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Don't let the fact that he's called "The Dark Knight" fool you. He's here to help.
"Sometimes it is easier to see the light when you stand in the darkness."
But maybe I shouldn't have been surprised: Even in Winter, the cold isn't always bitter, and not every day is cruel.
So, you have a race of people who all have black, leathery wings. They're born with the ability to shoot black, shadowy globs out of their hands. Also, they prefer the night, and let's not get started on their wardrobes. Surely, they're evil!
Well... no one actually mentioned them doing bad things; in fact, they may actually be pretty good guys. It's not like they keep pet dogs exclusively for kicking. Despite any images that may have been burned into our minds, creepy appearances and killing people actually don't have much to do with each other. It's not My Species Doth Protest Too Much, because the species, for the most part, isn't protesting the do-gooders. Unfortunately, however, people can still judge them based on their looks. Expect some Van Helsing Hate Crimes.
This trope can be a subversion or aversion of several other tropes depending on how it's played, including Beauty Equals Goodness, Always Chaotic Evil, and Colour Coded For Your Convenience. A common use for it is for the "Don't judge a book by its cover" Aesop. It can also be used to promote Evil Is Cool and Evil Is Sexy, and sometimes Even Evil Has Standards, except without the, uh... evil.
For the inverse, see Light Is Not Good and Good Powers Bad People. A natural implication of the Yin Yang Bomb. See also Good All Along, Perky Goth, Our Monsters Are Different, Anti Anti Christ, Reluctant Monster, and Halloweentown. When vampires are involved, this trope generally puts them on the friendly end of the Sliding Scale Of Vampire Friendliness, often resulting in a Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire. Gods of the underworld and death in particular can be this, despite Everybody Hates Hades.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
The majority of anime/manga examples are themselves an example of the cultural differences between Japan and the US. Contrary to the Anglosphere, in the East, good guys wear black and bad guys wear white.
- In the Nightschool, there are demon, vampires, witches, and people with horns spikes and wings...and then you meet Genki Girl Rochelle, The cheerful Night keeper Sara,and Madam Chen, who jsut wants her coffee. The fact that most vampires are harmless pretty boys (until the become Rippers)
- Pokemon can be a lot scarier than a series newbie might expect, but no matter how ugly they are, they're only as good or bad as their trainers. It's played straight in "Island of the Giant Pokemon." When Ash's and Team Rocket's Pokemon are seperated from their trainers on a deserted island, Ekans and Koffing lose all interest in fighting Pikachu. Meowth doesn't, but he's something of a special case.
- Digimon Frontier once has a lecture about how dark and light are opposite, but neither is inherently evil, resulting from the heroes encountering some strange but harmless creatures on the Dark Continent. This foreshadows Kouichi's Heel Face Turn, and the Man Behind The Man turning out to be a vaccine-type Digimon with the appearance of an angelic child. Regrettably, it?s lost when Lucemon?s One Winged Angel forms are Virus and each more monstrous than the last.
- Also in Digimon Frontier, one of the hero's elements is darkness. Koichi Kimura is his name, and he found (with the help of the good guys) the true darkness inside of him. It allowed him to digivolve into Lowemon and JagerLowemon, and he became a member of the team.
- The Gantz team is always dressed in black, but are mostly the good ones (or at least better than the bad guys).
- We don't know for sure whether the aliens are all bad, though. Most of them are just trying to go about their everyday lives when they run afoul of the Gantz Team. Hell, the Oni aliens were fully functioning members of society.
- Deshwitat, the main character from the Rebirth manhwa is a dangerous Dark Power-loaded half-vampire bent on killing Kalutika, The God of Light because he was once close friends with Desh when Kal was still human, and after a godly-powers-releasing Heroic BSOD cursed a mutual friend with immortality, killed Desh's girlfriend in front of him because of Desh's failure to rescue Kal's sister, turned Desh into stone for 300 years, annihilated the
Galactic Senate Council of the Gods, resurrected or cloned Desh's girlfriend and made her his consort, and is now plotting the destruction of the human and vampire races because of his really miserable childhood. Light Is Not Good indeed...
- The main character of 666 Satan is part demon, has a black and white motif with more emphasis, and constantly says that his goal is to rule the world. However, throughout the story he ends up doing more good than evil, accomplishing his goals more by gaining allies and saving people.
- Out of the three supreme Oni siblings in Hell Teacher Nube, only middle brother Sekki is irredeemably evil. Baki and Minki start out this way, but are quickly brought to the side of good by Nube and remain heroic characters throughout. Similarly, a Western-style devil summoned by a witch (and fellow teacher at Nube's school) is actually a very nice guy, and Yukime's schoolmates at the Youkai High are great people, except for being, you know, horrible demons. (Ironically, at least one god is demonstrably evil.)
- Evangeline of Mahou Sensei Negima uses Dark magic, but she's more of a Noble Demon. Also two of the team members are part Demon, but are perfectly trustworthy (and probably some of the more honest of characters).
- Later on,Negi learns and incorporates a Black Magic Deadly Upgrade,but he's still the same fussy and sweet-natured boy.
- Not that choosing dark magic is without moral dilemmas. While dark is not inherently evil, it tends to intensify and magnify negative emotions (hate, anger) which can lead to evil. Negi very nearly succumbed in a recent chapter, and Rakan, the man who presented him with the choice between choosing dark or light magic, worries that Negi's inherent darkness (anger, thirst for revenge for his village, guilt), supplemented by the dark technique Negi learned, may lead him to be lost in darkness.
- Also, turns out that because he's been using the technique, now he's turning into a demon. Of course, in Negima, Demons are Punch Clock Villains at worst, so it's not like he's actually becoming evil or anything.
- Before that, you've got Takane D. Goodman, a Mahora mage who uses shadow spears in combat... when she gets a chance to.
- Fran Madaraki of Franken Fran is a Cute Frankensteins Monster. She has almost no social skills, and her day-to-day life can be best described as "macabre". But she's a brilliant surgeon (if... unorthodox) whose entire existence is defined by helping people as best she can. Her servants also count - they look like the cast of a Universal Studios horror movie, but given they all recoil in terror from an actual horror movie...
- Unfortunately, while Fran does mean well, the results of her experiments tend to end very badly for the people she is "helping" (although, in many cases, they did have it coming).
- Her sister Veronica could also count. Sure, she loves to kill, but she does it as quickly as possible so they don't suffer. Of course, when she first see the outcome of a "Fran-periment", she does what any sane person would do: scream.
- What about Skull Knight and Guts (known as the Black Swordsman) in Berserk? Sure, Guts isn't exactly by-the-book good, but he's willing to fight the real evil until the final consequences (to himself) must be worth something, not counting he's actually a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. The other is literally a Skeleton, as his name implies, and is frequently confused with Death itself, but is probably the most by-the-book Knight In Shining Armor in the whole universe of Berserk.
- To be fair, in the world of Berserk, Guts is pretty much a Knight In Shining Armor when compared to everyone else in the world. In a less Crapsack World, he'd be an Anti Hero at best, but considering where exactly he lives, he is Sir frickin' Gawain.
- Angel Sanctuary has about all the main cast dressed in black robes and the like. And a lot of the good guys are demons or at least argueably non-holy creatures.
- The title character of Yu-Gi-Oh! often uses the Dark Magician card. There's also the Shadow Games; they often have a harsh penalty for the loser, but the one who initiates a Shadow Game must either make the rules completely fair or put himself at a disadvantage. Plus, they're generally only invoked against or by bad people anyway.
- They go one further in Yu-Gi-Oh GX, where Judai's Superpowered Evil Side Haou the Supreme King is actually not that evil (nor, surprisingly, is the third season's antagonist, the demonic-looking Yubel); the former's power, known as the "gentle darkness" is meant to fight against the malicious Light of Destruction, while the latter chose to become a demon to protect Judai's past self until he grew up enough to fight the Light off. Both were ultimately corrupted by the Light, though, hence why they were in full Face Heel Turn mode upon their debut.
- That said, however, while both of Darkness' hosts were relatively nice people when they weren't trying to either set fire to Judai's friends or destroy the world via an Assimilation Plot, the entity itself was definitely not an example of this trope.
- Card Captor Sakura has both a "Shadow" card and a "The Dark" card, neither of which are evil.
- The shinigami in Death Note look grotesque and kill humans to prolong their own lives. Despite this, they're a far cry from card-carrying villains. Most of them are morally neutral and easy to get along with. A few shinigami even fall in love with a human and risk their lives to protect her.
- The heroic Exorcists of D.Gray-Man are part of the Black Order. Despite the name and generally ominous, gloomy labyrinths that make up its headquarters, it's a good organization full of generally friendly people. Just don't ask about the Second Exorcist Project.
- However, the standard "dark = evil" is played straight in that the Akuma are made of "dark matter" and the Innocence is "white". Also, the evil Noah all have Dark Skin, well, most of the time anyway. And the only exorcist to go bad so far was Suman DARK.
- In order to save Deedlit (and, indeed, all of Lodoss) in Record Of Lodoss War, Parn had to wield both the Holy Sword as well as the Soulcrusher, symbolizing the necessary balance between Light and Dark.
- Even more so: The 'Dark Knight' Ashram may appear to be utterly evil but indeed only seeks for a place for his people to live in peace (other than a cursed island, if possible). And his lover Pirotess isn't that much more evil than Deedlit, just less pure.
- Despite the name, the Lord of Nightmares, from The Slayers, is not evil. She is, however, extremely powerful and dangerous, and the spells that draw on her power both count as Dangerous Forbidden Techniques.
- Lampshaded in that a lot of characters do think that She is evil and the revelation that She is not is a pretty big reveal.
- The Lord of Nightmares is more of a beyond morality kind of character. Her actions are thus not subject to being called good or evil. I suppose, however, if you want to look at it from the narrow-minded short term mortal view, that she chose not to unmake the world when she could have, to have been rather nice of her.
- A truer example would probably be the Overworlders in Try - despite the dark scary armour and orignally worrying goal of summoning the Dark Lord of their own world (Darkstar), they actually serve the gods of their world and want to summon Darkstar to destroy him after he's merged with their god, gone berserk, and ravaged their own world.
- As in the video game, the Pokemon that look scary or "evil", like Houndoom, Shuppet, Duskull, and others, are just as capable of forming friendships with their trainers as any "cute" Pokemon, and frequently appear in perfectly normal settings. On more than one occasion, in fact, Ash and his friends were in fact helped out by Houndooms against Team Rocket.
- A shining example is Ash's Gliscor; despite becoming more confident in its abilities since evolving, it retains signs of the hyper crybaby it was as a Gligar. However, it isn't a Dark type at all (its fierce design likely fooled everyone into thinking otherwise).
- And then there's the tenth movie, The Rise of Darkrai. The title Pokemon, whose special abilities involve being able to create nightmares (and in the story, cause eternal nightmares that can only be cured with a Lunar Wing), turns out to be one of the good guys here. Actually ends up saving everyone. The lord of nightmares. Darkrai Is Not Evil!
- This trope is probably felt even stronger in Japan, where the Dark type is instead named the Evil type. I guess that'd be Evil Is Not Evil?
- What about the whole business with Giratina and the "666" thing with its body? (OK, he's not "dark" in the traditional sense, but he's a Ghost-type, and Ghost is usually associated with darkness... plus the Reverse World ain't exactly a place of eternal sunshine).
- Giratina is actually a representation of antimatter in the same way that Palkia and Dialga are time and space respectively. He's most likely simply a ghost not because he is in any form 'dead' so much as alive in a sense somehow opposite to normal pokemon.
- Giratina could best be seen as the Pokemon version of an Eldrich Abomination. He's more highly aggressive than "evil" though.
- The new Legendary Zekrom is completely black, contrasting with the all-white Reshiram. Presumably, that doesn't mean he's evil (His typing is Dragon / Electric).
- Despite how nasty Takuto looks, and even though he did defeat Ash with a Darkrai and Latios, he's actually a pretty good guy, having given positive words to the protagonist.
- The demons of Yu Yu Hakusho go all over the morality spectrum. While we have demons like Suzaku and Yomi that want to take over the human world and treat us as cattle, we also have outright good demons like Kurama, Yukina, and Raizen. In fact, his learning that not all demons were evil was half the reason for Sensui turning into a Nietzsche Wannabe. The other half was learning that Humans Are Bastards.
- It gets even better. At the end of the manga, it's revealed that most of the "trouble demons" were actually innocent Class D monsters that were brainwashed by the Spirit World so that they can make themselves look good by padding the amount of actual incidents that their detectives can solve, letting them get away with things like taking territories and putting up dimension barriers under the guise of doing it for the greater good. Actual demons with evil intent are extremely rare, with the majority of them doing the nasty stuff because humans forced them to do it. When that gets revealed, the barrier between the human world and demon world gets removed, and its shown that both worlds are slowly but surely intermingling with each other in peace.
- Subverted in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei with Mayo Mitama. She really is as evil as she looks, but everyone else simply assumes that she's misunderstood.
- GaoGaiGar FINAL takes this trope home and cuddles it. GaoGaiGar was always black, so the OVA pits it against the clinical-white Palparepa, who has an A God Am I complex the size of the sun. Then, just to drive the point home, it depicts freeze-frames in the battle as between a white angel and a black demon. FINAL also created the final pair of Dragon Twins, KouRyu and AnRyu, who represent light and dark respectively, and combine into TenRyuJin (that's Heaven Dragon God in kanji).
- Genesic Gao Gai Gar, the main mecha of the Gao Gai Gar FINAL OVA and the true form of Gao Gai Gar itself, is the literal God of Destruction, whose purpose to 'bring hope of a new start from zero'.
- Hei, a contractor with the nickname "The Black Shinigami" in Darker Than Black, is probably the most humane of all the contractors despite his morbid reputation and a love for black clothing. Bonus points: "Hei" means "black".
- Hayate Yagami of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The Queen of the Night Sky and mistress of the Book of Darkness, she has six black wings, a mostly black motif, and her signature spell is a Sphere Of Destruction made of pure darkness called Diabolic Emission. She is also the boss of the heroes and one of the nicest people you could ever meet. (Except, of course, when you're a well-developed female, which means she will get her hands on you by any means possible.)
