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What a difference between issues #1 and #2.
All adown her back floated tresses of ruddy gold, with a slender jeweled circlet confining them at brow.
— Ozma as described in The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The diminutive brown-haired Princess was actually commanding him to give up his slaves.
— Ozma as described in Speedy in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Sometimes, characters' colors aren't consistent from one moment to the next, whether it's a very notable miscoloration in one panel, or consistently recolored across an entire issue. It's typically small details, such as eye color, but more major details, like hair color or costume colors, can be changed too.

It may be due to various artists. Maybe publishing issues. Maybe they're retconning or deliberately redesigning an outfit from here on out. Maybe they didn't care.

If it's actually supposed to be changing In-Universe, it may also be due to things like dyes, different lighting in different environment, magic illusions, or shapeshifting, or some other explanation.

This is particularly prevalent in comics, including western comic books, newspaper comics, manga and Webcomics, but can happen with other media as well. Is frequently due to different artists but can also be due to retcons or just the artist being Off-Model.

Compare to Depending on the Artist, Adaptation Dye-Job, Early Installment Character-Design Difference, Hair Color Dissonance, Unreliable Illustrator. Supertrope to Sudden Eye Color. Not to be confused with Eye Colour Change, which is where a character's eyes legitimately change color as part of the story.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • It's Happy Bunny: Happy Bunny has no official color. They're usually white, but they can also be a variety of other colors.

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Bleach, Rangiku Matsumoto's hair varies between ginger and blonde.
  • Wandering Son:
    • Early on the characters rarely had a stationary color in colored artwork; even within the same volume would the colors change. Eventually the manga decided on certain colors for certain characters, such as Takatsuki having black hair instead of brown as originally depicted. However other colors, such as the exact shade of Nitori's brown hair, still changed between colored artwork until the very end.
    • The middle school uniforms have a very inconsistent coloring. The manga depicts the gakuran as varying shades of pastel colors, however the in-manga shading imply this is simply artistic license and that they're a normal black. The anime went with that interpretation.
  • ×××HOLiC has Yuuko's and Watanuki's eyes, which have been just about every color of the spectrum.
  • Kamui from X/1999, whose eyes have been blue, green, and purple in various pieces of artwork.
  • The mangaka of Miracle Girls justifies this, saying that the different colors were caused by problems made during the publishing process. The main twins' hair would change between varying tones of near white, blonde, and brown depending on the cover. Their official tone was a dark brown, which the anime uses.
  • Lady!!: Lynn's eyes are green on the manga cover, but in the anime, they appear red, pink and brown at several different points.
  • The colored art for March Comes in Like a Lion portray the Kawamoto sisters with either black hair or brunette hair. Typically, the more detailed pieces, like the ones used for volume covers, will use brunette.
  • While the covers of Ranma ½ usually consistently show Male Ranma with black hair (though the highlight color may vary), Female Ranma's hair bounces off between black, brown, red, pink, purple, and blue. It's consistently red in the anime.
  • Naruto:
    • Ino from Naruto has been depicted with both blue eyes and green eyes in the manga, though she's usually green eyed. The anime uses turquoise.
    • Boruto has purple eyes in The Last: Naruto the Movie, but blue elsewhere.
    • Konohamaru had black, then brown eyes, and finally blue eyes.
    • In chapter 500, Mirai has reddish-brown eyes. In Naruto, she has either brown eyes or red eyes. In the Boruto anime, she has red eyes.
  • In Sherlock Hound, Moriarty's minion Smiley is green in the six episodes directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and brown in the other twenty episodes.
  • Aiko from Goodnight Punpun has been depicted with brown hair, red hair, and even teal hair. Her official color is a dark brown.
  • Shouko from A Silent Voice is frequently depicted in colored artwork with a near pink tone of hair. Canonically she has a dark brown hair but few artworks use the tone. The animated movie gives her reddish hair.
  • Triela from Gunslinger Girl is a dark-skinned blonde, however her skin tone is shaded in different ways. Early chapters often made her as light as the white characters, however later ones tend to shade her darker.
  • The pilot of Transformers: Cybertron had a few shots where Optimus Prime's head had noticeably different coloring than what was used for the remainder of the series.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Chibiusa's friend Momoko had brown hair in the R and S seasons but switched to purple hair in SuperS. In the manga she has pink hair.
    • The hair color Usagi's mom switches between pink and blue in the manga. The first chapter depicted her with light brown hair. The 90s anime depicted her with dark blue hair while Sailor Moon Crystal originally opted for light purple in season 1 before also switching her to dark blue.
    • Rei's hair color in the 1990s anime changes depending on the episode. It's usually plain black but sometimes it's red-tinted and other times it's outright purple.
  • Dragon Ball's creator Akira Toriyama was famously kind of a lazy artist, and one of his quirks included never bothering to remember what color anything was supposed to be, which occasionally led to various inconsistencies. Many of these are caused by the manga occasionally being coloured but only with a limited palette, while the Shonen Jump cover artwork was almost always in full colour.
    • The first chapters in 1984/85 depicts Goku's dōgi in blue, but was quickly changed to red for the limited-colour manga page and orange for the full-colour artwork on the front of Shonen Jump. The anime in 1986 resolved it by starting Goku in blue before changing to red when he got the Turtle School uniform, to explain the change in-universe. Orange wouldn't be adopted by the anime until the Dragon Ball Z rebrand, but without an in-universe justification this time. Interestingly, flashback to material from the original anime kept the old red colouring!
    • Goku's equipment isn't immune to this either: Kinto'un, or The Flying Nimbus, is typically yellow but is often inked in purple or even blue by Toriyama. The sheath for Nyoi-bo, or Power Pole, was frequently purple, which was carried into the Full Colour versions. The anime used red from the limited-colour manga pages.
    • Bulma however may be the queen of this in the franchise. Her earliest art gave her hair a minty turquoise colour, which is what the anime used used all the way through Dragon Ball GT. Toriyama more consistently used lavender purple however, and this was used for her son Trunks even in the anime (who appears as a teenager from the future and then as a kid later on). Dragon Ball Super however uses baby blue for Bulma's hair and Future Trunks... but not Kid Trunks for some reason, who still has the correct lavender hair. The cause of all this? Toriyama never bothered keeping consistent with her hair colour and used what felt best at the time! Of course, as bad as Trunks flip-flopping between blue and lavender may be, it's still not as bad as that one time his hair was red.
    • Karin (Korin in dubs), the magical cat, is a different color anytime he appears on a cover, to accent his strangeness. In the anime adaptations, however, he's a consistent white, while Dragon Ball Online makes him dark blue.
    • In the original version of Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta and Nappa infamously have completely different color schemes in their first few appearances: Nappa's armor is black and brown instead of dark blue and yellow, while Vegeta has brown hair, orange boots and gloves and green armor instead of black hair and white and armor, boots and gloves. This is because the manga hadn't showed them in color yet, and the anime pulled an accidental Adaptation Dye-Job which was inexplicably reversed by the time they arrive on Earth. Dragon Ball Z Kai changes Vegeta's colours to the correct palette, but didn't bother for Nappa, who wasn't quite as obvious. Some of the video games retain one or both color schemes as alternate costumes.
  • Exaggerated in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, as part of its general... bizarreness. Whenever color is used (most notably in the anime adaptation), characters are known to change color schemes multiple times within the same scene, usually but not always for dramatic emphasis.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • Tracey either has black hair or black hair with heavy green tints.
    • The switch to computer animation in late Johto caused this for several characters. For example, James' hair is either indigo, blue, or purple while Jessie's is either red, magenta, or purplish.
    • Misty's eye color has changed between blue and green many times. Since the switch to computer animation she usually is depicted as green eyed.
  • Hori's hair in Horimiya ranges from light auburn to a very dark brown in the original webcomic and official artwork. Confusingly, the manga makes it look like she has blonde hair since it doesn't have any screentone (and other characters with canonically lighter hair do).
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!, both manga and anime:
    • Dark Yugi (Yami Yugi): His eye color varies between art. In the Toei anime the color was red, which changed to purple in the second series. They've also been green, orange, brown, and blue, but it seems red is his most standard color in his official arts.
    • Ryo Bakura (Bakura Ryou): His eye color (and hair color) is never consistent across adaptations. They're blue or turquoise in the manga, green in the Toei anime, blue, purple or silver in the video games, brown in the second-series anime, and magenta red in The Darkside of Dimensions.
    • Dark Bakura (Yami Bakura): His eye color changes across adaptations, from purple in the manga and Toei anime to brown in the second series anime. They've also been turquoise in cover art, varying shades of purple and pink in the video games, and are blood-red in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
    • Blue-Eyes White Dragon is meant to be, well... white, albeit a pearly white with a bluish tint. However, Duel Monsters rendered it as more of a pale blue with a lot of shine to it. As a result, depending on the media, Blue-Eyes can be anywhere from mostly white (the manga, the Toei series) to mostly blue (the Gallop anime), with the shade of blue ranging from light blue to fairly medium or dark blue. In the uglier episodes, it can even end up as matte blue without a hint of shine to it.
  • Pokémon Adventures:
    • Crystal either has brown hair or blue hair. Her original jacket is either white or pink.
    • Yellow's eye colour has changed from black to a range of brownish shades.
  • The video extract from Seton Academy: Join the Pack! used to illustrate Our Nudity Is Different demonstrates this. A naked mole rat girl who has taken human form is ashamed she has to wear clothes to school. When she can, she strips them off. In the same scene, her bra and knickers begin in purple but abruptly change to white, with no explanation given.
  • Tweeny Witches:
    • Arusu's eyes are either reddish-orange or gold, depending on the scene.
    • Atelia's eyes are either grey, green or blue depending on the scene.
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: During Onodera's Early-Bird Cameo in the anime, she's shown to have light pink hair similar to what she has in the manga (indeed, it's the only way you can tell it's supposed to be her since none of her face is visible). When she's properly introduced 4 episodes later, she's suddenly become a blonde.
  • Dragon Knights is primarily drawn in black-and-white except for the covers. The characters' hair and eye colours are rarely consistent between different covers, which combined with several characters having similar hairstyles means that it can be hard to tell who is depicted on which covers. At one point, the series blames the indecisive colouring on hair dye, which still doesn't explain the eye colours shifting.

