"I had always presumed white light to be pure and somehow chaste, to be noble and good. But this whiteness was unutterably evil, chilling, its purity an abomination."
The FullMoon in most stories. It is during the brightest stage of the Moon that bad things happen in media, special when it has to do with werewolves. This might have a natural origin in that people might get more naturally anxious during bright moon stages, as during the night time predators lurk and a source of light only allows them to see you better.
Doubles as Dark is Not Evil because only the bright full moon is evil, while the dark new moon is generally good (or neutral).
The angel Arael is a beautiful bright bird that looks somewhat like a bunch of wings or branched out lights/leaves. It is, however, one of the most horrifying angels. It's the Trope Namer for Mind Rape and launches a brutal assault on Asuka's mind, which ends up putting her in a catatonic depression. And yet it's regarded as the prettiest and brightest of the angels. It's engulfed in a glowing white light. It's chilling.
Armisael (basically a halo made out of pure white light) and Ramiel (a perfect blue crystal that attacks using a Wave Motion Gun) aren'tmuchbetter. In fact, taking the name 'Angel' at face value, all of the Monsters Of The Week are this trope.
The first angel, Adam, is referred to as "The Giant of Light" occasionally. His form pretty much lived up to that name.
Byakuran in Katekyo Hitman Reborn! wears all white, decorates his office with white flowers and apparently consists on a diet of marshmallows. At the end of the manga arc, he also sprouts huge white wings and glows. Granted, he's glowing with stolen flames, but the flames turn into white light, according to the anime's current opening credits.
Friday Monday from Madlax wears white clothes, has white hair, and a golden mask. His base even looks like a church.
First, we have the priestess Kikyo, the antiheroine of the story. Her resurrection is clearly ungodly. She comes back to life with a mind full of hatred and vengeance and does both good (helping people in need, feeding the hungry, taking care of kids) and not-so-good deeds (antagonizing Inuyasha and Kagome, stealing the souls of girls to keep herself alive). Yet obviously, she retains her old holy powers. To her credit, she soon starts losing the hatred that poisoned her, and eventually gets better and becomes the local Dark Magical Girl, sealed by her helping an embittered holy man to go to Heaven and stop working for Naraku. And in the end, her definitive death is one full of peace, in which she finally can go to Heaven herself
Even more strikingly, the Living Buddha Hakushin uses his holy powers consciously to erect a barrier to protect the Big Bad Naraku. This barrier prevents people who have demonic blood, like Inuyasha, Koga, Sesshomaru, from entering Mount Hakurei and attacking Naraku.
One could argue that the Society of Light are a deconstruction of the idea that anyone who loses to the light sees their point of view, since anyone who loses a duel against them instantly defects to their side, just like is traditional for villains to do upon losing to the protagonist under the rules of Defeat Means Friendship.
The original Yu-Gi-Oh! had Seto Kaiba dressed in white with his Light-type Mons, the Blue Eyes White Dragon, pitted against a leather-clad spirit named Dark Yugi and his Dark Magician (with the rest of their decks tending to match the Light and Dark themes of their signature monsters). However, Kaiba was the Jerkass and Yami Yugi barely hit Antihero.
Two of the seasonal Big Bads in the original series, Noah and Dartz, were also light-aligned. Noah had a six-winged angel, Shinato, with regal robes and a halo as his deck master, who's name in Japan is Shinato, King of Heaven, and merges with it temporarily, and Dartz's whole deck was light-themed, meant to be around the Orichalchos.
In Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, we have Rex Godwin, our heroic mentor to the The Chosen One(s), but also has some sort of counter-agenda planned. And then there's Divine, resident Jerk Ass (and a downright bastard).
This carries over to the cards themselves - the two cards linked on the page for Eldritch Abomination are both Light-type.
D. Gray-Man: Despite being demons, Level 4 Akuma most closely resemble angels, complete with glowing white halos and wings. The Noah themselves avert this trope by gaining white skin when not in "horrifying evil" mode.
Lucemon from Digimon Frontier was most definitely a version of this; it also had Darkness-based powers, but started out pure Light. He uses both together in his second form. They combine to form Playstation, apparently (at the very least, circles, triangles x's and squares). Yeah.
The Royal Knights, being Holy Knights with light-oriented powers, also fit.
The BleachFiller Villain Maki Ichinose is a Well-Intentioned Extremist whose zanpakuto has the ability to manipulate light. He allies himself with Card-Carrying Villain Jin Kariya in an attempt to eliminate Soul Society, which he views as becoming increasingly corrupt. Unfortunately for him, neither his arch nemesis Zaraki nor Kariya himself care for such noble goals or even take him seriously. He does a Heel Face Turn after losing to Kenpachi and getting "The Reason You Suck" Speech, but gets killed by Kariya.
On a surely more important note than a filler enemy, the Gotei 13 captains started out as the antagonists, and their main trademark is that they... all wear white overcoats.
To a greater extent yet, Byakuya has a white reiatsu and his finishing move is a completely white sword overflowing with white reiatsu. And since reiatsu is thrown about a lot in the series, it becomes rather impossible to miss.
Hollows themselves are always a bright white color, despite usually being hideous monsters that eat human souls.
Light Yagami from Death Note. All of his symbolism in the opening credits, his speeches, and his ideals (hell, his given name, for crying out loud) state that he is firmly Light-aligned. And yet his method for purifying society, not to mention the way he deals with those around him, peg him clearly as the series' villain. His powers aren't directly Light-inspired — though everything else about him is. For added melodrama, "Yagami" means "night god".
Word of God states that the reason Light became so evil was because he wasso pure to begin with. To explain, Light was such a good person he was incapable of comprehending evil, and so evil's very existence in the real world threw him all the way off his axis and off the deep end. He couldn't think of any other method of dealing with evil other than pure, unrestrained destruction... no matter the cost.
Johan Liebert of Monster is so bright and beautiful looking that he could almost be mistaken for an angel, and indeed, the aura he gives off is one of almost unmistakable lightness. He's also the one holding the gun to the kid's head over at the Complete Monster page.
The Ineffectual Loner brigade "X Laws" in Shaman King all had angels as their spirits. And they did some pretty horrible stuff, being Knight Templars who beat and kill people just so they wouldn't join Hao. Also, in the manga, one of their original founding members defects to join Hao... and this defector, of course, used the angel Lucifer as his spirit.
Jakou in Fist of the North Star 2 is addicted to light, to the point where he captures slaves to operate his light-generating machinery.
Krad from D.N.Angel fits. He's the villain, but he's got all the light-related imagery, white wings and all that, while the good guy, Dark, has... well, you can probably guess.
From Trigun Knives, a Bishōnen decked out in white, who created the "Angel Arms" — super-guns of highly destructive light-beams. The manga takes this to an extreme, when Knives starts absorbing the Plants, he is the center of a writhing mass of angel wings and limbs.
Kalutika Maybus, The God of Light in the manhwa "Rebirth" wants to destroy the human race because his life as a human in the 1600s was very unpleasant. Prior to attaining (or growing into) godhood, he was the main character, half-vampire Deshiwitat's close friend. After Desh failed to save Kal's beloved sister, Kal had a Heroic BSOD and became a god. He then vaporized Desh's girlfriend Lilith right before his eyes and sealed Desh in stone for 300 years. Currently, he has somehow revived Lilith and made her his wife/consort. They apparently have a son, a powerful vampire called Gray. In spite of their connections with the vampire race, they're planning on killing them all before moving on to humans (Kal has already destroyed the Galactic Senate Council of Gods which govern his actions).
Trinity Blood is another classic example of this: The "Enemy of the World" is a blond bishonen with six white wings, who dresses all in long white robes and is first seen standing atop the enormous cross which hovers over the Vatican. The hero, in contrast, is a white haired pretty boy with black wings who dresses all in black and wields a scythe made of his own blood.
One Piece has Marine Admiral Kizaru, whose abilities via the Pika-Pika Devil Fruit give him power over light. He can move/attack at the speed of light, focus light into lasers, and also use blinding flashes. This isn't also including the basic advantages of his type of Devil Fruit, which cause solid objects to pass right through him. Though whether this is an aversion, playing straight, or subversion depends on your point of view as One Piece has pirates as the protagonists, making Kizaru the enemy, even though he's on the side of "Good" as far as the OP-verse is concerned.
I don't think it's a question at all, it's definitely played straight, the World Government has committed more horrific acts than anyone else in the series. Also Kizaru himself while laid back, is pretty sadistic and aggressive unlike the more Antivillainesque Marines like Aokiji, Garp and Smoker. Actually a lot about the Marines and World Government play with this trope, from the white uniforms of the Marines themselves, to the nobles of the government thinking they're gods.
Kizaru at least appears to take his job somewhat seriously, and shows the best leadership qualities out of all the Admirals.
Another possible example is the Fleet Admiral Sengoku himself, what with how he apparently has the power to morph himself into a copy of the Buddha. He's still one of the few non-evil Admirals, alongside Monkey D. Garp and maybe Aokiji. He is damn pissed with the most recent decisions of the higher-ups, for example.
It seems that everybody in One Piece can be considered "bad" except for the few pirate crews who just want to sail the seas and explore the world (like the Straw Hats), and the few Marines who believe in leaving pirates alone unless they're actively causing trouble (like Admiral Aokiji).
In Berserk, Griffith is a godlike demon who would willingly offer his best friend's life for power ( he has, in fact, having sacrificed the Band of the Hawk in order to become a Godhand) and is said to bring about an "age of darkness" which definitely does not sound nice. He appears to people in dreams as a hawk surrounded by light and is appropriately called the Hawk of Light by the Pope of this world.
And through Griffith's recent fusing of the planes of existence together with the mortal world using the Skull Knight's dimension-warping attack in the most recent installment, the "age of darkness" is now here.
It's worth noting that the fusion of the worlds was achieved thanks to the light produced during said event, further strengthening Griffith's connection to light.
Also Inquisitor Mozgus. He is a Knight Templar to the book, who believes the absurd level of sadism (with good measures of masochism) he reaches brings him closer to (probably non-existent in Berserk) God. He's given Light Powers as well. Specifically, angelic wings and a Light Breath. Given by a ragtag false God who's a servant to the false God Griffith (who probably works for another False God... although it's possible it is the real "God").
In a chapter that was later stricken from the books and archives because it "reveals too much about the direction of the series", it is revealed that God is actually a manifestation of humanity's negative emotions. Therefore, God is indeed evil. You can find the original chapter online in some places.
Also Lelouch, after taking control of Britannia and becoming next Emperor starts wearing a white suit, as opposed to Zero's and the Black Knight's black outfits.
And then there's Mao, a White-Haired Pretty Boy whose power is Telepathy which enables him to "see through" the "shadowy personality" of Lelouch (and most of the other characters). Oh, and he's also one of the purest-hearted and most innocent characters in the entire show, who prides himself on using his mind-reading skills to Mind Rape and ultimately kill people he sees as "bad." He may not be the only other one, either, since most antagonists in Code Geass (including Mao and Schneizel) are Knights Templar, and thus in theory light-aligned by default.
Suzaku Kururugi has shades of this, as well. Known as the White Knight, and later as the "White Grim Reaper" in the places he helps conquer, he actually started out with noble morals and an honest belief in reforming the system. A few traumas later, and he was willing to do anything to maintain what he saw as peace and reform over violent revolution. This trope is played deliberately in his case, much like Scheizel and Mao, since he's an antagonist of Lelouch. Meanwhile, Lelouch's mother and father are both portrayed as Light in their own ways (his father is the Emperor, and while not overly white in the same vein as Schneizel, still has shades of it, his mother was treated by all who knew her as a saint, and nicknamed "The Flash"). In the end, both were sympathetic in their very ultimate goals, but were veritable antagonists who wished to destroy the Gods as part of an Assimilation Plot, and their twisted love for their kids was their main motivator.
In the series Yami no Matsuei, Muraki Kazutaka has a lot of "light" symbolism surrounding him. (In the anime, he was even first encountered in a church by the hero.) The manga takes this even further, in his final appearance he is saved from dying by a giant ball of light "so strong and evil it could burn your eyes out." He may have inherited this trait from his mother, who may have been the one who saved him. That manga arc was really vague in some areas.
In the prologue of one of the Baccano!books, a twelve-year-old runaway is found by a man. Said man is androgynously beautiful, dressed almost entirely in white and (thanks to a trick of the light) appears to even be glowing. Is it an angel? Nah, it's Huey Laforet — terrorist and Mad Scientist who just so happened to be looking for "raw materials" for some very morally questionable experiments.
Note that he likes wearing white because it makes the blood stand out...
The true villain of Yu Yu Hakusho in the manga? King Enma, the lord of the Spirit World, who was catching weak and innocent demons and brainwashing them to be evil so that he could justify the Spirit World's more questionable actions as being for the sake of protecting the Human World. In fact, the last battle in the manga was against the more fanatical members of the Spirit World, who was appalled at the thought of humans and demonsliving in harmony and was planning to do some cleansing by causing Armageddon. Ultimately, Enma is overthrown by his son Koenma.
Sensui, Big Bad of the Chapter Black Saga, is a former Spirit Detective who has the ability to use Holy Chi.
The same applies to Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, which has the evil angel Michel; in fact, given his six white wings, white clothing and constant glowing, its hard to know why did he missed being listed here for so long.
Spoofed in Slayers, when Amelia, right in the middle of a villain's grand appearance, declares that he can't possibly be the bad guy because he's wearing white, whereupon the other characters collectively facepalm.
Big Bad Paptimus Scirocco of Zeta Gundam wears an immaculate white uniform as a visual contrast to the black-and-red wearing jackbooted thugs he works beside. Say what you will about Scirocco, the man had standards.
By the 5th Arc, it's subverted, with Battler as the Golden Sorcerer. Which means Dark is Not Evil gets subverted too...
In Fullmetal Alchemist, Father is a noble looking old man with white hair and who dresses all in white, and in the Brotherhood anime actually seems to glow with white light. That being said, his true form is an Eldritch Abomination Living Shadow- so he's actually more like Dark is Evil.
In the first anime, there is Hohenheim of the Light a man who for centuries murdered countless people to either steal their bodies or make philosopher's stones, before ultimately reforming.
This trope is also present in the form of certain religion related characters. For instance, the first villain faced is a priest, Father Cornello, who maintains the guise of a kind old man when his real intentions are quite megalomaniac. Scar probably fits as well, though he becomes an Anti-Hero.
Another example is that of the Affably EvilMad Bomber, Zolf J. Kimbley. Kimbley wears a pure white suit, has a pair of alchemical circles drawn on his hands that involves the sun and moon, both symbols of light, and his fighting style creating quite a bit of light as a side-effect.
Father whose plan succeeded, reshaped his body into looking like a young Hohenheim, meaning that he pretty much became a long haired, angelic looking male teenager.
Interestingly, Hiromu Arakawa, the author of Fullmetal Alchemist, apparently used this trope in her older manga Stray Dog; the villainous bounty hunter mage makes use of light related powers in the very first fight scene.
Solomon from Blood+ is an angelic blonde bishounen that more often than not wears a white suit. Needless to say that he's also one of Diva's chevaliers.
Diva as well. Pale pretty girl with blue eyes, wears white Victorian clothing, is a opera singer and often described as a angel. Bad side? She is a century and a half old Chiropteran Queen who has killed thousands of people, participated in a experiment to create a virus to turn others into chiropterans, had figures such as Gregory Rasputin and Martin Bormann as her chevaliers, meaning she was involved in, if not being the mastermind of, the Romanov Massacre (As she also impersonated Anastasia) and WWII. Should I also mention she raped a 14-year old boy to get pregnant and then killed him, all for the sake of pissing off her sister? Also, when she sings, people turn into monsters.