- Don't forget, however, that said "heroes" include a Magical Cannon Girl, whose friends all ended up on the receiving end of her Wave Motion Gun and whose only daughter took more magical punishment from her that the world has seen at once since the Ancient Belkan wars. Another "hero" is an former Child Soldier and interdimensional terrorist, who was drafted into TSAB thanks to familial connections in its top rung. It's that kind of show.
- ...No it isn't. That's a blatant misrepresentation.
- The demons in Shuffle are only demons in name. They're pretty much amiable people with long elven ears. Nerine and her Hot Shoujo Dad Forbessi exemplifies this well enough, these demons seems to be less rambunctious than the Gods' side (which consists a Genki Girl and a Bumbling Dad).
- History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi has "Dou"-type martial arts, which are powered by rage and aggression (in contrast to "Sei"-type, which are more about skill and precision). It is stated that many practitioners of Dou martial arts are most likely to walk the path of destruction. However, Dou-type fighting in itself isn't regarded as evil, and Dou users who are gentle by nature (including two of Kenichi's masters and his love interest) don't usually fall to that path.
- Umehito Nekozawa from Ouran High School Host Club is a fairly nice person who just happens to be allergic to any light that's not candlelight.
- The Black Knights of Code Geass, though their leader is forced to Shoot The Dog and eventually go Jumping Off The Slippery Slope. His followers/pawns for the most part are decent people however.
- And then there's C.C., a rather creepy Mysterious Waif who is also a powerful witch. She isn't an especially nice person, but she's never intentionally harmful.
- Lelouch himself, despite his numerous faults, is still considered the protagonist when compared to the machinations of many of his opponents. One of the main points of the story is moral ambiguity, and while Lelouch does some questionable things (and later jumps off the slippery slope), he's fighting an evil Empire that does way worse on a daily basis.
- In Sailor Moon, Hotaru may be Sailor Saturn, the Soldier of Destruction, but she isn't evil. In fact, she's very shy and sweet, and even though she's possessed when we first meet her, it's not her fault at all.
- Tuxedo Mask could also fit to some extent. Particularly well noted in his former life as a prince, in which he wore dark clothes that are more usually attributed to villains; contrasts quite nicely with the princess's white dress.
- Pluto is also a decent example. Not many realize that Guardiang the Underworld is part of her duites as it plays second fiddle to her dealings with Time. The personal color on her Sailor Fuku is also black and her skin is shown to be darker then others'.
- The manga version of Chrono Crusade toys with this. Chrono is always known as a Noble Demon, and he's actually a very sweet person with good intentions, despite being a demon. The rest of the demons seem very evil at first, but Aion is actually a Well Intentioned Extremist that has simply come to believe the only way to "fix" the world is to destroy it. He's actually a very nice guy...besides the whole evil plan thing. In fact, all the Sinners have far too complicated motivations to be called "evil". And even the rest of the demons are simply aliens left without a home and lead astray because of truths hidden from them by leaders long dead. The anime version, however, plays most demons as far less complex.
- DNAngel actually has a character named Dark—who, you guessed it, isn't evil, despite being a Phantom Thief with black wings.
- On the other hand, his light-looking counterpart Krad is evil.
- The Aswad from Mai-Otome are considered enemies of the Otomes because they dress in dark colors and are able to control Slaves, just like the Schwarz. However, when Arika and Mashiro take refuge in one of their settlements out in the Black Valley, they learn by observing the Aswad's leader, Midori, that they aren't quite as evil or scary as she first believes.
- The Shinigami from Bleach all dress in black, and while many of them are morally ambiguous (or, in at least one case, downright evil) the majority are decent people... particularly compared to the white-clad soul eating death monsters on the other team. Most especially Ichigo, whose most powerful form is dressed in solid black, with a solid black sword, and fires off huge blasts of darkness as his most powerful attack... and he's the main hero.
- "Titty" Kubo has stated that the white=death/black=life theme in Japan is in full-effect in Bleach. Fact: The manga was originally going to be titled "White" because of the prevalent theme of death (early, anyway), but Kubo scratched that and used "Bleach" instead because it held the same general idea and sounded a lot cooler.
- Kukuri in Mahoujin Guru Guru dresses in black robes, carries a staff with an eye on it, and is described as a "Dark Elemental." Her magic involves demon-summoning and is considered dark magic. However, while possessing many traits of the Black Magician Girl, Kukuri's personality is closer to that of the Staff Chick. There is also a Dark Society of black magic practitioners who are allies of the heroes against the demon lord Giri.
- The Japanese superhero Golden Bat pretty much personifies the trope
 ◊.
- In + Anima, Cooro can't help the fact that he has crow's wings, nor that everyone therefore assumes he's the angel of death. It just... happened.
- Sacrifar, the ninth form of Rave Master's Ten Commandments sword is a Darkness-aligned blade that increases Haru's aggression. When Haru first tried to use it in a battle, its influence began taking over his body and mind. Later, however, it is revealed that this wasn't because the sword was evil, but was due to the fact that the Ten Commandments was forged specifically for Haru's predecessor, thus Haru could not wield it properly. Presumably Haru is able to use it safely after he gets a sword of his very own, but he never used it again after that incident.
- Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing wears black (including a leather jacket in The Movie) and uses the nickname "Shinigami" to refer to both himself and his Gundam, Deathscythe, which is also black, wields a beam scythe, and even gets shield-like bat wings in its Mid Season Upgrade. Personality-wise, however, he's the goofy, cheerful, flirtatious Lancer of the group (though not without his Hidden Depths).
- Ogami of Code:Breaker has dark hair, dark clothes, a dark glove, and uses his powers to burn people to death on a regular basis. He's also very much a good guy, going to great lengths to protect his friends and allies.
- Mixing this up a bit with Light Is Not Good, Ogami's sempai is very sinister and is usually seen reading bondage H-manga, but he can control light (in the form of a shibari rope, naturally) and is also on the side of good.
- Karasu in Noein looks kind of creepy — long white hair, black robes, a perpetually snarly face, always angry, and he's played by Crispin Freeman... But he's just Yu all grown up, wanting to protect Haruka. His counterpart Noein is a Well Intentioned Extremist however, who wants some kind of utopia or instrummentality.
- Some of the chimearas of Fullmetal Alchemist, especially Zanpano and Jelso, whose "beast modes" are pretty ugly; the same probably applies to Alphonse Elric when his soul was attached to the armour as it is presently. Of course, this being a world where the bad guys are homunculi, Dark Is Evil is played fairly straight, and so is Light Is Not Good.
- The 'dark demon blade' of the Nakatsukasa family in Soul Eater fits this one. While originally it appeared to be something of an Evil Weapon of Living Shadows, when used by Tsubaki and Black Star it has turned out to be formidable for the protagonists. Arguably, the nature of chaos/insanity in the series where it and order take the place of 'good versus evil'. The shinigami too, naturally, seeing as Death leads the good guys and isn't your most creepy-looking of Grim Reapers.
- Yakko from Akazukin Chacha has dark blue hair, wears black and purple and relies on dark alchemy, and she is one of the silliest characters in the show.
- Michiru and Kaoru of Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, who continue to use their powers as warriors of the Dark Fall, even after their Heel Face Turn.
Comic Books
- Death of the Endless, or, for that matter, Dream of the Endless.
- Destruction as well, not as dark as his simblings, but still isn't what you expect from the personification of the end of all things.
- Batman. The Dark Knight is one of the best barometers of what the writer wants you to think is morally acceptable in all of comicdom. In fact, there's been more "Oh noes Superman has gone evil!" stories, whether alternate universe or mind-control situations, than "Oh noes Batman has gone evil!" stories.
- That's because Superman going evil results in a massive conflict. Batman going evil simply results in him taking over the universe in about 30 seconds, because he's the Goddamn Batman.
- More seriously though, Superman without his brain is still able to wreck continents. Batman without his brain is just a guy who works out a lot.
- Without his brain? Or without his sanity? A sociopathic version of Batman (Owlman) winds up almost destroying 'everything that has ever existed or will ever exist' since it's "the only choice that matters."
- DC Comics continuity has a realm called the Great Darkness, which is sometimes referred to as the Darklands or Shadowlands. To make a long story short, when God said "Let there be light," this inadvertently created something called the Great Evil Beast, a creature composed of darkness and shadow on par with God itself. While this creature did go on something of a small rampage on account of not knowing its own nature, when it got to the gates of the Silver City, it merged with God to create a sort of yin-yang creature. However, the part of reality where it had formed was left over, and is called the Great Darkness. Many heroes and villains in the DCU make use of this realm and its power to manipulate shadow and create shadow constructs.
- The DC superheroine Nightshade has darkness-based powers, including the ability to create and manipulate darkness, and to create shadow-creatures.
- Likewise the DC superhero Obsidian, son of Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott. He had a Face Heel Turn for a while, but he's back now.
- The Shade, one-time villain of the Golden Age Flash. He ended up as a mentor to Jack Knight, aka the hero Starman, so the Shade probably counts for this trope. He gained his power during a magic-related incident in Victorian England that killed 104 people. Shade is probably far and away the most powerful of any of the DC characters that draw power from the Great Darkness, as not only is he ageless and immortal, but he has far more control over his shadow abilities and can directly travel between normal reality and the Great Darkness at will. Notably, he's been said to be capable of standing up to the Spectre (also known as the physical personification of the Wrath of God) and at one point, a future incarnation was able to transport Jack Knight centuries and Lightyears across time and space.
- The DC superheroine Shadow Lass from the Legion of Superheroes.
- And Raven - unless she's in one of her "daddy's girl" phases.
- With all these DC examples, it's worth pointing out one group who avert this trope completely, the Black Lantern Corps, a genuinely evil superpowered Zombie Apocalypse working for a Cosmic Horror. This horde of darkness-wielding super-zombies are so monstrous that even the most vile of the three evil light-based groups look good in comparison.
- It should be noted that the Black Lanterns themselves (at least the ring-generated personalities, not the actual souls of those being controlled) believe they play this trope straight, at least the "not evil" part. Needless to say, their actual depiction crushes that so-called belief flat.
- The very, VERY obscure comic "Hybrid" has Nocturns.
- Nightcrawler of the X-Men. Despite the fact that he resembles a demon and was in fact chased out of his hometown for looking like such, he remains a devout Catholic. (Not to say that that hasn't caused problems.) Also, there's that minor matter of his powers work by shunting himself though Hell.
- In the Adventures in Olympus arc of Flare, Aphrodite tells Pan that "Nyx is not evil. But she does hate Eos."
- Trauma from Avengers: the Initiative is a half-demon who can shapeshift into a person's worst fear, invoking responses that range from a freakout session (Armory and Cloud 9) to reliving one's worst personal shame (Yellowjacket) to ending up in a mental institute (Trauma's mother). That being said, Trauma himself is a pretty nice guy who seems to have found a calling in helping people overcome their fears.
- The Ghost Rider is a burning skeleton riding a motorcyle made of hellfire. He's also the hero of his story.
- And in one storyline is actually revealed to be an angel.
- Hellboy. And I know this quote is from the end of the movie, not the comic book, but it applies. "What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once asked. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he finishes them."
Film
- Tim Burton has based much of his career on this trope:
- The citizens of Halloween Town, from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, are textbook examples. They said it in the opening song quoted above. Even though they're all skeletons, Frankenstein-esque monsters, ghosts, vampires, a Mad Scientist, etc., for the most part they're just fun guys who love a good Halloween. The only one who's Obviously Evil is Oogie Boogie - and he isn't exactly popular with the others.
- Corpse Bride also plays on this trope. The undead are jovial and friendly both to each other and to mortals, while a lot of the mortals themselves are jerks.
- They are also more colorful whereas the mortals appear in what can only be called 'the Tim Burton palette'.
- Beetlejuice is yet another example. It features a sympathetic ghost couple who try to scare off a new family that moves into their house with the intent of giving it a massive makeover. The couple meet various other undead people along the way, some hideously disfigured. The dead are all portrayed as eccentric-but-decent people, with the sole exception of the film's eponymous antihero, Betelgeuse who's really more Chaotic Neutral.
- The Animated Adaptation is considerably Lighter And Softer, although it also plays into this trope. Lydia is a goth who enjoys horror movies, insects, rainy days, and other creepy things, and she's a very nice person. Similarly, the Netherworld ranges from freaky to downright bizarre, but very few of the ghosts there are actually malevolent.
- His version of Alice In Wonderland has Chessur, an unbelivably unsettling version of the Chesire Cat, although he is among the good guys. To a lesser extent, the Mad Hatter and the Ugly Cute bear/hyena/reptile like Bandersnatch (originally a bad guy, then changing sides); in the end, the Red Queen's minions also stop being in her side. Yes, that includes the creepy card soldiers.
- Meanwhile, the pretty and bland people of Alice's world are almost all shown to be hypocritical, boring, domineering, or shallow.
- Unbelievable how it hasn't been mentioned earlier; the ENTIRE moral of Edward Scissorhands, is this. The town starts to judge him by his appearance of being scary and 'monstrous' when in fact he is the most human character in the movie, being caring and downright innocent...
- Part of the twist ending to The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, in which Mad Scientist Caligari is actually a perfectly kind psychologist, his sleepwalking hitman is just a harmless loony, and the hero turns out to be a paranoid psychopath. Although it is notable that after The Reveal, Cesare and Caligari look a lot less dark, and Francis looks a lot darker. Since Tim Burton gets all of his ideas from Caligari, this makes perfect sense.
- ...Unless, of course, you see the very rare removed footage, which pulled a Double Subversion and twisted this back on again, by revealing in a Mind Screw moment, that the "kind psychologist" really IS Dr Caligari.
- Santi, the Creepy Child ghost in The Devil's Backbone.
- And, while we're on the subject of Guillermo del Toro, it turns out that the Nightmare Fuel Unleaded-faun of Pans Labyrinth is entirely trustworthy.
- Similarly, the intentions of the other children in The Orphanage weren't quite as macabre as originally thought, as they were trying to let her know something crucial.
- Similarly, as if the Hellboy movie hadn't already the eponymous demonic protagonist, the sequel also introduces several magical creatures that, for most part, just want to be left alone. A notable example is the Angel of Death, which is pretty weird and macabre looking, but helps nonetheless.
- Daywalker Blade is not only dark, he's black.
- Don't forget the Man in Black from The Princess Bride. He dresses like a villain, even acts like one in places (more in the book than in the movie), and is eventually identified as the murderous Dread Pirate Roberts - but at the end of the day it's all subterfuge, because he's really the presumed-dead hero Westley.