    Asian Animation 
  • In the Simple Samosa episode "Carnival Chaos", the pink-colored Sher Singh, who runs the carnival, appears in yellow a couple of times with no explanation. Later on, he is depicted as either pink or yellow depending on the episode.

    Comic Books 
  • The Incredible Hulk: In his first appearance, Hulk is gray; then from the 2nd issue on he's green (and is shown to be green in Flash Backs to the first issue); the change was made because the cheap printing process used for the comic couldn't render gray consistently, giving him a different hue on almost every page. Much later it's re-retconned back to him being gray at first.
  • In DC's Trinity miniseries, Triumph was drawn with at least four different hair colors... and they weren't similar. He started out blue, popped up with red and brown, and finally ended back where belonged at blonde.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
      • Characters in the comic originally had black eyes that would sometimes appear colored, however the colors weren't consistent. Eventually the Sonic Adventure era created an excuse to give Sonic green eyes, while everyone else was just assumed to have always looked that way. Their colors stayed stationary since then.
      • Amy had violet eyes at the beginning of the Sonic Adventure arc instead of her normal green.
      • Sonic initially had blue eyelids but was later changed to flesh-colored to match his game counterparts redesign in Sonic Adventure, then eventually went back to blue when the games also gave Sonic blue eyelids.
    • Sonic the Comic:
      • The comic had problems with eye colors in the Sonic Adventure arc. Porker Lewis' eyes changed from brown to blue and back. Everyone with black eyes before switched to colored eyes in the Sonic Adventure arc.
      • Sonic started out with flesh-colored eyelids, but then shifted to blue. Then the Sonic Adventure arc shifted them back to flesh-coloured.
  • Before he got his own comic, Midnighter's hair color frequently changed. This was because he was so rarely seen without his cowl that colorists never settled on a consensus. It was eventually explained as him constantly dyeing it different colors.
  • In her introduction, Storm from the X-Men had blue eyes when not using her powers. This was mostly kept up about a decade after her introduction, but in comics post 2000, it isn't terribly uncommon to see her drawn with brown eyes.
    • Wind Dancer's skin tone, hair and eye color is inconsistent. Her skin is either fair, or slightly darker than other white characters. Her hair has ranged from dark brown, to a light brown, to a bright orange-brown. Her eyes are usually dark brown, but have been portrayed as light brown, blue, and even gold.
    • Rachel Summers is fairly notorious for this, sometimes having bright green eyes like her mother (often highlighting just how much she takes after mummy dearest), and sometimes having blue eyes like her father (when his powers aren't working).
  • Batman's debut in Detective Comics #27 saw him wearing short purple gloves instead of the long black or blue gloves with the three blades on the sides. Then there's the fact that his cowl, cape, gloves, boots and Underwear of Power are alternately colored black or blue.
  • Robin (1993): While Tim Drake's eyes are canonically blue in his early appearances, including the entirety of the 80-Page Giant, he was occasionally given brown eyes by artists before his appearance was settled.
  • Black Canary is naturally black haired except when some artists mistake her for a natural blonde. The New 52 even retconned her into a blonde before later going back on that.
  • Impulse: Bart Allen switches between brown, red, and auburn hair.
  • Monica's Gang: Before Jimmy Five's outfit was estabilished as being a green shirt and black shorts, they were colored yellow and red respectively in some early merchandise such as dolls.
    • Franklin's pet dog, Blu, also used to have grey fur before swithing to blue for the rest of the series, presumably because of the same printing errors that resulted in the Hulk's color change. One has to wonder if his English name would've been different if he kept the grey fur.
    • Monica's stuffed rabbit Sansom is an interesting case. He was based off the creator's daughter's own stuffed rabbit, who was yellow. When it was time for the characters to be colored, Sansom's chosen color was blue, and has remained as such since, including in official colorations of old black and white strips. However, his classic colors were recently retconned, so now colorations show him as yellow like his real life inspiration. What's more bizarre? They further retconned his old yellow self so he's now an entirely separate Companion Cube named Hercules. Go figure.
  • New Gods: In his first published appearance, Orion's costume is red with purple trunks, boots and gloves — and his helmet is purpleish, too. When the original 11 issues were reprinted in semi-digest format on higher-quality paper, the purple became blue and the helmet became a shining metal that looked a lot like polished or stainless steel. That colour scheme has been used ever since, even forming the basis for a couple of costume redesigns.
  • The Beano: The cover of Book 1965 shows Minnie the Minx and Little Plum blowing up a Biffo balloon. Minnie's jersey is red and yellow hoops, rather than the red and black the character is now associated with. But at the time, she'd have mostly been appearing in black and white or duotone, so the colour of the hoops was somewhat up for grabs.
  • Batgirl: DC is inconsistent on whether Barbara Gordon has green or blue eyes. She's most frequently depicted with blue eyes.
  • Star Wars: Kanan: Whether it's a problem of coloring or of attributing speech bubbles to the wrong characters Commander Grey and Captain Styles are occasionally depicted wearing each other's armor, which is rather confusing given that the differences in the way they've painted their armor is the only way to tell clone troopers in Billaba's battalion apart during missions as their armor is all concealing and identical otherwise.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Some re-prints of some issues color Etta's red hair blonde, reflecting her Silver Age iteration, and Mala's blonde hair red reflecting her Silver Age iteration.
  • Most of Two-Faces earlier appearances had the scarred side of his face colored green, in later appearances the coloring on his scarred side has varied between purple, red, blue, gray, or black.
  • In the cartoon universe of The Powerpuff Girls, Blossom's ice breath is a glimmering light blue. In the DC comics, her ice breath is colored pink, prompting one of the writers to comment that it looks like she's barfing Pepto-Bismol.
  • In cartoons, Muttley was a light green. In the first Wacky Races comic book (Gold Key, May 1969), he was colored a deep green and his ears were unblackened. Ensuing issues of it as well as the spinoff had Muttley colored a pale yellow (his ears would eventually be blackened). One story, "Secret Weapon" (Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #5, Gold Key January 1971), had his paws uncolored.
    • Laff-A-Lympics: In issue 13, Dick Dastardly's trench coat is colored exactly like Dread Baron's (it adds since the story tells that they're brothers) while Muttley is colored identical to Mumbly—light blue face, orange fur (Mumbly's trench coat is orange).
  • The first issue of Invader Zim (Oni) has Dib's eyes slowly morph from brown (their color in the show) to blue as the story goes on. Recap Kid actually lampshades it in the second issue.
  • Superman:
    • Superman's costume, neglecting colouring errors, was coloured very inconsistently for many years after his introduction, particularly his shields, though his boots, belt and sometimes trunks often changed between issues or even between stories. His colour scheme didn't entirely stabilize until after World War II.
    • Supergirl's skirt was colored inconsistently during the first two years of her existence. Depending on the comic, it was red or blue until DC -and the artists- finally settled on blue. Back then, the in-universe reason is Kara had different suits and she enjoyed trying new clothes.
    • In Superman's Return to Krypton Lyla Lerrol is a blonde woman. In The Last Days of Superman, she is depicted as raven-haired in a flashback scene. In For the Man Who Has Everything, she is blonde again.
    • The Death of Luthor: In one panel, Supergirl's legs are colored blue, making it look like she is wearing pants. In another panel of the penultimate page, Supergirl being drawn in an awkward angle causes the colorist mistaking one third of her face for her cape's rim and coloring it red.
    • In Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends, Brainiac's green face is colored blue several times.
    • Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: In the second panel of the seventh page the colorist seems to have forgotten that Supergirl does not wear pants, since her legs are colored blue.
    • In The Earthwar Saga, Light Lass' hair is colored golden instead of red.
    • "The Unknown Legionnaire": One panel shows Brainiac 5 with blue face and green hands. Bariny is supposed to be completely green-skinned.
    • "Let My People Grow!": Supergirl's red choker is colored white in several panels.
  • Spider-Man: The first 20 years of publication Morbius had pink eyes as a vampire. This was changed to red without explanation and then kept that way, except for various issues of his 1st solo series, where they're yellow.
  • Werewolf by Night: The titular character canonically has blue eyes and light red hair but has been shown with about every eye color and hair color imaginable. His eyes are also supposed to turn yellow when he's transformed but fully in control of himself and red when he's not, but there's hardly a single comic that adheres to this.
  • Very common in the BIONICLE comics, especially the early years. Even disregarding the multitude of coloring errors that plagued nearly every issue, the characters' primary and secondary colors were often mixed up and random parts of their bodies be occasionally colored grey.
  • The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis: Bart's shirt is colored blue when Fry enters his classroom for the first time, as well as when Bart sees Fry again the next morning. Other than these two instances, his shirt is red like usual.