Xargin of Blassreiter may look like a wandering evangelist...but his message is genocide, and he will disintegrate you in your own best interests, with that darn perty smile on his face.
Well Johan is more of a Dark is Evil since his Gundam looks more Dark Based.
The Alvaaron is bright, shiny gold, and is shaped like an angelic knight. It is also piloted by a guy who wants to destroy and recreate human society as he sees fit.
The Innovades also wear white... outfits. Their leader and Big BadRibbons Almarck pilots a white Gundam.
Hellsing Ultimate has Alexander Anderson, a Catholic priest/paladin dressed in white who's kind to children and puppies. However, you even mention the word "Vampire" in front of him and he turns into a homicidal psychopath who won't hesitate to chop up normal humans in his path to purify the world of "evil".
Not to mention the Crusade that was assembled when the Nazi Vampires destroyed most of London. They not only looked like a cross between the historical Knight Templar and members of the Ku Klux Klan, but their mission wasn't to eliminate the vampires and save London, it was to eliminate the vampires and KILL EVERY PROTESTANT IN ENGLAND.
One of the major themes of the manga Angel Sanctuary. God Is Evil, and many of the angels are fanatical, murderous, lunatics. And with which group does the hero side? The demons.
In Axis Powers Hetalia Russia manages to curse Japan using the power of the Orthodox Church. Apparently even White Magic is evil if Russia is involved on it. Somewhat subverted with England's "Brittania Angel" mode, which is merely creepy when he's not being hilarious.
In Black Butler, Ash is the main villain of season 1.
The Sword of Light from Slayers. Slayers Try reveals that it is actually one of a set of five weapons from another dimension that are that dimension's equivalent of the Five Dark Lords.
In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Kuze has a cybernetic body with white skin and hair, and usually dresses completely in white. His followers see him as a savior, but he's also Japans most dangerous top terrorist. Slightly subverted, as it later turns out that he's actually the most noble and kind character in the entire franchise, even though he has turned to extreme measures to bring an end to injustice.
Probably emphasized further by the fact that he becomes a lot more sympathetic character after he gets rid of his white getup permanently, and switches to brown leather jacket and blue jeans.
In Bastard!!, the only Angel willing to fight to protect humanity instead of wiping it out is the fallen angel Lucifer, AKA Lucien Renlen.
This even exists in Dragon Ball. Case and point: FREEZA. His main colors? Pink, purple, and white. Especially in his final form; he's like a bastion of whiteness. In regular demeanor he's completely regal. And he is indeed the lord. Of an intergalactic organization of planet pirates responsible for multiple genocides, including at least one of a race that worked for him at the time.
Broly, in terms of movie villains. Adorned in holy-looking clothing. Apparently mild-mannered and totally harmless. An incredible mass of repressed unstable rage and monstrous power which bursts open and crushes everything in sight including his own father once he's seen Kakarot (Son Goku) again for even ten minutes.
In terms of Broly, his father Paragus applies as well. Dressed in a white cape, sporting a damaged eye, introducing himself as a humble servant of Vegeta, and presenting Vegeta a new planet to rule over as its king and restart the Saiyan race - just as soon as he defeated a "Legendary Super Saiyan". His true intentions are to leave Vegeta stranded on this planet, which is a complete ruins beyond the supposed throne city and is about to be bombed by a comet, so that he can restart Saiyan dominance for himself on Earth and rule over it with his Legendary SSJ-potential son as his instrument of power.
Kurei from Flame of Recca was made to believe he carried the cursed flame when he really carried the sacred Phoenix flame.
The Hyuga clan of Naruto often dresses in white, and many of their names have to do with the sun or other sources of light. However, the leadership of the clan oppresses the branch house with a curse mark that can cause great pain or kill those with it when it's activated, and some members of the branch house possess resentment toward the head family that can be potentially murderous. Despite this, it is implied that Hiashi, current head of the clan, is rethinking the role of the main and branch families, especially after Hizashi sacrificed himself for the sake of his brother and village rather than the head family, and the current heiress, Hinata, is a kind individual who cares for the members of the branch family.
Raijin in Yaiba is the God of Thunder, but hinted to be quite evil. Kaguya is the Moon Princess, but is at least a Well-Intentioned Extremist and a Complete Monster at worst. Also Plasma the Light Demon.
In Saint Seiya, VirgoShaka fits. Whilst he's more of an Anti-Hero, he's very deceptive-he's an incarnation of Buddha, but in the first series has aligned himself with the very evil Pope and is only too willing to Mind Rape and maim the main characters. He also happens to be an angelic-looking blonde with bright blue eyes and very long hair. Who glows. In the dark. His Expy from Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas does a similar thing.
Aion of Chrono Crusade dresses in all white, and even comes with white hair. Underneath his disguise however is a total bastard. Prone of long winded speeches and making your life a total misery.
Love Machine, the big bad AI gone mad in Summer Wars might qualify. After it feeds on a few unsuspecting avatars he goes from rather ditzy looking to something that could only be described as a monk, who looks like he fights for good, with an evil mask. What drives the point home though is the bright white godlike aura he can activate at will in this form, making him look like a cyber-messiah.
Later when the plan of the family to lock him down fails, he emerges as a giant black monster, made from avatars he already ingested. What involves the trope in this form though are the bright white angelic wings he got from the OZ-Central Building. Moreso, he now looks very dark, but he still has the ability to project his aura, which leads to an extremely cool looking moment, when the behemoth Love Machine triumphs over King Kazma, calls back his minion avatars and activates his bright aura, which actually looks out of place behind his now massive black body. The following scenes show King Kazma, powerlessly floating in the void of OZ, being shined on what can only be described as angelic light.
Saikano's Chise glows a bright white when she uses her abilities, which, along with the techno-wings that often sprout from her back, make her look downright angelic. Unfortunately, being "The Ultimate Weapon", this frequently ends in lots and lots of people dying and/or entire cities being literally reduced to dust.
The Qwaser of Gold in Seikon No Qwaser, appears in one beautiful form or another, and often glows with a golden aura. Sasha and Katja both play with this and the inversion; though Heroes in the series, both are extremely fair-skinned and fair-haired who wear black, both are battle-hardened, vicious and damaged individuals.
Da Capo and its sequels have the Giant Sakura Tree and its ever-blossoming kin. There are some truely terrifying scenes in the animes when everything is going horribly right we see beautiful cherry blossoms budding up and blossoming to life even as the characters beg for the trees to die.
In WITCH (the original comics from which the animated series were based on), Arkaam the White Queen turns out to be a despotic bitch. Her magical artifacts are also defenitely light or fire based. An earlier villain, Tridart, a servant of Nerissa, was angel themed and white, but his powers were ice based.
The Dawn of the White Hand were a brief lived foe organisation to the X-Men. It was based on Japan, where the colour white is still associated with death.
While currently heroic, Northstar has had a history of face heel turns, most notably during his time under HYDRA.
The Angelus from the The Darkness/Witchblade universe. Unquestionably a force of light and law. It just so happens that the Angelus is a completely sociopathic entity that believes the world should be run by her light and her laws.
In an old issue of Superman, the Man of Steel confronted seeming angels, standing guard before the gates of Hell. After he worked out the truth and threw off their illusions, he asked the Space Policeman who took them away why they hadn't changed. The cop calmly told him that they really did look like that.
While Karolina Dean of Runaways is heroic; her parents, who shared her light powers, were supervillains.
The comic book version of Dr. Light warrants his own entry, given that on top of his villainy, the Identity Crisis miniseries also retroactively made him a serial rapist. Just to clarify, this is the male Dr. Light (who appears in Teen Titans). DC actually has two. The female Dr. Light (who appears in Justice League Unlimited) is at worst a case of Good Is Not Nice.).
The DCU also has Solaris, the evil AI sun from the future.
The Marvel Universe has Lightmaster, a recurring foe of Spider-Man. The Living Laser is another light-themed villain.
And several comic companies, including the Big Two, have used stories of Angels turned overzealous.
B.P.R.D. story arc The Dead: the villain used a salvaged version of the Spear of Destiny to open a gateway to Heaven and released one of the Six-Winged Seraphim. Whilst it does match every qualifier of the Seraphim, it's not going to be in the murals at your local Church.
Airwalker, the angel themed herald/former herald of Galactus. He wasn't that good in a lot of his showings.
Stardust, a being of pure (and bright blue/white) energy and Galactus's latest herald, is also quite Ax Crazy, insisting on slaughtering the entire population of any world Galactus consumes, even though Galactus himself has no interest in killing the people (though he has no particular interest in not killing them either).
Inverted and then played straight in Cerebus. Prior to his religious conversion, Sim depicted a creation myth in which the female Light was essentially raped by the male Void in which it resided, causing the Light to completely shatter and form the physical universe. After his conversion, the male void became God and the female Light became YHWH, God's Adversary. Cerebus is physically dragged into the Light after his death in the last issue, screaming for God to save him.
Green Lantern plays with this a little. Certain "colors" in the "Emotional Spectrum" are more evil than others. Red (rage), orange (greed), and yellow (fear) are mostly evil, but green (willpower), blue (hope), indigo (compassion), and violet (love) are mostly good. However, black is so evil it makes all lights look good by comparison, even the evil ones.
In technicality, all colours are neutral, and even "good corps" had their own morally inconvenient moments. The Star Saphires, for example, have a history of Love Makes You Crazy and the Guardians have caused many problems. Blue Lanterns are all good, but their light is very limited in terms of power, so they are often incapable of doing much, while the Indigo Tribe has mercy killed many people, and it is composed of sociopaths brainwashed by the Indigo light anyway.
We can safely add the White Light entity to the list now, thanks to the amount of morally ambiguous acts it has made, such as killing a couple because they love each other and would not obey to its command and separate.
Blue Lanterns will show you visions of hope, but its really just anything that will make you feel hope whether it has any truth to it or not (though presumably plausible visions are more effective than implausible ones).
In the first issue of the Mice Templar comics, (nocturnal) mouse children are told scary stories about the "world of day".
Snowflame, a one-shot villain from New Guardians, is perhaps the strangest example of this trope. By smoking cocaine (really) he uses what appears to be light manipulation/white flames, and has a white motif, notably his hair. He is also an Ensemble Darkhorse, by the way, thanks to the sheer strangeness of using a drug as fuel for his powers.
The sun like creatures known as "thristies" in Marvel's Kool Aid comic.
In one of Alan Moore's issues of Swamp Thing, John Constantine wonders why everyone thinks of angels as comforting, confessing to the reader that they scare the shit out of him. They do indeed seem to be not so much unalloyed good as merely preferable to the demons.
In contrast to Batman, The Joker. He dresses in bright colours, his skin is bleach white and has a sunny disposition. He's also the Trope Codifier for Monster Clown, and the most iconic supervillain there is.
There are quite a few Kingdom Hearts fics positing that, in order to complete the trifecta of Dark Heartless and Twilight Nobodies, the third faction of evil beings will be light-based and Knight Templar-ish.
In this parody of a certain Merlinfanfic, this trope is played with, most notoriously with Arthur and the Dragon (the later reimagined as a Lucifer like figure).
"Oh don't worry, the light will fry many more brains..."
My Immortal plays this trope straight with the preps, which being stereotypical as they are they are obsessed with pink and other lively colours as well as white and are christians. Even the "posers" are simply hiding their "Lighter and Softer" nature beneath pseudo-"goffic" clothes which are way more lively coloured than the real "goff" clothes anyway. Their moral alignment ranges from sheer annoyingness to outright villainity, but they are not better than the "goffs" anyway. Ironically, the Big Bad, Voldemort, is dark, looking about as "goffic" as Tara and her friends.
This has become a recent trend in Harry Potter fan fiction. Rather than the spells themselves being evil, the authors postulate that it is the intent behind them. This is largely an answer to questions about why they never kill the racist, terrorist, murdering wizards; once dark spells are no longer evil, you can start actually fighting without being as bad as they are.
Isn't that sort of canon? It's established that with the Unforgivables at least, you have to truly want to cause their effects (pain, death, and mind control) if you want to use them. Thus, it's impossible to use them for goodhearted intents (like when Harry tries to Crucio Bellatrix over the death of Sirius.
That wasn't good-hearted. He just didn't have the practice being ruthless.
But it was still for "righteous anger", as Bellatrix puts it.
Not that you couldn't kill someone pretty effectively with the kind of severing charm they use for cooking...or Wingardium Leviosa hard into the ceiling until the neck breaks...or the old fairy tale favorite, Tarantallegra, until the heart gives out...these people are armed to kill from age eleven.
'course, armed wizard could get out of most of those, but still, the possibilities to kill with stuff that isn't actually 'Dark' are considerable.
In Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality, Harry finds that, when he becomes truly angry, he enters a coldly angry state, in which his mind works even better than it normally does (the purpose of the fic is Harry is incredibly smart, and incredibly well educated for his age in most non-magical fields.) When Snape's bullying pushes him into this cold state during Harry's first potions class, Harry asks how he would go about getting abusive teachers fired. Snape bullies him worse, and Harry tries to leave the classroom. When Snape locks the door, Harry escapes using a Time Turner, which he had been told not to use in any way that could indicate its purpose. When his anger leaves, he starts frantically thinking how to get himself out of trouble, and eventually pushes himself back into his coldly angry state in order to think clearly. He thus remembers that he was not completely in the wrong, remembers the other victims of Snape's bullying (who he had been told of previously,) and notes that his "light side" is the more selfish and cowardly state of mind.
In Abandon by Batsutousai, Harry and Tom Riddle fall inlove and Harry and his friends joins the dark side. It is still clear that Tom is the evil one and the Death Eaters are still "the dark side", but as the story goes on Dumbledore and the light side appear more and more as manipulative bastards and the reader do not blame Harry for turning dark.
On a less literal level, the Houses Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. While the Slytherins make up most of the bad guys in the actual novels, it is made quite clear that, just as not all present Slytherins are evil, the potential for assholes from the Houses that are seemingly more benevolent to exist is considerably large, and indeed a few show up, although not very prominent.
In Cornova's Poké Wars, the Big Bad is Ho-oh, who is normally seen as a benevolent force.
In the film The Prophecy, the allegedly good angels like Gabriel and Uriel, who express affection abundantly, love kids and can't stand to see people cry, are the villains on an anti-human crusade to destroy and rebuild heaven as it was before the creation of man. The devil has to offer his aid to the humans who end up getting involved in the war (which, of course, he does for his own ulterior reasons).
The main villain of the Constantine movie. While the halfblood Gabriel turned out to be the main cause of the problems, Lucifer (Satan) was dressed in an immaculate white business suit and yet was not the major villain.
There was that black goo clinging to his feet, though....
Though you can take it as a moment of fridge brilliance, since Satan was once an angel, who was cast out of Heaven. It's a fitting look for a sullied angel.
The escape from Crematoria scene in The Chronicles of Riddick illustrates this trope rather literally.
Doctor Cocteau in Demolition Man wore conservative white robes, was a moral pillar... and responsible for releasing a psychopathic murderer in order to maintain his perfect pearl of a society.
On that note, the President of the United States in Escape from L.A..
The main villain in The Legend of Zorro kills people because he believes he is doing God's work, and often quotes the Bible.
In The Godfather Part III, the Vatican is revealed to be in cahoots with the Corleone crime family.
In Night Watch and Day Watch, the good guys are called Night Watchers, while the bad guys are called Day Watchers.