- This trope and its reverse are essentially the entire plot of Clive Barker's Nightbreed - it's the humans who all act monstrously. Especially the one played by David Cronenberg.
- Star Wars has BadAss Mace Windu. His fighting style, Vaapad, focuses on channeling his inner rage and bloodlust into strength and speed. He is able to go berserk on bad guys without losing control and falling to The Dark Side.
- Aside from the Windu example the Star Wars movies play it pretty straight. Luke using his anger to channel the dark side and overpower Vader (which is basically an uncontrolled version of what Windu does) almost brings him past the point of no return.
- In the Expanded Universe, it's made clear that The Dark Side itself is not necessarily evil; it can be fueled by any emotion—even positive ones. It's just that Evil Is Easy, and also that having so much power tends to mess with pure emotions like love and justice.
- Firefox - In this movie, an American pilot steals a super-advanced Soviet fighter jet and is pursued for the last third of the movie across Europe by his Cold War counterpart. The American is in all black, and the Soviet is in almost pure white. (Does it make you the bad guy if you're performing grand theft aero for LIBERTY?)
- Ladyhawke. Knight errant Etienne Navarre dresses in all-black armor with red flourishes, and turns into a wolf at night. His lover Isabeau wears a fair amount of black herself; by contrast, both the Big Bad (the Bishop of Aquila) and his Dragon wear white.
- Toothless the dragon is completely black, uses the cover of night to his advantage, his breed is considered the scariest and most dangerous dragon of all, and is on two different occasions referred to as something unholy. However, he's also one of the main characters, a "good guy," and freakin' adorable.
- The made-for-TV-movie When Good Ghouls Go Bad features this. The eponymous ghoul may look scary, but he's what's left of a harmless (and actually kind of cute◊) goth kid who just wanted to show off the statue he made of his mentor. D'aaawwww.
Literature
Live Action TV
- The Addams Family comprise of a variety of Horror Tropes, and appear highly sinister, but they hardly ever do anything that could be considered evil. They are, in fact, for the most part perfectly friendly and decent people (probably the healthiest family on TV when it first aired), if more than a bit weird and possessing unquestionably morbid and bizarre tastes.
- Similarly, The Munsters are a family of popular Hollywood monsters that act like your average Dom Com type family.
- The Addams Family movies did see the odd bit of evil, or at least questionable, actions from the family, mostly from the children. It tended to take the form of IRL trolling or excessively severe punishments meted out on the family's enemies.
- Some of the darker gags in the movie (like the family dumping boiling oil on Christmas carolers) are based on the original Charles Addams strips rather than the tv show, so Flanderization is probably inaccurate. As well, much like the characters in The Nightmare Before Christmas, they do equally "nasty" things to each other (Wednesday electrocutes her brother for fun, and he seems to enjoy it) and don't seem to suffer any ill effects. Plus, the counselors at the camp really deserved it.
- Not only are the Addams family decent people, but they show an extraordinary amount of hospitality and generosity. Gomez, being the philanthropist that he is, regularly gives away surprisingly large sums of money to benefit the community. Who could ask for better neighbors?
- Irish children's programme The Morbegs had a whole episode centred around the "festival of darkness" that the Morbegs brought to Ireland from Morbegland. The human host of the day was afraid of the dark, but as the Morbegs said, "Don't fear the darkness! It's not bad, it's just different!"
- The British show Being Human plays with this, as the main characters are a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost, all of whom just want to do their jobs, go down the pub and be friends.
- Although it's shown that most of the other vampires are very dangerous. While other werewolves just seem to try to get along on their own, Tully at least is shown to somewhat unbalanced (although this is probably owing more to being lonely than being a werewolf).
- And pretty much all the ghosts shown are perfectly nice people.
- It's safe to say that 99% of the demons in the Buffy/Angel verse are evil but they make a good point of showing that some of even the more evil-looking demons are actually good guys. Clem (the loose-skinned but amiable slacker demon from Buffy) is an obvious example. As well as Lorne from Angel, green with red eyes and horns. Skip from Angel, though originally fitting the trope, later counts as a subversion.
- In the Supernatural episode "In My Time of Dying", Dean is on the verge of death and has become something like a ghost wandering the hospital. He sees a ghostly specter that seems to be trying to kill him and another patient. He meets a girl who seems to be in his same situation, but it turns out to be the Reaper he saw. She took a human form to be able to talk to him, and she turns out to be very sympathetic to his situation, but gently explains that he might become an angry spirit if he doesn't follow her into the afterlife.
- Rescue Ink is a show about Bad Ass Biker type guys with hot rods and tattoos, some even with past jail time... who rescue helpless and abused animals.
- The WWE Wrestler Mark Calloway is best known for being "The Undertaker", a wrestling gravedigger/zombie/death incarnate/cult leader/biker. Although he started off (and every so often returns to being) a Heel, currently he's often treated as a Face, being one of the longest-tenured and popular currently active wrestlers.
- In the TV series of The Dresden Files, one episode features a young boy who is being followed around by ravens who turn into creepy-looking black-clad people. Turns out the ravens are the good guys, and they're following him to protect him from the real bad guy, the boy's teacher.
- Kamen Rider Raia from Kamen Rider Ryuki has a Contract Monster named "Evildiver", and thus by extension most of his equipment is prefaced by the word (Evilvisor, Evil Whip). However, he's actually a very honorable and noble person who is one of Ryuki's few allies in the Rider War.
- In Ryuki's American Adaption Kamen Rider Dragon Knight Kamen Rider Onyx a black version of Dragon Knight was assumed evil since it's Japanese Version Ryuga was evil, and that Kit had nightmares of the armor trying to destroy him or venting Len and Kase, making him reluctant to use it when Eubulon handed the deck to him. However when Kit took the Onyx deck and armor it didn't corrupt him as he feared it would and it showed as Kit used it to fight Xaviax's forces until Adam his mirror twin gave him the Dragon Knight deck in the finale.
- Dark Kiva Kamen Rider Kiva is used by three people: King (the Big Bad), Otoya (who's good through and through), and Taiga (who is antagonistic but not evil and eventually becomes a good guy). Kivat the 2nd, who provides the Dark Kiva powers, isn't a bad person himself; he only goes along with King because he's loyal to the guy's wife, and pulls a Heel Face Turn when she does, further prompted by seeing his Kid From The Future Kivat the 3rd partnered with Otoya's Kid From The Future Wataru.
- Kotaro Minami AKA Kamen Rider Black. He's chosen to be one of the leaders of the Gorgom cult to eventually rule the world and his transformed form is majorly black colored. Instead, he uses his power to destroy Gorgom and protect humans. His rival Shadow Moon provides a nice contrast with silverish white color scheme.
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: In "The Mad Woman in the Attic", Eve is a redskinned alien girl with a disturbing hairdo who mind-controls her "friends" into endlessly riding the rides of an abandoned fairground. And then we find out she's an orphan and refugee from the Time War who doesn't know any better, and that she's actually sweet and kind.
- Played fatally for laugh in this SNL skit. Heaven's commitment to helping prayers is indeed doubtful when the messenger is Christopher Walken adorned in black.
- Played straight in a episode of CSI, when a teacher is telling Grissom about a student who creeps her out badly. She points toward the lockers, and Grissom assumes she means the Goth boy there. The Goth boy walks away with an airy "Hey teach," as he passes them, revealing the preppy boy behind him who's the one the teacher was really referring to. It turns out there's very good reason the teacher was creeped out by Preppy Boy.
Mythology
- Many of the protagonists of the various branches of the Mabinogion are the Welsh gods of Darkness.
- Hades from the Greek Mythology; even though he is portrayed as a Satan analogue nowdays in the original myths he can best be described as Lawful Neutral, and is actually one of the few gods that didn't harm mankind directly (even Demeter caused devastation by the droughts following her daughter's "abduction"; keep reading). The worse thing he did was to kidnap Persephone, and in some versions she was perfectly willing to go with him. Other entities from the greek mythology, such as the already mentioned daemons, are also neutral or benevolent, and are usually dark aligned, in contrast to the violent/very manipulative and certainly NOT good light themed gods such as Zeus.
- In most myths he shows up in, Hades is shown to be a polite guy simply doing his job, though he can be a bit grim. But considering his job, that's to be expected. And he proves himself perfectly willing to work with you if you simply come and talk to him up-front, something that most of his fellow Gods and Goddesses seem to flat-out refuse to do. Hell, if it was Zeus in Hades' place during the whole 'Persephone' incident, she'd have been raped, and when Demeter got angry, he'd have punished her for doing so.
- In some versions of the tale, Persephone is violently raped. And she's about twelve years old. Some versions of the tale have her so young that she sobs for her crushed flowers as much as she does her utter terror at being kidnapped and raped. Granted, Zeus rapes a whole lot more women, but it's still pretty brutal.
- On other versions Aphrodite is to blame for her megalomania, making Hades fall in love/lust with Persephone for the mere fact he was not under her control. On other myths, Persephone is no better then Hera: a jealous bitch.
- Pan swings between playing this trope straight and subverting it. He's a goat-like guy who is usually happy to play a pipe and dance in the woods at night, but then he also has a tendency to get moody and shriek at people who disturb him (this is where "panic" comes from - it's what people felt when they heard his cries). Still, he never hurt anyone.
- Anubis and Osiris from the Egyptian Mythology, which are both death related deities that are good and righteous.
- Zoroastrianism portrays light and dark as two sides of the cosmic balance. On the other hand, the God Of Evil (sort of) Angra Mainyu is identified with darkness, while the good one true God, Ahura Mazda, is associated with fire (and thus light); it's just that evil is part of the cosmic balance. Complex, huh?
- Even Angra Mainyu doesn't seem to be completly evil; in the end of the world, Ahura Mazda forgives him. Compare that to the christian/muslim belief that Satan will be thrown into Hell at the end of the world. Of course, it could just be that Yahweh is a sadist and Ahura Mazda is a saint.
- While Christianity usually uses light as a metaphor for good and dark for evil, lots of churches, especially old Eastern Orthodox ones, are pretty dark and gloomy inside.
- Hinduism has several entities that are associated with destruction but are not directly evil; Kali is such an example, even if she is mostly demonized nowadays, much like Hades. Its last reforms spawned more confusion.
- According to a few verses, the biblical God dwells in darkness (1 Kings 8:12, Psalm 18:11, Psalm 97:2). Whereas he is good or not is a matter of debate however.
- Angels could also appear to be 'dark' or very threatening, appearing like EldritchAbominations or other monsters.
- In the Lusitanian Mythology there was Ataegina, a goddess of the night that was also the goddess of Spring. Similar in some ways to Persephone, another benevolent goddess of the Spring and the Underworld, except that Ataegina wasn't married to anyone.
- Santa Muerte. Almost unbelivable since she's considered a Catholic saint by a community in Mexico. True, Catholicism as a whole does not accept her canonically, but enough worship her that the movement is pretty much a de facto religious sect. Subverted in that a few of her followers use her to impose death on their enemies, though several other worshippers aren't that nasty.
- The minoan deity Snake Goddess; also averts the Reptiles Are Abhorrent trope.
Tabletop Games
- Though Dungeons And Dragons tends to be pretty bad for "dark equals evil", this is not always the case. Even necromancy isn't always evil; while most of the necromancy-themed prestige classes don't allow you to be good, they don't require you to be evil, and a wizard specializing in necromancy may be of any alignment. Basically, in most settings there used to be three main types of people who chose Necromancy knowing what they want: some came there to create undead, some for Regeneration, and some to destroy undead.
- A subversion existed in the older spell-casting rules: Healing spells were in the Necromancy school, until they were moved to Conjuration in the Third Edition. However, there are still some beneficial Necromancy spells, such as False Life.
- By 3.5 core rules, very few Necromancy spells are evil. The Evil Necromacy spells are any that create undead creatures, causing disease via Contagion, making unholy water (the opposite of holy water, natch) via Curse Water, the life-draining Death Knell, the torturous Symbol of Pain, and the "Evil Eye" Eyebite. Oddly Deathwatch is described as Evil even though the only effect of the spell is to know how close nearby creatures are to dying. Strangely, not even instant-kill spells like Finger of Death are given the "Evil" stamp by the game - and most of the Evil spells are available to priestly Clerics.
- Presumably due to the flavor text mentioning the caster "using the foul sight granted by the powers of unlife", but that's merely that... flavor text. And not that neutrals were utterly prohibited to have anything in common with undead. It's only a "detect hit points" spell, for God's sake. Giving it an evil descriptor is ridiculous. Especially since the 3.5 edition Spell Compendium contains a spell that basically does the same thing: It allows player character clerics to closely monitor the hit points of their allies during combat, how wounded they are, etc., so the cleric will instantly know when and where to dispense healing.
- What's really odd, is that Deathwatch is on the spell list of the Miniatures Handbook Healer, which is required to be Good, and Book of Exalted Deeds Slayer of Domial, that loses all powers if it commits an evil act. Hmm.
- Clerics are much much much more affected by alignment descriptors than Wizards; indeed, only with something like the Spell Focus (Evil) feat do alignment descriptors have any game effect on arcane spellcasters. Clerics, however, can't cast spells opposed by their alignment. The goddess Sharess from the Forgotten Realms might be partially an instance of this - not a dark goddess, but she certainly brushed with Evil is Sexy when confronted by Shar before ultimately ending up good. Someone check my references though...
- The "Book Of Vile Darkness" describes evil, and what has to be done for it to be evil. Spells like "Finger Of Death" are not evil— Killing something is a neutral effect, the reason why is what's morally affected. However, spells that cause unneeded pain or torment, like "Wither Limb", which causes the target's limbs to shrivel terribly, are evil simply because you could incapacitate an enemy in a much less cruel way. Otherwise, in a game like D&D, where a Paladin loses all abilities for doing any evil, even just attacking would be evil because it's causing harm. It's okay, because it's not torture.
- Or it's "[Evil]" if it "channels Negative Energy (TM)" or disrupts lifeforce, as opposed to kicking it out: Slay Living isn't "[Evil]" just like its reverse Raise Dead is not "[Good]": neither Bane has a reason to frown when his priest raised mad Sammaster, nor anyone else was happy to see him again.
- The best breakdown of all that I've ever seen was a bunch of houserules called the "Tome of Necromancy", which says there's two ways to handle it, based on Negative Energy: 1) Treat Negative Energy as automatically evil 2) "Playing With Fire," which says it's risky, but not automatically evil.