    Comic Strips 
  • Since most Newspaper Comics are printed in black and white, this trope can happen if a colored version is available. This can be seen in Garfield, where the house interior and appliances are not defined color-wise. Even Jon's outfit changes colors sometimes.
  • In some Peanuts color Sunday strips, Charlie Brown's trademark yellow shirt is a dark red, or green, or something else. The same applies to the other kids’ outfits too: Lucy’s dress is sometimes yellow instead of its familiar dark blue, Sally’s dress is sometimes pink instead of sky blue note , etc.
  • Dilbert:
    • In black and white daily strips, the point is lost that Asok the intern is meant to be Asian. He looks "white" as his face and hands are rendered in the same pale tones as Dilbert, Wally or Alice. However, in the color weekend strips, it is clear that his ethnicity is different. Owing to the limitations of monochrome publishing, this has effectively become an unintended version of this trope — Asok is white on weekdays and Asian at the weekend.
    • The colorized weekday comics from the official site are quite inconsistent about Ratbert's color. His official color is apparently orange, but he's been also colored yellow or gray. Bob the Dinosaur is almost always green (although the exact shade varies, as does the color of his belly and back ridges), but in at least one instance he became purple.
    • In one of the books of collected strips, Scott Adams points out that he didn't pick the colors for the Sunday strips; it was done by someone at the syndicate, and "they pick the worst times to add diversity to the cast." This was the annotation for a strip where the colorist made a bit character a "person of color" ... in the strip where he's stealing from the other workers.
  • Because The Phantom started out in black-and-white dailies, his costume has appeared in a wide variety of colors in international reprints. In the early strips, dialogue occasionally referred to his costume as being gray. When the strip expanded into color Sunday strips, it was depicted as grayish-purple (which may have been an attempt to depict it as gray where the color registration went wonky). After a while, it was acknowledged in-text that the costume was purple. Even now, it's depicted in a wide variety of shades, from dark purple to a bright almost-blue.
  • In Donald Duck's earliest comic strip appearances, his feathers were yellow instead of white.
  • Popeye:
    • Popeye's first appearance in the Thimble Theatre daily strip depicted him with a white shirt and pants. A few weeks later, he acquired a black shirt, likely to make him stand out more on the black-and-white page. Upon appearing in the color Sunday strip, his hat and pants were light blue, which carried over into the two-reel Technicolor cartoons, but most current media depicts him with a white hat.
    • Olive Oyl is normally depicted with a red shirt, a black skirt with a yellow stripe, and brown galoshes. But in some Sunday strips, the shirt was colored blue or yellow. In aforementioned color cartoons, her shirt is green, the skirt stripe was red, and her shoes were white.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • The title character of Balto has yellow sclerae in the original film, but they're white in the sequels.
  • Strip "The King" Weathers from Cars normally has brown eyes, but when Chick Hicks crashes him at the end of the film, they somehow turn blue. They revert back to brown after he is helped by Lightning McQueen into reaching the finish line.
  • Cinderella:
    • In the original film, Cinderella has strawberry blonde hair (although it was light blonde when she was a child) and her ball gown is silver with white accents (although when she dances with the prince at the ball and when she runs away at midnight, the lighting makes it briefly look blue). In all print media, she has light blonde hair and her gown is blue with lighter blue accents. The first sequel also lightens her hair, though the third film brings back its original color.
    • In the sequels, Lady Tremaine's dress was changed from maroon to purple.
    • Drizella's hair was a dark shade of brown in the first film, a lighter brown in the second, and jet black in the third.
  • In The Lion King (1994), Nala's eyes can be seen as changing from blue to green. In The Lion King: Six New Adventures, her eyes are gold. In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, her eyes are an electric blue. In The Lion King 1 ½, her eyes are green. They are back to blue in The Lion Guard. Whew.
  • The Little Mermaid (1989):
    • Sebastian's sclerae are colored white in the film, but they're yellow in all print media.
    • Ursula's skin colour is lavender purple (with a greyish hue) in the original movie. In promotional material and later portrayals (as in Mickey's House of Villains and Hercules: The Animated Series), it appears brighter and closer to fuchsia. Conversely, her model skin in Kingdom Hearts goes the opposite direction with a dark-purple hue.
    • Ariel's sisters all have blue eyes like she does in the original film, but in The Little Mermaid III: Ariel's Beginning, their eyes are assorted shades of blue, green, and brown.
  • In Mulan, Mulan's armor is mostly seen as green but also as blue and brown later in the movie.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas:
    • Oogie Boogie is burlap-colored, with only the lighting during his song making him temporarily look green. But a fair amount of merchandise depicts him as green.
    • Sally's hair is auburn in the actual film, but almost always bright red in merchandise and print media.
  • In Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket's skin is a pale, muted green. But Fun and Fancy Free and some print media make him peach-colored instead, while other print media makes him a brighter green.
  • Rankin/Bass Productions Christmas specials:
  • 'Sleeping Beauty'':
    • Aurora has three eye colors throughout the movie. Brown eyes, purple eyes, and even black eyes. In at least one scene she changed between the three. Disney Princess merchandise portrays her consistently with purple eyes, making her the only princess with an unnatural eye color. Rereleases have fixed the film so that her eyes are more obviously purple. (Her dress also changes back and forth between blue and pink, but there's an in-universe reason for that.)
    • Flora's wings, petticoat and hat trim tend to be portrayed as pink in print media, when in the actual film they're beige.

    Films — Live Action 
  • Mal of Descendants is shown to have green eyes most of the time (just like Dove Cameron, her portrayer). However, most of her dolls up until 2019 have hazel-brown eyes, while her appearance in Descendants: Wicked World depicts her with grey eyes.
  • Inspector Gadget 2: G2's police uniform is blue in the film, but is silver on the cover art.
  • Star Wars: The colors of the buttons on Darth Vader's chest panel aren't consistent. There is no in-universe explanation, but one can assume that it's due to parts being replaced as they break down or are damaged in combat. In Real Life, it's just down to the crew evolving the design as time and technology marched on:
    • In A New Hope, the two buttons on the top right of the panel are colored green (top button) and red (bottom button). The four switches at the bottom of the panel are colored white (far left) and gray (the remaining three). The same color scheme is used in Rogue One, Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the series finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
    • In The Empire Strikes Back, the green button was changed to blue. The colored switch was moved to the far right and changed to red. The three slots on the top left also now have red flashing lights. This color scheme is kept for Return of the Jedi.
    • In Revenge of the Sith, the top button was changed back to green. The colored switch was moved back to the far left, but retained the red color from Empire and Jedi. The red switch and the two top buttons now light up as well.
    • In addition to his chest panel, the color of the eye lenses on his face plate have also changed colors over the years. They were tinted red in A New Hope and all other media using the design from said film (except for Obi-Wan Kenobi), but are tinted black in most other media.

    Literature 
  • Warrior Cats is prone to this type of inconsistency, primarily due to the authors disagreeing with each other and/or losing track of details:
    • Despite being the protagonist of the first Story Arc and having the most official images out of any character in the series, the artist of the series can't seem to decide whether Firestar should have tabby stripes, what shade of orange his fur is, whether he has white markings (especially on his face), and whether or not he has green eyes (the canon color) or yellow. In a particularly egregious example, some of the book jackets advertise an image of Firestar's Quest where he has yellow eyes, even though the actual cover has him with green eyes! The books themselves never refer to Firestar as a tabby, implying he's solid-colored.
    • Longtail's design is very inconsistent. He's referred to as brown and then less than fifty pages later is called silver. Apparently one reason for this is because the Erins have different views on what tabbies look like (one thinks they're brown and another silver). He's commonly depicted by fans as sort of a gray-brown beige due to this.
    • Dovewing's eye color is inconsistent to the point of Memetic Mutation; they were first described as gold, and then it frequently swapped between green and blue. The authors had differing opinions, and there was even an infamous edit war on the wiki over it. Eventually the books made her eyes officially green.
    • The color of Scourge's collar was unmentioned in the books themselves until Leopardstar's Honor, leaving artists to guess wildly. It's usually depicted as purple (which is the color eventually established within the text), but has also been yellow, and occasionally red. It's even been depicted as a necklace instead of a collar.
  • Land of Oz:
    • Ozma is described as having "tresses of ruddy gold" (strawberry blonde hair) in The Marvelous Land of Oz. Most official art dating back to Ozma of Oz portray her as a brunette, though some also portray Ozma with black hair or red hair as well. Subsequently, popular fanon depicts Ozma as a brunette and most adaptations portray her as any color but blonde. Return to Oz is one of the few adaptations where she is a blonde (and even then she doesn't have a reddish tone to her hair). Even 1914's The Patchwork Girl of Oz (which L. Frank Baum himself was directly involved with) portrays Ozma with brown hair. Amongst the Famous Forty not written by Baum, Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote Ozma as brown-haired and the McGraw's wrote her as black-haired.
    • W.W. Denslow's illustrations for the first book portray Dorothy with dark hair in Girlish Pigtails but John R. Neill's illustrations used for most of L. Frank Baum's books portray her as having a blonde '20s Bob Haircut.
    • The Glass Cat's visible brain is usually pink, but one of the later books describes it as being purple.
  • Official art for Seeker Bears differs on whether Lusa has a brown muzzle or a black muzzle.
  • Wynne in Beansidhe's Wail is said to have eyes that change from "pale grey, to sky blue, to sea green, to violet to silver." The author says the same thing about her own eyes, saying, "A Clear Crystalline Grey That Shifts In Colour From Grey To Blue, To Green, To Violet And Sometimes Almost Silver, Depending On My Mood And My Clothes. I Have A Darker Grey Ring Around My Irises {Said To Be The Mark Of One With Faerie Blood And A Natural Witch} And Unusual *Lightning Bolt* Markings In Both Irises. My Eyes Are Quite Cat~Like, Almond Shaped. People Are Always Telling Me That I Have *Faerie Eyes* And Saying That My Eyes Are *Ancient*, *Ageless* *Endless*, And *Full Of Wisdom*"
  • Door of Neverwhere has "fire-opal" eyes of ever-changing/unclassifiable colour.
  • In Where are you Constanza, by the chilean writer José Luis Rosasco, Constanza, the protagonist's mysterious platonic love, has eyes whose color changes from blue to gray, to a very clear green.
  • The Baby-Sitters Club: In at least one book, Mallory's hair is described as chestnut brown, but nearly all the books' cover art makes it red, as have all the live-action media adaptations so far.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: Lucy's hair is described as "golden" and "fair," but Pauline Baynes' original illustrations depict it as dark. This probably explains why both the BBC and feature film adaptations give her brown hair.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Bran's direwolf Summer from Game of Thrones has gone from having gray fur to having brown to having what is a sort of beige-like color.
  • Barney the Dinosaur started out as a blue-violet color as opposed to the red-violet that most are familiar with.
  • Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House is supposed to be a golden brown color, but there are times where he appears orange (especially in promotional photos and merchandise). He's even been referred to as both brown and orange in-universe.

