reflected in their mastery of illusions) or Black Robes (who use magic for selfish or evil goals, prefering curses and necromantic magic). Oddly enough, within the Tower of High Sorcery there is no social stigma attached to donning the Black Robes, and the three orders do not war with each other. Everyone obeys the order's rules, even the Black Robes.
In LE Modesitt's Recluse series, black is the color of Order (light doesn't reflect off of it) and white is the color of Chaos (all wavelengths of light bounce off it randomly). Normally the forces of Order are the "good guys", though the point is frequently made that balance is for the best.
In Mother of Demons, the color of a Gukuy's mantle indicates their current emotion. This is subconscious. Black is determination, brown grief, blue anger, green love, grey calm, etc. This has interesting effects when they encounter humans, who are permanently one color.

Close Literature

The Peacekeepers from Farscape were immediately defined as bad guys, and wore the most Evil combination of colours: red and black. The effect of this was lost, however, as the show and its politics became more and more complex.
- It should be specialy noted that said complexity gets stronger when Grayza enters the show, she is gray by the name! and is/wears white, black and blue.
In Babylon 5 Season 4, we can tell that the new Kosh is evil the moment we see him, because his overall design is much more menacing — including changing the old Kosh's friendly green "eye" for a threatening red gaze.
- We are grey; we stand between the candle and the star.
  - Perhaps a neutral color to indicate wisdom and balance?
- Londo's costume gets progressively darker through each of the first three seasons, indicating his slide down to the Dark Side in his dealings with the Shadows.
At least for a time, Star Trek The Next Generation took special effort to give every faction a different weapon color. These included red for the Federation, green for Klingons, blue for Romulans, and pink for Ferengi.
- Taken to new levels with the Orions in Star Trek Enterprise. The first Orion seen in the original Star Trek was the original Green Skinned Space Babe (sorta; illusions at work, long story), so more recent appearances of the species make everything about them green, from transporter effect to engine glow to weapons fire. These folks like green. A lot.
- The Peter David Star Trek novel Q-in-Law has the Houses of the Tizarin denoted by skin and hair color. As Wesley finds out, it's not dye or makeup, If You Know What I Mean.
- Star Trek even applied this trope to the good-guy Mooks, to let the audience know which one ends up dead by the end of the episode.
  - This wasn't intentional, at least in the beginning. Uniform colors were assigned based on role — blue for science and medical, red for engineering and security, and yellow for command. The no-name expendable personnel that beamed down to the planet with the main characters were, of necessity, part of the security division.
- Also the Prophets and the Pah-Wraith in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. (The Pah-Wraith was a former Prophet who'd gone renegade.) It is particularly visible in the episode "The Reckoning", where a showdown between a Prophet and the Pah-Wraith takes place. The Prophet was being shown as blue plasma, while the Pah-Wraith was being shown as red plasma. Also applied to the colors of eyes of the people possessed by these two.
In Power Rangers, good guys come in all colors, black included, with red typically being The Hero. Recently, two seasons in a row have had a bad Ranger in purple. One of them made a Heel Face Turn, and upon fully joining the team, had his suit inexplicably become red. The other one is the only evil Rangers (not counting entire teams of Ranger-dressed Mooks, robots, illusions, etc, which is sort of a yearly tradition) to not wind up changing sides. The only unrepresented color is orange, and that appeared imaginarily in the SPD episode "Boom". (There was an orange ranger in Super Sentai prior to Power Rangers: Battle Cossack from Battle Fever J.)
- Jungle Fury has changed that with the Rhino Ranger, translated from Gekirangers Geki Chopper.
  - "Kat Ranger" in SPD (Deka Swan in Dekaranger) has a Oranger Heptagon on the white torso armour.
  - And let's not forget the racially color-coded uniforms from Season 1 (Gender-specific in the case of Kimberly).
Charlie Jade did this with entire universes. The Alphaverse, a polluted Dystopia, was given a green Matrix-like tint at almost all times. The Betaverse, basically our world, was similarly tinted except with blue. The Gammaverse, basically a Utopia, had all the colors mildly enhanced, and there was sunlight with no clouds in all daytime scenes.