- In Lords Of Madness, a book about Abberations,there is a race called the Silthilar, creatures that were once elven wizards but turned into hive minded swarms that coalesce into what can only be called a Starfish Alien and specialize in grafting strange and bizzarre parts onto humanoids. And they are Chaotic Good.
- 4E has an embodiment of the trope as a basic character class, the theurgy-inclined Warlock. The three paths they have to their particular brand of Pact Magic are, as follows: Making a literal Deal With The Devil for more offensive Black Magic, consorting with The Fair Folk for Psychic Powers and various trickery, or making a contract with a Cosmic Horror for a mix... and they are quite as capable of being good as any other core class, although the book mentions they have great capacity for evil as well, but that's the same for all other classes. There's even the Dark Pact in the Player's Guide to Faerun, in which you make deals with shadowy beings of darkness, and you are no more forced to have any alignment restrictions either (though it does promote acting like a dick in some cases).
- To expand on the last sentence, that's because the Dark Pact has a modified version of Cast From Hit Points applied to it; some of its spells can be made more powerful by draining Hit Points from allies, while others cause a penalty to allies in exchange for working. And what about the Vestige Pact, which revolves around drawing upon the spiritual remnants of powerful forces and entities that displayed either great authority or awful capabilities in life?
- Not to forget the 'tiefling' player character race, who are descendants of fiends and mortals and look accordingly. While their looks and history give them a definite push into the dark and brooding loner direction, any given tiefling may still be of any alignment.
- Though since their appearance back in the early editions of the games, tieflings have been described as being 'mostly evil.' Plane Scape stated about 90% of tieflings are, in fact, evilly aligned. Which leads to a curious disparity; apparently being demon-blooded makes you less likely to be evil than just being born into certain completely natural, mortal races.
- And the most famous tiefling is Rhys. Not only true neutral, but the head of the Transcendent Order, who tend to balance things around themselves involuntarily.
- The sharakim in D&D 3.5 are a race of orclike humanoids who are mostly kind and goodhearted. Likewise, the mongrelfolk, who go back to 1st edition, are deformed mish-mash hybrids that look like man-eating monsters for the most part, but they really just want to be left alone.
- Another 'not evil' race from D&D, it's name eludes me as it is 3AM here, was a species that looked like devils, had the horns, red skin, goaties, tails, hooves, ect. The twist? They're peaceful people who are exiles after evil beings took over their dimension, and the reason they seem to be so secretive and isolationist is that they find US disturbing and demonic to behold.
- Could it have been the Diaboli? Skin was more purple then red, if I recall, but sounds much the same. Look like stereotypical devils (tiny horns, long tail with a fork, goat-like legs), kindly, peaceful, find mortal races strange and scary-looking, forced to flee their home (the Plane of Dreams) when it was invaded (by the Plane of Nightmares)...
- Speaking of races, drow serving Eilistraee (Chaotic Good goddess) managed to implement both Dark Is Not Evil and Good Is Not Nice: they are supposed to be more benevolent than one would expect from an average surface elf, let alone drow, but frequently are too paranoid, aggressive and/or even Holier Than Thou to be a good company.
- The Al-Qadim campaign setting went out of its way to embrace this trope, such that goblins, orcs, ogres, and other races that are just there for the heroes to kill in other settings were actually peaceful, productive members of society; the only races that were Always Chaotic Evil were explicitly supernatural, like the yuan-ti, yak-folk, and noble efreet. Likewise, the Eberron setting played goblinoids as aggressive but not inherently evil, while the orcs were actually responsible for protecting the world from Cosmic Horrors. And, of course, the draconians in Dragonlance were created to be the vile servants of the Gods of Evil, but once the gods went away, a lot of draconians realized that not being willing tools of evil has its ups.
- While usually the good creatures get short shrift in the Monster Manuals of all the editions to make space for yet another thing the heroes can fight, there are a few which play this trope straight. Most notable might be the Asuras, good-aligned celestial beings with flaming wings who embody a holy fury. Though virtuous, the average asuras makes a mortal Knight Templar seem more like a Gentle Giant.
- Three words: Special Snowflake Syndrome.
- Well, mythologically speaking there really are three kinds of undead, which in D&D terms could probably be called Good, Neutral and Evil : for Good we have those folks which subvert the natural order (born-lived-died-end) in order to help others, such as the bhoddisattva of Buddhist lore, i.e. guys who have earned their way out of the whole reincarnation chore and into Nirvana, but stay down here to help others on that path. Which is pretty cool of them. For Neutral, we have the "unfinished business" kind, those undead who, in life, were focused on one goal so hard even death ain't an obstacle. Mankind's wishful thinking, there, OK, but in any case, the task in question can be Good ("protect my baby heir"), Neutral ("finish my research") or Evil ("Kill my murderer in gruesome ways"). And then we have the Evil, RRrrrGrowl, feast-on-the-living, Braiiiiins kind of undead, which aren't nearly as interesting.
- Old Lords of Darkness mentioned things like skeletons marching out of crypts to save their descendants. Also, Forgotten Realms officially has at least two paladins who walked as undead for some time — didn't thought the grave is important enough to stand between them and the duty and all that.
- The gods and demigods that make up The Dark in Nobilis are harder to characterise as Not Evil than their opposite number are as not Good, since they believe above all else in inducing humans to suicide. Their work generally involves systematically destroying everything a given person cares about. However, they have some redeeming features: They are arguably a fundamental and necessary part of human nature, having sprung from the fruit of the Garden of Eden. They will almost never kill, since a murder is a suicide prevented, and may even step in to avert needless death. The more someone resists their tortures, the more likely they are to simply leave them alone for an easier target, effectively purifying the gene pool. Some believe that the point of their work is to make those they test stronger. However, as the book points out, cruelty for kindness' sake can be much more thorough than the other kind...
- In Warhammer 40000 the Black Templars and Dark Angels Space Marine Chapters are... no more evil than their peers, although the Dark Angels are one of the shadier Chapters of Space Marines, more concerned with personal redemption than serving the Imperium itself. Though, the Dark Eldar are definitely a lot worse than the Craftworld Eldar.
- The Black Templars are even more fanatical than usual and the Dark Angels...well. It's also not fair to label all the Space Marine Chapters as "evil" - the Ultramarines and the Imperial Fists are examples of a couple of the more genuinely heroic chapters. The Raven Guard are a better example of Dark Is Not Evil.
- The Soul Drinkers are a dead-straight example: their name sounds pretty nasty by itself, their motto is "Cold and fast", and as a pleasant bonus the vast majority of them are mutated in some way, with their Chapter Master having the legs of a giant spider. They're the closest 40K gets to Neutral Good, fighting both the destructive madness of Chaos and the tyranny of the Imperium.
- Then there's the Space Wolves, who all look like large, wolf-fanged, viking Space Marines, who are all pretty damn pissed that the administratum decided to wipe out the remaining survivors on a planet they had just saved. Needless to say, they are probably the least tolerating towards the administratum's actions of all the chapters still in the Imperium.
- Don't forget the Salamanders chapter, who have jet-black skin and glowing red eyes, but are actually concerned with protecting innocent people instead of just slaughtering the bad guys (and whoever gets in the way).
- In the novel Eisenhorn, the eponymous Inquisitor is surprised that a Librarian of the Deathwatch Chapter is a very erudite, even nice, guy, despite being a veteran xeno-fighter with Terminator honours.
- In Brothers of the Snake, the distinction can be drawn between two of the senior marines. On one hand: Librarian Petrok, a walking CMOA and superhuman killing machine whose attitude towards those around him, particularly Priad, could nevertheless be described as 'chummy'. He is given to occasional whimsy, and likes to "remind himself that he has a soul". On the flipside of this, there's Hero-Captain Phobor, a more conventional Astartes in that he's a humourless, unrelenting psychopath who is 100% devoted to warfare and nothing else, and is contemptuous of weakness to the point of sentencing the officer corps of an Imperial Guard regiment to penal legions for failing to win a battle of attrition.
- Changeling: The Lost has the Darkling seeming. They explicitly had some of the "light" (however you want to define it, it might change from person to person) taken from them in Arcadia, leaving them rather warped and with an aversion to sunlight. One of the kiths sees ghosts; another drains life from passerby. Their major Contract gives them power over darkness and shadows... and nothing stops them from being decent people.
- The Moros Path of mages in Mage: The Awakening have Death and Matter as their ruling Arcana. Their powers are thus heavily rooted in destruction and decay. For the most part, however, they're not evil, just depressing; you'd be the same way if you saw the world through the eyes of the dead, too. (This is slightly mitigated by the fact that they just beat out the other Paths for Left-Handed Legacies, with three Moros-specific.) In the earlier Mage: The Ascension there were the Euthanatos mages, who were also down with death and decay, were resident experts on where the souls of the dead go, and were dedicated to making sure all things die at their appointed time. Despite all that they were still supposed to be good(ish) guys, and firmly disapproved of things dying before their appointed time.
- Vampire: the Masquerade had the Nosferatu (who were all hideously disfigured) and Gangrel (who start normal but become more and more bestial-looking over time) vampire clans. Despite being full of monstrous-looking freaks, neither of them were "baddy" clans... Well, not any more than the other Camarilla clans, anyway. Still blood-sucking undead monsters, though.
- Werewolf: the Forsaken and Werewolf: the Apocalypse had... well, pretty much everyone. The protagonists are werewolves for god's sake, turning into big ugly monsters comes with the job.
- Kindred of the East introduced 'vampires' who were more like Asian hungry ghosts than anything else, feeding off of chi energy. One group had a karmic imbalance towards virtue and duty, and were driven by those emotions. They're still undead, soul-siphoning abominations who use powers which range from rather creepy to outright squicktastic, but their souls and powers still feed off their sense of righteousness and obligation. Even that setting's Complete Monster group, the Devil Tigers, were portrayed to usually be doing some sort of 'good' by visiting their vast cruelties and depravities on people who need to suffer such things.
- The Nightbane RPG from Palladium books is about characters who are gifted with incredible superpowers that they use to fight off demonic forces that secretly rule the world. Except the superpowers all relate to darkness or blood, and they have to transform into hideous freaky-deaky monsters to use their powers.
- The Golgari Swarm in the Magic The Gathering setting of Ravnica are a cult of elf and human necromancers who use zombies as labor... but they're also an indispensable part of Ravnica's society, providing food and waste disposal services. A lot of them are indeed black-hearted knaves who sacrifice unwilling people to raise them as undead, but one of the heroes of the tie-in novels is the leader of the Golgari, who's working to reform them after the death of his evil sister.
- What about Black? It's iconic creatures are zombies, vampires, and demons. But they aren't defined as strictly evil, only greedy or ambitious.
- In theory anyway. In practice it's also heavily associated with sadism, desecration and murder.
- However, Kamigawa's main protagonist, Toshiro Umezawa, is black, while its main antagonist (among mortals, at least), Konda, is white.
- Mark Rosewater discusses Black's ideology at length here.
- The vampire planeswalker Sorin Markov is another black Anti Hero. He's scheming, vicious and paranoid...but at the same time, he managed to work together with two other planeswalkers to seal the Eldrazi in their can.
- To a lesser extent, gargoyles. Although they are technically White, their appearence is quite◊ demonic◊
- In the Mutants And Masterminds third party setting Halt Evil Doer!, the principle hero team features Splotch, a darkness manipulator who looks like a walking ink blot test. Not only is he one of the good guys, but he's also an Expy (or Captain Ersatz depending on your point of view) for Spider Man.
- In Exalted, Five Days Darkness sure sounds like he'd be an evil god—he's got a sinister name, a backstory as the first shadow cast by the Unconquered Sun, he was cast out of Heaven because the other deities didn't trust him, and he's a Creature of Darkness, a descriptor usually used to refer to enemies of Creation. However, not only is he one of the good guys, he's also one of the nicest and least corrupt gods you're likely to meet.
- We also have Green Sun Princes, the True Infernal Exalts. Yeah, sure, they're basically demonic demigods, they have to furfill their Urges or risk building up Torment and the way to reduce it is to act like a B-Movie supervillain...Except those Urges can easily be traditionally Solar goals (yes, Light Is Not Good and all, but Solar goals tend to be morally neutral) and the guy you are doing the villainy gig on is your choice. Word Of God says the Yozi screwed themselves over on that one.
- Likewise, Abyssals may hurt the world through their very existence, but some of them work to keep the ghost/mortal deals fair (although the White Walker is a bit myopic when it comes to the feelings of mortals), and some of them, such as Fallen Wolf of the Cutting Sea, would very much like to stop hurting the world now please.
- Scion has any number of gods of death or darkness among the roster. Their Scions are perfectly capable of being decent folk - one of the sample characters on the hero side is the daughter of Baron Samedi, Loa of death. Likewise, just because your patron god is generally considered evil doesn't force you to be a villain - the rules allow Scions of, say, Loki or Set to be heroic. (White Wolf kind of drops this ball, however, as the only sample villain not the Scion of an "evil" god is the daughter of Erzulie...)
- Not true. Kane is a Scion of Amaterasu, he chose to sign up with the Titans, and Victor is a Scion of Ares, whos a bit of jerk, but not really evil. At least not by Olympian standards.
- From fan work, we have a semi-example in Po, Polynesian Titan of Night. Sounds like she would compete with Sobe-No-Kumi for the "Bastard of the Eon" award, right? Nope. Instead, she represents potential, meaning that her Genius Loci form is a beautiful forest under a clear night sky where life thrives. She's actually rather fond of life as it is now, and it's outright stated that her conquering reality wouldn't be the worst thing in the cosmos. Unfortunately, she doesn't discriminate between monsters and humans, meaning that her Earth would be a safety hazard. So, in this case, Dark Is An Anti Villain.
Theatre
Theme Parks
- This is a common interpretation of the Ghost Host and the Happy Haunts from The Haunted Mansion and other attractions at Disney Theme Parks. The is supported by the line in "Grim Grinning Ghosts", "They pretend to terrorize," implying that, like with the citizens of Halloween Town, it's all in good fun for them.
- This is more blatant in the Expanded Universe material, specifically the movie and the game, where the ghosts are the victims that the heroes need to save.
Video Games
- Deus Ex. JC Denton is always dressed in a black overcoat with shades. Of course, you can play JC as an amoral killer, but that's the player's choice.