    Multiple Media 
  • Takua of BIONICLE started out as a customizable, nameless character in the 2001 Quest for the Toa Game Boy Advance game, though his official colors were grey for his body, yellow for his arms, red for his feet and bright blue for his mask. His joke cameo in the LEGO web game Backlot changed his torso to yellow and his mask to dark blue. In the Mata Nui Online Game and the web episodes, his mask went back to bright blue and his upper body and feet swapped colors. His 2003 toy changed his feet to dark blue but this time there was an in-story reason: he had rebuilt himself. The Mask of Light film turned his mask dark blue with red highlights, though on certain promos and the DVD extras he (and some other characters) had black feet. Finally, his exclusive 2023 toy went back to the MNOG colors with a bright blue mask, red body and arms and yellow feet.

    Music 
  • The former Trope Namer for Eye Colour Change is "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (LSD) by The Beatles. John describes Lucy as having "kaleidoscope eyes"; that's how he knows her. Unlike most of the other examples here, he does not elaborate. Given the overall character of the song (plasticine porters with looking-glass ties? Marmalade skies?) it's implied that the eyes are actually perfectly normal—the kaleidoscope bit is probably acid-induced Mushroom Samba.

    Toys 
  • Transformers has a very peculiar situation with Frenzy and Rumble, the two humanoid Decepticon mini-cassettes. In the original toyline, Frenzy was blue and Rumble was red and black. In the cartoon, however, Frenzy was given Rumble's red and black coloring, while Rumble was blue and purple. Most of the subsequent adaptation followed the toy colorations (albeit Frenzy is sometimes given the cartoon Rumble's purple accents), with only a few cases following the cartoon colors. This was actually lampshaded by Hasbro a few times, such as when in the Transformers: War for Cybertron line they first released a (red) Rumble figure and later on a (blue) Frenzy redeco of it whose official description actually claims "It's up to you to decide which one is the red or blue", while Transformers Studio Series follows the cartoon colorations and marks the figures as "Rumble (Blue)" and "Frenzy (Red)".
  • My Little Pony:
    • In G1, several ponies were coloured differently depending on the region.
    • Princess Celestia from G4 is white-coated in the series, but her first toy was pink.
    • Cross-gen ponies designs can differ so heavily to the point of You Don't Look Like You. G1's orange furred and flaxen haired Applejack became apple-red furred and green haired in G3 before returning to her original colours in G4.

    Theme Parks 
  • Disney Theme Parks
    • As in print media, Cinderella usually appears with light blonde hair and wearing a blue dress, rather than the actual film's strawberry blonde hair and silver dress.
    • Tigger's nose is usually colored black instead of pink in his meet-and-greet costume form.
    • The stripes on Piglet's jumper are usually pink and white instead of all pink.
    • Except for Dopey, who usually keeps his signature green and purple, the Seven Dwarfs tend to wear completely different colors than they do in the film, and Happy, who in the film is the only dwarf with white eyebrows, usually had black eyebrows like the rest of the dwarfs, until 2015 when his mask was redesigned to have white eyebrows as he does onscreen.
    • Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas is always bright green, when in the film he's actually burlap-colored, with only the lighting during his musical number making him look green.