This is because the Night Watch are the side of the Light Others, whereas the Day Watch are the side of the Dark Others. The names are literal; Night Watch keeps a watch on the dark, and Day Watch keeps a watch on the light. Of course, the books and movies make it clear that when you get down to it, both sides are just people with jobs, and the Night Watch have quite their share of dicks.
The lot of you missed the whole point: the Light Side is just as packed with assholes as the Dark. The main difference is that the Light consists of collectivist hypocrites feigning righteousness and confused idealists who actually buy into their crap, while the Dark is made up of devil may care individualists who do not need to justify anything with fake morality. For example, Dark vampires kill people, but the Light Side gives them hunting licenses to do so.
Realising that Light and Dark are the same in essence is what happens to all older others.
In Dragonheart, King Einon always dresses in white.
Not to mention the pretty, sparkly, glowing jellyfish.
Another literal example in another Pixar film. Sunnyside Daycare may sound like a nice place, but it's not. Even in its brightest daytime glory it is not. Also, there's the famous quote, referring to almost literal Hellfire:
Rex: "Hey, I can see daylight! We're gonna be OK!"''
Woody: "I don't think that's daylight..."''
Sunshine (2007). As the Icarus II gets closer to the Sun the latter begins to take on the impression of an all-powerful god, and not a friendly one either. Several people, notably psychiatrist Searle and the Nietzsche Wannabe villain, are affected.
A glowing, beautiful, angelic version of Big Bad Sauron would've appeared in the climactic battle in The Movie of The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King had the design team not decided that making the omnipotent Eye corporeal would've been silly. Still, the idea of Kate Winslet as, basically, a Warhammer character would've been something.
Then there's Galadriel showing why giving her the One Ring would be a bad idea:
Evil!Galadriel: And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair.
Saruman the White as listed in the literature section; though he isn't particularly nice looking and is surrounded by dark forces he still has quite some light related symbolism, most notable in the scenes in which Gandalf (then Gandalf the Grey) is present.
The movie adaptation of the first book of His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass, seems to love this trope, to the point that Mrs Coulter (who was black haired in the books) became blonde (to which the author said: "I was clearly wrong. You sometimes are wrong about your characters. She's blonde. She has to be."), not to mention how intercision is not done with a blade as in the books, but with lasers.
Soundwave's robot mode vaguely resembles an angel. His satellite mode (well, at least the toy version) also continues this theme somewhat.
When Edward Dalton parks his car under a tree in the full heat of the day, the whole scene does a great job at equating light with fear.
When we are introduced to the Big Bad in Heroic Trio, he is wearing a gold, glittery outfit and is illuminated in the middle of a dark lair.
In Kung Fu Panda 2, Lord Shen is a white peacock who is a ruthless conqueror who is perfectly willing to commit genocide on the Giant Pandas to thwart a prophecy and then kill anyone in the way of his ambitions. Chillingly fitting considering that in Chinese culture, white is the color of death.
In a rather bizarre scene from Gordy, the villain is shown with a heavenly, golden glow around him as overlaid footage of what he believes is sabotaged clips of the title pig is being shipped off.
How about the entire premise of "The Darkest Hour?"
Literature
Discussed by Ishmael in Moby-Dick, in relation to the creepiness of albinism in spite of the good symbolism of white.
Dolores Umbridge, oh so very much. Besides her obsessing with Tastes Like Diabetes imagery, she, unlike the main villains, can summon a Patronus like the protagonists. Even better, she can do so while wearing an evil Soul Jar on her neck while everyone else can't. On other words, an animal shaped avatar of light powered by her utter sadism. Yeah.
Crenshinibon, The Crystal Shard from the Drizzt Do'Urden-centric Forgotten Realms stories, is a psychotically evil artifact with the power to do almost anything—as long as it bathes in the light of the sun every once in a while. The liches who made it were unusually Genre Savvy, and made the thing work on those principles because they liked the irony. Then, just to prove its own Badass credentials, Crenshinibon ate them.
Would the Stone Chargers in The Thran (Magic the Gathering Artifacts cycle prequel book) count? the bright, shiny cloudy thing they let out kinda erases you from the universe. Also, the Halcyon Guard side with Yawgmoth and Phyrexia and still wear bright shiny armor. Also Phyrexia itself, a bright shiny clean place, where everyone wants to go, turns out to be a horrendous, creepy, oily, too-shiny, sterile, mechanical pit where they cook you down and mutate you into a "perfect"form.
Traditionally phyrexians have been Black aligned, although as of New Phyrexia White ones now exist (and Old Phyrexia already had a White spell, funnily enough). For more information on other Magic: The Gathering characters that represent this trope see the Tabletop section.
In The Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist, the Valheru Ashen-Shugar dressed in golden armour with a white tabard and rode a golden dragon. And while he may have had some faint feeling of responsibility for the land and the people enslaved under his rule, he was still Valheru all the way.
In Neverwhere, the Big Bad turns out to be soft-spoken, kind and caring angel Islington. Well, not that kind and caring, actually. They don't kick you out of Heaven for nothing.
The villain (well, he starts out good and gets steadily more villainous as the series goes on) of Janny Wurts Wars of Light and Shadow is a handsome, blond, blue-eyed guy who wears white and gold and wields the elemental power of Light. He sets himself up as a deity and has the hero, who has black hair, green eyes and the elemental power of Shadow, hunted down as the embodiment of all evil.
In Albert Camus' noir novel The Stranger, strong sunlight generally accompanies unpleasant moments in the narrator's life. The day of his mother's funeral and his murder of the Arab that eventually sees him sentenced to death both take place on bright, brutally hot days.
In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, the Children of the Light believe themselves to uphold the 'will of the Light' when, in fact, they generally do more harm than good. Particularly the Questioners.
There's also one of the series main villains, Lanfear, who always wears white and silver and surrounds herself with light, but is the second-most powerful of the Forsaken (only Ishamael beats her) and generally one of the most infamously evil people in history. Ironically, her name means "Daughter of the Night", so she legitmately uses light and dark symbolism.
A borderline case that nonetheless is a good illustration: A recurring theme in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series is that, although the Light is Good, in the sense that everything it does is to protect humankind, it's not nice. This comes up most explicitly in The Grey King, in a conversation between Will Stanton (a representative of the Light) and John Rowlands (an ordinary human): "At the center of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the center of the Dark there is a black pit bottomless as the universe."
That conversation also causes Will Stanton to suspect that the Light is what originally caused him to become so severely ill he was sent to Wales to recuperate... making him conveniently available to do the Light's work.
Lord Rahl, the villain in the first Sword of Truth novel is a Villain with Good Publicity who dresses in white robes, talks a lot about peace and harmony, and generally does a pretty good job at convincing everyone that he's The Messiah. Of course, the impression is somewhat ruined by the fact that Lord Rahl's first name is "Darken"...
The sisters of the light, while well intentioned, are often seen as a hindrance throughout the first half of the series, especially when many of them are captured and enslaved by the big bad and used for evil.
Evangeline Walton's Prince of Annwn (a very loose adaptation of Welsh legend) features as its primary antagonist Havgan, a god of light and beauty — but also sterility and disease. He is heavily implied to be an Expy of real-world Babylonian mythology's Nergal, who had a similar portfolio; his heroic opponent, by contrast, works for Arawn, Lord of the Dead and poster boy for Dark is Not Evil.
The gods of Order in Louise Cooper's Time Master Trilogy are hardcore Knight Templar fundamentalists with an insane lust for power and worship. Tarod and the gods of Chaos range from slightly Chaotic Evil tricksters to fairly Chaotic Good, going through almost every shade of Chaotic Neutral, but they're always portrayed in a much more positive light than the always psychotic gold-and-white-clad gods of Order.
Discworld novel Thud! does this a fair bit when describing the philosophical beliefs of the Dwarfs. As a subterranean race, light and darkness have very different connotations for them, so that "becoming enlightened" is not a good thing.
However, in novel, the dwarves that believe that becoming enlightened is bad repeatedly cross the Moral Event Horizon, and are evil. The 'enlightened' dwarves are modern and progressive, and the heroes of the novel.
This is not exactly the case. The fundamentalist dwarfs have reduced the tenants of their de facto religion into simply sitting in the dark and pretending that light does not exist. Others, like Grag Bashfulsson, consider darkness a state of mind, not a lifetime spent sitting in a cave. He and those like him are still 'endarkened', which to dwarfs is the same as 'enlightened' to humans.
Also of note is Lady Lilith A.K.A.Lilly Weatherwax who is every inch the good fairy god mother, save for the moral compass.
In Wintersmith, after Tiffany Aching dealt with the crush the Wintersmith had on her that threatened to turn at least the continent dark and cold forever by properly releasing the summer, she is shown what the opposite would have been—the deep, deep desert, so bright and hot that nothing can survive.
Also, elves, largely thanks to their Glamour. One of the names used to refer to them is "The Shining Ones".
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, plays with this theme; Aziraphale and Crowley often squabble over who does what, heavily implying that good and evil are all perspective. The forces of light are also destructive and more than happy to bring about the Apocalypse, especially the Metatron.
Of course, Gray actually starts out as a very angelic and pure person, only to be slowly corrupted as the book goes on. And while he does remain blond and angelic, his painting makes it pretty clear that his inside looks quite different. When he stabs the painting at the end, his body does change to look as horrible as his personality and actions have been.
In Waywalkers and Timekeepers, the Light is the most powerful weapon in existence, and the only one able to defeat the Big Bad Cronus. To use it, the protagonistSatan has to tap into the fear of every human on earth, and may lose his own mind in the process.
In Andre Norton's Janus duology, the heroes are members of a nocturnal, forest-dwelling people (moonlight is okay), and their enemy rules the daylight and the sun-scorched desert.
From the same author, Roverandom has The Great White Dragon, although admittedly he's not as impressive a villain as Tolkien's famous dark lords.
Tolkien was well aware of that darkness and light can be used as metaphors of evil and good, but also the reverse, more rarely. For ex, there are moments when Frodo and Sam find themselves thankful for the omnipresent cloud and shadow of Mordor, since it helps to hide them from the Eye of Sauron and lesser evils. Minas Morgul radiates a sick, corrupted light that is so terrifying and maddening that simple familiar shadow and darkness become a welcome source of shelter and protection when they hide you from it. In that case, darkness was good and light evil.
Also, in some accounts of the Silmarillion, Melkor the Morgorth originally manifested himself physically as a brilliant, beautiful light...Tolkien himself was well aware the 'Lucifer' means 'light bringer' or 'light bearer'.
In the context of Tolkien's mythos, the Sun is not good for the elves, who see it as symbolic of the triumph of men over them (it is outright stated that the Sun symbolises the waning of the elves, and Galadriel implies in The Lord of the Rings that they see the dawn in the same way mankind sees the dusk - as symbolic of the end).
There is no Heaven though Also note that the "demons" are actually daemons, which are a different mythological concept, though probably still count as Dark is Not Evil because they represent consciousness, and since the church seems to oppose to free will...
In response to above spoiler: That there's no heavenly afterlife doesn't mean there is no heaven as a residence for the angels ? some of whom, in fact, do fight for the good guys.
Guess what: the good angels were banned from there. In any case, said "Heaven" is indeed quite similar to the popular Fluffy Cloud Heaven, only that the souls of the sentient beings don't go there but to a Hades-ish underworld instead, which doesn't quite make it a "Heaven" in the sense we call it.
Also, I really don't know why people forgot about Mrs Coulter, who is a beautiful, charismatic person and yet probably the most fucked up villain to ever show in the series. The movie made her a blonde, only to stress this trope. Also, her monkey daemon is golden in colour.
And, of course, the tualapi, which are white birds that cause destruction on the mulefa's world.
In Stephen King's The Mist, the most religious character is also an insane murderer.
And let's not forget the villain in It, who has her dead lights.
R'hllor is the Lord of Light and a god of fire, who supposedly stands in contrast and eternal conflict with the Great Other, the icy and evil god of darkness. However, judging from the actions of his clergy, such as Melisandre, the religion comes across as far from pure and good. Melisandre in particular uses blood magic and human sacrifice to perform miracles, and is an altogether ruthless Knight Templar. When called to task, however, she does give persuasive justifications for her actions, which she sincerely believes will save lives. The fact that R'hllor's apparent enemies are Obviously Evil also helps justify her cause, but it might be a question of Black And Black Morality. The darkness and cold versus fire and light conflict, as well as the name of the series, call up Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice," in which both extremes are equally destructive.
The Kingsguard are supposed to be paragons of chivalry. They wear pure white cloaks and shields to show that they have renounced all familial ties, but the additional connotations of purity and goodness are obvious. Unfortunately, they are tasked with serving the king unquestionably, which sometimes makes them brutal enforcers of a mad despot.
After Cersei grants Qyburn a lordship, he starts wearing an outfit that's a combination of a maester's garb and a Kingsguard outfit (so basically monastic robes but in elegant white and gold). Qyburn is a depraved Mad Doctor and Torture Technician that is basically Mengele in medieval clothing.
I had always presumed white light to be pure and somehow chaste, to be noble and good. But this whiteness was unutterably evil, chilling, its purity an abomination.
In Laurell K Hamilton's Merry Gentry series most humans automatically assume the "Light Court" of the Seelie is good and the "Dark Court" of the Unseelie is evil. In truth things are much more complicated.
In particular the King of the Seelie Court, Taranis, "Lord of Light and Illusion" who is a batshit insane rapist willing to let his people die rather than give up power.
The White Court vampires in The Dresden Files. No they won't drink your blood, just all your emotions, will and finally life force, but by then you won't care.
Also the Wizards White Council is theoretically the good guys but is so riddled with political backstabbing and dealmaking and so rigidly bound by it's traditions that in practice it falls more somewhere between True Neutral and Lawful Neutral. At best.
The Summer fae also have elements of this. Yes, they're The Fair Folk, but they're somewhat benevolent and generally on the side of life. Except Aurora, the former Summer Lady, was so pissed off at the state of suffering engendered by Summer and Winter that she wanted to bring about the end of the world so it would all stop, and Titania, the Summer Queen, keeps finding ways to fuck with Harry for killing her, even though he saved the world in the process.
That and while the Winter Court represents the bad things of darkness, freezing cold, and death, the Summer Court represents the equally bad things, like scorching heat, infestations/plagues from too many harmful living things, and unending, uncontrolled life. (like, you know, cancer.)
The Archangel Uriel (literally "Light of God"), while presented as a good guy, is distinctly not a nice guy. In fact, he is more accurately described as heaven's "spook": the assassin of Heaven who took the first born of Egypt, among other shady aspects of the business of safeguarding humanity and free will.
Played for all it's worth in Ghost Story. When Harry calls Uriel "Uri", the the Archangel nearly annihilates him. "Uri" or in english "my light" can mean something very different than "Uriel" The Lord is my light. Still scared out of his spirit mind, Harry decides to call him "Mr. Sunshine". Uriel bemusedly accepts it.
It goes without saying that you don't become the spymaster of the Archangels, in a universe where knowledge and power are at times one-and-the-same, by collecting bottlecaps.
The Forces of the Light from Grunts! are perfectly willing to kill female and young members of the Dark races for no apparent reason other than that that is what Light warriors do and are monumental jerks about it. Then again, seeing as the dark races tend to kill and eat members of Light and Dark races for no reason...
Something of a point is made of this in Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy. The tree-dwelling Kindar are ruled by a priestly class who are the only ones allowed to wear pure white clothing. The priests — and the reason for their existence — are what's killing off the psychic powers and the three principles the culture needs to survive. In the third book, they all get kicked out of their palaces, but a few hang onto their principles and their white outfits until both are filthy, tattered rags.