- The Necromancer from Diablo II and the Assassin from its expansion pack, Lord of Destruction, fit this perfectly; the Witch Doctor in Diablo III will follow suit.
- Millenia from Grandia II is a textbook example of this. Despite being a piece of the setting's local Satan figure, she's actually a rather pleasant person when she's in a good mood. Eventually she becomes one of the main characters' love interests.
- Overall, this trope is pretty much half the point of the game itself...the other half being Light Is Not Good
- Dante of Devil May Cry, although he's mostly an exception as nearly all demons in the series are evil. Sparda, Dante's father, was an extremely powerful devil and nicknamed "The Legendary Dark Knight"; he was also a very nice guy who saved humanity from extinction. Trish and Lucia from the same series are also demons who fight for the good of mankind.
- Dark types from Pokemon. Dark types also aren't emo, despite what the good people of Deviant Art tell you. Though they aren't perfect, they're no worse than any other type of Pokemon. A good example is Absol, who can sense disasters and tries to warn people of them, but gets blamed as the perpetrator, or Umbreon, which evolves due to happiness (at night).
- Despite this, the original Japanese name for Dark type is "aku" or "evil" type. This could be because of the nasty effects dark-type attacks often have, however - most of them involve "fighting dirty", like pretending to cry (Fake Tears), ganging up on one opponent (Beat Up), biting (Bite, Crunch), thievery (Thief), and throwing foreign objects (Fling).
- Additionally, in PokemonColosseum, the original Japanese name for Shadow Pokemon is Dark Pokemon. They, for the most part, were used by an evil organization, inverting this trope. This trope was also ironically played straight, as not every Dark Pokemon was an "evil" type.
- Darkrai is practically made of Nightmare Fuel in the games, but he is the Legendary Pokemon protagonist of the anime's tenth movie (although he is accused of causing the events until Dialga and Palkia make their presence known)! He also is said to be misunderstood, according to the Platinum Pokedex.
- Ghost and Poison types are also similarly treated in the same way that Dark types are, Ghost types having paranormal powers and Poison types being associated with pollutants, venomous animals or sickness.
- The Longest Journey and its sequel has The Dark People, these aren't evil despite the fact that they are cloaked, dressed in black or seem to lack legs. They are librarians and collectors of stories and knowledge and actually helps the main characters on several occasions.
- Silent Hill's Alessa Gillespie is either Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral, depending on whether you assume that her motivations are to prevent the birth of some sort of demon goddess and protect the world, or just to end her own suffering, but either way, she is absolutely freaking terrifying and she is preventing the end of the world.
- The Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children games, for the Game Boy systems, are probably king of this trope: the eponymous heroes are half-demons who explore Makai and various other worlds training demons, at some points even collaborating with Lucifer. Naturally, they're trying to save the world. Then again, positive portrayals of some "dark" supernatural entities is pretty standard for MegaTen.
- Igor from the Shin Megami Tensei spin-off Persona game series is a very sinister-looking character, with a hunched back, bulging eyes, an enormously long nose, and pointed ears. He's actually a steadfast ally to the main characters throughout the series, giving advice and his services of Persona fusion. And he's the only character to appear all Persona-related media to date, including the anime.
- Shin Megami Tensei in general has a very literal example of Dark Is Not Evil. The series uses a two-axis alignment system, with the axes being Law/Neutral/Chaos and Light/Neutral/Dark. However, despite what you might expect due to its similarities to Dungeons And Dragons, Dark Is Not Evil, and Light Is Not Good — they have to do with the mythological reputation of the being in question, not its actual morality; Dark demons can be good, and Light demons can be quite nasty indeed.
- The Dark Warriors of Final Fantasy III (the old one). They helped save the world in the past of the game world when the Light got too powerful and threatened to destroy the earth in the Flood of Light.
- Most Black Mages in Final Fantasy aren't evil at all.
- Cecil, too. Yeah, he throws away his own Dark Blade and becomes a Paladin, but the prophecy mentions wielding both dark and light... and indeed, at the end, it takes both Cecil and Golbez to finish off the Big Bad.
- Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII has strong goth/vampire themes, and turns into horror creatures as part of his Limit Breaks, but is nevertheless a force for good, more or less.
- In Final Fantasy X, the Dark Aeon Anima is an expression of motherly love and devotion, who barring completion of a sidequest, aids you in your quest to save the world at the cost of her own life.
- In Final Fantasy XI, Diabolos is simply cynical and even allies with the player if a certain quest is completed. Odin might also qualify for this.
- Riku from Kingdom Hearts in the more recent two games; at the end of the third game, Riku was purified of Xehanort's darkness, but he keeps his own darkness-based abilities because they're part of who he is.
- Terra from Birth by Sleep is an even better example. He's basically Riku's predecessor and also uses darkness despite being a good guy. However, unlike Riku who becomes kinda emo about it for most of Kingdom Hearts II and wangsts about how he gave into the darkness, Terra angsts about it for a few minutes but gets over it and remains a slightly stoic but kind, heroic and loveable goof even after he starts zapping people's eyes out with dark energy. Unfortunately, he learns the downside of dark power in the end. Whether it's used for good or evil, use of darkness weakens a person's heart's natural defenses of light, making him helpless when Master Xehanort attempts Grand Theft Me.
- Pure-hearted Mickey himself uses the keyblade from the Realm of Darkness.
- A good comparison of Riku and Terra's view on Dark is not Evil is that while both are scared of their dark power and then accept it Riku eventually learns that darkness doesn't make one evil and one can still use darkness while fighting on the side of the light (the Road to Dawn) Terra decides that no dark is just as bad and he's essentially damned beyond redemption at this point and all he can do now is use his sinful dark power to kill the Big Bad and help his friends before he's lost to darkness. As a result Terra doesn't completely master his power and is harmed by it in the end. Compare the swords they get after resolving to use darkness. Riku gets a noble blade based on a black but angelic looking wing, while Terra gets a demonic looking BFS.
- The Forsaken of World Of Warcraft. There have been plenty of arguments between those who say they're evil and those who say they're doing what they have to in order to survive. Blizzard themselves flip flops on this issue.
- The Wrathgate storyline more or less proved both sides of the debate right. Putress and his followers certainly weren't 'doing what they need to to survive,' when they betrayed their allies and killed the delegation at Wrathgate. However, the subsequent Battle for Undercity storyline makes it plain that Putress and Varimanthras were only a splinter group and that most of the Forsaken, including Sylvanas, remained loyal.
- Also Warlocks, who are described in the character creation menu as "the bane of all life", and whose magic focuses on (1) summoning demons, (2) sucking life energy out of people, and (3) setting people on fire. Nonetheless, they're able to do all the same heroic deeds as any other playable class. (Having said that, all important warlocks in the story are evil.)
- The Good aligned Troll tribe are called the Darkspear. Similarly the Shadow Tooth tribe of Dark Trolls aided in the battle of mount Hyjal.
- The night elves, while being WoW's version of dark elves, aren't evil. Yes, they're nocturnal and have fangs. Sure, they're mysterious, distrustful of the other races, and rather prideful. They have made some (rather large) mistakes in their past, namely tearing the Warcraft world's Pangaea-like supercontinent apart with overuse of magic. But for the most part they're okay folks who want to preserve the balance of nature and stuff.
- If you really get into the lore, you begin to find that the ones who are actually still dark elves are largely, in fact, the ones who managed to avoid being responsible for all of the above bad s*** . The segment of the elven population responsible became the Tolkienesque High elves (and then the blatantly ruthless yet still Color Coded For Your Convenience as "good" Blood Elves).
- And if you really get into the lore, you begin to realise that Highborne were always night elves, and the "high elf" evolution only came about after they were exiled by the rest of the night elves for practicing arcane magic (the alternate War of the Ancients, where the Highborne chose to leave on their own accord may or may not have actually happened due to the good old-fashioned Timey Wimey Ball). A great portion of the night elves were vain, distrusting, and arrogant, and the Highborne were just an extrapolation on those rather extreme views. The only three night elves that truly had their heads on straight were Malfurion, Tyrande, and Jarod Shadowsong (and his sister is an abject psychotic). Throw in the asinine recreation of The World Tree against nature's blessing in a vain attempt to regain their immortality for purely selfish reasons, as well as the whole shattering of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands which is pivotal in the war with Ahn'Qiraj. The high/blood elves are bad, but the night elves as they stand today have still done worse.
- It's worth noting that those two events (the new world tree and the shattering of the scepter) were both the work of Archdruid Fandral Staghelm, a downright infamous jerkass to say the least. His actions most likely don't represent the entire night elf race.
- In fact, it's not entirely uncommon for Alliance players defending the Night Elve's capital city to defend Tyrande and just let the Horde kill Fandrel Staghelm. Pretty much the only way he's sympathetic is that his son died, but then he shoves it in your face and goes back to making the Alliance look bad.
- The new Death Knights for the World Of Warcraft, are pious fighters of the light who died, and where brought back as mindless servants of the scourge. Towards the end of the questline the Lich King loses control over the player, and the player joins either the Alliance or Horde depending on race.
- One of the biggest examples is the NPC Death Knight Thassarian, first to rejoin the Alliance. Even while still loyal to the Scourge, he shows a bit of weakness by showing concern for a captured ally, frowned upon by his colder comrades. After returning to the Alliance, he's primarily concerned about saving his Sister.
- The next Expansion Pack will feature Gilnean Worgen, not entirely unfortunate victims of a lesser version of Arugal's curse. Unlike their truly cursed cousins in Silverpine, they retain control of their minds in wolf form and can switch between both at will. While they look less ugly then true worgen (extradimensional invaders that have one form and one form only), having no tusks and well-groomed fur, their human forms are very definitely "dark", being at least one foot taller on average then actual humans and looking, shall we say, feral. They're members of the Alliance, as opposed to the endearing Goblins of the Horde.
- Gilneas also fit this in Warcraft II, in which their color was black. Though tremendously selfish jerkasses they still fought with The Alliance in the end.
- If by "fought with" you mean "walled themselves off for a decade" then yes, they did do that in the end. It's also worth noting that they didn't have free will until at some point during the beginner area, they work some magic to give you your free will back.
- The country of Darkworld is on the good guys' side in Wonder Boy in Monster World; apparently it's called that because it's dark most of the time (which is also why there's so much ice), even though the world is flat.
- The Twili in The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Indeed, the entire game plays to this trope in one way or another. Consider the golden wolf that turns into a menacing skeleton warrior... who then proceeds to teach you how to sword-fight. Or the monstrous black headless bird summoned to attack you that, once its master is defeated, happily gives you a ride to your next destination. Or the hungry yetis, who send you on fetch quests for treasures that turn out to be soup ingredients, and don't attempt to eat you at any point in the game. (Well, the big guy might've considered going after your "wolf" if he hadn't just gone fishing.) Or the Temple of Time, where you spend the first half evading vicious enchanted armor, and the second half controlling it. Or the fully assembled helmet Midna wears, which seemingly goes out of control and turns her into a massive tentacled shadowy beast... and then a boss fight doesn't happen. And all this is on top of the premise of Link being a Big Badass Wolf for much of the game, complete with the way the public reacts.
- Soma Cruz, the resident white haired pretty boy in the Castlevania series of games wields the dark power to absorb his enemies' souls and use them as weapons, a result of either inheriting the power of Lord Dracula or being Lord Dracula. That said, he is quite a nice person, selflessly working for the good of mankind and looking after his childhood friend, who later proves his sweet-as-pie girlfriend who has so far completely failed to be kidnapped.
- Demons in Disgaea and Makai Kingdom. Though most would likely insist that they are, in fact, totally evil, the only affect demonhood would appear to really have on one's conscience (as Flonne and others turned into demons would probably tell you) is a natural predisposition to be a smartass. And slightly dimwitted: Adell, who never actually figures out he's really a full-blooded demon himself doesn't even manage that much 'evil', other than a love of battle.
- King Krichevskoy particularly exemplifies this. Far from being a Card Carrying Villain, all evidence points to him being a very nice if rather eccentric demon who would even treat complete strangers with kindness. He was even shamelessly married to a complete Love Freak. All this from the man who just happened to be the king of The Netherworld.
- Of course, there are a few demons who are genuinely evil even though the majority of their kind lean more towards chaos. Demon Overlord Seedle was a "hero" who tried to rape the woman who would become protagonist Zetta's Love Interest and became Overlord of the Netherworld just to get revenge for her fighting back. Fake Zenon was a general asshole who ruled Veldime with an iron fist, perpetuated a curse to drain away the residents' memories and conscience in exchange for his own power, and captured the amnesiac reincarnation of the real Overlord Zenon as a trophy before burning the people raising her into the ashes of history.
- Driving the point of this home is a sequence in the first game. The angel Vulcanus sneaked down to the netherworld out of rage that Flonne had be sent to deal with the situation there instead of himself. He steals a pendant that Flonne (or any trainee angel) needs in order to survive down there. As he's escaping the Netherworld, the pendant starts to blaze into heat in his hand, causing him to drop it, for the Noble Demon
Veyers Mid-Boss (who turns out to be a reincarnation of Laharl's dad, mentioned above), to find and pick up. Before the last battle of the chapter, the main characters find Mid-Boss in possession of the pendant, and Flonne warns him that it will burn the hands of anyone with an evil soul. Not only does its failing to do so in Mid-Boss' hands display this trope, But what does it say about Vulcanus back up there?
- Yuri from Shadow Hearts is a "Dark"-elemental character, and the main character- a heroic main character, even. He can transform into various demons, but he uses that power to fight against the really nasty bastards, and himself suffers absolutely no evil attitudes other than being a bit of a dumbass and a slight pervert. There's also Shania, in the third game, who is not only the main heroine and a Proud Warrior Race Guy... er, girl, but very much a Darkness element character.
- Lucia from Covenant is also a Dark-elemental character...who's also a ditzy and nice fortune-teller, barring the whole attempted murder by giant, pink pussy on the cat (she has a good reason for that).
- The Protoss Dark Templar of Starcraft are pretty damn heroic. They are also some of the only Protoss seen so far to have a sense of humor. As for the mainstream Protoss, its a case of Light Is Not Good, because most of the Khalai Protoss, with a few exceptions, are blind, arrogant religious zealots. The Dark Templar are actually peaceful, it's the Light-aligned Khalai Protoss who are the war-mongers. During the course of the series so far, the Khalai Protoss have declared war on the Dark Templar at least three times. The Dark Templar have declared war on the Khalai Protoss...never. They just want to be left alone.