    Video Games 
  • Cuphead: Cuphead and Mugman's White Gloves are suddenly yellow in your post-level scorecard. In this case, the inconsistency is deliberate and obvious, in reference to color illustrations of the black-and-white era of cartoons the game homages.
  • The exact colors of Lucia's hair and eyes in Lunar: Eternal Blue vary wildly between in-game graphics, cutscenes, and promotional art. Her hair color ranges from dark blue, to bright azure, to even sea green. Her eyes are consistently blue in the original Sega CD game but in the remake her eyes are green, but some of the artwork from the remake still has her with blue eyes. There's also Jean, who has green eyes in the original Sega CD version but brown eyes in the remake.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Originally Sonic had flesh-colored eyelids, then they were changed to blue to match his appearance in Sonic X, which has stuck ever since. This can be somewhat surreal in Sonic Generations, where Classic Sonic retains the flesh-colored eyelids but Modern Sonic has the current blue ones.
    • The exact shade of Classic Sonic's fur is inconsistent. It's sometimes a dark blue and other times a lighter blue. Since Generations, Sega has been making him lighter furred than Modern Sonic.
    • Tails' fur was originally designed as a medium orange, to make an Orange/Blue Contrast with Sonic, but the color has varied significantly over time. Some early non-Japanese media, such as Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, portrayed his fur as burnt orange or brown. His fur color was described as "fox brown" in Sonic Adventure 2, while in Sonic Heroes, it was changed to highlighter yellow to create a Chromatic Arrangement with Sonic and Knuckles. Sonic Riders gives Tails a board called the "Yellow Tail", but his fur has an orange tint. Since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), the color seems to have settled at yellow-orange.
  • The Resident Evil series seems to have every major character's eye color switch back and forth from brown to blue in their various depictions and artwork. Most of them have since settled on blue, while Chris Redfield seems to have stuck with brown in his later appearances. Leon Kennedy's hair also went from auburn in the 1998 original Resident Evil 2 to a dirty blond in every subsequent appearance (including the remake of part 2).
  • Pokémon:
    • The exact shade of colours for certain human characters varies. For example, do Dawn and Lucas have bright blue hair, dark blue hair, or black hair with blue tints? Red's hair as of the Generation 3 redesign is brown but the exact shade of brown differs. Sometimes it's so light that it looks grey but other times (such as his sprite in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 and his appearance in Pokémon Masters) it's so dark that he looks raven haired.
    • The male Nido line, Ditto, and Gligar are sometimes pink and sometimes purple; this sometimes changes between games on the same console.
  • Somewhere between Golden Sun's character concept art and the game sprites, someone forgot what color Sheba's eyes are supposed to be—they're green in the art but purple in-game.
  • I-No from Guilty Gear is said to have eyes that change their color depending on the angle you're looking at them, but it's never been fully implemented until Xrd. (Prior artwork depicted her with green eyes or, less commonly, blue.)
  • Lightning of Final Fantasy XIII has eyes that don't actually change colour but appear either pale blue or green depending on the lighting conditions. Some players have even spotted her appearing to have heterochromia, and inconsistent official artwork certainly doesn't help the matter.
  • What is the colour of Zelda's hair in The Legend of Zelda? The sprite is a brunette but that doesn't mean much in 8-bit games. Official art has her as a brunette, a redhead, and a blonde (though the last one has a different design from the other two). The brown haired one is apparently the canon colour, but even the art-book uses the redheaded design.
  • Batman: Arkham Series: Due to Batman: Arkham Origins being developed by a different studio and Batman: Arkham Knight taking the series to eighth gen consoles, there were some inconsistencies in the coloring of certain characters' hair and/or eyes:
    • Black Mask has brown hair in Arkham City (a hole in his mask shows a patch of brown hair), but in Arkham Origins, the unmasked Roman Sionis has black hair.
    • Catwoman goes the opposite way, having black hair in Arkham City and brown hair in Arkham Knight. Considering that she has been known to dye her hair in other continuities, that could be an explanation.
    • Robin (Tim Drake) has blue eyes in City and while his hair is covered by his hood, it's listed as black in his character bio. In Knight, he is given green eyes and a brown buzz cut (promotional artwork in City depicted him with a buzz cut too).
    • Commissioner Gordon's hair was snow white in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but in Arkham Knight, his hair is a mixture of gray and brown, probably to reflect the brown hair his younger self had in Arkham Origins.
    • Riddler's hair was a sandy, light brown color in Arkham City, but dark chestnut brown in Origins and Knight.
    • Talia al Ghul's hair was the same sandy color as Riddler's in the original seventh gen version of Arkham City, but the Return to Arkham remaster for eighth-gen consoles darkened both heads of hair to the dark brown color.
    • Joker's hair is a darker shade of green in both Origins and Knight compared to the first two games.
  • Street Fighter: Vega's hair alternates between brown and blond. And in both live-action movies, his hair was black.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Alistair's hair color changes constantly, and there is still some confusion as to what his canon hair color is. In Origins it is sandy blonde (although lighting makes it almost brown) and he is called "Blondie" at least once. In the sequel it is notably lighter. In Inquisition it's strawberry blonde, and in the comics it's flat-out orange.
    • Varric's hair is brown in his concept art, but ended up reddish blonde in-game. In promotional material for Inquisition (including a demo shown at a convention) it was brown again, but once again he ultimately ended up as a strawberry blonde... except for his in-game portrait where he's a brunette. The comics are even more inconsistent, with varying shades of brown or blonde depending on the series. The brown hair actually makes more sense, considering his nickname for Anders is "Blondie", even though the two have the exact same hair color.
  • Wario's signature clothes are yellow and purple, but in the NES version of Wario's Woods, his clothes are purple and white instead due to the NES color palette's limitations. Ditto his appearances in Wario Land II and 3 on the Game Boy Color, which are black and white for similar reasons.
  • Disco Elysium has various inconsistencies between how things appear on the in-game models, the portraits, and in the text.
    • Harry's eyes are described as blue by Ancient Reptilian Brain, but as grey-green by Harry when looking at his badge and struck by how handsome and charming the younger version of him looks. In his mirror portrait, his eyes appear dark blue, and in his in-game portrait, they are light blue.
    • The Samaran Conical Hat is described by both Harry and Charles as being black (it's even meant to be made out of a specific kind of charcoal-coloured bamboo that has significance in Samaran culture), but in game is clearly straw-coloured.
    • Klaasje is described as having a face covered in birthmarks (which Dros finds reminiscent of the peninsula where Revachol is placed). Neither her portrait or character model display them.
    • Lena's model has brown hair but her portrait shows her as a greying blond.
    • Joyce's model also has brown hair, but her portrait shows her with grey hair. The text describes her as having brown hair with proudly-worn streaks of grey that Harry finds attractive.
    • Dolores has golden blond hair on her model, but her hair is described in the dialogue in various scenes as 'impossibly blond' and 'white'.
    • Gary, the Cryptofascist has shoulder length reddish hair in his portrait and short, slicked-back white hair on his character model.
    • In The Final Cut, Steban will show up wearing a brown jacket if you poached the white one in his room, but his portrait will always show him in the white jacket.
  • Between Persona games, the artists can't seem to decide whether Fuuka's eyes are green or brown. Her hair also switches between being more green or blue.
  • Metroid: The early games went back and forth on what colour Samus's hair was supposed to be. In the NES original, it was a dark brown shade that, as a concession to NES palette limitations, changed to bright neon green upon collecting the Varia Suit. Super Metroid made her a very light brunette, verging on a dirty blonde. Metroid Fusion onward settled on a bight yellow-blonde seen to this day (and applied retroactively in Updated Re-release Metroid: Zero Mission).
  • On the box art for Doki Doki Panic, Wart's belly is pure green, but it's colored white in the game. When the box art was retooled for use for a Dolled-Up Installment in Super Mario Bros. 2, Wart's belly was drawn white to match his in game sprite.
  • The render model used for Princess Peach's artwork in Super Mario RPG has her dress in two shades of purple while her in game sprite has her dress colored pink.
  • Mario's artwork and sprites used in Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 were very inconsistent on what colors were used between them. In the former game, Mario on the boxart and in the manual had a blue shirt and red overalls while his in game sprite had them reversed. In the latter game, Mario on the boxart and manual had him in a red shirt and blue overalls while his ingame sprite colored him with a red shirt and black overalls. It wasn't until the release of Super Mario World where Mario's artwork and in game sprite would consistently stick with the red shirt and blue overalls.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Double Homework, Lauren's hair darkens as the story moves on.
  • In Melody, Bethany's hair appears darker in later episodes, when she tracks the protagonist down and tries to get him to come back, than in the introduction, when she is kicking him out of the house.

    Web Animation 
  • RWBY: Officially, Ruby's hair color is a dark red that appears brighter at the tips, but various material has also portrayed it as black, black with reddish tint, and black with red highlights.

