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Take note, security officers: You can get these at Wal-Mart.
"It's not as bad as a red [shirt], but a bit worse than a blue [shirt]. Sort of a mauve, but I didn't want to say mauve..."
Dr. Girlfriend: Is there a reason you always use #21 and #24? The Monarch: I know it sounds crazy, but they both have that rare blend of "expendable" and "invulnerable" that makes for a perfect henchman.
Nobody in their right mind wants to be a Red Shirt — it's death sentence even the most Genre Blind can spot a mile away. It's been lampshaded to death and back, but it remains a very real trope with very real danger for the faceless masses under its thrall. So, if you're saddled with this Red Death what can you do? Change the color of your shirt!
In Star Trek, "Blue Shirts" were for science personnel and "Gold Shirts" were command staff; both had a much better life expectancy mostly due to rarely being sent on away team missions, the latter more so. The opening quote is a play on this, noting that the character is less vulnerable than a redshirt, but more so than blue. Chromatic issues aside, the Mauve Shirt is a former Red Shirt who has managed to get enough screen time and lines to make him stand out from the rank and file, but not enough to be part of the main cast. It can also be accomplished by showing pictures of a spouse or baby (Be careful with that, as it's Tempting Fate all by itself), personal quirks, or just plain old giving them a name (whole or in part). The advantage to this is that they're less likely to be killed senselessly, because it would hit harder than some faceless redshirt no one cares about. The downside is that, since their death would now have more emotional impact, they are more likely to be Killed Off For Real to prove how bad the new villain is. If they're successful enough, they just might graduate from Mauve Shirt and become a "Gold Shirt" as part of the supporting cast or even the main cast.
Anyone Can Die shows love to kill off these characters — we're getting to know this guy, he must be important, then boom! He's dead, and the status quo remains safely in power. See also Colonel Makepeace for a character starting as a Mauve Shirt. Compare Ensemble Darkhorse.
If one of these guys manages to make the jump to full-on major character, they've successfully achieved Ascended Extra status (and if they are killed off even after becoming a major character, they've become Sacrificial Lions). For the villain equivalent, see Mook Promotion.
Examples:
Anime
- Barely touched on in Gundam Seed, early on in the series, when the Archangel lands at an Alliance fortress, one soldier is heard mentioning that his mother's illness is getting worse. The fortress gets blown to oblivion.
- Last Exile has Mullin Shetland, a member of the Red Shirt Army who is slowly built up and even gets a Love Interest. He has beat the odds and not died in the incredibly deadly Napoleonic style battles he's been in. He manages to survive 19 battles (the 20th promoting him out of the firing line) and even falls in love with a former enemy soldier when, predictably, he is shot in the final episode's boarding actions, wringing it for so much grief it's almost a Shaggy Dog Story. Subverted because he's seen giving a child (son?) a piggyback ride on Earth during the epilogue of the final episode.
- The plot of Mobile Suit Gundam and many other Universal Century stories are paved with the corpses of Mauve Shirts.
- This is very true, but, to This Troper, one UC character stands out as flamboyantly mauve: Lt. Apolly Bay of the AEUG in Zeta Gundam, who makes it through almost the entire show from his introduction in the beginning of the series without establishing solid personality characteristics. Lt. Apolly is in at least half of the episodes, a named character almost always with a speaking role, yet is complete wallpaper. He's the one who gets to say "It's a kid!" and spoil Mineva Zabi's majestic entrance, yet he has no personality whatsoever. It's hard to imagine a mauver shirt.
- Saikano, being a horrifyingly sadistic Kill Em All series, will often build up characters just to kill them off horribly in the war segments.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann does this with Gimmy and Darry. Where entire waves of the Redshirt Mecha brigades they are a part of are getting blown away around them, invariably they are the only ones who survive... until the last time, when two other Mauve Shirts get blown away saving them.