- Nina of Breath Of Fire 2 fame is a pure-hearted maiden, but her feathery black wings make her an outcast and scapegoat for disaster in her hometown. Also a Black Magician Girl.
- The hero's power in Illusion Of Gaia are dark-based, and his badass form is called a dark knight. The Big Bad itself is neither Light nor Dark, the hero and his Love Interest fuse into a Yin Yang Bomb to fight it.
- The Daedric Princes of The Elder Scrolls. Despite many of them being outright evil, and the general association of Daedric meaning Demonic, quite a few of the Daedric Lords are benign or outright Good. Meridia, Azura and even the Ax Crazy Sheogorath, Daedric Lord of Madness, turns out not be really evil.
- On the other hand, Azura only shows compassion to her followers in Oblivion and doesn't particularly care that the mortal world is invaded by Mehrunes Dagon. And in Morrowind, the only reason she helps the PC is to pull off a Xanatos Roulette to get back at a few ex-followers-turned-living-gods for a slight that occured a few thousand years ago. The fact that this actually helps ward off a big war and a Knight Templar theocracy is just coincidental.
- Although she is kind to her tool (the PC) during this. The actions of all the Deadra Princes are justified somewhat in them not even being nearly human. They might look or sound remotly human, but they are ancient being often with totally alien goals and mindsets.
- But then again, the same criticism can be leveled at the Nine Divines. The only time Akatosh gets involved is when Martin kills himself to summon his Avatar.
- Meridia is another example; she wants to fight undead and necromancy. And even Malacath, who has you protect the honor of Orcs and Ogres when they are abused by other races (such as a Dunmer Hero taking credits for the exploits of his Orc servant in Morrowind, or humans using Ogres as slaves in Oblivion). While their methods are ruthless and violent, their goals are not always evil.
- A more straight example may be Divayth Fyr from Morrowind - not only does he run the only hospital for sufferers of a certain truly horrific disease and show genuine compassion for them, he is also the only person in the game to wear full demonic armour.
- Though is you talk to him, Divayth makes it clear that his interest in Corprus is academic. If he so happens to help people while doing his research, so much the better, but he's only doing this because of his fascination for the intricacies of Corprus as a complex magic disease and the corprusarium is a side benefit of that research.
- Nocturnal would either be this trope played absolutely straight or subverted, if she wasn't so damn MYSTERIOUS! About the only action that has been stated that might be good or evil would be the curse of the grey cowl of Nocturnal, and that seems more like a Take That than anything else. Most of the time she calls on the PC to take care of some matter that's causing her grief.
- Vivian in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is considered an enemy since she is the sister of the other two "Shadow
Beauties Sirens" that are working for Grodus. However, about midway through Chapter 4, Vivian ditches her witch sisters and joins Mario's party in order to not be pushed around by Beldam anymore and as thanks for Mario helping her find the Superbombomb. She uses many witch-like powers, such as setting enemies on fire or pulling Mario into a void to dodge enemy attacks, which falls under the Dark Is Not Evil trope since she's helping Mario on his quest to defeat the Man Behind The Man.
- There's also the Pinato mob boss, his daughter, and Frankie, all of which look and act like stereotypical mobsters but all love each other like crazy.
- Sonic in Sonic Unleashed unwillingly gets turned into a werehog after absorbing some of the Big Bad's dark energy. He may look ferocious but he's still (mostly) the same hero we all know and love.
- Shadow the Hedgehog qualifies for this after his drawn out Heel Face Turn.
- The video games Star Ocean: The Second Story and Final Fantasy IX have child magic users Leon and Vivi, respectively, available as player characters. Both of them, especially Leon, use shadowy and dark magic in some of their attacks, even to the point of summoning up The Grim Reaper to instantly destroy the villains, but neither Leon or Vivi are themselves evil.
- In Star Ocean: The Second Story, Leon's ultimate weapon is the Necronomicon. Evil flavor text about opening portals to hell and summoning demons also included.
- Rider in Fate Stay Night doesn't appear completely dark or use especially dark powers, but wears a black cloth, initially comes off as the Servant of an evil Smug Snake, is seductively sexy and dangerously ass-kicking, and even Saber calls her off as a monster. To hammer it down worse, she is revealed to be Medusa, a Greek figure mostly viewed as Always Chaotic Evil. But beyond the initial impressions, you find out that she's not THAT evil, only tortured and hammered with lots of misfortunes in the past, and her true Master was someone far more benelovent and kinder than the said Smug Snake (provided she doesn't snap).
- Oichi in Sengoku Basara is known for her dark powers and even has 'dark hands' as her special moves. But she's pretty much an innocent, melancholic woman that doesn't seem to be pure evil, driven with her love with Nagamasa. Push her too far, however, and she'll really show that she can be destructive with her dark power (or to be exact she gets taken over by her dark side and wreaks havoc). Another example would be the jovial ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, who is only "Dark" due to his job.
- The Summon Spirit, Shadow, who is the summon spirit of darkness, in Tales Of Symphonia, and again in Tales Of Phantasia is one of the nicer Summon Spirits. (In Phantasia especially, as he does not require a fight to obtain.)
- He's contrasted in Symphonia by Luna and Aska, who will kill you if you lose the pact-making fight, and they're the Summon Spirits of Light. (Note that in Phantasia, neither Luna nor Aska had a fight either.)
- They don't necessarily kill you. But you'll get a Game Over for losing the fight, which is justified by the fact that the group can't simply return like on the other fights. Kratos would block the way, making things like leveling up somewhat impossible.
- Because of Tales of Eternia's magic system, Shadow makes whatever mage is equipped with him the designated Dark mage. Also, the Dark Aurora used by Shizel and Meredy. See also Yin Yang Bomb.
- Tenebrae, from the sequel, is also a very straight example-besides being a servant of you know, the king of all monsters, he's also the Centurion of Darkness. He's also a pure good guy, albeit one with a nasty sense of humor.
- Emil, the protagonist in the sequel, is also Darkness-affiliated. Although with his Ratatosk Mode, this may not be a perfectly straight example.
- The series also has several Dark-elemental playable characters - Leon Magnus of Tales of Destiny, Ricardo Soldat of Tales of Innocence, and Kunzite of Tales of Hearts all use primarily Dark techs, spells, and abilities. However, the original Leon doesn't really count as he remained a sadistic Jerkass, it wasn't until the remake where his personality gets retooled into a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. On the other hand, his alter ego Judas counts very much.
- The dark worlds in Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King are pretty much called that because they aren't as bright as the worlds the heroes come from and not because there's evil everywhere (though almost everything in the one in VIII is black and white for some reason, with the residents commenting on the heroes' colors). In fact, most (if not all) of the human residents encountered aren't evil at all. The one in Dragon Quest III is actually Alefgard, the country the original game takes place in, which also appeared in the second. The main character defeats the Demon King Zoma and restores light to the land and is given the title of Loto/Erdrick, becoming the legendary hero that the main characters of the first two games are descended from.
- Neither Demitri or Morrigan from Darkstalkers are evil.
- Neither of them, however, are good. Morrigan is a self-indulgent and childish princess, and Demitri is a power-hungry vampire who wants to conquer Makai/the Dark World. However, several of the characters the closest to purely good in the series also fall under this, including Rikuo/Aulbath, the fish-man; John Talbain/Gallon, the werewolf; Anakaris, the living mummy; Lei-Lei/Hsien-Ko, the Chinese Vampire; and Victor, the Frankenstein's Monster.
- City Of Heroes liberally uses and plays with Super Hero tropes, and this is no expection. The primary example is Infernal, a demonic-looking warrior from another dimension who controls demons and binds them into his armour, but is always portrayed as a hero (excepting his Evil Twin from the Mirror Universe, who shows that demon binding is a risky business). City Of Villains added a large amount of rather villainous-looking costume pieces, but all of them are equally accessible to hero characters as well.
- Also, the various Dark power sets, which have a variety of quasi-vampiric powers, are freely usable by heroes and villains. Pain Domination may or may not involve this trope, as it is a set of villain-only healing powers with a black-and-red color scheme.
- Since the recent advent of power customization, you can have a hero with cloven hooves, horns, a demon's tail and wings, a skull head (and a costume consisting of skulls, chains and barbed wire) who fires off black energy blasts or carries black swords.
- One mustn't forget the Nictus: Scientifically modified energy beings that feed off their unmodified bretheren, work with The Council and 5th Column, and want to make earth their new homeworld. Reformed Nicti/human unions are a Hero exclusive archetype, called Warshades. If you want a Villainous Warshade, you have to side switch it. No Praetorian Nictus for you.
- Masterminds are slated to receive "Demon Summoning" in Issue 17. Currently, Masterminds are an exclusively Villainous Archetype, but when Going Rogue is released one can easily play a demon summoning hero.
- Hell, Going Rogue is this trope, (mixed heavily with Light Is Not Good). Even Arachnos Mooks can be heroes now.
- Heroes Of Might And Magic V plays with this. The Dark Elves are not generally evil, although some of their clans are. The Necromancers are initially presented as evil, but in the Tribes of the East stand-alone expansion they are allied with the good factions against the Demons. The Orcs from the same expansion are also not evil and part of the alliance. Of the 8 factions, the only one that's Always Chaotic Evil is the Demons.
- That said, the game still considers the Dark Elves, Necromancers, Orcs, and Demons to be "evil" factions when calculating morale.
- Yeah, but morale is more about the perceptions of the troops than it is about actual alignment. Angels really hate Devils, even if the Devils are actually pretty good guys and misunderstood. They still hate each other, thus a morale hit.
- According to the backstory, in the next-gen Prince Of Persia Big Bad Ahriman, God of Darkness, was an example of this trope... until his Face Heel Turn a thousand years or so before the game started. Becoming the Sealed Evil In A Can hasn't helped matters any in that regard.
- Second Sight introduces members of the psychic Zener Children that were horribly mutated by the treatments used to activate their powers: despite their repulsive appearance and cannibalistic habits, when John Vattic arrives in the lower levels of the Zener Project base, they are quite generous in assisting John through the passages, eventually banding together with the unmutated Zener Children in the final battle.
- The Seiken Densetsu series has Shade, the spirit of Darkness. Despite having spells with names like "evil gate" and pitting the party of one game against a monster in order to prove their worth, he's still a purely good entity, as dedicated to saving the world as the heroes are.
- In the Fire Emblem series, offensive magic can be divided into anima (thunder, fire, wind), light (
lightning Exactly What It Says On The Tin (The spell being called Lightning has little to do with what it is.)) and dark (darkness, energy absorption). However, this doesn't determine the user's alignment; e.g Nergal from FE 7 is a dark magic user and the Big Bad, whereas your group can recruit a shaman named Canas who's actually a quite nice guy and directly invokes this trope (though he also points out that "dark" magic users prefer the term "elder" magic).
- In FE 9 and 10, the character Soren, who is both dressed in black and born with the "dark" affinity, is possibly THE most loyal character to the protagonist's cause.
- That said, he's also one of the most amoral of the Greil Mercenaries.
- Pelleas, who uses Dark Magic and is implied to have become a Spirit Charmer to get that ability, is kind and honorable, albeit naive.
- This is actually Lampshaded in FE 8. Look up Lute's and Knoll's support converations.
- Let's not forget that in 10, your army ends up working for the goddess of chaos against the goddess of order. The goddess of chaos is considerably kinder than the goddess of order.
- A mention to FE 5's Salem, a Loputo Mage (A servant of a Dark God (who really is evil)) is pulling a Heel Face Turn when you encounter him. If you successfully capture him you'll find he's not evil, unlike every other Loputo Mage ever.
- Meta Knight, Gooey, and Shadow Kirby from Kirby.
- Gooey from Kirby's Dream Land 3. He is shown as Kirby's friend from the beginning, and the only way to reveal he should be with the bad guys is doing 2-player on the Final Boss. Gooey attacks Zero without hesitating the slightest, as if he never was on their side.
- For clarification: When you bring Gooey into the final boss against Zero you need to be flying. Gooey can fly on his own. Now the relevance is the fact that Gooey looks exactly like a dark matter, his body changes its overall shape and he gets the orange nubs on the back, the only difference between him and regular dark matter is he has a face instead of a single eye.
- Planescape: Torment really likes this one. Your party alone can include Fall-From-Grace, a chaste succubus uninterested in damning mortal men's souls, and Morte, the sarcastic foul-mouthed disembodied talking skull who went to Hell when he died... who is also the only Good recruitable NPC and the only true friend you start the game with.
- Dark Jak. While he's rather darker than he used to be, Jak still has his heart in the right place.
- The true ending of Eversion: The princess was a monster all along! But wait... your character was also a monster all along!
- The Nanaya clan in Tsukihime. A family of assassins. Seclusive, described as vicious killers and also seem to have a penchant for rape. The only glimpse we get of one is Nanaya Shiki, the hero's Super Powered Evil Side who first brutally destroys Arcueid and then later tries to rape her. However, as Akiha points out, they weren't actually that bad (nor that were they very good either) because the only ones they ever had that impulse towards were non humans, who generally are not good people to have around ie: the Dead Apostles, demons and the inverted members of the Tohno family. They still seem to enjoy themselves a little too much when 'working' though.
- Actually, the rape was due to Arcueid's mystic eyes. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Nanaya side.
- The Asmodians of Aion. They look faintly demonic, and are rather harsh and violent — both due to living in a wasteland that at its brightest exists in what could be called "shadowy twilight", and due to being descended from those who supported continued war with the cruel and brutal Balaur rather than attempting to sue for peace. They're ultimately only trying to survive, and just as dedicated to fighting the real villains as the more angelic Elyos. Unfortunately, both sides are just as dedicated to fighting each other, out of a combination of blaming the other side for the ruin of their world, and the belief that one of the remaining stumps of the Tower of Eternity has to be destroyed to save what's left of the world from total destruction. Each side also blames the other for their current state of war.
- In Odin Sphere, the "Shadow Knight" Oswald is somewhat cold and ruthless, but DEFINITELY a good guy. The "Demon Lord" Odin is one of the most morally ambiguous characters in the game but never comes across as "evil". Even Odette the Queen of the Underworld, despite being as cruel and vindictive as you'd expect for someone in her position, doesn't seem to be a real villain. The game DOES have definite villains and Odette doesn't even come close.
