Phenotype Stereotype

Don't strain yourself.

In real life, human appearances tend to be very varied even amongst the same ethnic groups. In fiction, you are going to be very lucky if you see that. An individual who is from one ethnicity will display all the stereotypical features of said ethnicity.

Now, Tropes Are Tools. Many ethnicities and nationalities ^note These are NOT the same. do have a look that is typical for them and if used properly, they can be a good shorthand for saying "this person is X." The trouble begins when all persons from that place/race/ethnicity are shown in that way. It reaches quite absurd levels when real-life persons who do/did not conform to the "standard" phenotype are portrayed as if they did. The real life Ramses II had red hair, but he has rarely been portrayed that way in Hollywood, for instance (though Courage the Cowardly Dog of all things did give him red hair).

Japanese media supposedly have a tendency to assume that all white people that show up in their country are from the United States (statistically, most aren't), and by extension often assume that all non-Japanese travelers or immigrants with palefaces are American. And, in Japan, the stereotype of someone from the U.S. is usually a blond and blue-eyed person. Because of this, if foreign characters in anime are white, in most cases they will be blond, blue-eyed and tall Americans unless there's a plot reason for them to be from another country or have another look. This is especially common in anime that use non-traditional Hair Colors and eye colors; any other combination is fair game, but if you see blond with blue on a non-main character, that'll be the foreigner. By contrast, suggesting the stereotype of blond, blue-eyed, white and tall defines the average American to an American will come across as ignorant as best, or offensive at worst, given the diversity of the New World. However, New Worlders assume that every European by contrast fit that exact trope perfectly to distinguish their malleable appearance with the supposedly homogenous one from Europe.

Here are some common examples in media that tend to be universal stereotypes:

• Irish characters are very likely to have red hair. Most Irish are actually brown-haired or blonde-haired; red is simply proportionally more common among the Irish than other Europeans (except the Scots). Green eyes are also common among Irish characters, yet most Irish people in real life have other eye colors.
• Likewise, Scottish characters are often depicted as redheaded, despite Scottish people likewise being mostly blonde or dark-haired in reality.
• In a similar vein, if a character is black, he or she is most likely to be from the United States, rather than from an African country or somewhere else. The character may be drawn with poofy hair, if not an afro, as hair texture is an otherwise tricky detail in low-budget animation.
• Also Germans, or simply characters Putting on the Reich, are most often portrayed as overwhelmingly blonde, and often very light. In anime, many of them also sport silver-colored hair, perhaps to emphasize the Ice Queen & Germanic Depressives tropes. In reality, Germans are mostly browns and dark blondes, with lighter blondes rarer, and white blond practically nonexistent. The Dutch often have a similar stereotype. Alternately, Germans may be given red hair, a trait ascribed to them as far back as ancient Roman literature.
• English characters will be presented as having honey blonde or mousey hair (often with very pale skin in period settings), though some English males may be presented with glossy black hair combined with a pale skin tone and blue eyes for the Tall, Dark, and Handsome trope. English women, especially in Asian works, tend to be blondes. As English people of white British heritage typically run the full gamut of possible hair colors from lightest blonde ^note  historically associated with Scandinavian and Saxon heritage to deepest raven ^note  historically associated with Norman French and Welsh/Brythonic heritage, this is often pretty much Truth in Television. Also, if a redhead isn't explicitly Scottish or Irish, then they'll almost certainly be English. Welsh characters tend to be on the darker end of the spectrum, hair colour wise, and very pale.
• Northern Europeans (Danes, Finns, Norwegians, Swedes) have blond hair and blue eyes. Unlike others in this list, this is Truth in Television. The region surrounding the Gulf of Bothnia was probably the origin of the blond hair mutation, so it's no surprise that they are statistically some of the blondest people in the world. In certain parts of Finland and Sweden, not having blond hair is a sight to behold. That said, pop culture tends to exaggerate this.
• Eastern European/Slavic, particularly Russian, characters typically have dark hair in Western depictions, especially to contrast them from Germanic peoples, yet in Japanese media, their hair will range from blond to white. In both, they'll be pale with gray or icy blue eyes. In real life, Slavs seem to have an affinity for light hair, since their ancestral homeland is close to the origin of the mutation (see above). Russians, due to being even more of a melting pot than the English above^note Until the Slavic migration, their land was inhabited by the Germanic Goths and Iranian Sarmatians, actually run the full gamut of the hair, eyes and skin colors possible for a Caucasian race too, from the palest ashen-blond to the darkest raven, and skin from the lightest to so swarthy they could be mistaken for the (stereotypical) Middle Easterner.^note For the record, when the historical Eastern Slavs first emerged in the 7th century, they were mostly dirty-to-straw blondes with green, blue or hazel eyes.
• People from Africa will usually have dark skin, curly black hair, brown eyes, and flat noses. Africa in real life is a diverse continent with varying skin colors and physical appearances ranging from white Afrikaners to North African Arabs and Imazighen^note also known as "Berbers," although many Imazighen consider the term to be derogatory to black-skinned Pygmies.
• Latin American people are generally all given a tan skin color and black or dark brown hair. Real-life Latin America is very much a melting pot, with European, Black, and indigenous ancestry abounding due to the long history of miscegenation among the trio. Some countries lean more on one part than the others: Colombians are much more racially mixed than Argentines, who are primarily of Southern European descent (i.e. Spaniards and Italians).
• People from Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Greece, etc) are also overly portrayed as tan and having dark hair. With Greece, it's Truth in Television (blond-haired Greeks are extremely rare. Their gene pool is quite similar to neighboring Turkey, despite mutual hatred), for the others it's debatable. Parts of Northern Italy and Spain experience more cases of blondism than the rest of their respective countries, though compared to Northern or even Central Europe it is minuscule. As noted above, blond hair is a Slavic trait, and Southern Slavs (Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, etc.), though still rare, are more likely to have it than Greeks or Italians.
• The Middle East is an incredibly diverse area (thanks somewhat to being an important trading area throughout history), with skin color ranging from super-pale to super-brown, and even some native inhabitants that have blue eyes or blonde hair and sometimes even red if they have ancestors from the Caucasus. In fiction, expect Middle Easterners (typically Arabs) to always have big noses, curly dark hair, brown skin, and usually a turban. For Jews, most will have black or brunette hair, pale-ish skin, and other physical traits similar to Arabs and Europeans, given that they have inter-mixed with those groups over the years.
• South Asians are often portrayed as having dark brown skin and black hair, often with accompanying facial hair if they are male. In real life, they run the gamut of skin color from "whiter than Irish" — see Freddie Mercury and Sir Ben Kingsley — to blue-black.

Someone who is foreign, But Not Too Foreign will often look totally non-Japanese, to distinguish him or her from the rest of the cast.

Notice that this does happen in real life, the assumption usually being how close that person looks to someone you'd already be familiar with. In the UK, those who have brown skin are assumed to be Indian, Pakistani or generally 'Asian' (unlike the US, in the UK it's usually used to refer to people from the Indian subcontinent). Some Americans consider all dark-skinned people "African-American" without asking — including recent immigrants (ranging from Austronesians to Antilleans and French-born West Africans), people who hail from the US but personally identify otherwise, and people who have never set foot in the United States — which tends to cause either resentment, deep puzzlement or, occasionally, outright hilarity. Additionally, someone who either is or who could be mistaken for Hispanic will often be believed to come from whichever Latin American group (Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, etc.) is the most common in that region of the US. And let's not forget the assumption that all Asians are from Japan or China.

Frequently applied to the Occidental Otaku. When played for sex appeal, this trope results in Foreign Fanservice. Compare Mistaken Nationality, which often occurs when phenotype prejudices clash with the reality of the situation. In works with People of Hair Color, stereotypical eye colors are often used as well.