Close Live Action TV

In Dungeons & Dragons, the good dragons are metallic (gold, silver, brass, etc.), the neutral ones crystalline (Amethyst, Crystal, Emerald, etc.), and the evil ones chromatic (red, blue, white, etc.). This strip from The Order of the Stick hangs a lampshade on dragon color coding, as seen in the opening quote.
- The ultimate "Good Dragon" (Bahamut, the King of Dragons) is Platinum. The Ultimate "Evil Dragon" (Tiamat, the Queen of Dragons) has five heads, one each with color and the special attacks of the various evil dragons. Both Tiamat and Bahamut were gods, starting with AD&D 1st edition.
- This is actually inverted in Dragonlance with the Draconians. This is because draconians were originally created by corrupting a good dragons egg. This works in reverse as well. The original Draconians (Aurak, Bazz, Bozak, Kapak, and Silvak) appear to have a "tarnished" version of the 5 Metallic colors. (Gold, Brass, Bronze, Copper, and Silver, respectively.) The "Noble" draconians (Flame, Frost, Lightning, Vapor, and Venom) are colored after the 5 chromatic dragons (Red, White, Blue, Green and Black). In addition, the two main gods of the series are nicknamed "The Platinum Dragon" and "The Dragon of Many Colors" (or something to that effect.) Guess which one is the evil one?
- This link, if you scroll down to Post #4 and read the tag under "Alternate Dragon Alignments", offers explanations of the standard color scheme and ways you can subvert it.
  - The official stance in 4th Edition is that dragons can be of any alignment, no matter their colour. In practice, the Chromatic dragons are still stated with the Evil alignment, though Metallics have lost their previous Good alignment for Unaligned and details are noted on how each breed could slide into Evil.
Warhammer 40000 has made this part of the uniform code for Space Marines. Not only can you guess roughly what the Marines you're taking on are good at from their colours and insignia (Raven Guard in black are sneaky, Ultramarines in blue are The Mario, Salamanders in green (who are scary black men) will kill you with fire, Soul Drinkers in purple excel at boarding actions), but also you can identify important officers by uniform - Apothecaries in white, Librarians in blue, Chaplains in black.

Close Tabletop Games

Bionicle. Also, blue means the character is female (with the exeption of Tarix, Vezok, Takdox and Vamprah).

Close Toys

Command And Conquer Tiberium games: GDI is a dark yellowish color, Nod is red. The Tiberian mutants are green because green is the color of Tiberium.
- By the time of Tiberium Wars, GDI has taken on a more blue-gray and gold color scheme, while Nod takes on a more sinister red and black. The Scrin are a distinctly alien purple.
  - There is also the zone system that rates each country by the amount of Tiberium present. Blue zones are mostly free of it and the home of GDI, Yellow zones have dangerous levels of it and is NOD's place, yet still house a significant portion of earths population, and Red zones are uninhabitable.
Koei's Three Kingdoms games assigns each kingdom a colour — green for the nice-guy Shu kingdom, blue for the Machiavellian Wei, and red for the... well, Wu. The system is so present in each kingdom in the Dynasty Warriors series that one can tell which faction each officer will end up part of before it technically happens.
The classic RTS game Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty had the army of the good house Atreides colored blue, that of the self-serving house Ordos colored green, and the wicked house Harkonnen's soldiers are colored red. It's definitely for your convenience, though; the troops for all three houses wear dull brown armor when shown up close. Meanwhile, the fourth army (the Emperor's unplayable Sardaukaar forces) was colored purple.
- In the book, the Atreides colour is red (Leto Atreides is actually nicknamed the "Red Duke"), and the Harkonnens are blue.
The Descent: Freespace series of games:
- The Shivans have ships that are painted red, black, and silver, (some "evil" unnatural greens even appear in the cutscenes) and fire off red lasers.
- The good guys, the Terrans and Vasudans, partly avert this trope by having ships and lasers of all sorts of fun colors (red inclusive). Also subverted because both species use the same lasers, technology which for the longest time they've been either stealing from each other (pre-Shivans) or sharing freely amongst one another (post-Shivans).
- Freespace 2 capital ships play this trope straight. Terran ships fire green beams, Vasudan ships fire yellow beams, and Shivan ships fire their traditional evil red beams.
In the Advance Wars series, each nation has its own colour — Orange Star, Yellow Comet, Blue Moon, Green Earth and Black Hole (the bad guys, of course).
- Days of Ruin has new factions with the same colors, although green is missing for some reason.
In Halo, the humans of the UNSC are defined by earth-tone colors, with browns, blacks, grays, and dark greens being prevelant in their gear and uniforms. The Covenant have a shiny, burnished and chrome color scheme, with bright blue, reds, golds, purples, and greens. The Forerunner are typified with polished, pastel grays, blues, and light browns/tans.
Sonic The Hedgehog's titular hero Sonic is blue, while his nemesis Dr. Robotnik wears red and black, Knuckles, The Lancer is red, Shadow, the Anti-Hero (but originally a villain), is red and black and Tails, the easy-going sidekick, is yellowish orange and white.
Many, many 2-player games do this for the player characters; Player 1 is typically red and Player 2 is typically blue. When third and fourth players get involved, Player 3 is yellow and Player 4 is green. Though, in some games, Players 1 and 2 or Players 3 and 4 have their colors the other way around.
- Daytona USA takes this even further. On setups with 5-8 players, Player 5 is black, Player 6 is pink/lavender/whatever, Player 7 is cyan, and Player 8 is orange.
In the Gradius series, Vic Viper has a blue trim, which gets pronounced in games where the red-trimmed Lord British is also present.
In Mirrors Edge by DICE, the entire game is color coded. Red represents runner vision, blue indicates the presence or involvement of police, and yellow represents government. Aside from these primary colors and a rare flash of green, most of the game's areas are black and white...
- Lampshaded in the game. One of the news reports states "a fondness for the color red" as a sign that any given person might be a rebel. Virtually all of the runners have some patch of the exact same shade of red as part of their clothing.
In Supreme Commander, the United Earth Federation uses a blue and grey color scheme, the Cybran Nation goes for red and black, the Aeon Illuminate is a mix of silver, white, and green, and the Seraphim normally use yellow and a dark grey-silver. None of the factions as a whole are evil, but notable sub-color schemes are Avatar of War Marxon, who switches out the usual Aeon green for black, and the rogue QAI, an offshoot of the Cybrans, who substitutes orange for red. The Order, an evil offshoot of the Aeon, adopt the same yellow colors as their Seraphim "allies".
In Alpha Centauri, the Peacekeeping Forces are (off-)white, the University of Planet is grey, Morgan Industries are yellow, the Lord's Believers are orange, the Human Hive is blue, Gaia's Stepdaughters are green and the Spartan Federation is black. In order, their goals are: Human rights and the re-unification of the fractured Unity mission under the UN flag; Scientific research with no impediments in the way; Free market capitalism; A life of true fundamentalist Christianity; The individual will replaced by the will of the collective; Preservation of the nature and ecology, both of Chiron and of lost Earth; And military discipline and survivalist self-sufficiency.
- Red might've been more fitting to the Human Hive.
Most variants of Tetris color-code each piece to make it easier to immediately recognize. The most common color schemes are:
- Guideline colors: L, J, S, Z, T, O, I
- Sega / Arika colors: L, J, S, Z, T, O, I
Sora replaces Mickey as the Red to Donald's Blue and Goofy's Green.
Ocarina of Time was very color coded. It took on the Red-Green-Blue theme with the triforce (red was Power, green was Courage, and blue was Wisdom), the Spiritual Stones and their coinciding fantastical races (green for the Kokiri, red for the Gorons, and blue for the Zoras), and Link's various uniforms (green was the standard, red was fire resistant, and blue allowed him to breathe under water). The six temples, sages, and medallions were also color coded for our convenience.
Many video games color items that boost health as either red or green. Items that boost magic are either blue or green.
- This actually confused a lot of players who moved from Warcraft III to World Of Warcraft: In the RTS, healing potions were green and mana potions blue (the only red potion was the potion of speed), in the MMO healing potions are red, mana potions blue and poisons green.
Pikmin features five different colors of the titular alien critters: red, blue, yellow, and then white and purple in the sequel.
- Red pikmin are immune to fire
- Blue ones don't have to worry about Super Drowning Skills
- Yellow ones can be throw higher distances and are immune to electricity (and in the original, could lift and carry bomb rocks too)
- White pikmin are immune to poison, can dig for buried treasures, and are faster than the other species.
- Purple pikmin are slower, have no immunities, but deal the most damage and can carry ten times their weight.
  - The colors also carry over to other items like pellets (that give you more pikmin that are the color of the pellet), and flowers that change a pikmin's species to match the color of the blossom.
Eve Online uses red for the Minmatar, yellow for the Amarr, green for the Gallente and blue for the Caldari.