- Furcadia's Dark Primes aren't all bad. Tallus, for example, was an "evil" god of prophecy and only considered evil because he could see the apocalypse.. He also was a thief but normally only stole from those who were unwary, unlike the light goddess M'rill who steals anything she wants. Tallus, according to in-game lore, died protecting his brothers and sisters, but in-game actually died in a bar as he tried to defend himself from an unprovoked attack by the light god Viveravus. He could have won, but did not want to harm the mortals around him. Taglin Tigh is considered the king of the Dark Primes and the god of Nightmares, but actually is friendly and helpful to anyone not a light prime. His main problem with the light primes is that they murdered Tallus in cold blood for no reason. He also is renowned as a "good father" to his many children and often his own brothers and sisters. When seen in public with his less-sane family members, he is always taking care of them and preventing them from hurting anyone..
- The ghouls of Fallout generally have either gone completely feral or are just regular people with severe skin issues. Fallout 3 subverts this in the Tenpenny Towers questline, where the racists are refusing to let Roy Philips and other ghouls move in. Roy's actually worse than the residents and ends up killing all humans in the tower if the player helps him. Nice Job Breaking It Hero.
- Toby from Quest For Glory 4 is this giant, furry, hulking, red-eyed, fanged, ill-tempered monstrosity. However, he's just protective of his ward to the point where he will sacrifice himself to bring her back to life.
- Pick a youkai from Touhou, any youkai from Touhou. In spite of youkai supposedly having a diet consisting of human, almost none of the characters are ever admitted as having actually done this. (Notable exception: Vampire Remilia Scarlet, who, disturbingly enough, is otherwise very much a friendly neighborhood vampire.) Even if, at first glance, The World Is Always Doomed, almost none of the supposed Big Bads were actually doing something as dangerous as it at first seemed, and after the shooting ends, tea parties are in order, and the characters are invited into the greater cast for whatever random adventure they'll be up for next.
- Subterranean Animism featured youkai hated even by other youkai for their distasteful powers, and exiled to the Underworld. Yamame, the friendly Cute Monster Girl spider monster could inflict diseases at will, but was popular for her friendly, cheerful personality. Yuugi, a much-feared Oni, mostly played around very roughly with the heroines before helping them out. Satori and Koishi both had telepathic powers that terrified youkai and humans alike, forcing them to live with nothing but animals, even if they had done no actual wrongs to anyone. Rin carries away corpses and uses them to regulate the Hell of Blazing Fires, and initiated the game when she began driving evil spirits above ground, but only to lure the more powerful beings living there underground to stop her friend Utsuho from doing anything foolish or dangerous. Even Utsuho herself, the nuclear-powered hell raven with ambitions to Take Over The World, just went a little mad with power and was fine after having some sense blasted into her.
- Death from Romancing Sa Ga is actually quite an important deity, as he is in charge of the cycle of reincarnation; he even helps out the heroes if you fight in areas where Death is worshipped or use his vortex enough; in which he will instantly kill most enemies, even some Bosses (Sadly undead and certain bosses are exempt).
- Rose from Legend Of Dragoon, who, being the dragoon of the dark dragon, has such attacks as: sucking out an enemy's life force, doing something that leaves the enemies utterly terrified, and sucking the enemy party through a portal to hell. She can be rather harsh, but she also saves the main character's life, teaches him how to use her powers, and faithfully follows the rest of the party in their missions. It's eventually revealed that as the only apparent survivor of the original seven dragoons, she has spent the last 11,000 years taking the unpleasant but necessary steps to keep the world from being utterly annihilated by the supposed Messiah.
- In the tragically-underexposed PAL-only PSX Konami-Atlus survival horror game Hell Night (Dark Messiah in Japan), the Cult antagonists in the game give the protagonist a test (which you have to pass in order to get a key item) to determine if he understands "True Darkness". The impression one gets is that such darkness is not supposed to be in conflict with, but actually in complement to the Light:
- You see 2 birds. Which bird will you help? A black dove or a white crow?
- There is a city. Who lives in it? Small children or big grown-ups?
- Which you do you prefer: the darkness of outer space or the darkness of the deep ocean?
- Correct answers are all B.
- In Super Robot Taisen Alpha 3 one of the protaganists that you can choose is Coubray, whose mech is the Werkbau, which eventually upgrades into the Dis Astranagant. Though he is part of the good guys 'Alpha Numbers'. His mech Dis Astranagant looks like a friggin devil and has attacks that includes a scythe attack and a final attack that erases his enemies out of existence altogether!
- Soul Reaver features a Crap Sack World and a number of fearsome-looking characters who could not exactly be called blameless, but their appearance is no guarantee of their moral alignment. The protagonist Raziel is former vampire, twisted by cruel execution into a ghoul who must feed on the souls of humans and monsters alike. However he rejects the brutality of his former brethren and acts with honor and is genuinely searching for the truth. The vampires are revealed to be the victims of a curse by their enemies, and were once a race of winged celestial beings. The vampire Vorador is a green scaly monstrosity but is basically decent. Even Kain, the Big Bad, is partially justified in his actions in the end. Contrast this with the supposedly righteous human characters, who are xenophobic, religiously fanatical exterminators of anything not human, including Raziel in his pre-vampire days as a member of the ruthless Sarafan order.
- Noctropolis features a post-cataclysmic city in perpetual night under a cloud of volcanic ash. The city's main hero restores his health, powers and equipment by immersing himself in a pool of Applied Phlebotinum called Liquidark, the distilled liquid essence of darkness, created by the Brotherhood of the Night as research into the extradimensional Elementals particularly the Patronage of Darkness, none of whom seem malevolent. The protagonist takes up the hero's mantle to fight the Big Bad revealed to be his predecessor switched over to Light in a Face Heel Turn to take over the world.
- Ragna the Bloodedge, the main character of Blaz Blue. He's a White Haired Pretty Boy with Boat Lights (one of them red), is half vampire, carries an Artifact Of Doom like nearly everyone else in the game, wages a one man war against the ruling government, and has a drive ability called "Soul Eater" which steals life from his foes. Despite all this he's not really a villain due to the questionable morality of the government he's fighting against. He's also nice enough to share food with a hungry Taokaka (who promptly starts calling him "Good Guy"). His rage and frustration with the world at large is also somewhat understandable since his life just sucks so much.
- There's also Rachel Alucard and her butler, Valkenhayn R. Hellsing. Rachel may be a vampire who acts quite bitchily and condescending towards almost everyone around her, but that doesn't change the fact that she also genuinely cares about the cast, and wishes to devote as much she can to defeating Yuuki Terumi, the man who has caused much of the suffering which takes place in the game's universe. Her butler, Valkenhayn, was one of the Six Heroes who saved the world from the Black Beast, an abomination which destroyed most of the world.
- Shadow from Twisted Metal. A ghostly black hearse that's had several drivers (including an undead mortician, a goth girl, and a nerdy kid with a pet frog), all with fairly sympathetic motives.
- Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier has the Orchestral Army, and to an extent the entire demon world of Formido Heim, although they did cause a bloody war ten years ago. However, special mention goes to the Orchestral Army's leader Ezel Granada, an axe-wielding demon whose head is a demonic skull with glowing red eyes and ram horns, constantly displaying a fanged grimace. He's also quite possibly the most noble character in the entire game, having spent the past ten years shouldering the burden of protecting the Endless Frontier from the Einst, as well as the guilt from being tricked into starting the war.
- Neverwinter Nights has no alignment alterations for appearance. So yes, with an upgraded game to get the right color options you can run around as a paladin with matte-black skin and hair dressed in black and red, and still have people treat you like you look perfectly normal and are not at all creepy.
- The rebel drow in Hordes of the Underdark, though their replacing the traditional drow black and red with blue and purple uniforms doesn't hurt either.
- Ammon Jerro, the second game's resident Knight Templar, is a demon-summoner with grey skin and glowing spiderweb tattoos that the game tries to convince you is the Big Bad for the first two chapters. If you have enough Influence with him by the scene at Shandra's farm, he will not be quite as evil as he was before.
- Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening has one in the form of The Spirit of Justice, who in the Fade is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. However in the real world he ends up becoming stuck in the corpse of a Grey Warden named Kristoff and joins your party as a Lawful Good Zombie.
- And in the original, blood mages. Blood magic is a terrifying power that lets you Cast From Hit Points and take control of people, but it's no more evil than any other form of magic.
- The beginning of Splinter Cell: Conviction has a flashback to Sam Fisher telling his daughter who's scared of the dark that the dark can be used to protect you from bad guys.
- The Duty faction in the STALKER series. While their uniforms have dark tones with red marks and their attitude can come off as harsh and somewhat elitist, they're not inherently evil (or good, for that matter).
- Serenade from Mega Man Battle Network 3 may also apply. It claims to be a "denizen of the Dark" when it is defeated. It also rules over the game's post-game area, which is pretty much the original form of the Undernet, an unspoiled, peaceful sanctuary.
- Necromancers - one of the player professions - from Guild Wars. They have all sorts of creepy and sometimes disgusting powers, but they're one of the most popular professions. The three NPC necromancer heroes - Olias, the Master of Whispers, and Livia - provide the personnel for two of the most powerful player/NPC team combinations in the game, the so-called "Sabway" and "Discordway" skill sets. The NPC female necromancer Eve is one of the poster girls for the game.
Web Original
- In the League Of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions Sailor Evil, aka Shadow Senshi, had darkness based powers, but was good... it was just her last name that was Evil.
- Louie and Ian Von Helson from Gaia Online, as they are vampires.
- The Elves and Glombies too.
- The Darkness Faeries in Neopets. Although even other fairies consider them evil, most of them are misunderstood and mischievious at worst, although they still seem to have an edge in the "evil" ratio as a group. There are many Neopians that even suspect that Queen Fyora herself is a Darkness Faerie promoted as queen, due to her name ending in the same sound as Jhudora and Jennumara, two Darkness Faeries (at least one of them, Jennumara, is actually evil. Jhudora might be just a bigass poser that might hug puppies when nobody else is looking... Or not).
- One darkness faerie in Neoquest II states that they are not evil, just Chaotic Neutral.
- This wiki! Yes! The Friends Of Really Kool Sobriquet are in the Darth Wiki, but are by no means evil. They call themselves evil, but most of the people there are just nice guys who like funny trope names.
- Plus a lot of the other stuff on there. Strictly speaking, there's nothing evil about hating bad movies and shows, nor in talking about it online.
Webcomics
- In Order Of The Stick: Start Of Darkness, it's revealed that the Goblins' god, The Dark One, is actually an ascended goblin who was called that because of the color of his skin. He was actually a leader and a peacemaker before being killed by
evil human, elven and halfling nobles during a diplomatic meeting. (Actually, sadly the nobles probably weren't "evil" per the D&D alignment system as defined by their own gods, since they "merely" did away with a goblin, not a member of the "privileged" races. But since D&D designers like to pretend that in D&D cosmology Good and Evil are Objective moral forces, having someone assassinated during a peace talk should rank as an evil act.)
- Another example of how Dark Is Not Evil is the aptly titled Monster in the Dark, an extremely powerful creature owned by Xykon who hides in constant darkness as a trumpcard for him to use. However the Monster itself is a simple-minded being with childish tendencies, only acting evil when directly told to by Xykon and even then doing so ineffectively (it doesn't care to eat children, throwing them into the trashcan instead). O-Chul, a paladin being kept prisoner by the villains, recognizes the creature as not evil and befriends it within a span of three months.
- Another strip has Belkar invoke this trope with regard to Vaarsuvius and hir Evil Costume Switch, telling Haley that she shouldn't judge hir just because of the newly added glowing eyes, wild hair, pale skin, vampiric fangs and ominous voices. Of course, V has just made a Deal With The Devil and killed an entire lineage of black dragons, so...
- Even without the black dragon massacre, the trope is subverted anyway when Belkar congratulates V on entering "the deep end of the alignment pool." He was just messing with Haley.
- Parodied with Tsukiko, the necrophiliac Perky Female Minion of Xykon. She thinks that because death is the antithesis of life and the Living are Jerkasses who are "prejudiced" against her for her "Beliefs", the undead are therefore kind and caring creatures misunderstood by others and that a Complete Monster like Xykon will eventually grow to love her. The Monster in the Dark tries to tell her that it doesn't work that way.
- The Guides from Gunnerkrigg Court are dark, frightening (at least one of them looks downright Lovecraftian), grim, and an obvious and infallible omen of death, but if you start chatting with them, you'll find out they are nice. Of course, unless you are a medium, by the time you can chat with them it's too late to tell the tale...
- There's also Zimmy. She looks like a Stringy Haired Ghost Girl, but the worst she's done so far is call another character "bignose".
- And make sure that her linguistically challenged friend Gamma can't have any other friends, by telling her that everyone else hates her.
- This is pretty much the entire point of Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes.
- Dee from Tales Of MU.
- Are you forgetting Mackenzie, who's supposed to be this horrible man-eating half-demon, but she's actually really nerdy and shy and wouldn't think of hurting someone... unless she forgets to drink virgin blood once a month, or comes in contact with a diabolic rage-inducing weapon, or someone tries to hurt Two, or... Well, the list goes on, but she regrets her actions after she regains control.
- In Shadowgirls, not only do the protagonists have some kind of darkness-based powers, but the recently revealed, rather joyfully sadistic protagonist has light-based powers.
- In Erfworld, Vinny Doombats has the appearance and bat-themed trappings of a classic Dracula-style vampire. He's also the loyal right-hand man to the color-coded "good" side leader, and acts on straightforward "good" motivations (friendship to the aforementioned leader and recognition that the enemy is a dangerous aggressor).
- While Vinny is unambiguously good, the leader of his side is portrayed as morally ambiguous, and his fervent religious and feudalistic beliefs (which keep him in power) and overall motivations are quite unsympathetic.
- But not as unsympathetic as Lord Stanley, the leader of the opposing side, who is a mean, cowardly and selfish guy with a Napoleon Complex who threatens to "disband" (read: execute) members of his own troops if he feel slighted.
- And by now, even Stanley shows some more sympathetic qualities, showing some remorse for the effect linking his Eyemancers (and then breaking that link) had on the Foolamancer Jack, acting as an inspiration to his men when they are surrounded by Transylvito forces, and thanking Jack for saving his forces, as well as showing doubt as to whether he is doing the Titan's will, suggesting he truly believes himself to be a tool of the Titans' will.