- While inmates in Dead Leaves are often killed off randomly and rapidly, Chinko Drill actually survived a lot, like repeatedly attacking 777 and just bouncing off. Unfortunately, he's not so lucky when the drill gets stuck in said guard's neck.
- Inoue from Code Geass. Stuck around as one of Zero's nameless lieutenants for the majority of the first season before getting blown up at the hands of an enemy mook's mech. Named by another one of Lelouch's nameless lieutenants right after that.
- Fullmetal Alchemist has the chimeras who follow Greed being like this. All are likable anti-villains with distinct personalities and it's a real punch in the gut that all of them get killed off arguably, it is even more wrenching in the manga, where Bradley kills most of them right in front of Greed and later, "Greedling" kills the only survivor during the period where he didn't have his memories. What Have I Done? follows immediately afterward
- Hayate Gekko from Naruto is a great example, dying soon after his introduction, but not so soon that he couldn't be voted as one of the series' 10 most popular characters at least once. His appearance also fits, as he wears a standard Chunin uniform with barely enough modification to be unique.
Comic Books
- Due to seventy-plus years of history, the number of superheroes and supervillains availible to DC Comics has made it so that every DC superhero or supervillain who does not have an ongoing title is one of these. Being in a Shared Universe really helps this.
- Similarly, everyone in the Marvel Universe with a name and a superpower can be killed, though they do not have as much history as DC. The X-Men are particularly notable because they are so easy to create.
- In the Marvel Adventures: Avengers line, HYDRA Mook Carl has become one of these thanks to a running gag that he causes a lot of accidents that screw up HYDRA and any other group he joins.
Film
- Guy in the Star Trek parody Galaxy Quest bootstrapped himself from Red, to Mauve, to main cast thanks to his paranoia and personality. And because he was lucky enough to be in a show that liked to subvert the classic tropes.
- Amusingly, in the film's finale, he's the one character in the shooting spree before Omega 13 is activated and they enter a Time Warp that didn't get shot.
- Many James Bond movies have male characters on Bond's side who are not important to the series like Felix Leiter but have enough personality and screen time not to be just another Red Shirt. They are invariably killed off by the Big Bad's goons. Examples: Quarrel in Dr. No, Sir Godfrey Tibbett in A View to a Kill, etc.
- This troper feels dirty mentioning Star Wars in a Star Trek inspired trope, but Wedge Antilles fits the bill, since he is the only X-Wing pilot to survive both assaults on the Death Star. He's George Lucas's "dedicated survivor."
- Wedge qualifies for full Ascended Extra status in the Expanded Universe: he and Rogue Squadron star in a series of books, comics, AND video games. He will likely be one of the next long-established characters to be killed to show that the next threat is Even Bigger And Seriouser than all the ones before it, but he's managed not only to last a long time but also to recurr, unlike many characters of his stripe who get phased out or outright forgotten.
- It's doubtful that the Expanded Universe authors will kill off Wedge. By this point he's got enough Plot Armor to wade through anything and he's a big enough draw for the fans that killing him off would be a bad idea. More likely, he's going to get hit with the Heroic BSOD when they kill off Janson, Hobbie, or Tycho.
- More accurate to the Mauve Shirt is Biggs Darklighter, an old friend of Luke's and his wingman in the Battle of Yavin (the one who called Luke "the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim Territories"). In a scene cut from the movie (but in the novelization and some deleted scenes on DVDs, also in the NPR Radio Play) Biggs, who has been training at the Imperial Starfighter Academy, returns to Tatooine briefly and tells Luke he has a friend-of-a-friend who knows where the Rebels are hiding and he is going to join them. He's killed in the battle, but not randomly, and it's a hard hit to Luke.
- Admiral Piett could be considered a Mauve Shirt for the Empire. He survives Vader's wrath in Empire Strikes Back and was popular enough to be written into Return of the Jedi.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise has its Red Coats, the nameless hordes of collateral Navy damage, from which — over the course of three movies — Murtogg and Mullroy defect into the ranks of the pirates, and Lieutenant Groves (recognizable by his increasingly dreamy-eyed admiration for Jack Sparrow) manages to survive the dual-sinking of the Endeavour.