Close Video Games

Ironically, the Halo machinima series Red Vs Blue doesn't follow this closely. Since only new recruits and COs wear regular red, they all have different armor colors for each member, with only slight resemblances between them. Red Team has its members in Red, Maroon, Orange, and Pink (formerly red) and the Blue Team has its members in Blue, Cobalt, Cyan, and (with a late addition) Yellow. Freelancers Tex and Wyoming have black and white armor respectively.
- The grunts play this straight, as they are a parody of gamers on multiplayer eternally playing a game of Capture the Flag where everyone dies and respawns every couple of minutes.

Close Web Animation

In The Order of the Stick, when the gods revoke Miko's paladin powers after her Face Heel Turn, her blue and white uniform becomes brown and grey.
- Similarly, when Belkar gets a temporary Wisdom increase, his shirt turns white and his cape a lighter green.
Captain Gamer: OOC. The title character wears a blue shirt (and silver visor), while The Rival Czar Gamer wears a bright red shirt with black visor and trench-coat. Besides that, their outfits are exactly the same.

Close Web Comics

In Avatar The Last Airbender, each of the four nations has a color scheme that is present in the clothing and even the eye color of most citizens of that nation. The Fire Nation wears red and black (occasionally pink), the Water Tribes wear blue and white (save the dark-green wearing Swamp tribe), the Earth Kingdom wears numerous shades of green, gold, and brown, and the Air Nomads wear orange and yellow. Each of these gain more and more style as the series goes on.
- Slightly subverted toward the end of the second season and the third season by the fact that Zuko and Iroh, the "good" Firebenders, use generic red-and-orange fire for their attacks, while Zuko's evil sister Azula uses blue fire, and both Azula and Fire Lord Ozai can create blue-and-white lightning.
- You can also tell a lot by how dark the colors are. The Earth King wears light green and yellow, but Dai Li wear mostly green so dark it's almost black.
- Interestingly enough, Kyoshi Islanders, though part of the Earth Kingdom, typically wear blue. Whether this is a result of Avatar Kyoshi's distancing them from the mainland or because of their proximity to the Southern Water Tribe (or for some other reason) is never explained.
  - Of the four groups, the Earth Kingdomers are the most likely not to hold to their established color scheme, in keeping with their decentralization and diversity. This is especially true of the small towns and villages, less so in the large cities.
The Transformers have the red Autobot symbol and the purple Deception symbol (with similar coding for other factions; red Maximals and purple Predacons in Beast Wars, for example). However, the official Transformers movie website casts the sides in blue and red. Generally speaking, Autobots also have blue eyes, while Decepticons have red, though this distinction did not appear in the early toy line (which included several imports from other lines: the original Optimus Prime had yellow eyes, though later reproductions changed them to blue).
- In one issue of Insecticomics, a character shows up wearing red Decepticon symbols. When his "parent" remarks on it, he replies with "The term is 'studied insult'."
- In the Shattered Glass alternate universe, where the Autobots are evil and the Decepticons are the forces of good, the faction colours are switched: red Decepticon symbols and purple Autobot symbols, which is the origin of the above comic.
To say the very least, Good neon green and Evil red played a pretty big role in Danny Phantom.
In the opening scene of Disney's Beauty And The Beast, Belle is the only person in the village wearing blue. This is to make her stand out visually and symbolize her status as a "misfit" in the community. Later on the Beast wears blue for the ballroom scene.
Used in Teen Titans, where Beast Boy and Cyborg accidentally enter Raven's mind and meet the Anthropomorphic Personification s of her emotions. If I recall correctly:
- Blue: Normal
- Pink: Genki Girl (extremely off-putting to BB and Cy)
- Grey: The Eeyore
- Green: Courage/Aggression ("A Marine" according to BB)
- Purple: possibly Lazy
- Orange: Only onscreen action of note is a belch. So either crude or masculine. (different troper)
- Yellow: Wears Glasses, so probably Intellectual.
- Brown: Doesn't do anything, so who knows.
- Red: Ax Crazy/Trigon
- White: Happy/free of Trigon - occurs outside her mind three times: during the Bad Future episode(note that she is not happy and quite possibly insane in this instance), when she's in love with Melchior, and again when Trigon is defeated (she reverts back to blue due to Status Quo Is God)
The Powerpuff Girls are color coded pink, blue, and green. Their bedroom, their belongings, and some of their powers would reflect this. Their rivals, the Rowdyruff Boys, wore darker versions of these colors (dark red, navy blue, and forest green) to seem more evil and more boyish.
Disney LOVES this trope: their core characters being a prominent example. Mickey is your standard Cheery/Heroic Red, Goofy is your Natural Green (it's more of a spirit color for him and his iconic hat, as his clothes actually swim in Earthy Browns and Funky Orange), and Donald, in spite of his fiery red personality, rounds out the trio as the all-encompassing Blue. In this case, it's probably to represent either his depressing status in his life, his sympathetic nature, the fact that he's wearing a sailor shirt, or because they needed a Water to balance out all that Fire and Earth on his compadres.