Compare Facial Profiling.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The personifications of America, France, and Britain in Afganisu-tan all have blue eyes. Meriken and Britain have blond hair, while France has light red.
• Tina from Ai Yori Aoshi. Although she's usually 'American'-like in promotions and merchandise due to her appearance, she was born in Japan and simply travels a lot, which at least provides an excuse for her horrible English.
• Among the Martians in Aldnoah.Zero, who are descendants of Earth-living humans and all have 'Europeanish' sounding names, the hair color almost seems to be a class thing. Most of the titled nobility, starting from the Royal family (though Lemrina inexplicably has lavender hair) are blonds, with the most notable exception of Count Saazbaum, the series' Big Bad, whose hair is an entirely nondescript brown, and the redhead Countess Femieanne. The commoners and lower nobility, on the other hand, have predominantly darker hair, like the black-haired Saazbaum's deceased fiancee, Viscountess Orlane, and Slaine's aide Harklight. For that matter, Slaine himself (whose surname is Troyard) comes from Earth and is a blond, while Inaho, The Protagonist, and his foil, is a Japanese boy with dark brown hair.
• Either played straight or possibly slightly parodied in Angel Densetsu. Kitano's neighbors, introduced later in the manga, are an American guy married to a Japanese woman and their children. The guy is of course blond and Aryan looking and a "stupid gaijin" to boot. Their children are also blond and completely un-Japanese in appearance and it's even lampshaded by Ikuno, who is trying to tell him not to judge by appearances (not to be afraid of Kitano, naturally), notes that anyone looking at him wouldn't expect that he only speaks Japanese.
• In Anohana The Flower We Saw That Day, Menma and her Russian mother Irene have pale gray hair and icy blue eyes, in contrast to the rest of the Japanese-looking cast.^note Anaru has red hair, but she's a Gyaru Girl who probably dyes it.
• Irina Jelavic in Assassination Classroom is a tall Serbian woman with blond hair, pale skin and blue eyes, so as an assassin it's fitting that she's got the Sensual Slavs game down for her Femme Fatale approach.
• Azumanga Daioh both uses and subverts this trope. After teasing Kagura for her failed attempt to talk to a visiting foreigner, Yukari attempts to show off her English skills by bothering another similarly 'obvious'-looking anglophone... then runs away when she finds out he's German.
• Max from the original Beyblade is half-American. Both him and his mom, Judy, are blue-eyed blonds and Max has freckles. As far as Max's concerned he's invoking the trope, as he actually admits he dyes his hair.
• Tina Sprout from Black Bullet plays this trope straight with her blonde hair, blue eyes appearance of an American, but averts this with her personality being one of the most kind-hearted characters in the series who doesn't talk much and happens to be very smart.
• Dino from Blend-S is born in Italy, but still has blond hair and blue eyes (which still fits with the "foreigners are blond" stereotype). Maika even comments on it during her first run-in with him, but strangely never questions the blond, busty, blue-eyed (but Japanese) Kaho.
• Bokutachi Otokonoko revolves around two protagonists, one of them being only half Japanese and having blond hair.
• In Brave10, amongst all the Japanese characters is Ana, a blonde-haired blue-eyed Russian.
• As expected of Kaoru Mori, whose other series take place in England, this is heavily subverted in A Bride's Story: at first the only British character is Henry Smith, who is clearly blond. Later progression of the story has Henry Smith and his elder brother be the only Englishmen seen who are blonde (their eye colour is light but otherwise unconfirmed — Henry's is probably blue). Both the Englishwoman in chapter 10 and Mr. Smith's friend, Mr. Hawking, have toned hair (so red or brown), not to mention the other members of the Smith family tending to be darker-haired. Additionally, since his features are also not uncommon to Slavs, many locals assume that Mr. Smith is Russian for this reason (with a focus on his fair skin); Ali uses a similar assumption to make locals think his boss is Tartar instead.
• In Burn The Witch (2018), both the main protagonists fall into this: British Ninny is blonde and green-eyed, while half-Japanese Noel is black-haired. Downplayed for the rest of the cast in that the story takes place in London, so multiple hair colors are seen throughout the series.