Katherine Neville's The Eight, a historical fantasy novel about alchemy, espionage and chess, has the "good guys" representing the black pieces on the chess board, and the evil guys representing the white pieces.
In the Dune mythology, a woman in mourning wears yellow. Because the desert is death during the day, or something.
Nineteen Eighty-Four: "The place where there is no darkness" is not a place you ever want to end up. Ever.
While the forces of Light are more often the heroes than the villains in Night Watch and its sequels, their Utopia Justifies the Means mindset occasionally makes them as bad or worse than the selfish, but not unnecessarily sadistic, forces of Darkness. The Nazis, among other horrors, were among their failed attempts to change the world.
Believe it or not, the Cthulhu Mythos invoked this trope occasionally. One of Yog-Sothoth's avatars is Aforgomon, a being worshipped as the god of time who only manifests himself to those who anger him, accompanied by blinding light. Among Nyarlathotep's forms there is the White Man, an angelic looking blond man with white robes, and the Black Pharaoh, who despite the name dresses himself in brightly coloured clothes.
The titular abomination in The King in Yellow is often depicted as an angel with yellow robes.
The false Lightbringer in the Reign of Istar Dragolance trilogy. Though he started out the ultimate good, and even grew to be consumed by a bright light aura, he quickly turned on the followers of the Neutral Gods after he'd removed the followers of the Dark Gods from his kingdom (or continent). After they were out of the picture, he soon turned on the followers of the Gods of Light that were not devout followers of his specific god.
In The Heart of the World series the predominant color of the Darwinist religion of Mann is white.
I'm kind of surprised the House of Night series by P.C.Cast and Kirsten Cast isn't on here yet. One of the books actually has the line "Remember, darkness doesn't always equal evil just as light doesn't always equal good." And later in the book Burned there are two bulls and the white one is evil and the black one is good. meaning it's bad when Stevie Ray accidentally summons the white bull thinking it's the good one.
In the first book of the Coldfire Trilogy, Senzei is tricked into consuming the Fire (water laced with solar fae) by a demon masquerading as Ciani who tells him that it will turn him into an adept. It doesn't end well for him at all.
"Daylight can't hurt you" she had said, but Senzei realized it could, in enough quantities. It could dehydrate, burn, inspire killing cancers...
Sol from Warrior Cats. His name means Sun, but make no mistake, he was the Big Bad for a while.
Lucifer in the Left Behind series, when he departs from Nicolae Carpathia to take on his pure form. The Other Light faction also see God in the same...uh, light as the Christians see Lucifer because of His 100 years of age life limit for unbelievers, hence the name of their group.
Live-Action TV
Buffy the Vampire Slayer gives us The Initiative. They're a government agency with sleek, white labs that captures and experiments on supernatural creatures, likely to make the US more powerful.
One of the titles Glory's minions call her is "The Shining Light".
How about Light from the Doctor Who story "Ghost Light"? Wants to kill everyone and everything, because we keep changing and that's just confusing.
Weeping Angels? Angelic statues which kill you by teleporting you into the past and feeding off of potential abstract energy.
The Doctor even more so. Half the time he's being portrayed as Jesus, half the time he's committing highly dubious acts without actually realizing he's doing something wrong.
It really depends on the doctor. 10 starts off as a rather goofy, nice guy, but ends up as one of the most morally questionable characters in the series, leaving the universe to be saved by The Master! 9 ends up being pretty nice and rather human, whereas 11 does some things that are morally grey (such as lying to future!Amy and eventually ending her life to save normal Amy) but always seems genuinely sorry afterwords.
This is touched on in Carnivŕle, as there seems to be no moral dimension for being the Creature of Light or the Creature of Darkness; the latter just seems to spread calamity around himself whether he wants to or not. The current Creature of Light is a decent, albeit extremely reluctant guy, but his predecessor is ruthless, manipulative and cruel. Interestingly, he's not beautiful in the slightest, despite being associated with Light, and prefers to hide behind a curtain or make himself invisible to keep the shroud of mystery around himself.
Samson also mentions it in his pilot monologue: "...A false sun explodes over Trinity..." This is a reference to the Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb (a perfect Real Life example of this trope).
Babylon 5 has Vorlons, who look like angels and seem to be helping the younger species fight off the evil Shadows. However, it turns out that the conflict is not between good and evil, but between stasis and chaos. Neither extreme is beneficial for the younger species, who are exploited as pawns in a deadly game. Ultimately, the younger species band together to kick both the Shadows and the Vorlons out of the galaxy.
The antagonist in the Farscape episode "Crackers Don't Matter" wanted Moya to generate as much light as she could, and used hypnotic patterns in the light generated within the ship to set the crew against each other. We don't find out what he wants the light for, only that it has something to do with what his species wants and they seem to be a threat to everyone else (even though, after he's killed, we never see anything like it again).
Merlyn's turn as an avenging angel who still dresses in holy white on American Gothic, in the episodes "Inhumanitas" (a dead giveaway by its name) and "The Plague Sower." The fact the latter is a callback to the The Bible and a reminder that this trope is Older than They Think doesn't change the fact she's left good behind—it takes Caleb revealing to her how she's become Not so Different before she returns to her usual self.
In one of the Season 6 'Immortal of the day' episodes of Highlander: The Series, the villain is the head of a global charity organization, always seeking donations and preaching hope, charity and mercy. When he ambushes the main character in a carport with two henchmen, this bit of dialog happens:
An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation had Data and the Enterprise computer infected by a program from an archeological artifact, forcing the ship's crew to play out an ancient ritual of a sun and moon exchanging places in the sky—from day to night, in this case. The ritual depicted the soothing, gentle moon convincing the harsh, burning sun to leave the world in peace for a time, to keep the sun from destroying everything.
Another episode, "Justice", has the enterprise discover a utopian planet of healthy happy people who wear white and enjoy sexual intercourse. Everything seems peaceful and perfect until Wesley gets sentenced to DEATH for falling through a green-house window.
So, how are they evil?
Ambiguously evil, perhaps. It's "evil by comparison" or simply differences in society, specifically a Protagonist-Centered Morality based around the Federation (and our morales as humans) as the protagonists. So by our definition of good and evil, the bright and cheery utopia matches this; there is deceptive peace and calm with an underlying evil of death as the only punishment.
Supernatural makes a point out of doing this with pretty much all the angelic characters featuring from the fourth season onwards:
Early in the series, an "angel" actually the ghost of a priest made people commit murders for the sake of considering them evil. He manifested himself surrounded by light, something unusual for a ghost.
Contrast the Winchester's angelic ally Castiel with Uriel in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester!" Uriel is fully willing to destroy the Adventure Towns that Sam and Dean have stumbled upon to stop the demonic baddie of the week from being raised (and a seal to the Big Bad's prison destroyed in the process), and he openly refers to humanity as "mud monkeys." Notably however Castiel would have helped destroy the town if ordered to, it's just he would have felt bad about it.
There's also Zachariah and his lackeys. At first, they just seem like smug, superior Jerkasses. And they are. They also want to set off the apocalypse. Or as Zachariah called it, "A cosmic enema." Zachariah also has another wonderful moment later: When Michael needs consent to take over Dean's body, Zachariah gets persuasive. Not content with giving Dean stage 4 stomach cancer and ensuring Bobby will never walk again, he cheerily announces "Okay, then let's get really creative. Let's see how Sam does without his lungs."
In the season 4 finale, the ending makes a large change as it fades to white instead of black. Guess who's shining radiance is approaching? Lucifer. Also, in the flashforward episode, Lucifer in Sam's body wears a perfect white suit and shoes.
Remember the Trickster? Liked teaching people lessons in very cruel ways, stuck Sam in a time look and killed Dean every single day? He's the Archangel Gabriel. And he's on their side.
Crowley reminded us early on that Lucifer is an angel.
The final seasons of Stargate SG-1 saw villains in the Ori, ascended beings posing as gods (fire gods, really, but they do a lot of light stuff) and trying to convert the Milky Way galaxy to their religion (Origin) so they can use their collective faith to power-up and take out the Ancients. Their religion seems pretty Christianity-inspired, including having their own holy book (The Book of Origin) and inducing immaculate conception in a major character.
However, the Ori fire motif was eventually contrasted with the soft-white light of the Ancients, who also inserted the concept of "fire is evil" into almost every human culture.
In the fourth season, a beautiful, optical illusion-y light was used as an "opium chamber" by Goa'uld. It accidentally snared the main characters after its former users were gone.
Light seems to be a major theme of Heroes villain Adam Monroe, even after he becomes a Fallen Hero. So much so that the episode where he is killed is called Dying of the Light.
There was a series called Brimstone. It had the same idea as Reaper, in which someone is forced to hunt Hell's souls because the Devil owns his soul, with Lucifer being a absolute magnificent bastardwho manipulates several parties against each other for his own Mephistolicious entertainment. Point was towards the end of the first season, his royal hoofedness shows up in front of the hunter of sinners, and gives a speech about how even the most damned souls can be redeemed. He then looks in the mirror and realizes he looks like Satan, and says to the hero that the first Angel someone sees is the way they perceive every Angel from that point on. Seeing as the show only had one season we never found out if this was Lucifer mucking with the guy or not.
One character (The Mole) pointed out that she had been a loyal worshipper of Baal, but had been condemned to hell because Christianity had "won" (in the Series, at least).
True Blood's Fellowship of the Sun is a fanatical mega church that is raising an army to make war on all vampires. It's led by a preacher in a white suit. And their version of The Dragon is not above committing rape to make his point.
And they recently added Faeries to the list of creatures. (Sookie is part-fay.) Faeries that kidnap their half-human offspring and keep them blissfully drugged.
It wasn't played up a lot in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it was a role in Charlie's play, not his actual persona, but this kicks in when you realize Dennis of all people was cast as Dayman in Charlie's play/demonstration of his memories of being implicitly molested. Dayman himself isn't evil being "a master of karate and friendship for everyone" (that would be Nightman), but Dennis is the person playing him.
Music
Music of the Night in The Phantom of the Opera: "Turn your face away/from the garish light of day./Turn your thoughts away from cold unfeeling light."
Evil Angel by Breaking Benjamin.
Evil Angel is also the name of a song by Rufus Wainwright.
"Alejandro" has her character as dressing white, saint like robes; depending on who you ask, she was meant to represent the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy (although, if you're an homophobe, she would probably be your hero). And the infamous ending had her face melting away while her eyes and mouth were replaced by light; many will be glad to inform you of how terrifying that looked.
Lampshaded by Jerry Lawler during the Wrestlemania 20 main event. Triple H wore white boots and Lawler said that only good guys wore white.
During the 2009 feud between The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, Michaels was dressed in white and used a lot of Christian iconography to contrast with The Undertaker, yet his attitude in the weeks prior to their match was less than admirable.
Michaels actually dressed up in a straight out white version of Undertaker's pre-match gear and did Taker's entrance pretty much to a T when he did this.
Being that his opponent is a self-professed embodiment of evil, a little insolence is justified.
Mordecai, a short-lived gimmick portrayed by wrestler Kevin Fertig. Mordecai dressed in all white and used a religious gimmick based heavily off of the Opus Dei as portrayed in The Da Vinci Code.
Fans had wondered how long it would be before Mordecai, who was basically a Knight Templar gimmick character, would end up in a feud with The Undertaker, since 'Taker is basically a case of Dark is Not Evil and seems to play with the idea that Satan Is Good, or at least neutral. But Mordecai was only around for about two weeks or so and then vanished into thin air.
How could we not have mentioned CM Punk yet? Punk started out as a rebellious and eccentric but still good-hearted athlete who avoided drugs and alcohol because "my only addiction is competition." As a face, he never tried to convert anyone to his "straight-edge" lifestyle and in fact was often mocked or even persecuted for his beliefs. All that changed in the summer of 2009, when his Money in the Bank world championship contract put him directly in contact with Jeff Hardy, another free spirit who had been known in the past for his occasional lapses into drug use. After winning the World Heavyweight Championship from Hardy and retaining it via questionable means, Punk became an arrogant character and declared that Hardy did not deserve to be champion because he was morally weak. As time passed, Punk became more megalomaniacal and finally convinced himself that it was his duty to be a "savior" to the "impure" people of the world. He gathered a cadre of followers into his "Straight-Edge Society" and finally emerged as a figure quite similar to the Reverend Jim Jones (although he physically resembled Charles Manson) whose followers virtually worshipped him and were willing to commit heinous crimes in the name of his "righteous" cause.
So, essentially, Punk as a face: Dark is Not Evil. Punk as a Knight Templar heel: this trope. And knowing how Punk's character has actually been this way since before he even came to WWE, as well as how both the positive and militant sides exist to the straight edge movement in real life; Punk's career is essentially Truth in Television.
Religion
Archons are the gnostic equivalent of angels, and one, Adonaios, is associated with the Sun. Since Gnosticism has God Is Evil as a core philosophy, the archons are unsurpringly consider malevolent or at least hostile.
As in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians example above, Hyperion, the titan of light, can be interpreted as this, since the titans were enemies of the gods and he participated in the Titanomachy. However, some see the titans as better than the olympians, seeing as they brought a golden age to man, though most likely both groups were neutral and Hyperion was prone to this.
According to Hesiod and Homer, Ares is this.
Zeus, the father of the gods, is a fantastic example of this. While many Sadly Mythtaken portrayals depict him in a similar light to YHWH as a benevolent father figure and just ruler of Olympus, the original Greek myths make it clear that he pretty much had sex with everything and used his powers to get out of getting caught with his pants down as best as he could, and that he frequently couldn't care less for what might be good and just, as long as he got what he wanted.
Apollo as well: Apollo, who is often referred to as the god of light, often pulls dirty tricks to get his way, and at least once arranged for some mortals to commit a heinous act, but then abandons them to their fate shortly after committing said heinous act (eg, Elektra and her brother avenging their father by killing their mother and her lover).
Circe is a daughter of the Sun god Helios, yet she is consistently portrayed as an antagonist. In addition, it was claimed that witches had a power called "evil eye", which was derived from Helios (who was also the god of sight).
Neto, a pre- Christian lusitanian (aka Portugal south of river Douro) god, was a god of the sun but also a war god, presumably as an acknowledgement of the sun's deadly side. The other light related god in the Lusitanian Mythology, Endovelicus, was supposedly good, though once Christianity settled in he became associated with Lucifer.
Biblical Example: Created as the mightiest archangel, Satan can still appear to men as an "angel of light"... making this Older Than Feudalism. According to tradition, if Satan appeared before you, you couldn't help but fall down and worship him, he would be so beautiful. Just as in the Bible, when an angel appeared to the shepherds to tell them of Jesus' birth, the first thing he says is either "Be not afraid" or "Don't worship me!"—as angels in other parts of the Bible tended to kill cities when they were sent. The Apocrypha adds to his many names by referring to his pre-rebellion self as Lucifer, which means "Lightbringer", and he's also sometimes called "the Morning Star".
In Abrahamic theology, Shamsiel, the angel of the Sun, is actually said to be a fallen angel; therefore, if not at Satan's side, still against Yahweh.
The Bible often described lepers with having skin as white as snow. While real lepers of course are just victims of a disease in Biblical time they were considered to have gotten the disease as a curse for moral failings.
"Lady Midday" from the Slavic Mythology. Unless you consider sun-stroke a good thing.
Lakota mythology features light and darkness as more reason and chaos. But following this theme, Yata, the north wind, is represented by white. He also causes harsh winters. Also, the wakinyan, or lightning gods, are either this or Good Is Not Nice.
