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Colour Coded For Your Convenience
alt title(s): Color Coded For Your Convenience
Miko: How can you be so certain it was evil, though? Are you not aware that there are dragons who live only to serve the greater good? Without proper training, it is nigh impossible to tell the good dragons from the evil ones. In your ignorance, you may have slain a powerful force for good in the world! What proof do you have that you did not vanquish a stalwart defender of the weak in your mad lust for treasure??
Roy: Ummm... its scales weren't all shiny?
Miko: Ah. Then its destruction was just and necessary.
Elan: Dragons: color-coded for YOUR convenience!
-Order of the Stick, strip #207

"29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion."
Peter's Evil Overlord List

How do you tell who to root for? Why, you look at what color the character wears, of course! In visual entertainment, who's good and who's evil is usually distinguished by the colors, and woe be to those who are colorblind.

Black for evil (why do you think it's called The Dark Side?) and white for good is probably the oldest and most obvious classification. It can be more complex than this, of course, especially when you get into different cultural values and perceptions. (For example, in Asia many countries associate white with death and mourning). Black can also be used as a form of Shadow Archetype which is not necessarily evil, and nowadays, dark equaling evil is subverted as often as it's used straight; see Dark Is Not Evil.

Another common pairing is red versus blue, where the hero is blue and the villain is red. A variation on this is a character that's calm being represented by blue and a more fiery character being represented by red, usually The Hero and The Lancer, or The Hero and The Rival.

In superhero comic books, superhero costume themes tend to rely on the primary colors (red, blue, yellow or gold) whereas supervillain costume themes tend to rely on the secondary colors (green, purple, orange). A classic example would be the 1980s Lex Luthor in his super-armor (purple, green, black) battling Superman (red, blue, yellow).

A frequent arrangement for weapons, Eye Beams, and energy blasts is bright green for good and red for evil, thanks to the colors of the Jedi and Sith lightsabers in Star Wars. (However, laser weapons on the heroes' ships in Star Wars generally fire red blasts while the villainous Imperial craft fire green ones.)

It should be noted, though, that many times it's not the actual color that's used to distinguish good and evil, but the tone or shade of that color. For example, more natural or muted colors are often used for the good guys, while darker or more garish versions adorn the villains. The best example of this is probably green, which can be used for good if reminiscent of nature, or bad if it looks artificial, either by being too bright or too dark.

It should also be noted that colors can be used to determine that kind of person's personality and powers as well.

That said, the general breakdown is this:

Good Guys:
  • White and off-white
  • Blue
  • Cheery Red - The Hero and The Lancer)
  • Natural Greens
  • Pink - The Token Girl
  • Browns and other Earthy tones
  • Gold
  • Black - usually with a splash of gold.

Bad Guys:
  • Black
  • Bloody Red
  • Dark Blue
  • Unnatural Greens - See also Sickly Green Glow.
  • Silver
  • Purple (popular in Japanese media; the official color of 8-bit evil)
  • All white (usually to show a hint of madness or religious zealotry)

Neutral Guys/Transition colours:
  • Black and White in equal amounts
  • Light Grey (black and white)
  • Purple (blue and red)
  • Orange (red and yellow)

Now take a look at combinations of colours. What is it about the colours red, white and blue together that make us think The Hero? Likewise, the colours red, yellow and black together point to Villains. Surely it's a deeper issue than just the French flag, and Communist colours!

Hmmmm... probably not.
Examples:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 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. Maybe the red gems for focusing the beam are just easier and cheaper to come by.)
      • If memory serves, the crystals the Jedi use are naturally-occurring, off of a few planets with caves of the stuff. The red Sith crystals, however, are artificially made and are tainted by the creator's dark side influence during the process.
      • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Real Life examples:
    • "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.
    • 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.
      • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Pv P-disabled enemies in some zones and servers) and red being hostiles. Inbetween we have green for allied NP Cs and yellow for neutrals, aswell as orange for unfriendly (which is mostly the same as neutral, except that you can't talk to them).
    • Although red is often used to signify the Horde, and blue the Alliance, regardless of which faction you're playing. This is because the faction flag for the Horde (orcs, trolls, undead, etc) is red and black while the faction flag for the Alliance (humans, dwarves, night elves, etc) is blue and gold.
  • Westerns are the classic example; the bad guys almost always wear black hats, while the good guys wear white hats.
  • The film adaptation of Logan's Run the Sandmen all wear black and silver uniforms.
  • In the Mighty Ducks film trilogy, the opposing team always wears black in the climactic match.
  • In Afro Samurai, the hero wears a white shirt; his robotic doppleganger wears black.
  • 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.
  • 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.)
  • In the Alternate Universe episode of Stargate SG-1 all the teams wore different colors. The black BDUs are worn by the first alternate team to come through the gate, who end up being here to steal our ZPM for their own universe. (They're not exactly evil, though — a deleted scene shows their Daniel being morally ambiguous about the whole thing.)
    • It doesn't really need the deleted scene, as the characters are shown throughout, once they're revealed, as not being really happy about what they're doing, but they're at the end of their rope trying to survive and this was their last option. It sets up the Not So Different scene between the two team leaders. (Which the writers even seem to agree with, since later on in episodes and the movie, "our" SG-1 is shown wearing identical black BDUs sometimes too.)
      • Really, the uniforms in that episode were more or less coincidental. This troper is pretty sure he's seen the main-timeline SG-1 wearing all of the other teams' colors at one point or another, including the black.
  • 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 movie 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.
  • G1 Transformers was incredibly heavy with this. Come on, Optimus is covered in red, white and blue, and the Autobot ranks are just crowded with the wearers of yellow, red with white, blue and pink. The Decepticons ranks are crammed with the more murky shades - especially popular was dark grey, purple and dark blue. This often gets muddied (The blue and white Soundwave and the white, red, and blue Starscream, for example), so another general rule of thumb is that Autobots are often shown with blue optics (eyes), while the Decepticons' are normally red. This too is not absolute, however.
    • Throughout G1 most of the time Autobot weapons fired yellow lasers, while the Decepticon ones were purple.
  • 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?)
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • Subverted 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.
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • The Scourge, in War Craft III, has green (when Arthas is not around) and purple (when you are controlling their side).
  • In the Doctor Who serial Trial of a Time Lord, the Sixth Doctor's multi-colored suit is in stark contrast with his antagonist 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.
  • 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 goodness). 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.