    Webcomics 
  • Legend of the Blue Diamond: At the beginning of the series, Nautilus has yellow eyes with small blue spots. In later chpaters, his eyes are more orange in color.
  • The titular character in minus. has hair which ranges from blue to red to green — although this is clearly an intentional case of Kaleidoscope Hair, it has no In-Universe explanation and is never noticed by the other characters. It just varies depending on the strip.
  • Sonichu: Before the hiatus in 2010, Chris's hair was consistently brunette (just like the real Chris's at the time), but constantly fluctuated between lighter and darker shades. The real Chris later came out as transgender, and since then Chris in the comic has blue hair.
  • Spinnerette: Mecha Maid has occasionally been shown with red or black hair, despite Word of God being that she dyes her hair purple and wears a black wig. A flashback to her as a baby also shows her with purple hair, despite her natural hair color being black.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: Some of it can be justified by the comic's tendency to change color palettes between chapters, but straighter cases show up as a side effect of the fact that the comic can sometimes change small details with no importance to the plot from one panel to the next, including coloring. Some cases are particularly noticeable:
    • The collar of Reynir's only shirt was white upon his arrival and has since gone through various darker colors, ranging from blue to various shades of brown.
    • When Lalli is in full gear (that includes very long black gloves), his upper arms are always colored white and his coat has been shown to be sleveless, thus implying that he's wearing the white-sleeved version of the uniform turtleneck under his outer gear. The two times the comic has shown him get stripped out of his coat and long gloves, he turned out to be wearing the black-sleeved version of the turtleneck under them.