- Really, Don King's "fervent religious and feudalistic beliefs" are a reaction to the political climate and a desire to remain closer to sides like Jetstone (not to mention a healthy hatred of Stanley). Before the battle for Gobwin Knob, he took a much more pragmatic approach to governance with the creed of the "best person for the job", even going so far as to name a non-Royal Heir Designate. The Values Dissonance between the old Transylvito and the new Royal Crown Coalition is a minor plot point, and a cause for unease in characters like Vinny and Caesar.
- The Watcher of Mort (God of Death) in Exterminatus Now look like empty tattered floating black robes with streams of ash running out of the openings. However, their holy mission is to protect hallowed grounds and the corpses resting therein from graverobbers and occult defilement. They hate necromancers who turn corpses into zombies. But they caution any passing "hero" not to harm the poor zombies further, as they are mere "victims, innocent puppets", who must be returned to their rightful resting places.
- Last Resort and the Dead Inside. Filled with Vampires, Zombies, and Djinn, they certainly look set up to be evil, complete with "Dead Eyes"... except Jigsaw's shaping up to be a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, and if anybody's come across as evil right now, it's the angel-winged Celeste.
- Chess Piece has King Vlad, who uses Dark magic and looks like a demon. He's actually a really nice person unless you threaten his son. On the other hand, his son's quite the opposite.
- Friendly Hostility has a demon and an Eldritch Abomination as friends to the protagonists.
- Planes Of Eldlor has a dark elf who is far more apathetic than evil. Also, the sinister-looking riftwalker dragons, which are all black with glowing violet eyes and blood, but do not appear to be evil.
- Picture if you will a comic in which a mysterious sickly eccentric and his undead henchman kill someone and resurrect him without his consent, turning him into a predatory monster. ...And they're the protagonists. This, my friends, is the beginning to Hanna Is Not A Boys Name.
- Digger befriends a strange creature she calls Shadowchild who turns out to be a feral demon who cat eat your shadow, sending you into a fatal coma. Shadowchild is also the most innoccent and well-meaning character in the comic.
- Secret of Keychain Of Creation is an Abyssal, who are supposed to be Always Chaotic Evil. She's manipulated things enough so that she only kills people who deserve it. (Or at least, people she feels deserve it.) Then again, Secret is an odd case.
- Rilian the necromancer in Dominic Deegan masquerades as a jolly guy called Brian in the Around the World arc. After he reveals his true identity, one of his associates remarks that he was not deceiving Dominic: The masquerade was a rare opportunity to let loose and be himself for a change. The personality, the philosophy and even the body was all him, the only fake thing was the name.
Western Animation
- Raven of Teen Titans, though she devotes a sizable amount of mental effort toward staying on the good side of the equation.
- The title characters of Gargoyles may look like classical demons from Hell, but they are unambiguously heroes sworn to protect the innocent. (Well, most of them.)
- This trope may only apply to the main characters, who were Scottish gargoyles. Gargoyles from other countries can have different appearances; The English ones resemble mythological beings like griffons.
- The Gaoul from Titan A.E fit this trope nicely... creepy, red-and-black batlike aliens that really turn out to be a helpful mix of Giant Flyer and Red Shirt.
- The Ruby Gloom cartoon intentionally exemplifies this trope. Perky Goth Ruby Gloom's friends include a two-headed Frankensteins Monster, an animate skeleton, a banshee, a cyclops, a black cat, a bat, and three ravens. Despite being traditionally being monstrous or "dark", all are decidedly not evil, and very friendly, if a bit eccentric.
- Other characters introduced along (including, among other things, a ghost, a mad scientist with the brains exposed and a carnivorous plant) are always examples of this trope if they are friendly. And there's an episode where the dark clouds covering the sky of their home place disappear; cue the opressive hot sun.
- The "Drak Pack" were a heroic Power Trio of a vampire, werewolf and a Frankenstein-like Monster.
- Little Gloomy, which had similarities to Ruby Gloom. Sure, some of the characters were obnoxious, but there were only two particularly nasty ones in the lot. (The Lovecraftian thing, for all his vows to destroy all life, did not seem to be one of them.)
- The diesel engines in Thomas and Friends. Diesels are typically portrayed as evil; rude, heartless machines who want all steam engines scrapped. But several kind-hearted and friendly diesels have emerged, such as BoCo, Derek, and Rusty. Likewise, while steam engines are shown as the good characters, several aren't.
- The Chaotic tv series features the Underworlders tribe of Creatures, who seriously play up the "Dark Beasts of the Netherworld" type for all it's worth, is host to some of the show's nastier monster badguys, like Baron Von Bluth, and it's leader, Chaor, is constantly organizing attacks against the Overworlder tribe. Yet, Chaor has been displayed honorable tendancies, and the Underworlder, H'earring, is practically Team Pet to Tom, Kaz, Peyton and Sarah. Furthermore, the Underworlders claim that the Overworlders were responsible for starting the war over the Cothica.
- Just to point out that Chaotic is often all over the map with the tribes' and creature's morality. Yes the Underworlders are the most unashamedly morally grey tribe but the Overworlders have just as many problems. They've got a couple members who look and act like mindless thugs and some have a habit of arrogance and intolerance while not being afraid to Shoot The Dog while claiming to be moral guardian types. It's just that their Teamwork mechanic makes them seem nicer.
- The Real Ghostbusters are typically hired by human clients to get rid of evil supernatural creatures, but some of the ghosts they've encountered are not evil, and are easily gotten rid of when the Ghostbusters help them complete their Unfinished Business. Other times, the supernatural creatures are the ones who hire the Ghostbusters, either to get rid of another supernatural being that really is evil, or to protect them from overzealous human villains.
- In the Grand Finale of Fairly Oddparents the cosmic entity know as "the Darkness" turns out to have never been seeking trouble; everyone that saw it simply got scared and preemptively started filling it full of explosives. When Timmy decides to be the first one to send anything nice into it (namely a smile made from light coming from every planet in the solar system) it returns all the people it swallowed and it's Killer Robots started hugging people.
- Don't forget Casper the Friendly Ghost!
- No, that's "Dead Is Not Evil."
- The Pixar Short Partly Cloudy follows a storm cloud who is only capable of making potentially dangerous creatures such as baby gators, porcupines or sharks for his Delivery Stork while all other clouds make cute little babies or puppies. Nevertheless, he is depicted as well-meaning, only wishing for companionship and not at all malevolent.
- Grim, The Grim Reaper of The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy. He may be death personified, enjoys watching television and is always (although reluctantly) willing to use his supernatural abilities to save others.
- It's no wonder if Grim seems like a nice (or at least likable) fellow compared to the company he is forced to keep.
- The Men In Black all work on the side of good (except for Alpha, but he left a long time ago).
- Don Bluth's animation for Scizzor Sisters has a a warlock/wizard that helps the hero to save his girl. He looks like your average magic wielding villain though.
- Now that I've mentioned Don Bluth there's also the owl and Nicodemus from The Secret Of NIMH, both of which old looking and very scary characters that are on the good side.
- Several aliens in Ben10 and its sequel Ben 10 Alien Force, some of which Ben himself transforms into thanks to the Omnitrix.
- Sid Philip's mutilated toys in Toy Story, despite being some of the creepiest things Pixar has ever rendered, are all pretty nice guys and have a knack for fixing things.
- If not Affably Evil, the Griffin from Quest For Camelot could arguably count. He's pretty much just the bad guy's pet, who ends up as being quite sympathetic for his Butt Monkey status, as the movie pretty much only shows him suffer in a way or another. The worst thing he did was his attempt to get revenge on the good guy's falcon (and getting burned by a siamese twins dragon for that), but then again he was asking for it.
- Oddly enough, the zombies in Scooby Doo on Zombie Island. Indeed, it turns out the cat demon creatures (aka, the true forms of their 'hosts' whose mansion they were staying at) are the villains, and trying to kill them for some form of life energy (and the zombies were the remains of the people the villains had killed in the hundreds of years before the gang arrived, and were trying to warn them about the villains). After the demons are killed, the zombies simply fall apart with their souls at rest, and the ghost of one of the Confederate soldiers who they'd seen in their earlier camera footage on the island thanks them.
- However, some of the zombies weren't nice people when they were alive, as for instance the pirates responsible for killing the original settlers of the island.
- Speaking of Scooby Doo, how about Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School? The girls of the eponymous school are all quite nice and friendly, and even their father (including the likes of The Mummy, Dracula, and The Wolf Man) are nice, if frighteningly protective of their daughters. The only really evil monsters to appear in the entire thing are Revolta and her minions.
- The Web Riders in Re Boot. Sure they fight the heros and look like something made up of pure Nightmare Fuel, but are actually quite nice and helpful once you get to know them. They weren't fighting the heros because of being evil, but because they were defending their herd of Web Creatures from the Net invaders.
- Disney plays with its portrayal of villains in The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. Kovu and the other Outlands lions are drawn exactly like Scar (lean build, dark coloring, pointed facial features), but only Zira is actually evil.
Real Life
- Above all, most individuals of African descent ("Blacks") are NOT evil.
- YMMV. Everyone on the planet is of African descent. There's some evil lurking.
- Goths out there really aren't - pardon the lazy joke - after your blood. Even the ones in fetish gear. There was a Dear Abby column a while back where a reader wrote in apparently very surprised after seeing a group of teenage goths helping a homeless man, with the implication that, firstly, teenagers doing good was out of the ordinary, and second, that most goth people can be assumed to be undilute evil with hearts as black as tar - but not these! I winced.
- Most Goths over the age of 17 are just in it because they like the music and think they look really good in black. It's usually the tweens who are all into the "darkness of life" and all that other crap.
- Goths got that bad reputation not only because they dress in black (scary...) but because they, just as occultists, don't back away from taboo-topics like death and depression and because they are interested in non-mainstream topics like psychology, magic, mythology or worst case: Corpses and the Life After. However being counter-society doesn't mean someone is evil. Think of the alchemists who we thank modern chemistry, think of the creepy anatomists of modern era London who stole corpses to develop the modern western medicine... and so on.
- In the same vein, punks. Just because someone has twin mohawks and is covered from head to toe in spikes and tattoos doesn't mean they won't help an old lady cross the street or give up their seats for an elderly couple on a bus. On top of that, Straight Edge might be the Most Triumphant Example of this trope in real life.
- Also, people who practice Wicca and/or Paganism. A very common first-reaction out of people who find out someone does this is to be afraid of them, thinking they're a "dark sorcerer" or something, hate God, want to curse them, a lot of stuff like that. But in reality, they're just regular people following a religion, like anyone else. (Besides, some branches of Paganism explicitly forbid practice of "dark magic" or intentionally hurting others.)
- Dark matter and dark energy are not as evil and sinister as they sound. In fact, they're just neutral and, so far, hypothetical astronomical and cosmological phenomena labelled "dark" because they haven't been seen and observed with conventional means but have only been inferred from their possible effects.
- However, they might be responsible for ultimately destroying the universe.
- ...and helping to create it to begin with. It is hypothesized by some that without dark matter galaxies wouldn't have been able to form.
- The shadow cabinet isn't evil - or at least, not any more than other politicians. Many would agree with me.
- Likewise for Australian politics, mostly. Though it does make the news much funnier when you imagine the Shadow Ministers as anime villains.
- When Trent Reznor bought a mansion in the Garden District, many of the proper society ladies of the community feared 3am industrial jam sessions and orgies on their front lawns. When Reznor moved in, he became a very supportive member of the community group and endeared himself to the little old ladies of the area. He's also friends with Tori Amos.
- Dave Mustaine mentioned that most people are shocked to learn that the lead singer for a band called Megadeth is also the coordinator of a charity that distributes Christmas presents to homeless children.
- Black Cats. Their spooky, fiend-like appearance has given them a terrible reputation throughout the entire world, and associated them with evil, witchcraft and bad luck. The poor things were regularly killed in witch hunts. Of course, their temperaments are no worse than any other cat.
- Similarly, black dogs (especially large ones) are harder to adopt because of they look "scarier" than lighter-colored dogs.
- Homeless people. Many of them are actually very nice and pleasant people, despite being portrayed as dirty tricksters in media.
- Bats. Most species are fairly harmless towards people and only one is after your blood; the worst they can do is transmit rabies, but considering that there's more people infected by rabies by dogs or racoons than by bats (specially considering they don't bite unless threatned; given a choice they'd fly away) they still pose no direct threat to people. Sadly, like other gloomy looking animals they end up receiving little sympathy from people.
- In Australia, substitute 'Lyssa and Hendra virus' for rabies. There are frequent howls for them to be culled, despite the fact that these viruses kill relatively few people each year.
- Black as a surname is fairly common, and often used in fiction for characters that are rather grey in morality. Aside from the obvious English surname Black, there is also the Irish surname Dowd/O'Dowd, derived from the gaelic word for black ('dubh'). Though some with these surnames in real life are undoubtedly villainous, many others are not.
- Classical gargoyles, such as the ones adorning Notre Dame and other gothic churches, were made as terrifying as possible to ward off evil spirits. Much like Disney's Gargoyles, they're only trying to protect us.
- The "Black Pope" is not a new movie starring Martin Lawrence but a derogatory term coined in Protestant European polities during the 16th Century refering to Superior General of the Society of Jesus. While very likely considered evil by those who coined the term in the first place, the so-called Black Popes were only as bad as their own personal failings (which varied from Superior General to Superior General just like behavior varies from person to person).
- The Black Star. Originally, it was name of Marcus Garvey's boat (although Your Mileage May Vary about how good Marcus Garvey was, only a Klansman would call him evil) and later the sea line he tried to start. Later it became the symbol of African emancipation and is still on the flag of Ghana—hence the Fan Nickname of the Ghana national football team: the Black Stars.
- Owls. Despite their scary appearence, they are no worse than any other predatory bird, and are agressive for perfectly understandable reasons, like defending their nests.
- As anyone who's been to a jazz club or casino's lounge will tell you, sometimes a darker setting helps to alleviate tensions.
- Squid ink as a food. It's used in sauces for pasta and pizza in Japan, Italy and Spain. It may sound like Foreign Queasine, and it stains everything black, but everyone who's tried it has found it delicious.
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