- Minnie, on the other hand, takes on many colors in her wardrobe, but her spirit/cited favorite color tends to be Token Girl Pink. Her actual clothes mostly bounce back and forth between Romantic Red to match Mickey, or a Complimentary Blue to indicate that she's his softer half (blue also being the token female color for Disney, and previously for the rest of the world, for a very long time).
- In the The Three Caballeros, Donald is transplanted into another Red-Blue-Green trio, again serving up the American Blue to Brazillian José's Calm Green and Mexican Panchito's Cheery Red.
- For the second time Donald is transplanted to another Red-Blue-Green trio, this time taking Goofy with him (who brings more green this time), in the Kingdom Hearts series. Mickey is replaced by Sora as the Cheery Red.
- Huey, Dewey, and Louie are another example of Disney's Red-Blue-Green trios. In the old cartoons, though, their colors were inconsistent, involving red, orange, yellow, green, and blue (never purple) - depending on what the director felt like at the time. Sometimes, in their later appearances, all three ducks were seen in the same color which was usually red. In the comics they all were dressed in black...even Uncle Donald. It wasn't until Duck Tales that it became permanent, once and forever, that Huey, Dewey, and Louie were a Red-Blue-Green trio.
Disney's Sleeping Beauty took on more color coding, with another (you guessed it) Red-Blue-Green trio, this time in the form of the three magical fairies. There's assertive Flora the leader in Cheery Red, calm and innocent Fauna in Natural Green, and excitable, irritable Merryweather in Blue...for the same reason as Donald, apparently. It was originally planned (but ditched) that each fairy would have powers derived from their namesake: Flora would control plants, Fauna would control animals, and Merryweather would control the weather...so why isn't Flora the one who wears green? Rule of Personality Coloring?
- The Three Fairies are unsure, however, on which way they should color code Aurora's dress for our convenience. The truest battle of Pink Girl Blue Boy ever told. Blue was the longest standing color for femininity at that point, with pink (a lighter shade of red) only just starting to emerge as a girl color. So while the pink was probably more radical when the movie first premiered, it's now viewed in today's world as the more girly color to pick. Note just which color Aurora's dress is for most of the movie vs. what color it always is on Disney Princess Merchandise.
Because Disney dates back to the early decades of the 20th century, the idea that blue represented calm, soothing, feminine attributes was a popular one (red/pink was the guy hero color). Due to this many of Disney's early female characters from the first golden age are swathed in blue; Pink Girl Blue Boy would emerge slowly but surely much later on.
- The artists debated long and hard on what color Snow White should be dressed in, even testing out the (at the time) unusual idea to dress her in all pink, but in the end they went with the easy-on-the-eyes blue bodice. Her prince of course brought the red cape.
- The Blue Fairy from Pinocchio (and the only chick in the film, no less. Cleo doesn't count). This might be because in the original tale her name was the Fairy with Turquoise Hair. The blue becomes more noticeable, though, when contrasted with Pinocchio's red lederhosen (heeey, that's not Italian!).
- Cinderella is debatable. Her dress is silver in the movie, but retconned as blue in all follow up merchandise in the Disney Princess line.
- Alice from Alice in Wonderland wears a blue dress; though this seems to be true of the original illustrations from the book.
- Wendy from Peter Pan wore a blue nightdress, while her younger brother Michael wore pink pajamas.
- In "Lady and the Tramp," Lady has a blue collar, and Tramp gains a red collar at the end of the movie. Meanwhile, the baby in the movie is a boy, but his entire room and pajamas are pink.
- Another dog example in "101 Dalmatians" lies with Pongo who sports a red collar, and Perdita who sports a blue one. Their puppies as a result also have collars color coded this way, depending on their gender.
- The trend is shattered, though, in the late 60s, where one would find girls popping up more frequently in purples and pinks (Shanti, Maid Marian, Bianca, Eilonwy, Hercules's Megara, Esmeralda), girls wearing whatever the movie would require (Pocahontas in tan...but with a blue necklace), and then finally girls who take both blue and pink/red in stride. Examples of pink-and-blue sharing being:
  - See Aurora (an example from 1959, actually) and Belle above. Prince Phillip (and the Beast in some scenes) are more red cape bringers, though. Also see Minnie above (her prince comes with red...pants).
  - Ariel had not just a blue dress, but a pink one as well. A portion of the fandom has since complained about the pink dress clashing with her aggressively red hair...but one must remember that it WAS the late 80s (the tiles on the floor in that scene are black-and-white checkerboard. Natch).
  - Jasmine from Aladdin is a more modern example of strictly-blue; but this might have been incidental, because as stated in the other Color Coded section, throughout the whole movie Blue was Good and Red was Evil. Her Go Go Enslavement outfit is red.
  - Mulan wears a pink dress for her meeting with the Matchmaker, where she's uncomfortable and unfamiliar with herself. Mulan wears blue when she is confident with who she is and unconfined by gender laws.
  - Olivia, Jenny, Kida and Captain Amelia carry on the grand tradition of strictly-blue-girls. Dr. Doppler, who Amelia hooks up with, is even kind enough to wear a red jacket next to her blue one. Aww.