- A number of mauve-wearing cops show up in The Dark Knight, most of them part of Jim Gordon's Major Crimes Unit. Some of them - including Wuertz and Ramirez - are corrupt and work for The Mafia.
Literature
- In the Redwall series, on occasion, certain vermin in the villain's army will be given some screen time and a chance to discuss the situation. These will usually be the only vermin aside from the Big Bad and his lieutenants to get names. Expect them to desert before the final battle.
- Warhammer 40000 novels tend to be even worse than Gundam. Quite often, a chapter will begin with the introduction of a character, give parts of their life story up to that point, then kill them off at the end of the chapter once the plot-relevant part is over.
- Particularly egregious is the novel Dark Apostle. Throughout the book's course, all of the main human characters get killed off brutally. One survives... and gets captured and possessed by a demon.
Live Action TV
- Helo in Battlestar Galactica was a Red Shirt during the miniseries, graduated to mauve in the first season, and joined the main cast after rejoining the fleet thanks in large part to positive fan reaction. He even survives the entire series, which is something for someone who was originally written to die in the pilot.
- Zack, from Babylon 5, more or less starts as a Mauve Shirt, then moves up to main cast around season four.
- Don't forget about David Corwin!
- Jonathan from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Once a nameless nerd who was constantly menaced by monsters, but unusually managed to survive each time. Was eventually given two spotlight episodes and became a recurring character until he was finally killed off in the last season. Of course he didn't make it all the way. This is a Joss Whedon show, after all.
- In Star Trek The Next Generation, Chief O'Brien started off at the beginning of the series as an unnamed CONN Officer (incidentally in a red shirt) and over the course of the series became the Transporter Chief with a wife and eventually a child (and a new gold uniform). This all led to him even becoming a main cast member of the next Star Trek spin-off series, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, earning himself even more screen time (and another child!). A word on color, however: in TNG, the gold shirt was worn by security personnel, and the red was worn by command staff, in a direct inversion of TOS.
- In fact, the original Red Shirts from Star Trek got this treatment at first, usually getting a name and some Backstory before being either horribly killed by the Monster Of The Week or driven to insanity by the Negative Space Wedgie. They stopped doing this around the end of the first season, when they realized they weren't fooling anyone. Yeoman Rand is arguably a special case, since her job description appears to be the two words "get kidnapped," yet she's always safe in her bunk by the end of the episode.
- And Ensign Harry Kim from Star Trek Voyager, who's probably worse off than a Red Shirt, since he dies multiple times, a la Daniel Jackson.
- Also on Star Trek Voyager, Lieutenant Joe Carey, who was tipped to be the new Chief Engineer before B'Elanna stole his thunder in the second episode of the series. He is then absent for the entirety of the series, except for time travel episodes that return to the time of the first or second episodes when you'd expect him to be there. He finally pops up in season 7, four episodes from the end of the series, and is killed off by the episode's villain in an attempt to show that's he's Dead Serious.
- In season 4, DS9 introduced Enrique Muniz, who had a strong aura of Red Shirt about him, being a previously unknown crew member in a highly dangerous situation. He survived, and recurred in a couple more episodes until finally being killed off early in season 5. I found myself actually unsure throughout the episode whether his severe wound would kill him before he could receive proper medical attention.
- Almost every single Tau'ri who captains an Earth-built starship on StarGate and related shows. They're all given names and a little bit of backstory/personality, but only one survived more than a few episodes (Pendergast). One, a long-running secondary character, was killed the very episode he took command of his vessel.
- Steven Caldwell, captain of the Daedalus in Stargate Atlantis also seems to be bucking the trend, still being alive and kicking after the better part of three seasons and numerous appearance as well as more ship-to-ship combat and encounters with freaky alien technology then most of the rest of the SGC fleet combined (Hell, he was even host of a Goa'uld at one point, which is usually a death sentence, or at least a Put On A Bus sentence), but never quite graduating into the ranks of the main cast.