Tabletop Games
The Solars in Exalted are the divinely empowered "chosen ones" of the Sun itself, with light motifs and abilities, who were overthrown and murdered long ago for being mad, inhumanly monstrous tyrants.
Not to mention that their Patron, the Unconquered Sun, apparently took over Heaven mainly so he could play the Cosmic X-box Games of Divinity.
That's just a side benefit, per the recent Glories of the Most High. On the other hand, he's solidly addicted to the games, and his constant insane virtue means he nearly constantly has to be suppressing some aspect of his being to be able to function at all.
There's also the Ebon Dragon, one of the Cosmic Horrors overthrown by the past incarnations of the player characters.
On the other hand, Five Days Darkness, the living shadow of the sun, subverts this; in second edition, he's become something of an Anti-Hero, and while he holds spite for the Elemental courts, he is on the side of Creation as a whole.
Also: if said light is green, it's time to leave very abruptly, because you are now dealing with the demons of Malfeas.
And if the source of said green light is on the ground and near you, you are dealing with Ligier. Run.
Calling the Imperium "Light" is just a tad misleading; they're the good guys, more or less, but their love of putting skulls all over everything, among other things, puts them pretty deep in Dark is Not Evil territory.
Then we have the C'tan who are even more evil than the Chaos gods and who are trying to kill everything in the galaxy. They are called Star Gods because they originally lived on stars, it is also implied that they are actually the souls of the first stars. Also did I mention that the weapon used by the leaders of their mooks is called a Staff of Light?
Then there's the Ethereal Tau caste who are (probably) brainwashing the other Tau into doing their bidding.
There's also the lesser known gods of order; while opposed to the Chaos gods, one of them, Alluminas, the god of light, is pretty much trying to keep the status quo, regardless of the current situation. While the other is a Knight Templar sun god whose followers are highly feared due to their Knight Templar ways.
The faction of Imperators (gods) and Powers (Player-character demigods) in Nobilis called simply 'The Light' exemplify this. While they believe above all else in the survival of the human race, they are not picky about the means. They will preserve humans and their well-being wherever possible, but if they have to kill or ruin the lives of a hundred people, or a thousand, or a million, to perpetuate the existence of the race, they will do so without hesitation.
When the survival of the race is not at question in any given situation, however, they're the closest thing to pure good guys the morally-grey setting has. However, they also desire the human race to thrive, and they actually have a morality that most mortals would recognize as a social conscience.
To put things in perspective, the Light was responsible for both breeding the divinity out of mankind in exchange for a larger population and then later for causing the Biblical flood to save the surviving humans from the Dark's plan to cause humanity to wipe itself out with overpopulation and arms races.
Similarly, Angels and others that follow the Code of Heaven are more concerned with Beauty than with mortal concepts of goodness. The closest they get is considering Justice to be a form of Beauty. It's also their will that closes the doors of Heaven to mortals to preserve its beauty, condemning nearly all living things to a cycle of endless reincarnation until damnation.
Ananda is a being of indescribable beauty. He is probably one of the closest things to a good guy in the Council of Four that rules Earth, and his realm of Cityback shores up the progress of all cities. However, he's also the Imperator of Murder (meaning that all murders derive from his existence), his beauty kills or drives mad all who see it, and a prophecy prevents him from taking action against the openly evil (and yet loyal to Creation) head of the Council of Four, Lord Entropy.
The antagonists of this setting, the Excrucians, sort of follow this trope as well. They are the most beautiful beings in the settings (more so than even the Angels), but their goal is the destruction (or possibly theft) of all of Creation, both good and bad.
Lastly, there's Lucifer, whose angelic glory is utterly uncorrupted by his time in Hell, but who is still pledged to lead the cause of Hell and damnation for reasons of personal conviction.
Light becomes a little less good in 3E, to correspond with Dark becoming a lot nicer. While the Angels are the same, Light is now about sheer, unchanging law now, uncaring of what humans actually desire, as opposed to the Dark's reckless individualism. As for Lucifer, this is trope is subverted, however slightly-Devils like him were actually the Angels who thought all things deserved love, so they made a place where things like corruption could find it. Their relationship to their nobles is explicitly compared to a codependent spouse-genuinely loving, but so broken they become abusive.
The Eladrin, a branch of outsiders in 3E and elves in Fourth Edition who live in big shiny crystal cities in the beautiful Feywild, are inhumanly beautiful and custodians of ecology... And are noted as being rather frightening due to their alien nature and, as all PC races are in 4e, listed as "any alignment". So while an eladrin can be goody-two-shoes Purity Sue, he can be a real prick as well.
Third Edition had beings from the Positive Energy Plane who loved nothing more than combat, to the point where they would take vacations to the Material Plane, offering to bond themselves to warriors who would get some pretty significant powers in exchange. In fact, the fast healing that they provide was so powerful that if you weren't actively being injured, your body would explode from the buildup of positive energy. The kicker? They risked dying themselves if they stayed in the Material plane for more than a week or two.
The Positive Energy Plane itself practically embodies this trope; it's a world empty of matter but filled with brilliant healing light, which restores living beings to full health — and keeps pouring energy into them afterwards until they explode. By contrast, the Negative Energy Plane is no more harmful than the Elemental Plane of Fire, it hurts things not immune/sufficiently resistant to fire/negative energy, but is harmless to anyone who is, and the plane has residents that can exist on the prime material unharmed. That said, the Plane of Positive Energy has one advantage for ordinary mortals: the explosion thing can be perpetually kept at bay with perfectly nonmagical means*
have a knife. Cut yourself every now and then
.
The 3E/3.5 spell Searing Light can be used by casters of any alignment. It literally involves shooting someone with a light beam.
In 4E, the warlock class can make a deal with beings who reside "behind the stars" to use their powers. Quite a few of their attacks do radiant (light) damage. This also kind of subverts the trope, as these beings are completely outside of good and evil.
Also in 4E, the paladin class is no longer limited to being Lawful Good. Rather, they are now a class of holy warriors dedicated to a god. Many of their attacks do radiant damage regardless of their deity's nature. In fact, the player's handbook acknowledges how disturbing it would be for players to fight a champion of evil whose weapons explode with holy light.
Radiant Energy in general counts. Vaguely equating to Positive Energy (pure life force) in the older edition, Radiant energy is described as "pure light" and is most commonly found in the Divine classes (arcane, primal and psionic classes also get a sprinkling of Radiance powers). It's a damage keyword — meaning that it's specific use is, generally, the same as a Fireball or Acid Storm.
Specifically, Radiant effects usually are caused by divine powers, rather than "laser magic". Considering that there are just as many gods and goddesses of darkness, evil, chaos, shadow and hatred as there are those of light, good, order, charity and love, it kind of makes sense.
Angels themselves in 4e; beings of pure light/energy, they're not necessarily good or evil; simply, they serve gods. Some serve good gods, others evil ones.
The Quasielemental Plane of Radiance in Planescape cosmology does it literally. No, it's one of most beautiful places in The Multiverse (some Celestials travel just to look at it) and hostile beings are very rare there — even mephits are quite harmless. The problem is, the whole plane is bright — like a sun disc, but from every direction at once. The problem is, it causes a few inconveniences to most non-natives: the light is near-instantly blinding, the air is absent, and everything unprotected suffers more than half of heat damage it would take on the plane of Fire. It's that bright. It's placed between the planes of Fire and Positive Energy ("life").
The Dungeons & Dragons World Eberron has no restrictions on what alignment a cleric of any faith has. This means that the Church of the Silver Flame, a lawfully good religion centred around a divine silver-coloured flame created/tapped into by the sacrifice of most Couatl (beings of good) and The Messiah of the Church has its share of Knight Templar and self-serving hypocrites (they also have corrupted secret followers of the Shadow in the Flame, but that is another trope). The same applies to any basically good faith, although most aren't quite so associated with light.
The Forgotten Realms had the (dead, but with a constant presence nontheless) god Amaunator, a god of the sun... and of order, law and bureaucracy, with all that entails for clerics taking 'order'too far. He isn't evil, but neither is he good.
In "Pathfinder" there are the Shining Children- weird alien things, Lurkers in the light- VERY evil fey who have light based powers and will mess your day up and Aeons- not quite "light based" but some appear to be made of cosmic energy and light. But they aren't good... or bad. They're very neutral.
In Magic: The Gathering, white's worst traits are being dogmatic and authoritarian, to the point of ruthlessness and xenophobia.
Mark Rosewater writes an extensive article here discussing the color's motivations. His style summary may not reflect recent sets since it was written in 2003.
Worth of noting is the daimyo Konda from the Kamigawa block, being not only white and villainous, but also opposite to Toshiro Umezawa, which is heroic. Konda pretty much stole a "god" to gain immortality, and while justified as to keep his people happy it comes across as rather selfish, unusual for a person aligned with white.
Lieutenant Kirtar, listed in Feathered Fiend, is also a White aligned villain that is essentially a proud, arrogant Jerk Ass.
One of the Archenemy decks is based around the colors green and white, which are usually associated with life and nature. Its theme? "Trample Civilization Underfoot".
The Scars of Mirrodin set introduced white Phyrexians in the two last extensions (Phyrexians being the big baddies of Magic)... Though, given their general appearance, it crosses the line between Light is not Good and Obviously Evil.
It also includes a white spell called "Wrath of God." Its effect? Destroy all creatures. A double-edged sword if your creatures aren't indestructible.
The "Wrath of God" card used to be this trope's page image. Also, the card later got a Dark is Evil counterpart named "Damnation" that does exactly the same thing.
Scion gives us Akhenaten, the Titan of Light. How is light bad? It burns away everything it focuses on, leaving nothing but empty, unending light. Akhenaten's avatar (i.e. its brain), Aten, desires nothing more than the worship of every living thing. He's quite good at turning his enemies Brainwashed and Crazy... and then making them into suicide bombs.
On a lesser level, Kane Taoka, the leader of the sample evil Scions. He's a son of Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess. Although he does eventually become the god of darkness.
In Paranoia, white is reserved for High Programmers, who have huge amounts of power and trust with which to screw you over (including reprogramming The Computer) and are not shy about doing so.
In Nomine is built around playing with this trope (and similar ones). While the angels are ostensibly the good guys and the demons are the bad guys, the angels are decidedly not nice (except for the ones who are exceedingly so), and often don't have mankind's best interests at heart. The game also lets you play the demons' side of things; and one style of play (known as "playing In Nomine backwards") portrays Heaven as a bunch of jack-booted control-freak thugs who wish to suppress and dominate everyone.
Theatre
In the version of The Phantom of the Opera which has emerged, Erik seems to fit this to some extent, being called the "Angel of Music" for his beautiful singing voice and rather than the hideous character of the novel is a handsome man whose partially scarred face is more of a Red Right Hand.
Ironically, Erik also lampshades this trope with the lyric line, "Turn your face away from the garish light of day./ Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light."
This is a very common trope in late 18th/early 19th-century Romanticism. As Friedrich Nietzsche explored in The Birth of Tragedy, 18th century Classicism, which stressed order, civilization, and reason, was associated with the Greek sun god, Apollo. Whereas Romanticism, in defiance, stressed chaos, nature (or savagery), and emotions, and was associated with Dionysus, god of wine. Nietzsche's former mentor, Richard Wagner, used this in Tristan und Isolde: Isolde's husband, King Mark, is associated with civilization, sings harmonic lines, and is always well-lit on stage. The two lovers, meanwhile, are always seeking the darkness and the deep forest to hide their affair, sing chromatic lines and are motivated by emotion.
In the original version of the play Auto da Barca do Inferno written by Portuguese playwright Gil Vicente the angel (that was in charge of the boat that lead people to Heaven) was good (albeit a complete asshole), but in the most recent version of the play she is just as bad if not worse than the Devil.
In Angels In America, the angels are fantastic beings (and the main one is played by Emma Thompson in the HBO mini-series), but they all lack the ability to imagine, which means that they are all extremely bureaucratic and rather useless, unable to figure out how to cure the "plague" (HIV). Their idea to bring back the missing God is to order humanity to stop moving forward and progressing.
The Archangel, one of the Accursed in Riviera: The Promised Land, is 'an angel burdened with the sins of others', who tries to get revenge on the gods of Asgard.
The Evil Empire of Xenogears is the Sacred Empire of Solaris. Despite being populated mostly by slave labor and an upper-class of unrepentant douchebags, native Solarians are mostly light-haired, most wear white clothing, their military Gears and vehicles tend to be white. Solaris itself is white. White is also a major motif of the Big Bad and his component parts. Save for a few notable exceptions, you might almost say that this game plays the trope straight.
Gill from Street Fighter III is the brightly colored leader of The Illuminati who can attack using a large flash of light with a rainbow. He also has aspirations of being The Messiah.
The final bosses of the House of the Dead 2 and 3 are magnificent shiny quicksilvery creatures bearing a striking contrast with the usual shambling rotten and untidy lot of the zombie army. They are still dicks though.
Solaris, the final boss of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is a solar deity who is literally made of light energy. He fights by shooting white laser beams at the player. Ironically, according to Solaris' character backstory, he's actually a combination of two lesser beings of different elements; Iblis, a giant lava/fire creature, and Mephiles, a bizarre shadow being.
In fact, Solaris was the original being. Iblis was the embodiment of his pure unrestrained power and Mephiles was his consciousness, which was probably shadowy and dark due to how supremely pissed off Solaris was at being experimented on.
The Bastard of Kosigan series (fan-made Neverwinter Nights expansion) has the classic angels and demons of Christian mythology as the 'order' and 'freedom' factions of a race of precursor humans, but the 'order' faction (who are definitely rather nasty, going directly to deadly force whenever anyone says 'no' to them) eventually won their war for the hearts and minds of ordinary humans and killed all the 'chaos' faction (except for two 'demons', one of whom is revealed to have been St. John and the other is your character's deceased mother, who stole Archangel Gabriel's (the leader of the 'order' faction) sword)
One of the major plot points in Tales of Symphonia. The major villain, Mithos, is a Fallen Hero, and his main form of attack carries over into his villainous style. Appearing as a bishonen angel with wings of multifaceted crystal, he uses mainly Light based attacks, and even has a very specific vulnerability. What is it? Why, darkness, of course! In fact, all the angels except Kratos and Yuan have that weakness.
Of note: Only two of the Summon Spirit boss fights result in a Game Over when you lose, one being the humanity-hating Volt, and the other is the Luna and Aska battle, and Luna and Aska are the Summon Spirits of Light. They're the last Summon Spirits to form a pact with, and since Kratos is on the previous floor, there's no opportunity to leave and level up. So a Game Over is the only logical end to a lost battle.
The final form of Duke, the last boss of Tales of Vesperia, has a mystic arte that ends with a move that looks like Estelle's Sacred Penance, called Brave Vesperia, a compilation of your seven party members' Mystic Artes. Shame the PS3 version of the game doesn't add Flynn's and Patty's Mystic Artes. However, despite his shining appearance, Duke is not actually light-elemental. And despite being the Final Boss, he really is good in the end.
Regardless of their leader's alleged Omniscient Morality License, Celestia in Disgaea qualifies as this. Though not evil, they are people capable of being very wrong while also being very sure they're right, and aren't above Fantastic Racism towards demons and humans. We do know that Lamington and Flonne aren't as apeshit about order as Vulcanus, but the rest...
Actually in this sense it would seem that Lamington was usurped by the ambitious Vulcanus (despite him having no chance), and the rest of the angels merely followed orders. Lamington never actually does anything offensive besides dealing with Vulcanus and Flonne, however Flonne is dealt with by their laws and in the good ending returns as a fallen angel rather than being turned into a flower. Flonne seems to be ruled more by The Power of Love and the Rule Of Cool than anything else. She has no prejudices (and in fact states as much early in the game) and no real desires beyond living a happy life and bringing love to those around her.