Close Western Animation

Between the world wars, the U.S. Navy color-coded its war plans against potential enemy nations. Red was the British Empire, Black was Germany, Gold was France, Yellow was China, Orange was Japan, and so on. At least some of the colors were related to the national (or naval) flags of the opponents.
Many political movements have traditional colors: White for monarchism, black for anarchism, red for socialism (especially communism), green for environmentalism, brown for fascism, etc. This is often used for symbolic purposes.
This troper recalls a high school competition of sorts in which each class was given a color; in his senior year, freshmen were blue, sophomores were yellow, juniors were green, and seniors were red.
Some gangs have their members wear certain colors, most famously the Crips (blue) and the Bloods (red).
Babies are color-coded, too — pink is for girls, and light blue is for boys. This is actually an inversion of the way things used to be, as pink is a lighter version of red, a color associated with blood, war, and other things that are generally considered manly, while blue was a feminine color due to an association with the Virgin Mary.
Various religions have colours associated with them: Orange for buddhism and green (and black) for islam for instance.
One example of colour-coding is the practice among steppe-peoples of associating colours with the four cardinal directions ("White" being "west" and "black" being "north" for instance)
Brand names. Coke is red, Pepsi is blue; in the UK, the three major supermarket chains are red, blue and green.
Real life subversion (and probable inspiration for this): NATO tracer rounds had a red trail, the Warsaw Pact's were green.