    Western Animation 
  • The Magic Key: Among Animate Inanimate Object tools of Tool World are one male pair of pliers who switches from being entirely blue to having a blue bottom but a green top, depending on the shot.
  • In The Tick, one episode has the defective superheroes gathered in a room. A continuity error or just sloppy coloring keeps depicting American Maid as alternating from black-stockinged legs to bare legs and back again, even though she is just sitting there and has neither time nor a plot reason to keep whipping her stockings on and off.
  • There's an intentional example in Yakkity Yak with Professor Crazyhair, whose hair constantly changes color. It's a rather fitting name.
  • When Speed Buggy and friends crossed over with Scooby-Doo, Speedy's pal Mark had a much darker skin tone than how he was normally shown.
  • Classic Disney Shorts:
    • In Mickey Mouse's first color film, 1932's Parade of the Award Nominees, his shorts were colored green rather than red. A few early color shorts gave him yellow or beige gloves as well.
    • Throughout the 40s and 50s, Goofy's body is either black or flesh-colored, sometimes in the same cartoon. This clothes were also colored differently during the classic era; his familiar green hat, orange shirt, brown vest and blue pants didn't appear until the 1950's Disneyland compilation specials.
    • Pluto's collar was red in most of the classic shorts, but it's green in A Gentleman's Gentleman and in most media today.
    • In the shorts, Pluto's nemesis Butch is grey with a darker grey muzzle and white belly, but on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, he's brown with a tan colored muzzle and belly.
    • The colors of Huey, Dewey and Louie's clothes often varied, with some projects giving them identical colors that make it almost impossible to tell them apart. Their familiar red-blue-green color scheme didn't appear until DuckTales.
  • In one episode of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, Linus' blanket is colored green instead of light blue. Hand Waved by a voice-over of Lucy saying that "My brother's got a stupid new blanket."
  • This happened to Sunshine in Salty's Lighthouse, the cut and paste translation of TUGS. In addition to Sunshine being a girl in Salty's Lighthouse (in TUGS, he was a boy), stock footage from TUGS episodes were used for his/her scenes, namely switching between his/her original white livery from the episode, "Sunshine", and his/her yellow paintwork in later episodes.
  • Rugrats merchandise often has Angelica with either brown or purple eyes while Angelica and Suzie's Preschool Daze has her as blue eyes. A piece of All Grown Up! promotional art also has her as blue-eyed.
  • The Legend of Korra: In his youth, Amon (or Noatak) had dark skin like most Water Tribe characters and like his brother. As an adult, his skin has lightened several shades.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Bart's red t-shirt was colored blue in many merchant items, and even in a few commercials, during the 1990's. This was lampshaded in "Pokey Mom", when Bart is asked where his blue shirt is and says he doesn't have one.
    • One Butterfinger commercial had Lisa's dress colored pink instead of red.
    • In Smithers' first appearance, he was infamously given black skin and blue hair, before he got the yellow skin and grey hair he has in most of his appearances. On the other side of the coin, Officer Lou appeared as yellow in early episodes before becoming black for the rest of the show. The only major character to change races multiple times is Judge Snyder, who started off as yellow in season 1's "Krusty Gets Busted", but appeared as black in season 3's "Bart the Murderer". He would flip-flop between the two skin colors for the next several seasons, his last appearance as yellow being in season 10's "Homer to the Max," before becoming consistently black.
    • In “Homie the Clown”, Chief Wiggum has his black hair from the first two seasons, instead of his later blue hair.
    • A few episodes from seasons 16 and 18, such as "She Used to Be My Girl", "There's Something About Marrying", and "The Mook, the Wife, the Chef, and Her Homer" inexplicably color Krusty's arms white instead of yellow.
    • Around season 26, Sideshow Mel started switching between being pale-skinned (as in his previous appearances) and completely yellow.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Some of Bugs Bunny's earliest appearances gave him yellow gloves instead of white.
    • In Daffy Duck's first color cartoon, Daffy Duck and Egghead, the ring around his neck is blue instead of white.
    • Sylvester is normally has a red nose, but 1946's Kitty Kornered gave him a black nose.
    • Hippety Hopper normally has brown fur, but his earliest appearances had it a more grayish tone.
  • King of the Hill:
    • Joseph started out wearing a green shirt and white shorts. But after he hit puberty in season five, he switched to a blue shirt and brown shorts. Some artists seem to have forgotten this and gave Joseph his old clothes in some of the subsequent post-puberty episodes.
    • Dale's orange Mack baseball cap is sometimes colored red.
  • Winnie the Pooh.
    • Eeyore is colored dark gray with a light gray muzzle in all Pooh movies and TV shows, but he's colored blue with a peach muzzle in almost all merchandise and promotional art.
    • Rabbit was originally depicted with yellow fur in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. In the 80s and early 90s cartoons (most notably The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh), he had pale green fur. It was changed back to yellow from Pooh's Grand Adventure onward and stayed that way.
    • Like Eeyore, Tigger's white stomach and muzzle are colored yellow in merchandise and promotional art, and his red nose is colored pink.
  • The Batman: Ethan Bennett's eyes alternated between blue, teal and green.
  • Scooby-Doo:In a few of the 1980s incarnations, Shaggy's shirt was red instead of its trademark green and he wore blue jeans instead of his brown bellbottoms.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Incidental fish vary colors a lot, mostly due to coloring errors. For instance, Fred is usually brown, but it's not that rare to see him in blue or green. Sometimes multiple colors of him will show up in the same episode.
    • News reporter Perch Perkins is either orange or purple. He's a Canon Immigrant from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie — there, he was purple, but on the show, he's orange. Word of God by executive producer Vincent Waller says that they couldn't use the orange color because of rights restrictions with Paramount, who produced the movie. Things got further complicated with The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water, where Perch is colored purple again. After that, he switches from orange and purple between individual episodes (such as in season 12, where he's purple in "Dirty Bubble Returns" but orange in "Lighthouse Louie" and "Hiccup Plague"). Averted on The Patrick Star Show and Kamp Koral, where Perch is always colored orange. The episode "SpongeBob on Parade" actually acknowledges this, with a close-up of (orange) Perch's face having purple make-up smeared on it.
    • In his debut appearance, Slappy was colored yellow. On The Patrick Star Show and a few season 13 episodesWhich? , he's colored blue. In "Squidferatu", "Slappy Daze", and "Tango Tangle", he's colored a pale shade of green. This became a Mythology Gag later on the Patrick Show, where Slappy's Distaff Counterpart uses his original color scheme.