Examples of other color coding:

  • Writer Lore Sjöberg has referred to purple, green, and orange as the "Marvel villain palette".
  • 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.
  • 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 the webcomic Order Of The Stick, when the gods revoke Miko's powers after her Face Heel Turn, her blue and white uniform becomes brown and grey.
  • 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.
  • In Dungeons And 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 Order Of The Stick hangs a lampshade on dragon color coding, as seen in the opening quote.
    • 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.
      • From what this troper has heard, D&D Fourth Edition has dropped the alignment restrictions and instead focuses on the tactics used by different types.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.)
  • To say the very least, Good neon green and Evil red played a pretty big role in Danny Phantom.
  • 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.
  • Real Life example: 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 general multi-color breakdown described above is followed throughout The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant with surprisingly few deviations.
  • 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".
    • Jungle Fury has changed that with the Rhino Ranger, translated from Gekirangers Geki Chopper.
      • This Troper recalls what was called "Kat Ranger" in SPD (Deka Swan in Dekaranger) having a Oranger Heptagon on the white torso armour.
  • 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.
      • Then again, the Terrans aren't necessarily the good guys.
  • 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.
  • In the Advance Wars series, each nation has it's own colour — Orange Star, Yellow Comet, Blue Moon, Green Earth and Black Hole (the bad guys, of course).
    • What no Purple Horseshoes?
    • Days of Ruin has new factions with the same colors, although green is missing for some reason.
  • 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 The Hunt For Red October, the Soviet subs have a black colour scheme, while those of the Americans are grey.
  • 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!'"
  • 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 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.
  • 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 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.
  • Red vs. Blue. Each character has a uniquely-shaded battle suit: in this case, it really is "For Your Convenience", as the battle suits hide every other feature of the character besides voice.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Some gangs have their members wear certain colors, most famously the Crips (blue) and the Bloods (red).
  • In the Gradius series, Vic Viper has a blue trim, which gets pronounced in games where the red-trimmed Lord British is also present.
  • 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.
  • The game Mirror's Edge by DICE will use red as a hint as to where your character should go, more advanced paths are available, but red will essentially paint the basic way for you.
  • 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 Rushmore, the official colors of Max's drab new public school are black and gray.
  • 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.
Subversions:

  • 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 Devil in the movie version of Constantine wears a white, albeit tattered, suit.
  • 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.
  • 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 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 El Mariachi, the good guys all wear black, and the bad guy wears an immaculate white suit.
    • More of antihero vs. mad villain than of a subversion.
  • 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).
    • 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 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.
  • Real life subversion (and probable inspiration for this): NATO tracer rounds had a red trail, the Warsaw Pact's were green.
  • Prince (later King) Luca Blight in Suikoden 2 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Artic nights where the sun doesn't set.
  • 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.
  • Blood Plus used red to symbolize protagonist Saya and her allies and blue for the antagonist Diva.
  • 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.
  • Devil May Cry's hero Dante wears red, while his evil twin brother Vergil wears blue.
    • Subverted again in DMC 4. One protagonist wears red (Dante), the other wears blue (Nero AKA Not Vergil). Both are good guys.
  • 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, others subvert it; Lancer wears blue armor, Archer wears black and red (neutrality), Rider and Caster wear purple, and naturally, the Big Bad wears black robes.
  • Airwolf- the slightly dodgy Anti Hero F.I.R.M. always dress in white.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The anonymous hero in Daft Punk's Interstella 5555 wears a space age outfit in wine-red and dark purple that makes him resemble a Marvel villan more than anything else.
  • The Nancies in I'd Do Anything wore different colour dresses for Oliver! related songs and the results announcement.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • In a story this troper wrote, the heroic Gadgeteer Genius had bright green hair (she liked the look) and liked wearing orange.
  • In the fanfic "Becoming Mama Bear", the neutral character Hotwire alternates between a red Decepticon symbol and a purple Autobot symbol depending on who she's working with.
  • An early episode of Slayers featured a villain that Amelia couldn't believe was actually evil, on account of his entirely white outfit.
Clothing Damage
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Costume Inertia
Chromatic Arrangement
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