Close Real Life

In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yugi's favorite monster is the Black Magician while his rival, Kaiba, has the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. In addition, Yugi also usually wears darker colors than Kaiba.
- The black vs. white reversal is taken to the extreme in the Hikari no Kessha arc of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, where white is the Big Bad's color motif because it represents: loss of individuality and free will, imbalance between good and evil, and deception — after all, calling your followers the Dark Association would be advertising, "I'm evil, don't trust me", but who's going to suspect an organization dedicated to spreading "purity" and light as evil?
Same with The Big O: Roger Smith wears a black suit and his eventual antagonist, Alex Rosewater, wears a white suit, the same goes for their Megadueses. Also, the mostly nuetral Nietzsche Wannabe Shwartzwald wears grey and pilots a red mecha.
In Fushigi Yuugi, the good Suzaku Seishi have red kanji marks on their bodies, while the antagonistic Seiryuu Seishi have blue ones. This is because both groups draw their powers from one of the traditional Four Gods: Suzaku the Phoenix and Seiryuu the Blue Dragon.
In Bleach, shinigami (the main character race) wear black uniforms, while The Rival's faction, the Quincy, wear white. Later on, the Big Bad has armies of white-clad soldiers, the Arrancar, as well.
- Main character Ichigo is often given traditionally evil colours, though, since his powers come from his Hollow side. In the battle against Kuchiki Byakuya, he was portrayed as black while Byakuya was white. This, however, may have more to do with his Meaningful Name. Byakuya means "white night", and refers to the long Arctic nights where the sun doesn't set.
Blood Plus used red to symbolize protagonist Saya and her allies and blue for the antagonist Diva.
In Gao Gai Gar Final the ultimate mecha of Guy, the hero, is a detailed black, while his chief opponent/Evil Counterpart, Mr. A God Am I Palparepa's mech is a sterile white. It then takes it further by in some scenes portraying the fight as a war between a white god and a black demon.
- Every GaoGaiGar is black. Temporary mecha GaoFighGar was actually darker than the actual GaoGaiGar models, since it used the blue GaoFar robot as a core instead of the white-and-gold GaiGar.
Code Geass inverts the traditional "white hero, black villain" setup and takes it a step further by having the protagonist and his La Resistance group wear black (and they are in fact called "Black Knights"), while the antagonist and his teammates from the second season all wear white uniforms.
- This is a logical extension of the series' themes, as well. After all, white always moves first.
- In R2, Code Geass also utilizes the theme from recent Gundam series (which though otherwise unrelated are produced by the same company) of a female character "coincidentally" ending up with a pink Humongous Mecha. Twice.
- Because of the show's Grey And Gray Morality and its unusual position on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism, the color code doesn't really apply to good and evil. Idealistic takes the place of good, and cynical takes the place of evil for the sake of colors. Consider that Suzaku pilots a white Knightmare the whole time, and the black knights Knightmare colors tend to change when they need to change. Lelouch usually pilots a black Knightmare with red thrown in there on occasion, and members of royalty, excluding Euphemia, wear various "evil" colors and pilot "evil" colored Knightmares. The exception to this seems to be C.C. with her usually pink frame and heavy dose of cynicism.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's Fate Testarossa continues wearing red and black (with a yellow magic motif) even after her Heel Face Turn, despite not actually being an Anti Hero.
An early episode of Slayers featured a villain that Amelia couldn't believe was actually evil, on account of his entirely white outfit.
In Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, Synchro-cannons of REF are in silver, as are their rocket traces. The weapons of shadows - both short-range and wide - range beams (and even engines) are red. Malfunctioning because of dusruptor wave REF tech also turns red.
In Berserk, Anti Hero Guts, "The Black Swordsman," is clad in black armor while the ruthlessly ambitious Griffith, "The White Hawk," wears an immaculate suit of white armor.
You can always tell if Naruto is using his normal chakra or his unnatural Kyuubi chakra by its color - blue (yellow in the manga) for normal, red for Kyuubi. (In-universe, chakra is not actually visible except by people with special powers, but Naruto describes that his abnormal chakra feels "red.")
The anonymous hero in Daft Punk's Interstella5555 wears a space-age outfit in wine-red and dark purple that makes him resemble a Marvel villan more than anything else.

Close Anime and Manga

Inversion in Green Lantern comics: Green (and it often is a unnatural light shade) is good. It's traditionally vunerable to things colored yellow, though that's fluctuated over the years. And there's all that business now with Red Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, etc., etc....
- Note that the warm colors have negative correlations (anger, greed, fear) and the cool colors have positive correlations (strength of will, hope, love), rather than the usual comic book primary/secondary color split.

