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Lucien: What's happened to my hair?
Audric: You've gotten a little streak from the shock of the Dark Gift. Not unusual. The shock's greater for some than others ... why, I used to be a brunet! Imagine! And as for Ginevra, she used to be a man!!
Let's say you're a typical protagonist, and you've stumbled upon a Mac Guffin or had some kind of traumatic, scarring experience. Naturally, it changes you. Especially your hair. That gray streak smack in the middle? That's not stress. You've just been Locked Into Strangeness by coming into contact with the plot. *
Contrast Expository Hairstyle Change, which doesn't happen in real time. Compare Skunk Stripe and Multicolored Hair, which are common results.
Not related to Mode Lock or Shape Shifting in general. Usually.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The first time Guts uses the Berserker's Armor in Berserk, he gets a white streak in his hair.
- At one point in the Akira manga, Tetsuo's hair turns completely grey as the result of a major psychic revelation.
- In Mermaid Saga, Towa Kannagi's hair turns completely white overnight when she drinks mermaid's blood.
- In the manga version of Chrono Crusade, Aion's hair turned completely white (on top of his skin becoming darker, for whatever reason) when he saw forbidden knowledge during his coming-of-age ceremony, including the fact that the demon's Hive Queen was originally a human woman pregnant with twins—him and Chrono. It's implied his hair and skin color was identical to Chrono's before the change.
- Half the hair on Jio's head from 666 Satan is white, to go along with his Boat Lights eyes. Being possessed by Satan does wonders for his personal appearance.
- Half of Dr. Black Jack's hair started coming in white after a land mine pretty much blasted his head apart when he was a child.
- Enishi Yukishiro's hair in Rurouni Kenshin turned almost white after he witnesses his beloved older sister Tomoe's death.
- Read Or Die, the TV series: in the final episode, Joker's hair turns entirely white after being put in direct contact with the mind of Mr. Gentleman. He also goes more or less catatonic.
- Dragon Ball Z's Super Saiyans become blondes as part of their Battle Aura. The change is only temporary, however.
- In Mushishi, coming into contact with certain mushi alters your appearance. This is what happened to Ginko, and previously his mentor, Nui.
- In Soul Eater, Death the Kid's three horizontal hair stripes, which normally only cover half of his head, begin to stretch around to the other side of his head and connect one at a time when he receives a major power up. In the manga, this happens because he had been carrying a powerful Macguffin called BREW which unlocks his true potential. In the anime, it happens for no explained reason at all (and BREW is instead used to turn a city into a giant mech which is piloted by the Grim Reaper). This is only temporary, however.
- Argento Soma sees protagonist Takuto developing one heck of an epic streak after his girlfriend and her mentor are flattened by the wreckage of a laboratory demolished by an...escaping alien named Frank. No, really.
- Naruto uses this with Pain/Nagato, whose hair turns from black to white after he resurrects everyone he killed in Konoha. Notably, he dies right after.
- In D.Gray-Man, Allen's white hair is the result of a curse.
- In Bleach, Junshiro "Captain Tuberculosis" Ukitake went white in the course of one night when he was diagnosed with his Incurable Cough Of Death.
Comic Books
- The titular XIII has a grey streak on his left temple where a bullet scratched him pre-amnesia.
- In DCU supervillain Prometheus' backstory, his hair went white when his parents were gunned down in front of him by the cops.
- In the Belgian series Papyrus, the titular hero got once his raven-black hair turn white after being frightened to death by a venomous snake crawling over him.
- Astro City's Samaritan has his hair turn blue after the Time Travel incident that gives him his powers. He can change it to white at will, but apparently not back to its original black.
- In The Corinthian: Death In Venice, Amedeo's hair turns abruptly white when his body is possessed by the Corinthian. His already mentally-disturbed lover, Coco (or Pestilence, or Columbina), alludes to this trope, saying she's willing to bet it didn't happen out of fear...
- In the original run of the Legion Of Superheroes, the second Invisible Kid ended up with a white streak in his hair after coming face-to-face with an evil Physical God.
- The Postboot incarnation of Shrinking Violet gained a lock of green hair in the aftermath of the "Emerald Vi" incident.
Fanfiction
Films
- In Young Frankenstein, Elizabeth's hair gets a white streak after she's been abducted by the monster. This is mostly so she can have the Bride of Frankenstein hairdo later, because it's funnier that way.
- Of course, then there's the Bride herself...
- This happened to the Mom in Poltergeist after she rescued her little daughter from that ghost world — two white streaks in hair, one at each temple.
- Rogue gets her white streak after the end of the first X-men movie.
- This eventually happens to the protagonist in the Nightmare On Elm Street series.
- The same Green Rocks that turn Susan Murphy into a 49-foot-11 giantess in Monsters Vs Aliens also bleach her auburn hair white.
- Reed Richards in the 2005 Fantastic Four movie gets his comic counterpart's grey temples after being exposed to the cosmic radiation that gives the titular four their powers.
- Bruce Campbell gets a grey streak over his temple at the end of Evil Dead 2.