Kefka also talks an awful lot about burning things, fire being a good example of the destructive side of light.
Final Fantasy III also had the good-guy Warriors of Darkness in its backstory, fighting the evil "Flood of Light" that threatened to burn away all of creation.
The GBA remake of Final Fantasy II has the Light Emperor. Specifically he is the "good" side of the Emperor's soul split from the "evil" side in Pandemonium. He tries to take over heaven.
Try nothing. He succeeds completely, becoming master of heaven and hell before you even get there. He's still a tosser though
In Final Fantasy XI, the gods Alexander (light) and Odin (darkness) are in constant opposition. Every few hundred years they break free from where ever they are to fight each other in a "Ragnarok", in an attempt to destroy each other and mowing down anyone in their paths. Showing that Dark is Not Evil, Odin is the more magnanimous of the two as he, beseeched by a servant who had repeatedly defied Odin's orders, saves the life of an Empress who was shot with a holy beam meant for him.
Also in Final Fantasy XI, beastmen summoners are capable of using the Light-based Avatar Carbuncle for their Astral Flow ability, generally with more disastrous results than the normal elemental Avatars.
Also you learn in the Chains of Promathia expansion that the Beastmen are actually the creations of the Dawn/Light Goddess Altana, while the playable character races are the creations of the Dusk/Dark God Promathia. Basically it's the playable forces of Darkness wailing on the creatures of Light who are just trying to live in peace and harmony with each other.
In Final Fantasy XII, light elementals are just as pernicious once roused as their dark brethren, and by the same token, a dark elemental is just as peaceful as a light when left alone.
And then, of course, there's the recurring "Blast the shit out of everything with divine light" spells Holy and Ultima.
The common Final Fantasy spell "Holy" is a beam or explosion of divine light that burns the target from the astral plane, and is usually earned late in the game. Plenty of adversaries (mostly evil ones, who might even belong to a Corrupt Church) use it on you with impunity.
In Final Fantasy VII, Holy was supposed to save the Planet from Meteor. It was summoned so late, though, that its clash with the Black Magic spell was actually devastating what it was meant to protect, until the Lifestream surged up and helped it destroy Meteor. Even then, Bugenhagen theorized that Holy, a spell that obliterates that which is harmful to the Planet, could have very well destroyed mankind as well, if it judged humans to be harmful. The game's ending was deliberately ambiguous about whether this had in fact happened, but of course the spinoffs and sequel movie made it clear that humanity survived.
Not just humanity, but all mako reactors, Big Bads and anything related to Jenova proving that Bugen Hagen was making junk up.
From Final Fantasy X, we have the Church of Yevon, which (initially) seemed like a good organization, if a bit bigoted, bringing hope and order to Spira. Then the Maesters showed their true colors...
Fortinbras, the Big Bad from Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams comes to mind. All of his attacks are light-based, and he even walks onto the battlefield wearing all white.
That, and he specifically refers to himself as the 'God of Light'. Conversely, the main character is sometimes known as the 'Oni of the Ash'.
Baelheit's special moves in Baten Kaitos Origins are not only Light-based, they're callbacks to the special attacks of the protagonist from the first game in the series (of which Origins is a prequel). This makes sense, considering Baelheit is the realSpiriter. And a Well-Intentioned ExtremistDisc One Final Boss to boot.
Combining "value-neutral elements" with "too much of a good thing" gives us the Sun Rune in Suikoden V. Properly sealed away, it provided light and perpetual fertility for the Queendom of Felena. Like all True Runes, it has a will of its own, however, and if taken into someone's body, it seems to slowly twist them into an imperial tyrant. Ultimately, it may be one more case of that universe's take on Order Versus Chaos.
To be fair, the Sun Rune, Dawn rune, and Dusk Rune come as a set, and it is explained in the course of the game that the Sun Rune will not corrupt its bearer if said bearer also possesses the other two runes. Of course, since a major plot point is that one of the runes has been stolen, we never actually see this...
Deliberately invoked throughout Devil May Cry 4. The villains are a Corrupt Church. Their signature soldiers are the beautiful Angelo living armors, crafted with a glorious mixture of angelic and demonic features and deliberately created as "angels." By contrast, main character Nero's sinister Evil Hand turns out to be a powerful force for good. Interestingly, the villain's raison d'etre, using demonic energy to kill all the demons in the world, isn't necessarily a bad one, but in the third act of the game, it's pretty obviously shown that Extremism has taken root, so they've become da bad dudes.
Also the "Fallen" enemy in the third game. The figures appear angelic...until they spread their wings and reveal a monstrous face on their torsos.
Beowulf (no relation to the hero) from the third game too. A light-elemental demon, complete with pseudo-Tron Lines, with a desire to see every blood relation of Sparda dead. He is a tough nut to crack too.
The angels in the Diablo franchise are portrayed as being manipulative and having no feelings for humans beyond using them to fight the demons. The necromancers believe that although the demons winning would lead to an eternity of torture for mankind, the angels winning would lead to domination and mental stagnation, and so the balance must be maintained. The main exception to this rule is the archangel Tyrael, who started out spiteful to humans but grew to appreciate them.
And Auriel and a few others, but they certainly don't align with High Heavens policy. In fact, whereas the demons just want to enslave mankind, the angels in general and Imperius and Malthael in particular tried to destroy the mortal world because they deemed it a taint on creation. Also, humankind used to be a lot more magically powerful in the past, until the antimagic effects of the Worldstone (thanks to renegade angel, Inarius) took hold. Then when a group of humans rediscovered their ancient power and managed to resist an angelic invasion intent on destroying the mortal world, the only lasting impact was that the mortal plane was allowed to continue to exist—thanks to Tyrael convincing the Angiris Council that people do have feelings—albeit without their powers, with the Worldstone still there and the plane itself only protected from extraplanar influence by a brittle pact between the Council and Mephisto, who naturally circumvented the pact and proceeded to do the things demons do in Diablo while the angels stand by and watch. This plot twist is found in the third book of the Sin War series, and is rather scary in a Cthulhu sort of way. These are angels who almost destroyed our universe, then were only prevented from finishing the job by democratic vote, then took away humankind's power and allowed the mortal world to be overrun by demons and people to get killed in a lot of creative ways, just to see if humankind would eventually grow up to fight off the demons by themselves and join their ranks—or presumably face the judgement anyway. Think about that when you get killed by Blessed Hammer in PvPAGAIN.
The Scarlet Crusade from World of Warcraft, another Blizzard game, is comprised almost totally of paladins, priests and other "goodie" classes... who exterminate anyone they find because they believe that everyone has the plague of undeath now. And that's if you're lucky. The only thing worse than being tortured to death is being healed back to full health only to be tortured again.
Well, the brain behind the Scarlet Crusade is Balnazzar, a Dread Lord working on behalf of the Burning Legion. And then there is the highlord of the Crusade, who is an undead himself.
Another example of non-good paladins are the Blood Elven Paladin (AKA the Blood Knights), who derive their powers from a kidnapped being made of pure light.
Although recent advances of the plot of Burning Crusade have seen the blood elves former leader, Kael'thas, who is now in league with the Big Bad, forcibly take the captured naaru from his people and use it for his own nefarious purposes. The leader of the blood knights later pledged her warriors to stopping their former leader and were blessed with the Light by another naaru.
Said Crusade may have taken inspiration from Prince Arthas, who slaughtered an entire town in the name of the Light. Granted, said town was already infected with a virus to turn the villagers into zombies, but praying for a cure or something might've been a better idea. And it only gets worse from there until he claims Frostmourne at the cost of his soul and turns evil.
There's also the val'kyr, servants of the Lich King, who look like stereotypical angels, but are, according to official description, "fearsome creatures made of pure nightmare".
Playing a Paladin or Priest can go in this direction, with a slight variation to a holy spec (which means normally healing) and the right equipment they become devastating powers. The priest is in a holy spec in the early levels far stronger in offensive. But in the higher level this changed with the new skill trees in patch 3.0 for the wrath extension: the shockadin (paladin dealing damage with holy shock) is pretty dead and the priest version (the smiter) lacks in raid support compared the shadowpriest counterpart.
And on that note, the Shadow spec for the priest class. You may follow the Light and have the power to heal others, but your real talent lies in Mind Rape.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn uses this as well as Order Versus Chaos. The villains of the game are the Begnion Senate, which is obviously modeled after the medieval Catholic Church. All of the senators are the Bishop class and use light magic. One of them uses corrupted light magic. Ashera, Goddess of Order, is the final boss, as she wishes to punish the world with the light of judgment, and our heroes team up with the (very nice) Goddess of Chaos to stop her. The Order Versus Chaos page explains this all very nicely.
The entire series uses both this and Dark is Not Evil, because classes specializing in healing or light magic are quite frequent in the enemy armies, including among their often flatly evil bosses, and classes specializing in dark magic can be good. (In fact, in every chapter of the first game's second half, expect at least one Cleric with a Reserve Wand.) However, there's still a tendency towards the nastiest magical characters being hideous and/or using dark magic, and the reverse for the good side.
It's explained that light magic draws its power from faith, and that dark magic draws its power from knowledge, creating a sort of religion-science dichotomy between the two. If you'll notice, even the most evil of Bishops (like Kenneth or Riev) have absolute faith in the villains, and most of the series' dark magic users (at least since Sword of Seals) have been extremely intelligent bookworms, regardless of their alignment to good or evil. The series tries to avoid the subject of religion for the most part, but Kenneth laughs at the idea of gods, cementing the idea that object of a light magic user's faith doesn't need to be divine.
Also in Fire Emblem 8. The most evil and irredeemable character Riev is the Bishop class and uses incredibly powerful light magic.
In Path of Radiance, you have to take down a corrupt bishop who stole a heron. He uses one of the most powerful light spells in the game. Said character also happens to have an army of other light magicians with him.
If you get betrayed ANYWHERE in the series, 2:1 odds are that it was by a bishop, cleric, paladin, light magician... you get the point.
The Ultimate EvilBig Bad of Sam And Max Season 1, Hugh Bliss, is a self-help guru who wears all-white, is a kindly old man/aging blissed-out hippy, and uses rainbow-colored magic. He's also building a giant mind-control beam on the moon designed to make everyone on Earth as happy as he is. Turns out, he's a sentient colony of space-faring bacteria that feeds on human happiness.
Best part about that? You get to stop the Big Bad, which necessarily means turning the world into a Crapsack World again. And the only way to "cure" the hypnotized happy people is by punching them in the face. Max gleefully spends the credits doing so.
Well, actually, defeating the Big Bad changes the mind-control beam. Instead of everyone acting oh-so-very happy and cheerful and kind, everyone on the planet is acting like Max. So, punching everyone in the face...is definitely necessary.
In Planescape: Torment, Trias the angelic deva desires nothing more than to aid the Heavens in recognizing and combating the threat posed by the fiendish Lower Planes... so he decided to get the Lower Planes to wage bloody war on them. After all, they're only fiends, they deserve what they get...and the Upper Planes deserve the pain they get for not treating evil as a true threat, and casting him out...
Castlevania has the Amalaric (or Goth Sniper), a minor enemy that looks like a white torso with wings and a bow and is described as a fallen angel. While in Symphony of the Night and Dawn of Sorrow he's quite a pushover, in Portrait of Ruin he gets a boost on his attack power, becomes resistant to Holy damage, and gains a new attack that shoots arrows in ALL directions.
Speaking of Order of Ecclesia, Ecclesia's true purpose is to fulfill mankind's "greatest wish": The return of Dracula.
In the online Flash RPG Adventure Quest, Brilhado are humanoids with dark purple wings with red tips. Books in the Temple of Hope say people once called them Angels but are really Greater Light Demons. AQ Demons are not satanic, but are creatures from the elemental realms. The Brilhado are Greater Demons because they are even seen as demons in the elemental realms. Most of them work for N.O.V.A.
Subverted by Diviara, though a Brilhado, is a Necromancer, who wears black robes, though his weapon, Duality switches between Light and Darkness elements. He is a general of N.O.V.A. but after his brother's death joins you.
Played straight by Mouri Motonari in Sengoku Basara (AKA Kahz in Devil Kings) who claims to be 'The Child of the Sun', and is a Light-elemental character (which just means he can break enemy blocks). Except that he's The Neidermeyer and a sadistic Jerkass who could care less about his soldiers' welfare as long as they just do as he commands, treating them like disposable pawns. Exemplified with the fact that in-game, he can actually attack his own allies, a trait shared only with psychopath Akechi Mitsuhide. This is lampshaded by Oichi, the series' poster girl of Dark is Not Evil, in the spinoff Sengoku Basara X who goes on to say that his "light is a lie" if they ever face each other.
On the other hand, this is subverted with another Light-elemental character: Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He's cruel, ruthless, willing to kill his own wife to achieve more power, but he is a Well-Intentioned Extremist (noble goal behind cruel action). And unlike Motonari, Hideyoshi actually shows his charisma to his soldiers and cares about them (especially Hanbei), not treating them like disposable pawns (he can't attack his own allies, unless he equips himself with a special item, and even that's limited to just grabbing moves.)
Imagawa Yoshimoto, though not evil is a Dirty Coward whose only connection to Light is merely his love for disco and as such summons light shows for attacks.
In general, Sengoku Basara seems prone to give the "Light" element to unsympathetic characters, like Otomo Sorin and Kennyo Honganji. There are still good examples though (like Ieyasu and Nagamasa.)
In Grandia II the Pope of the popular religion turns out to be helping to revive Valmar (the game's Satan analogue) because contrary to the world's standard mythology, Granas (the "God"/Crystal Dragon Jesus of said popular religion) lost the ancient "Battle Between Good and Evil". Said Pope also seems to actually be much more evil than Valmar, and sought to revive the "devil" to steal its power and make himself into a replacement for the long-dead Granas. Mareg's religion doesn't believe in complete evil or good (much to the disdain to one character) and is proved correct when the "real" history of the gods is shown to the heroes.
In the Shin Megami Tensei games there are usually the alignment choices of Law (Light), Chaos (Dark), and Neutral (Whatever) (each having their own advantages and flaws). Law's flaws are that the rules are too strict and harsh, and that anybody who doesn't obey the rules must be eliminated. In fact the only reason the Chaos alignment exists is to stop the Law alignment's tyrannical reign.
Some Shin Megami Tensei games additionally have a Light/Neutral/Dark alignment axis. This refers to the mythological reputation of the entity as something to be reviled or revered, and has no bearing on its actual morality — the below-mentioned YHWH and his higher-ranking Angels are as far along the Light axis as you can get, and are petty, self-centered megalomaniacs.
Especially seen in SMT 2 and Nocturne where YHWH is the true ending's final boss in the former and a total douchebag in the latter (He is confirmed to the leader of the Law alignment).
Let us not forget Light as an elemental spell. In the Persona subseries, Light's main form of offense is insta-kill spells, identical to Dark except for their element. Sometimes seemingly Light-oriented personae will learn both Light and Dark spells. Whether or not these spells are effective, Light as an element can be pretty dang cruel.
In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, there are a couple of incredibly malevolent Light spells. Amaterasu's Godly Light instantly destroys 80% HP of everyone in your party who does not null Light. Kagutsuchi's Vast Light and Infinite Light are both monstrously powerful Almighty moves, meaning you can't null them and they will hurt like hell if they don't outright vaporize everyone. Radiance can obliterate entire parties with one casting. Thunderclap and Holy Wrath can mow everyone's HP to half. Metatron's Fire of Sinai not only deals random Almighty damage, but can also extend to insta-kills. So yes, pretty dang cruel.