Close Comics

The Devil in the movie version of Constantine wears a white, albeit tattered, suit.
In El Mariachi, the good guys all wear black, and the bad guy wears an immaculate white suit. The title character (a guitar player) wears black, so he keeps getting mistaken for the gangster (who's out to kill the Big Bad in the white suit) because he also dresses in black, and carries his guns in a guitar case.
In the movie Dragonheart, the good knight wears black while the evil king wears white. This may have been to symbolise the corruption of the crown in the film.
Despite being standard-bearer for the red-versus-blue divide, Star Wars subverts this several times:
- Imperial Stormtroopers wear white. Luke Skywalker initially wears a white tunic-and-trousers combo in A New Hope, moves on to a grey ensemble in The Empire Strikes Back, and by Return of the Jedi dresses entirely in black. This is meant to represent his separation from normal humanity as a Jedi and the growing temptation to go over to the Dark Side of the Force. Note that this is due to the aesthetic divide in Star Wars not being black versus white, but monochrome versus color (mostly earth tones).
  - The Emperor's Royal Guard (seen in III and VI) wear rather striking red. It's probably a chess theme.
- Grand Admirals (highest ranking commanders of the Imperial Navy, answering directly to the Emperor) were issued white uniforms, as opposed to black and gray worn by all other ranks.
- Rebel ships fire red lasers, while Imperial ships fire green lasers. All hand-held or vehicle blasters, good or bad, fire red bolts.
- Note that in the prequels, Republic ships have green lasers and Trade Federation/Separatist ships have red ones. This makes sense as The Empire succeeded The Repbulic and absorbed its military, but it makes it a reversal along the Good/Evil axis.
- A possible inspiration for this may be aircraft tracer ammunition during the Cold War. US and NATO ammunition used strontium salts to produce a bright red light, whereas Soviet and Chinese rounds used barium salts to produce bright green trails.
John Woo often has the antagonists in his films dressed in white for the final showdown to emphasize the blood from the gunshot wounds they receive. The main subversion, of course, was The Killer from above.
In the Hong Kong cop movie Sha Po Lang, Detective Ma Kwan, the protagonist, wears an all-black ensemble. One of his enemies, the assassin Jack, wears a completely white outfit, while Wong Po, the Big Bad, wears a white shirt underneath a bright red vest.
Given that it's a spoof of Star Wars, Spaceballs turns the lightsaber color = Force alignment on its head; Lone Starr packs a red-orange Schwartz, while Dark Helmet uses a green one.
In What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, the fact that the apparent villain, Jane Hudson, is blonde, and her "victim", crippled sister Blanche, has black hair, should be the first clue that all is not as it seems. In fact, Blanche is crippled because she tried to kill Jane in a car accident, then pinned the blame on her sister because of her alcoholism.
Partly inverted in The Matrix movies where the heroes are distinguished by their individually-styled black trenches and square yards of black leather and buckles. On the bad guys' side, The Twins specifically wear all white. (The Agents wear black suits, but that's because they are Dressed To Kill and everyone has Sinister Shades.)

Close Films

Lord Of The Rings, while following the general coloring scheme on a large scale, tends to follow it less with individual characters — Gandalf the Grey, for example, and while the white wizard's fall to evil does come with a corresponding color change, it's from white to white with faint, shimmering rainbow colors. Of course, the book largely predates most uses of color-coding in the first place.
- Parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000: "Torgo. Yes, that was my name, and such you may still call me. But I am Torgo the White."
The Dark Is Rising has the Black Rider (formerly just the Dark Rider) and the White Rider, who are both evil — Black represents people who join the Dark because they have evil goals, while White represents people so blinded by their high ideals that they can be controlled by the Dark.
You wouldn't think yellow was a creepy color, would you? The King In Yellow will change your mind.
- Sin City is another good example of yellow as a creepy color. As well, in many cultures (including Japan), yellow is considered the color of death; see, for instance, the Bride's jumpsuit in Kill Bill.
In A Song Of Ice And Fire, the generally antagonistic Lannisters are represented by red and gold - red for their legendary ruthlessness and gold for their innumerable riches.
In Mary Herbert's novel Dark Horse, the main villain, and the tribe that he leads, wear brown capes (a traditionally "good" color). However, the subversion ends there: The heroine's tribe, of which she's the last survivor (or so she thinks, until the last book in the series that followed reveals that half of the tribe split off and left the area), wear bright red, and her love interest's tribe wear gold. And poop jokes are made about the bad guys' outfits.
The Saga of Recluce series has order represented by black and chaos white.

Close Literature

In the Highlander episode "The Vampire", during the climactic sword fight, Duncan wore black and his opponent wore white. This is probably because the default color of the Badass Long Coat is black.
The Nancies in I'd Do Anything wore different colour dresses for Oliver! related songs and the results announcement.
Airwolf: The slightly dodgy Anti Hero F.I.R.M. always dress in white.