- Metropolis: Joh Fredersen is dark-haired for most of the film, but goes totally gray while watching his son and Rotwang fight it out on top of the cathedral.
Literature
- Jagged Fel in the Star Wars Expanded Universe developed a white lock and scar from some head trauma he suffered. His descendants exhibit the same hair and scarring, and the surrounding Fanon suggests it's a family tradition.
- In Stephen King's The Stand, Nadine starts with black hair, gains a white stripe, then ends up all-white as a result of her personal proximity to Randall Flagg.
- Also in his short story The Jaunt, a character who stays awake during the jaunt ends up white-haired and insane, because Hyperspace Is A Scary Place.
- And then there's Pet Sematary, where the protagonist's hair turning white is the last sign that he's snapped completely.
- In his short story The Mangler, the protagonist's hair also turns white by the end.
- In David Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean series, this is the reason for Polgara's white lock. She got it when her father, the sorcerer Belgarath, first laid his hand upon her after she was born. It resists cutting and dyeing, which has led to some interesting dilemmas when they've been trying to hide from their enemies.
- Uncle Andrew, the Magician in C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew tells his nephew Digory Kirke that his hair turned white as a result of the bizarre magical experiments performed in order to create the rings.
- In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams, Simon gains a scar and white streak in his hair after being burned by dragon's blood. From then on he's often referred to as Simon Snowlock.
- Several of Kay Hooper's characters in her psychic series end up with a white streak going through their hair.
- Jonathan Harker's hair turns completely white after his traumatic experience in Dracula's castle, additional trauma added by waking up to his wife screaming and covered in blood after just having been neck-raped by the Count. In their bed. While he was still in it. (Some people, just heavy sleepers...)
- Similarly, Raistlin in Dragonlance had his hair turned white by the Test of High Sorcery, among the other bizarre changes it wrought to his appearance.
- In Les Miserables, during the trial of "Jean Valjean", as Monsieur Madeleine sits in the audience, his hair turns from graying to snow-white while he awaits the moment to reveal that — super awful spoiler here — HE is Jean Valjean!
- Susan Sto Helit, adoptive grandaughter of Death, is slightly more than human because of the odd way heredity works on the Disc. Signifying this, her hair is pure white with a single black streak running through it.
- Richard Henry Benson's hair (and skin!) turned pure white after the loss of his wife and child, and he suffered from paralyzed facial muscles as well, which led him to become the heroic Avenger in the Pulp Magazine series of that name.
- Extreme example: the "old man" in A Descent Into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe.
- Erast Fandorin's temples become grey after the traumatic end of the first book in his series.
- This happens to the Judge himself in the Judge Dee novel The Chinese Nail Murders. At the end of the novel, which has been filled with tragic events and a crisis which threatens his career, he is congratulated by an Imperial official who refers to him as an old man. Dee is about to take offense, being only in his 40s, but then sees his reflection and realizes he has gone completely gray.
Live Action TV
- According to his Back Story, MST 3 K's Dr. Clayton Forrester gained a white streak in his hair (and his mustache) after being struck by lightning.
- In an episode of The Avengers showing Tara King's backstory, she was originally white-haired, until she saw something so horrifying that it turned her hair black. .
Theater
- The stage version of Sweeney Todd has this happening to Toby as a result of his Break The Cutie ordeal, which turns his hair completely white by the time he finally kills the title character.
- The film version gives Todd himself a streak of white from the trauma of his incarceration.
Video Games
- According to the official BlazBlue Setting Material Collection, the attack that killed Ragna's sister, burned down the orphanage his family lived in, and cost Ragna one of his arms is also responsible for turning his blond hair permanently white.
- Itsuki from Fatal Frame 2 has completely white hair as a result of the shock of having to kill his twin brother for the Crimson Sacrifice Ritual.
Web Comics
- The anthropomorphic raccoon hero of Tales Of The Questor has a white cow-lick where he was touched by, essentially, God.
- Word Of God, it's not God, it's a mythic entity—- believed by some to be equivalent to an angel.
- Can happen to vampires in the webcomic Bite Me! Lucien gets a white streak in his hair, while Audric's hair is completely white. Ginevra also gained a streak, though contrary to Audric's claim, she was always female.
- This troper uses a similar idea- one of her vampire characters who was blond in life now has heavy white streaking in his hair.
Western Animation
- Juniper Lee developed a fuchsia one of these upon becoming the Te Xuan Ze. Her grandmother's streak turned gray upon the transfer of power.
- The streak may actually be white (she just dyes it fuchsia), though past Te Xuan Zes seen in flashback have the same fuchsia streak. (Most notably a male one from what's probably the middle ages, before they were likely to have that kind of hair dye.)
- In Transformers Animated, it's been revealed that this is how Isaac Sumdac got the grey/white streak in his otherwise black hair. He found a protoform, and when he touched it, it did... something to him while scanning his DNA, resulting in said hair.
- In Gargoyles, gangster Tony Dracon has a Skunk Stripe in his hair after his first appearance in "Deadly Force"; Word Of God says that the in-universe rationale for this is because Dracon's first encounter with the gargoyles scared him so badly.
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