- Don't forget Major Lorne. He has been around for forever and is still hanging on.
- Chuck the Gate Tech might also qualify for this. His predecessor was also a Mauve Shirt who was killed off for dramatic effect in the first season finale.
- Braca from Farscape at first appeared to be just another mook, until the first season finale when Big Bad Scorpius tells him "I believe your star is on the rise," a signal to the viewers that he actually is going to be important and they should pay attention to him. He ends up surviving the whole show, along with his boss.
- Braca was originally slated to get killed off but managed to survive due to David Franklin’s incredible ability to emote. Braca also managed to go from red-shirt to having a first name and command of his own ship, so kudos that mook.
- Doctor Who subverts this with Private Ross Jenkins. He gets a name, a bit of a personality in "The Sontaran Strategem". He is killed in the second part, "The Poison Sky". He managed to get a rather large following on The Doctor Who Forum and a fan club there: Private Ross Jenkins' Widows. It helped he was one of that story's Good Looking Privates. The Doctor even shouts about his death angrily, which is more than some of his old companions got when they left the show alive.
- In the new series of Doctor Who, nearly any person who is given a name and a bit of sympathy for the Doctor and his companions dies. It gets to be a running joke with this troper and his friends.
- Star Trek, in addition to being the Trope Namer for the Red Shirt concept, also gave us what could be considered the original Mauve Shirt in the form of Montgomery "Scotty" Scott. His shirt is just as red as the random expendable nobodies, but he survives the entire series plus all six movies, and even goes on to guest star in a The Next Generation episode a century after the end of The Original Series.
- He did die once. He got better.
- Well, it is a side-effect of the engineering personnel having red shirts just like the security personnel. What it comes down to is that it was the security personnel who were always getting killed because they went on the away teams as protection. Their shirts just so happened to be red. Scotty was chief of engineering rather than security, so he had fewer opportunities to die. He was also part of the main cast. If anything, he's an example of why the concept of Red Shirt is more about a set of characters who always get killed off than the color of their shirts. So Scotty obviously isn't part of the Red Shirt Army and since he's pretty much part of the main cast, he's arguably more gold shirt than mauve.
- Lost has done this not once, but several times, always with annoying people who often have incredibly ironic deaths:
- In season 1, Leslie Arzt appears as a (seemingly) knowledgable science teacher who accompanies the Big Damn Heroes to the Black Rock to help them properly handle the dynamite. Of course, as Arzt is in the middle of a lecture about dynamite safety, the stick he's holding explodes.
- In season 5, Neil "Frogurt" is introduced as an irritating, neurotic man who is literally wearing a red shirt and is constantly complaining about the others' inability to make fire. Cue a fire arrow straight through his chest.
- Additionally, a random DHARMA Initiative security drone named Phil starts making frequent appearances in the latter half of season 5. While he hasn't died yet, his increasingly annoying behavior—culminating with punching Juliet and Sawyer's vow to kill him in the penultimate episode of the season—seems to indicate that he will be killed in the cataclysmic finale.
- Well, Sawyer didn't kill him. But it seems magnetized steel girders did.
- Detective Ronnie Gardocki of The Shield had no dialogue in the series pilot, and the actor who portrays him went uncredited. He appeared in about half of the episodes in the first season, and was a "recurring character" up through season four. According to That Other Wiki, fans originally suspected he would become a redshirt, and the series writers even toyed with this idea in season 2. However, he survived and graduated to a regular cast member in the last three seasons, becoming increasingly important as the series went on.
Video Games
- Fire Emblem may be the supreme overlord of this trope, with nearly every character in the game being one, due to the fact that the only characters that cannot be Killed Off For Real are the Lords. The greatest example? The almighty 3-13 archer of course.