Close Live Action TV

The music video for They Might Be Giants' video "Hollywood House of Blues" has the good rock band The Lads wear red blazers — their lead singer also wears an Eyepatch Of Power — and evil ripoff band The Blokes wear the exact same thing, only blue.

Close Music Video

Captain Scarlet is an obvious example. Not only are all Spectrum agents specifically colour coded, the leader of the good guys is one Colonel White and the main agent of the baddies is Captain Black. Subtle, ne?

Close Puppet Shows

In the RPG Paranoia, the entire society of Alpha Complex is organized by the color spectrum; your character starts as a Red troubleshooter and attempts (usually unsuccessfully) to survive long enough to be promoted up towards the Violet elite. The hierarchy even spreads beyond the visible spectrum - the drugged-out subhuman menial laborers are Infared and the High Programmers with the authority to tamper with the computer overlord are Ultraviolet.
In Legend of the Five Rings RPG, all clans are color-coded: the Crab (Boisterous Bruisers) are dark blue and dark red, the Crane (White Haired Pretty Boy Politicos) light blue and white, the Dragon (Kung Fu Magic Warrior Monks) green and gold, the Lion (Proud Warriors) gold and brown, the Mantis (Pirates) blue-green and gold, the Phoenix (Magic Knights) red and gold, the Scorpion (Ninjas - even if they deny it!) black and red, and the Unicorn (Country Cousins/The Golden Horde) are purple and silver.
Thoroughly averted throughout the Magic The Gathering universe. All five colors — White, Blue, Black, Red and Green — have their "good" and "evil" traits (White will heal you and protect you but expects you to march in lock-step with its ideals; Blue holds Knowledge Is Power but loathes emotions of all kind; Black uses death as a tool and not a natural part of a lifecycle, but can and does drive individual desires and gains; Red is violetnly destructive and impulsive but is the foundation of anything related to one's "creative juices"; Green preserves and protects natural beauty but is essentially a stupid, technophobic luddite).

Close Tabletop Games

In Illusion Of Gaia, the good forces are associated with black, darkness, and night, while the 'villain' is the blue-white comet. This is later double-subverted when "the black and white knight unite" to attack the comet, and the final boss on the comet is a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere called Dark Gaia.
In the computer game Myst, the two "villains" are color-coded blue and red, to represent the player's uncertainty as to which is really the villain (they accuse each other and attempt to get the protagonist to release them). The slow-witted and psychotic Achenar is coded blue, and the more clever but greedy Sirrus is coded red. But their noble father, Atrus, was imprisoned in a green book that both brothers urge you not to open. The subversion is eventually reverted in a later sequel, when Achenar sacrifices himself to help the player defeat his brother. Why? Because Dumb Is Good.
Prince (later King) Luca Blight in Suikoden II wore splendid, white-and-gold armor. He was quite probably the most sadistic, heartless psycho you've ever seen trying to decapitate a 4-year-old orphan girl with a speech impediment. Admittedly, he did have one whopper of a Freudian Excuse, but still...
In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall, the protagonist, wears a black leather jacket, while his rival Seifer wears a light grey Badass Longcoat.
Devil May Cry's hero Dante wears red, while his evil twin brother Vergil wears blue.
- In DMC4, one protagonist wears red (Dante), the other wears red and blue (Nero AKA Not Vergil). Both are good guys. And The Order wears white and gold while being evil.
- Hideki Kamiya, the series creator, explains that Dante wears red clothes because the color red is traditionally used to denote a hero in Japanese media.
In Fate Stay Night, The Dragon is blonde to add to the fact that he wears a full set of gold armor (he's Gilgamesh, by the way). Certain Servants and Masters play this trope straight; Lancer wears blue armor, Archer wears black and red (neutrality), Rider and Caster wear purple, and naturally, the Big Bad wears black robes.
Twilight Princess. Midna is black and silver and unnatural green — a threefer! Despite this, she's actually got a pretty good heart in her, despite her somewhat poor (yet charming) attitude at the beginning of the game.
In Tales Of Symphonia, the Idiot Hero is dressed primarily in red, while the Big Bad is dressed primarily in white. Then again, the latter does keep very well with the game's general theme of Light Is Not Good, So Yeah...

Close Video Games

Possible trope reversion in The Wotch: Lord Sykos is an super Insane But Powerful mage who has no alignment and no morals: he's chaotic neutral. However, after The Wotch defeats him and teaches him about being good, he decides to try it... but oddly, the large gem he wears around his neck was blue before, and is replaced by a red one after he turns good. This may reflect just how crazy he is.

Close Web Comics

MegaMan: While the cartoon played aspects of this trope straight, with Megaman (blue and light blue) and Protoman (red and gray), it also completely averted it by not only keeping the Robot Masters every colour of the spectrum (the white and blue Geminiman, for example), but making Wily's shirt pink. In the original games, colour is irrelevant (with the exception of the good and evil energies—blue and purple, respectively).

Close Western Animation

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