In Strange Journey, Metatron's Judgment Light insta-kills with 80% efficiency, for those not weak to Light.
Also plot-wise, Zelenin's transformation into an angel practically turns her into a walking demon-slaugthering human-brainwashing machine.Who enjoys the whole thing.It is creepy even if you're going for the Law ending...
In the Kirby Super Star Ultra subgame Meta Knightmare Ultra, Meta Knight ends up fighting against a Light Is Not Good Evil Counterpart. Playing the Blood KnightAnti-Hero in this game, he wishes to Nova that he could fight the greatest warrior in the galaxy to improve his skills. It turns out it's a being that looks like an angelic version of Meta Knight and was sealed away because its sheer power presented a danger to the galaxy.
No Crystal Shards yet? The final boss, Zero Two has an angelic design, complete with "feathery" wings and halo.
All of the Totema bosses of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance use are healed by Holy, and some use it too. One of the game's most powerful swords does Holy-elemental damage, much to the dismay of many players who went into the final battle with it equipped.
Phantasy Star IV has this as a major theme toward the end of the game. The Great Light, the creator god of Algo, is not shown to be good, just not straight-up evil. The main character, Chaz, has a moral objection to the expectation that he and his companions should do the Great Light's bidding, being that the Great Light itself abandoned the solar system ages ago, and that doing so would make them no different from Zio, the cult leader/evil wizard who killed his mentor figure. More directly, though, the elemental Light creatures are few in number, live in idyllic, magical crystal castles, are immortal figures made of glowing fire. De-Vars, Sa-Lews, and Re-Faze embody Strength, Courage, and Anger respectively, and while they're all pleased that that the heroes triumph over them, they do make a point of trying to crush them in order to make sure they're worthy of the task of saving the universe. Re-Faze in particular is willing to isolate, trick, traumatize, and insult Chaz in order to test his mettle. In the end, only good can truly triumph over evil, and good can only exist in the human heart.
Also, all the Light elemental attacks are pretty badass. In PSIV, if it looks like a laser, you can expect it to do some pretty hefty damage. In a couple of boss fights, the wussy second-level Githu technique (it's basically a yellow laser that goes bzweeoon) does more damage than most melee attacks.
The Final Boss of Bomberman 64 fits this trope. Each of the five major NPC's in this game (Sirius, Regulus, Artemis, Orion, Altair) are Color-Coded for Your Convenience, (White, Blue, Red, Green, and Black, respectively). For most of the game, Sirius acts as your ally, giving you sage advice and convenient power-ups just before boss fights. That is, until you get 100 gold cards and beat the game's initial Big Bad, Altair. Instead of escaping, Altair gets ambushed by Sirius, who steals Altair's Omni Cube (later explaining that Altair had stolen it form him in the first place) and reveals himself as the real Big Bad after vaporizing Altair with a laser.
The sequel, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack provides three examples to this trope. First there's the boss, Zoniha, whose title is "The Purifying Light" and attacks with, you guessed it, light based attacks. Though her case is arguable since she was brainwashed by the Big Bad to do evil deeds. The second case is the penultimate boss who is literally a goddess of light who decides to pass judgment on Bomberman for refusing to cooperate with her. The final example is the final boss, the angel of light and darkness, who seems to focus more on light attacks than dark ones.
Copy X from Mega Man Zero and Lumine from Mega Man X 8, which take on angelic forms during their boss battles. The Classic series has Bright Man and Flash Man who also have light-based powers, and they're antagonists (though Bright Man is one of Dr. Cossack's creations, who attacked Mega Man due to Wily's manipulations).
Destroyman in No More Heroes appears to be a Superhero and claims to fight with honour...but it's not hard to see that he's one of the most dirty fighting, Ax Crazy assassins that Travis has to fight.
The Angels in Bayonetta, which are best described as "grotesque monstrosities with marble-colored skin, stereotypical Greekish clothing, wings, and halos."
More extreme is the Big Bad, Father Balder. The last of the Lumen Sages, he orchestrated the genocide of both them and the Umbra Witches, killed Luca's father, is the one commanding the angels, and does not seem to care for his daughter beyond being a tool for the awakening of Jubileus, who he intends to use to destroy the current universe so that a prettier one can be created.
Jak's own Light form comes complete with a set of angelic wings. While its powers are mostly based on defense rather than offense, it still enables Jak to wreak havoc, for example by using Flash Freeze and then shooting everything in sight.
Arguably The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where the Twilight realm would have stayed peaceful if not for Ganondorf, a light being. Ganondorf is the big bad of the whole series, and he was one of the three people blessed with a piece of the Triforce. He also fights with a sword of Light in Twilight Princess
Ghirahim in Skyward Sword has a predominantly "white" look, but he's clearly a villain. The whiteness gradually "molts" off, though, revealing the dark demon underneath.
The Light school of magic in Dawn Of Magic deals radiation damage.
Dominions 3 has it's fair share of evil Light nations. Take for example Marignon, a nation led by an inquisition that went too far in their search of heresy that they made a pact with demons and started practicing blood magic to increase the effectiveness of the inquisition. But then, there are no "good" nations in Dominions.
Want to permanently brainwash enemy civilians into zealot loyal to your cause? (Disclaimer: The process is far from perfect, only some will be properly converted, others will be driven irrevocably insane or will simply die.) There's an astral spell for that. Want to curse somebody for the rest of their lives? There's an astral spell for that, too. Want to cause a province-wide epidemic of bad luck? Astral magic. Want to paint a unremovable bullseye on somebody that will make them a target for any passing Eldritch Abomination? Yep, astral magic. Want to send an Eldritch Abomination to wreck havoc on a distant province? You're going to need astral magic. Want to forge an Artifact of Doom? A lot of them require skill in astral magic. Want to taint the source of magic itself, so that only Blood Magic is safe to use? Hope you've got at least six levels in the astral path.
Taki's, Siegfried's, and Cassandra's endings in Soul Calibur IV touch upon the fact that the titular spirit sword can easily be just as dangerous and manipulative as its darker counterpart and precursor, Soul Edge.
Jin Kisaragi of BlazBlue is very handsome, has blonde hair, wears brightly colored clothing, and is celebrated as the Hero of Ikaruga, a war which took place some years before the game. He's also an enormous Jerkass who possesses very few redeeming qualities, is easily angered, and who's Yandere for his brother, Ragna. However, by the end of Continuum Shift, it has appeared that he's pulled a Heel Face Turn, and may be slightly closer to Light is Good.
On the other hand, Jin's girlfriend, Tsubaki Yayoi, uses the Armagus Izayoi, a light-based weapon. Except that rather than simple light manipulation, this is some sort of Evil Weapon that steals light from other people, causing the user to go blind. Tsubaki thus far managed to avert this trope... until she got Mind Raped by Hazama, turning into a Green-Eyed Monster bent to kill Noel for a selfish desire, playing the trope straight.
When we first see Mu-12, she descends from the Cauldron bathed in a bright light, lending her an almost angelic appearance. Also, most of her attacks are light-based to some extent. She's also known as Kusanagi, the sword that slays gods, and is Noel's Superpowered Evil Side.
A major theme in Disgaea, along with Dark is Not Evil. The villain in the first game is an archangel who manipulates humans to start a war with the demons and attempts to ascend into godhood in order to bring about absolute peace by forcing all angels, humans and demons to do as he commands. Despite what they themselves believe, neither demons or angels are absolute good or evil, but both are capable of actions of either morality.
The Elyos in Aion. They look angelic, and tend to be comparatively more gentle than the Asmodians. They're also arrogant, self-absorbed, and just as dedicated to the petty and vindictive war against the Asmodians as the Asmodians are to the war against them.
Despite the first game taking a straight "light is good, and dark is bad" angle, most of the Kingdom Hearts series affirms that light and darkness are simply sources of power. What you do with them is completely up to you, and later games introduce light-wielding villains.
Furcadia's "Light Primes" are generally not nice. For example, Viveravus, the good god of colors and the twilight, literally tore Tallus to itsy bitsy pieces with his own two hands in public, at Mycrofts of all places, regardless of what the game cannon says. Tallus did not even fight back, he just kept trying to defend himself against an unprovoked attack against an angry drunk god. This happened in front of a bar full of horrified mortals. He also threatened to attack said mortals. Also, meeting many of the light primes in person can be a shock most of them are jerks. Aristaya, the goddess of good dreams, is a regal ice queen, M'rill the sun goddess is full of herself and will rob you blind, and Chim will challenge you to games at which you will almost certainly always loose. The rest of the gods can be even worse...
Throughout Legend of Dragoon, historians, priests and various worshippers speak of the Moon Child, a saviour reincarnated once every one hundred and eight years to bring holy bliss and purity to the world: however, for the past eleven thousand years, the Moon Child has been killed by a nightmarish demon known only as "The Black Monster." Well, with all the cliches at work in this game, you'd expect that your ultimate goal in the last disc is to kill the Black Monster and help the latest incarnation of the Moon Child purify the world, right? Wrong. It turns out that the Moon Child is really the misplaced soul of the Virage Embryo, the God of Destruction. And once the two are reunited, the world will indeed be purified... by being completely destroyed.
Legend of Dragoon takes it even further: Each character is associated with one of 7 elements. Your first archer, Shana, turns out to be the Moon Child. What element do the archers represent? Light.
In Knights of the Old Republic II, Atris (morally-questionable Jedi Master) and her handmaidens wear all white.
Seiken Densetsu 3 features 8 elemental God-Beasts of destruction who had to be banished before the world could be created. During the course of the game, they all get revived and it's your job to bury them again. Light, like any other element, has its own God-Beast: Lightgazer, an eternally staring floating eye occupying a ruined "City of Light".
For a Dark is Not Evil counterpart to this, the game also features 8 elemental spirits who helped you out. Shade, the slightly scary-looking spirit of darkness, is just as friendly and helpful as any of the others.
Tenshi of the Touhou series is the Big Bad of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. She's a Celestial, essentially the series' version of an angel. She also caused the various incidents in that game, from causing tons of weather disturbances to threatening to unleash a massive earthquake. Why? Because she found heaven boring and so she decided to endanger all of Gensokyo For the Evulz. Light is a Jerkass.
Reimu, the amazing flying miko and main heroine of the series, is also an unrepentant jerkass at times (see the "Reimu is a bitch" meme), and the newer miko player character, Sanae, has wandered into "she who fights monsters" territory.
Unidentified Fantastic Object had at least two holy characters (Shou Toramaru, avatar of the god Bishamonten, and Byakuren Hijiri, a Bhuddist nun turned magician youkai who was responsible for Shou becoming Bishamonten's avatar) who favor youkai over humans and oppose the heroines.
The Big Bad of the upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Sith Emperor, shows his face for the first time in the game's lead-in webcomic (he'd been nothing but a hologram in previous promotional material) and he's... a serene, clean-shaven young man, almost monk-like, dressed in a brilliant white cloak. Certainly he won't be a problem, right?
EVE Online has the Amarr Empire as one of the main factions in the game. They are a pure and devoutly religious people who protect the galaxy from evil with their beautiful golden spaceships. However, these beautiful spaceships are enormous monstrosities like the 'Apocalypse' and 'Armageddon' battleships with laser cannons that are arguably the most powerful weapons in the game that can turn most opponents into dust in minutes. And how do they protect the galaxy from evil? By conquering as much of it as they can, enslaving other races that oppose them and claiming divine right to do whatever they feel like to anyone they feel like as servants of a higher power. The only thing that stopped them cold was a far more advanced and powerful race which they tried to claim as their property. Since then, they have put their plans for purging the galaxy of evil on hold.
Nova Praetoria by far the brightest, shiniest zone in all of City of Heroes. There's a bright Gold on White Motif, all of the civilians are happy, statues of superheroes dot the landscape, and one of the first missions involves picking flowers. Did I mention that this is the Evil Mirror Universe version of Paragon City?
With the new side switching system, now even the brightest, most light oriented Empathy/Energy Blast Defender can be a Complete Monster!
2 examples from the Daedra in The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. The Aurorans in Knights of the Nine are the servants of Meridia, the Daedra Lord of life and energy; in the game they have allied with one of her servants, Umaril, who seeks the downfall of The Nine Divines. The Golden Saints (Aureal in their own language) are employed as enforcers by Sheogorath the Madgod; while they aren't outright evil, they frown upon mortals as unworthy and are a lot less sympathetic than their counterparts, the Dark Seducers.
In God of War 3, among the gods who oppose Kratos there is Helios, the god of the sun, and Hermes, who has his hair made of light. One could argue that they were corrupted by the evils of Pandora's Box, but the only god who seems to have been significantly affected was Zeus, so it may just be that they are that way.
The little angelic boy named Emilio Michaelov in Psychic Force. At the first glance, he's a timid boy who just had tremendous power of light, but good hearted. Then he gets Brainwashed and then turns into an Ax Crazy psycho working for the bad guys. His good self still struggle to prevail over his evil self, but ultimately fails.
Orochi from The King of Fighters 97 who is a white pants wearing white haired Bishōnen who can call lightning from the sky and blasts his opponents with light as one of his super moves.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn uses this trope for the Apollo Sanctum, which is bathed in light so intense it will kill your party without somebody wearing the correct equipment to provide protection. The light around the Apollo Lens is so fierce that even the Umbra Gear cannot protect the person who has to fire it. Manlytearsensue.
In Guild Wars: Prophecies, the White Mantle (dressed, appropriately, in swishy white and gold getups) initially seem like great guys. They welcome a band of refugees from a formerly-enemy country, give them a nice patch of land, spend lots of time fighting the undead menace that has recently risen, recognize (and promote) talent, even among foreigners, and search the peasantry for those with magical talents so that those peasants can be educated and their talents developed. Turns out, though, that all those talented peasants are being sacrificed to golden, floating, not-really-gods, the undead were attracted by an artifact the White Mantle shouldn't have been messing with in the first place, and other Evil Things were afoot, ultimately caused by the dark god Abaddon, who has been trying to break his prison and destroy the world since the other five gods caged him up about a thousand years ago. Their counterparts the Shining Blade, with an equally bright name but more practical clothing, are pretty straightforward, though.
The fourth generation Pokémon games give us Cyrus, a villain named after the sun (at least in most translations), who is a Knight Templar type. Depending on the version you play, he's either a straight-up Omnicidal Maniac or a good bit more sympathetic (but still evil). However, the PC's, Lucas and Dawn, also have names with light themes, so they largely avert the trope.
The Khalai Protoss of Starcraft certainly qualify. In contrast to the more kind, individualistic Dark Templar, the light-aligned Khalai/High Templar are blind, arrogant religious zealots. The Khalai are also the war-mongers among the Protoss, in contrast to the peaceful Dark Templars. During the course of the series so far, the Khalai Protoss have declared war on the Dark Templar three times, while the Dark Templar have yet to declare war on the Khalai, just wanting to be left alone.
Magical Starsign assigns a starsign to everyone, including antagonists. Most of the Space Police is of Light. And a sizeable chunk of them cooperates with the pirate otters.
The guardian faction from Rift, they're the chosen of the world's gods, live well and faithfully, yet they're genocidally zealotic towards anything that shows a sign of heresy, they're also very, very quick to lose their minds, for example in the Defiant version of Bad Future instance fall of lantern hook, where the world is being assaulted by Maelforge, they completely lose it and start throwing everyone, innocent, guilty, believer and heritic alike into the fires.