- In the real-time strategy game Myth: The Fallen Lords, all of the player's units could be considered mauve shirts, since the game tries to get you emotionally attached to them by giving the otherwise-identical units unique names and calling out "Casualty" in a grim voice whenever one of them dies.
- Same thing for Cannon Fodder, of course.
- There's also the fact that they gain experience with each kill, and that when they die they aren't replaced until the beginning of the next level.
- Super Robot Wars Original Generation adds a number of Mauve Shirts to fill out the Heroes' roster. So far, they've proven surprisingly durable, and even include a few Badass Normals (which, for a mecha show, means they pilot the grunt suits).
- In most SRW games, certain series allow you to switch pilots freely within their own series, so some of the lesser characters get a chance to shine (putting Boss into a spare Mazinger Z when Kouji gets his Mazinkaiser is popular). In OG, this applies to every character and every mecha, so if you like a side character better than a "main" one using an appropriate robot, go for it. Just be aware that certain chapters will assert mecha ownership, especially if it's an ATX or SRX mecha in question.
- In Gears of War, Carmine (whose name is a shade of Red) was a faceless Redshirt squadmember (the only man on the team to wear a helmet and mask) who dies after the first couple of levels to show that the situation is serious (he's 1 of only 2 characters in the entire game to perish). Due to being "a weird fan favorite", he was scheduled to return in Gears of War 2, somehow. It turned out to be his brother, Ben Carmine, the next of the 4 Carmine brothers. With the extra screen time he received compared to his brother he was pretty much a true Mauve shirt.
- "Well... 3, now." And then there were two.
- Half Life 2: Episode 2 had Griggs and Sheckley, two resistance members down in the Antlion Tunnels. While resistance members in the game are usually disposable redshirts, these two seem programmed to always manage to survive the frantic firefights they take part in, mainly because Valve gave them such wacky, dinstinctive personalities.
- Portal has the heartbreaking Weighted Companion Cube.
- Jagged Alliance is a fantastic example of this. Even though you can replace the occasional dead merc with relative ease (and in fact, the penalties for getting them killed are often lighter than those for firing them), they're all given names, personalities, and back-stories, making you feel like scum when they die. (Note however that other would-be contractors may notice a trend...)
- Except for Reuben, the remorseless mass-murderer. Die, bastard!
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes features several Galactic Federation troopers. While they're all dead on arrival, scanning their corpses reveals their logs, a portion of their character, and their lives and interactions before their deaths—there's the one who's gone crazy, there's the cynical snarker, there's the Straw Feminist type who idolizes Samus, etc.
- Metal Gear Solid 3 has Ivan Raidenovich Raikov. His design is a Discontinuity Nod, his name is a cruel pun, and his roles are that of a Morality Pet to the Big Bad, and of a hapless victim for the player to take out their frustrations with the series' Scrappy upon. Due to becoming a bit of a favourite in the fanbase for a few complicated reasons, he made a cameo in Portable Ops, despite the fact that he can be killed in the original without causing a TIME PARADOX, where he got a little scene with some characterisation (vain, aggressive, fierce, and a little sociopathic, but mostly amiable).
- Jonathan in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops exists for three reasons. The first one is to provide a sympathetic villainous point of view, so you understand why the Russian soldiers have decided to hook up with a crazy American anarchist with a Compelling Voice. The second reason is to be your first non-Snake character, so you can learn how the soldier system works, and he gives He Knows About Timed Hits tutorials to you. The third reason is to take a bullet intended for Big Boss during Gene's Moral Event Horizon, and provide a Player Punch. For the last reason, he and Snake cannot suffer permadeath in online play.
- Tales Of Symphonia has lots of named NPCs with just enough background and emotional value, but the one that sticks out to this troper is Botta, the second in command of the Renegades. He starts out one of the first villain characters you see, interestingly, but the plot twists around so far that when he makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save the party, many players find it to be a genuine Tear Jerker.
- Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has your second wingman PJ; after Pixy goes AWOL, he goes from Crow Team Butt Monkey to the second Galm 2, continuing to retain his Gameplay Immortality and now actually able to (very infrequently) help you. Unfortunately, his Genre Blindness catches up to him when immediately after the Avalon attack he declares that he's going to propose to his girlfriend back at the base... "I even bought flowers!" Then you see a light in the distance, headed your way...
Webcomics
- Wonderfully used in this
 Order Of The Stick comic, where two soldiers save themselves from dying as part of the city's Redshirt Army by saying their names. One of them even keeps his last name in reserve to potentially save himself from another life-threatening situation. In fact, the two of them later become major supporting characters.
- Also, in the same battle, the remaining members of the Sapphire Guard become Mauve Shirts, particularly Lien and O-Chul, while the rest are wiped out.
- Some people on the Giant's forums have attempted to make their own: That Guy with a Halberd.
- As the body count rises during the siege of Gobwin Knob in Erfworld, Dora, and then Webinar are quickly added to the list.
- Misty, the Lookamancer who helped Parson with one of his plans, and Jaclyn, the only named Archon, both end up croaked.
- Nick and Shep in Schlock Mercenary are lampshaded as Red Shirts by the narrator in their first appearance, and quickly prove the narrator wrong, followed by becoming Those Two Guys in the mercenary unit. Shep even lasts to reach a successful retirement.
- Bert from Sluggy Freelance was originally a one-off gag character, but was given a larger role during the "KITTEN" storyline. Of the dozen plus supporting characters in that Story Arc, he was one of only four to survive. He went on to become a recurring character ... until "KITTEN II" finished what the original couldn't. He did get to come back as a ghost, though.
- Girl Genius offers Sergeant Scorp of the Baron's Vespiary Squad, a Cool Old Guy in every sense of the term and possibly the least mad character in the entire series.
Western Animation
- The two henchmen, Number 21 and Number 24, in The Venture Brothers. While they don't have names, just numbers, they have quirks, personalities, and a lifetime supply of Genre Savvy, making them still henchmen, but not really killable. All of the other henchmen usually are killed in droves, often at the hands of Brock Sampson.
- 21's name is Gary. Unfortunately for 24, this may have saved his friend from death.
- Further lampshaded by number 21 who seems partially aware of his own status as a mauve shirt.
#21: I can't believe we didn't get blown up. Dude, we're like those guys on TV that never get shot. We are like main characters. #24: Don't jinx it.
- Oh cruel hand of irony, dark goddess of seatbelts, what hast thou wrought?
- Then they spend an entire episode completely aware of being entirely unkillable, as oppose to Henchman #1, who they're convinced is going to die despite being much more competent.
Other
- Slightly subverted in Evil Dead The Musical with Ed The Bit Part Demon.
Ed: I'm that guy you see in every horror flick/You probably don't remember me, I come and go too quick
Linda (a main character): We've listened to you talk for the past two minutes! You said a whole lot just now, just you! Aw, you're not a bit part demon any more, you're a lead player! A star!
Ed: You're right! Now I see that this thread has been disrupted/I've said more than five words without being inturrupted/I'm a bit part no more, my character's had a swing/Now it's time for this demon to sing, sing, singgggggggggggg, I
*gunshot*
Ash: Now you'll have a bit part, in hell!
Real Life
- Sanada Yukimura. He starts out as a normal soldier, pretty much someone you'd expect to die sooner. But he proves to be tougher than expected, surviving lots and lots of dangerous battles, and eventually at the end of the Siege of Osaka, performs a Foe Tossing Charge, killing many soldiers with just a few helpers but being heavily wounded and finally declaring to supposedly a random mook... "I am Sanada Yukimura, no doubt an adversary quite worthy of yourselves, but I am too tired to fight any longer. Go on, take my head as your trophy." It's no wonder that due to his record and his awesome charge, Ieyasu honors him as Japan's Number One Soldier.
- According to one source, he performed the foe-tossing charge many times, getting pushed back at the last possible second, almost getting to Ieyasu Tokugawa's face.
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