    • In some episodes in season 4 and 5, like "Best Frenemies", "New Leaf", and "Friend or Foe", the inside of Plankton's mouth is noticeably purple instead of dark red. Later reruns and releases would usually fix this.
  • Tom and Jerry:
    • The artists can't seem to decide whether Tom has gray or blue fur.
    • Likewise, Jerry is often colored medium brown, but in some of the older 1940s shorts and the Chuck Jones shorts in the 1960s, he was colored light tan.
    • Butch (the dog)/Spike and his son Tyke either have grey fur or brown fur.
  • On Ready Jet Go!, Sean has either blue, green, or grey eyes. Also, Mindy has really light skin and really dark hair or reddish-brown hair and tan skin. Some sunset scenes can even make it look like Jet has pink hair.
  • On KaBlam!, June's jacket is orange. In various blocks and promos on Nickelodeon hosted by Henry and June from 1999 to 2001, her jacket is red.
  • On Arthur:
    • D.W.'s pantyhose are light pink, but they are white in promotional images for the show, and are occasionally miscolored white in the show itself. This may be because in the books the cartoon series is based on, her pantyhose actually were white with pink stripes.
    • Prunella is depicted with red hair in pretty much all promotional photos. In the series itself, however, her hair alternated between red and brown until the switch to Flash animation, where she became a permanent redhead.
  • The Flintstones:
    • Fred's tie alternates between blue, teal and green.
    • In the feature film The Man Called Flintstone, Wilma's dress was light purple instead of white.
    • Dino took a while to gain consistent coloring. In the first intro, he was colored blue with a green muzzle. When he debuted in the series, he was violet with a lavender muzzle (and was anthropomorphic to boot). Then he was red with a peach-colored muzzle before they finally settled on red-violet with a peach muzzle.
  • Popeye: During the Famous Studios era, Popeye's white Navy uniform was colored blue in four shorts: "Her Honor, the Mare", "Klondike Casanova", "Barking Dogs Don't Fite" and "Riot in Rhythm". Similarly, Bluto's shirt was blue in "How Green is My Spinach?".
  • Stella of Winx Club has Supernatural Gold Eyes to reflect her nature, but her dolls and 2019 redesign depict her with dark brown eyes, while World of Winx depicts her with bright yellow eyes.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: In the first few episodes, Toad's mushroom cap was red with white spots before becoming white with red spots, though the original color scheme was used whenever he grabbed a Fire Flower.
  • Madeline: Each time the cartoons have been rebooted, the hair colors of a few of Madeline's schoolmates have changed. Over the course of the franchise, Chloe's hair went from light brown to bright orange, Yvette's from golden blonde to strawberry blonde to pale blonde, Lulu's from brown to auburn to black, Janine's from blonde to dark brown, Monique's from reddish to brown, and Ellie's and Simone's from light olive-brown to black. Several of the dark haired girls also had their skin darkened from Season 2 on. Meanwhile, when tie-in dolls of some of the girls were produced, Chloe's hair was brown even though it was orange in the cartoons at the time, Nicole's hair was pale blonde instead of its usual straw color, and Nona's hair was blonde instead of black.
  • An intentional example, Tuesday X from The X's default hair color was green, but it often changed color between shots, with her brother Truman lampshading it at least once, it could change to red, blue, purple, orange, pink, or brown.
  • When Batman: The Animated Series was re-tooled into The New Batman Adventures, Batman's costume was given a less colorful look: the blue highlights on his cape, cowl, gloves, Underwear of Power and boots were removed, along with the yellow oval around the bat symbol, and his yellow utility belt was changed to tan. However, nearly all promotional art and merchandise based on the show colored the belt yellow like his previous one. The same is true for the belt on his Justice League costume, which brought back the blue highlights.
  • Done in purpose in Space Ghost Coast to Coast with Zorak, as his color palette is so inconsistent, that can even change colors between shots in the same scene. One song of Cartoon Planet lampshaded this:
    "I'm green, I'm olive, I'm chartreuse,
    I'd love to stay one color, but what's the use."
  • Jackie Chan Adventures: In the episode "Through the Rabbit Hole", Jade travels back in time to Jackie's childhood and encounters a younger Uncle sporting black hair. However, later episodes show him with brown hair during flashbacks, along with his aged-down self in "The J-Tots".
  • Inspector Gadget: Gadget's trench coat switches between gray and beige. This is reflected in the live-action films as well, with the first film giving Gadget a beige coat and the second film giving him a gray one. And in Inspector Gadget's Last Case and Gadget and the Gadgetinis, he wears a black trench coat and hat.
  • Alvin and the Chipmunks:
    • Alvin, Simon and Theodore originally had Black Dot Pupils, but halfway through the '80s TV series Alvin and Simon's eyes became blue while Theodore's became green. In the live-action/CGI film series, Simon and Theodore kept their respective blue and green eyes, but Alvin's became hazel. Then, in ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks, Alvin's eyes reverted to blue, but Theodore's became light brown.
    • Throughout the '80s cartoons, Brittany’s hair color was especially inconsistent, shifting between light brown, red, and honey blonde. It became red in the live-action/CGI films, but golden blonde in ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks. Jeanette’s hair has similarly been many different shades of brown across the franchise and her eyes have changed from green (in the '80s cartoons) to purple (in the films) to blue-violet (in the ALVINNN!!! series). Eleanor's blonde hair has been consistent, but her eyes have changed from brown (in the '80s cartoons) to green (in her CGI iterations for both film and TV).
  • American Dad!: Roger's blood is never a consistent color. It alternates between red, purple, green, blue and even yellow. It's possible that Roger can alter the color of his blood, since it's usually shown as red when he's wearing a disguise (thus helping him appear human) and usually shown as purple when he's naked.
  • South Park:
    • On the rare occasion when Craig is hatless, he usually has black hair. In "The Losing Edge" and South Park: The Stick of Truth, it's brown.
    • In the first two seasons, Craig's blue clothes would sometimes be colored orange or green.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle
    • Rocky in has a Y-shaped nose in the original series. In all subsequent media, merchandise, and promotional art, his nose is a black dot.
    • Likewise, Bullwinkle's antlers were colored brown like the rest of his body in the original show, but most media today gives him yellow antlers and drawn distinct from his body.
    • Boris' eyes were red in the earliest episodes.
    • In a few Taco Bell commercials from the early 1990's, Boris and Natasha have peach-colored skin instead of white.

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