Assassin's Creed: Abstergo Industries, the current incarnation of the Templar, favour sterile white surroundings, with Big Bad Dr. Vidic as a Man in White.
The final Bowser level of Super Mario Galaxy actually takes place in orbit around a giant hollow Sun Bowser created and is fought inside of.
In Terraria, you have the hallow biome, which is a polar opposite to The Corruption, with multicolored trees and a permanent rainbow, but infects other biomes exactly the same way, and its inhabitants (which include pixies and unicorns) are just as nasty as their corrupt counterparts.
As well as being a huge example of Lawful Stupid, the paladin Miko Miyazaki from The Order of the Stick is an example of this Trope. The gods of that continent might not actually be much better, but to their credit, they did revoke Miko's paladin-ness after she finally went too far by executing Lord Shojo out of paranoia.
In the print-only book Start of Darkness, according to Redcloak, the gods made the Always Chaotic Evil races such as Goblins, Orcs, Kobolds and such as XP Fodder for their followers to kill and level up, thus getting stronger.
The Ivory Veil of Antiheroes is an organization of paladins and allies that the paladins don't lose their paladin powers by associating with assembled by a trapped evil demigod and used as his personal army.
Dominic Deegans Lord Siegfried "Siggy" von Callan falls neatly into this category. A Royal Knight of the comic's kingdom, and one of the most masculine (and arguably, prettiest) characters in the comic, Siggy also happens to be temperamental, violent, and a raging racist cheerfully capable of hanging innocent, nature-loving Orcs from adolescence.
This is also something of An Aesop in the "Storm Of Souls" Story Arc, which goes out of its way to state that Light, Law, Chaos, and Darkness can all be negative forces if one gains too much of an advantage. The Hero is, therefore, the Champion of Balance. Of course, he still fights the Avatar of Chaos and Darkness because he was the one messing things up at that point, but his predecessor fought against abuses of Light and Law in flashbacks.
In fact, Raf Malkish, the previous Champion of Light and Law, was willing to kill the family members of his followers to create a Acibek, a Golem of Law. The first thing Acibek did when he was activated? Expose Raf's actions in disgust.
In the recent Orc Lands saga, Dominic explains that in Orc religion, Ice represents good and Fire evil. When his companion pointed out that it was an odd thing to base religion on, Dominic pointed out that orcs felt the same way about humans using Light and Dark. What make Light good and Dark evil?
While the Necromancers of the Shintula clan, who channel the black Power of Death, can be quite violent and brutal and are not known for kindness, they are mostly desperate and try to save the land. The Bikta, who channel the white Power of Life, are however Knights Templar of the worst kind.
In this strip of Fans!, after the 23-sider of power is recreated, Tim pretty much spells out this trope for Ally.
The Light Warriors of 8-Bit Theater who despite being (or more accurately passing off as) the Chosen Ones of destiny are a bunch of Villain Protagonists who commit a bunch of atrocities For the Evulz and/or out of sheer incompetence. In fact, they've been straight up stated to be the most evil beings of the world, with Fighter being the exception.
Blanc from Adventurers! had white hair, wore all white, and shot blasts of white energy.
The main character Danny of Chess Piece uses Holy and is a White-Haired Pretty Boy (but didn't start out that way), but is a sadistic, amoral Evil Prince who may or may not have killed his great-grandfather. Ironically, in spite of this, (and his Take Over the World scheme) a short time when he ruled the country while his dad was gone saw him to be a fair ruler. Go figure.
That's because it's purposely kept ambiguous on what he plans to do with the world once he takes over it.
You know how Dr. McNinja recently got a new motorcycle? That motorcycle is actually a polymorphed Unicorn, and ever since he got it, the Doc has been acting more and more erratically and amorally. Coincidence? You decide.
Oh, and it was recently revealed that the previous owner of the unicorn bike had gone on a bloody killing spree. That owner? An elderly antiques dealer who had no memory of even owning the thing. And as soon as he does remember, he's mysteriously murdered. Yeah...
Recently brought to a head when King Radical reveals that Sparklelord is an Evil Overlord and describes him as a combination of Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, atomic bombs and Seabiscut.
More recently revealed is that King Radical was lying through his teeth, the motorcycle is only a little worse than he is. He then rides away on his own magic motorcycle, laughing.
Shadowgirls's main villain, Mother Hydra. In human host she/it has light-based powers, as a Foil to protagonist's shadow-based. It doesn't help that her host is blonde girl who happens to speak in golden speech-bubbles.
Kore from Goblins is a paladin - how he remains a paladin is yet to be revealed - who kills supposedly Always Chaotic Evil races, as well as anyone who associates with them, voluntarily or not. Knight Templar does not even begin to cut it. His magical aura looks like angel wings made of tortured souls.
Specifically, its implied to be the souls he killed, chained to his back.
In Blip, you have several examples. Lucifer and the chibi Angels, the classics. But then you have these guys, who are different from our Harmless Villain chibi angels, and have the whole "For the greater good" crap going on.
Two of Homestuck's characters are associated with light, and they both play with this trope a little. Rose, as the Seer of Light, touches it by proxy, preferring to use dark-based magic (thus playing into Dark is Not Evil), while Vriska, the Thief of Light, is..."ambiguous".
Eridan is the "Prince of Hope", yet has genocidal ambitions. He gets a white wand that lets him shoot blasts of light, and becomes decidedly Not So Harmless by using them to blind his romantic rival and kill his love interest.
You forgot the part where he then goes on to destroy the troll's only hope for rebuilding their civilization naturally just to press Kanaya's berserk button so she's that much easier to kill.
In fact, one of the posters on the MSPA forum has noticed that "the current threats [to the trolls] feature or involve lights or brightness" (Vriska's fairy sparkles, the beams of white light used by Eridan, vampire Kanaya (the troll equivalent of vampires are associated with light rather than darkness), the way Terezi becomes blind and Bec Noir's white-green lightning.) "All pretty grim and chilling for a nocturnal race—very well-constructed".
In Off-White, the white spirit snow leopard is very...malevolently territorial at the very least.
Web Originals
In the Whateley Universe, Golden Girl fits this trope. She's another student at the Super Hero School Whateley Academy. She is strikingly lovely, and when she uses her powers (golden energy blasts, golden force fields, super-strength, flight), she's covered in a golden glow. She actively hates Phase (one of the main characters and good guys) and tries to hurt her every time they spar in aikido.
Not to mention that Dr. Horrible, the supervillain, wears white (at least at first), and Captain Hammer, the Designated Hero, wears black.
In The Salvation War, the angels OF Heaven are portrayed as the masters of light. Of course, this being The Salvation War, the angels are very much not on the side of good.
And just to put the cap on it, the archangel Uriel is eventually killed by a laser beam. In other words, by pure light.
The famous ''Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies'' YouTube pop saga by Jittery Dragon somewhat invokes this trope at its fifth alternative ending, with Pterano, by touching the coldfire stone, becoming an angel; cue the ominous orange light surrounding him, actually a mixture of edited footage from Land Before Time X with footage from Neon Genesis Evangelion. This became a running gag within the series, having him reappearing in the second part of The land before everyone froze to death, stating that he is the cause of the climate change as he came on the Great Valley.
Most of the villains in Red vs. Blue have much lighter armor than the "heroes"—Meta and Wyoming both have white armor, and even Omega and Wash (when he was a sort-of villain, anyway) were gray, not black.
While My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has lots of Light is Good (unless you're one of the fans who considers Celestia evil), there are some hints that light powers =/= goodness. It is implied briefly that the stars helped freeing NightmareMoon, and considering how actual star made beings exist in the forms of Ursa Minor and Major, it isn't a stretch to think at least some are actual entities. Discord also seems to like to teleport by using bright white flashes.
In Teen Titans, Dr. Light certainly counts. He even makes a joke about it while fighting Raven, the Teen Titans' version of Dark is Not Evil. After pasting her with a laser bolt, he asks her, "What, scared of the light?" (Then her Superpowered Evil Side got him, right after mockingly asking him if he was afraid of the dark. He wound up being so for a while. In a later appearance he fought as usual against the Titans until seeing Raven, at which point he instantly surrendered.)
Another example would possibly be Brother Blood, who wears white and yellow and is quite charismatic. Of course, his powers are psychic in nature, but otherwise seems light aligned. Bonus points for Word Of God, which states that he was intended to be a Foil of Slade; while he hides in the shadows, Brother Blood likes being the center in the spotlight.
More literal would be Angel, an angel themed H.I.V.E. student.
One can never forget the Christmas episode of South Park, where Stan helps cute forest critters build a manger for their baby to be born in, only to find out they're satanists and the baby is the Antichrist.
The furry little animals later return in Imaginationland as part of the Evil Imagination army. They prove to be the most evil of the group, all of their actions involve violent rape, urophilia, or some other horrible thing that squicks out all other evil creatures. The fact that they're borne from Cartman's imagination might come as no surprise.
The Knights of Standards and Practises from "It Hits the Fan" are a more literal example, being Knight Templar in nature, although they were clearly the lesser evil. The forces of Heaven, while technically good, sometimes get less pleasant.
Interestingly, Jackie Chan Adventures presents dark (well, "yin") as good, and light as evil. Well, more like nice and jerkass than good and evil. This is in keeping with Chinese symbolism, in which Yin represents coolness, shade and calm, while Yang represents heat, fire (or sunburn) and passion, and neither is entirely good nor entirely evil.
Until he became the hideous Darkstar, though in one episode he managed to return to his old sparkling self for some moments, by draining the life from his enemies.
Superman villain Luminus from the DCAU. The Justice Lords may also qualify.
Again, the Justice Lords are the DCAU version of Wildstorm's Authority.
Really? Does that mean that Justice Lord Batman and Superman were dating?
The Overworlders from Chaotic count for this. Although being contrasted with the evil-looking Underworlders no side is given to be more or less evil then the other.
In the episode "Chaotic Crisis", Maxor, during an attempt to force the Underworlders back to Perim, reveals his intentions to conquer Earth for the Overworlders (of course, it was All Just a Dream).
Daemon, the most powerful villain in ReBoot, is a brightly colored, speaks with a soft French accent, and is generally styled after Joan of Arc. She also wants to unite the entire Net under her order and then destroy it, to create perfect order in oblivion.
In a segment of The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror VI", Homer gets trapped in a 3D dimension. When Reverend Lovejoy asks if he sees a light Homer says yes and the Reverend instructs him to "Head into the light my son." Cue the sound of electricity and Homer screaming in pain.
I n a ThunderCats episode, the titular feline heroes are faced with two aliens: one is a gruff, armored reptilian(?) and the other is a gentle-voiced, delicate golden robot in white robes. The golden robot claims he's being hunted by the reptile (either they're at war or it's a cop chasing a criminal); naturally the opposite is true.
Although good, the Air Tribe from Gormiti The Lords Of Nature Return resort to anything to defend their people, fitting well on the Knight Templar aspect of this trope; this is exploited by the Fire Tribe, which convinces them to do a Heel Face Turn on the backstory of the series, with not very pleasant results. Being modelled after fairies and angels, and with white, yellow/gold and bright blue as their main colouration pattern, they look rather pleasant compared to the other tribes, which have quite grotesque members. Note though that an actual Light tribe exists in the franchise; they just haven't showed up in the series. Since the show is quite Animesque, it wouldn't be surprising if they were Knight Templar-ish as well...
In Cats Don't Dance, Darla Dimple looks like a sweet, cute little girl that wears pink and or other light coloured clothes, she is blonde and has blue eyes, and she even goes as far as playing the role of an angel in a movie. Sure she must be innocent and sweet, right? WRONG!!!!
Stimpy's conscience in The Ren & Stimpy Show. A Jiminy Cricket expy who appears in a burst of light and goody goody sounding music, offering platitudes with a twisted attempt at a warm facial expression and demeanor. He's really a dense, dangerous, domineering jerkwad who himself abuses Ren against his own conscience when he sees Ren pick on Stimpy, and leaves Ren entirely alone otherwise despite having been lent to him to be his temporary conscience (since Ren ordinarily has none).
On Young Justice, the Big Bads (so far, at least) are a council referring to itself as the Light. So far its leaders are not seen directly except as bright silhouettes on computer screens. Superboy, who was created by them, originally wore a white version of Superman's costume before switching to a black one after his Heel Face Turn.
Little Suzy, the usually pretty blonde little girl often spouting cute nonsical words and adorable in almost everyone's eyes on Phineasand Ferb ...is actually a monster. She makes Candace's life a living hell whenever she's around to the point of Candace becoming frightened of her. This also applies to Buford. "Justified" in one episode where she tells Candace that it's just how she acts in order to control her older brother... which doesn't make it any better.
The Big Bad in Batman Beyond's first season, Blight, emits a bright radioactive green glow. This contrasts with Batman, who is dark, and can even turn invisible.
The clione is a type of sea slug that resembles a tiny angel (hence it's other name, "sea angel"). When it wants to eat, however...see for yourself.
Swans. Seriously, they might be ridiculously angelic in appearence, but they're agressive as hell and use their angelic wings to break bones when fighting. Even black swans fit this trope because they still have white wing feathers.
Polar Bears are known to be lethal predators who sometimes even kill for fun.
Josef Mengele, the most horrifying of the nazi doctors, was reffered not only as "Angel of Death", but as "White Angel" as well, due to his white doctor suit and possibly due to Genre Savvy prisoners (see below for the use of white as the colour of death).
Bugzappers from an insect's perspective.
Historically, white has more often than not being the colour of death, contrary to modern perceptions, and it still is in parts of Africa and Asia. Even in Ancient Egypt, where its mythology had Light is Good very strongly, white symbolised the sterile desert sands and the goddess Sekhmet, while black was the colour of the fertile Nile muds.
Any religious extremist who uses white clothes to convey a holy appearence. Osama Bin Laden is a good modern example.
Sunstroke and sunburns can result from staying outside too long. They can be fatal, albeit usually only by making someone feel so ill or in pain they don't want to move.
Consider for a moment: The Sun is a gigantic atom-smashing fireball. It puts off completely absurd amounts of light, heat, and radiation. Prolonged exposure to it will kill you. And that is what made the nuclear bomb the most feared weapon in human history: We brought The Sun to Earth. It's also responsible for providing energy to all life on Earth, so, more of a yin yang thing really.
They've got nothing on supernovae and gamma ray bursts. The latter will fry anything in its path, the former destroys everything in a solar-system sized radius. Supernovae are also an example of Light is Good, since they're the source of the heavier atoms in interstellar clouds, and thus of the material that earthlike planets are made of.
Speaking of atomic power, the "Radiance of a Thousand Suns" is often used when talking about Hiroshima.
A group of people once used religious symbols, fire and very-white clothes. Its name? The KKK.
Black holes count as this andDark is Evil. At the very edge of oblivion, you can find a circle of light orbiting it. Inside the actual black hole, it's full of light being pulled downwards.
The term "black hole" overall is just because light, alongside everything, is sucked into it; both outside and inside of them is filled with brightness being pulled into. There's also the theoretical "white holes", which are essencially the exits of the "black holes", which are throwing out all matter inside. This is good because it provides new matter, but also very bad towards anything nearby.
White phosphorous (P4) was used as a weapon since World War I. It can cause death in three different ways: by burning deep into tissue, by being inhaled as a smoke, and by being ingested. And we won't discuss about specific uses of this substance.
Magnesium and lead flames are white/silver in colour. Besides the fact, that they are, you know, fire, the first are ridiculously explosive and so hot that it is very hard to put them down, while the latter are toxic.
A common side-effect and/or withdrawal symptom of drug use (be it prescription or otherwise) is extreme sensitivity to light.