• In Yoichi Takahashi's Captain Tsubasa and Hungry Heart: Wild Striker, every dark-skinned character is Brazilian, although not every Brazilian in the series has dark skin (namely, Roberto in Tsubasa). Both titles are about soccer, and the "street" predominant phenotype in Brazil is nearer to African than to the archetypical Latino, as the most famous Brazilian soccer player can show us. However, it still seems a waste, if not wrong, to represent a team rarely, if ever, so homogeneous in such a way. Even more considering the country the team represents. And there is also the fact that among the famous Brazilian players of non-black phenotype, there are not only the very famous Ronaldo Nazário (archetypical latino) and Kaká (white), but also Zico (white) who is, or at least was once, very famous in japan specifically (In the videogame Zico even has a character named after him).
  • Also, several of the German players had blue eyes and either light blond (Schneider), dark blond (Schester) or light brown (Müller, at least in Road to 2002) hair. And not all dark-skinned charas are Brazilian; Hyuga is Japanese and has much darker skin than his peers, though in his case it's justified by the fact that he spends a lot of time under the sun due to doing part-time jobs rather often to support his family.
• Case Closed:
  • This trope is evident for Vermouth and Jodie, but subverted by James Black, who has black hair.
  • Also, minor character Hakuba, better known from the connecting series Magic Kaito, is half English, and has blond hair and blue eyes in the manga. In the anime, he is portrayed with darker hair and brown eyes, however.
• In Cat Planet Cuties, the character Jack (actually a woman, Jack just being her initials) dresses in full barely covering cowgirl gear, extremely buxom, long blond hair and is always seen eating fast food.
• Justified in Chrono Crusade. Rosette and Joshua Christopher are Americans with blond hair and blue eyes... but the anime is set in America, and characters with other realistic shades of hair for white people show up as well, such as a redheaded German and a brunette woman. In fact, there are far more brunettes in the series than blonds.
• A Dog of Flanders (1975) is set in Belgium. A good chunk of characters have blonde, dirty blonde or light blonde hair, and many (including Nello and Alois) have Innocent Blue Eyes.
• Death Note:
  • Misa, who is also entirely Japanese, has blonde hair, but it's explicitly dyed.
  • Then there's Mello, a blond, blue eyed guy from Britain who moved to Los Angeles to join The Mafia.
• Digimon:
  • Yamato Ishida and Takeru Takaishi of Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 are at least a quarter French — their maternal grandfather Michel is French — and are appropriately blond-haired and blue-eyed. Americans Michael and Wallace are also both blond-haired and blue-eyed.
  • Alice McCoy of Digimon Tamers has blonde hair and blue eyes, as does her father Keith.
  • Izumi Orimoto of Digimon Frontier is full Japanese, but lived in Italy since she was little and returned to Japan a year prior to the series. She has blonde hair, but her eyes are green rather than blue.
  • Touma H. Norstein of Digimon Data Squad is half-Austrian on his father's side and is appropriately blond-haired and blue-eyed.
  • Torajiro "Astra" Asuka from Digimon Universe: App Monsters is half-British on his mother's side and is appropriately blond-haired, though he has green eyes rather than blue.
• Both Shinku and Adelaide from Dog Days have blonde hair and blue eyes. The former is half-British and the latter is implied to be French.
• Blond-haired and blue-eyed Anthony is the personification of this trope as the American exchange student in Doki Doki School Hours. Of course, his Japanese is impeccable.
• Dr. STONE: Many of the inhabitants of Ishigami Village have blonde hair and/or blue eyes, which Tsukasa notes is a sign that they aren't full-blooded Japanese. They're descended from a Multinational Team of astronauts, which is where their foreign blood comes from. Speaking of which, all four Caucasian members (three Russians and one American) of said astronaut team have blonde hair.
• Durarara!!:
  • Durarara averts this trope with Simon, an African-Russian guy who works for a Russian sushi shop in Japan. He still has blue eyes, though. And to muddle the water even further, he's actually African-American, whose parents emigrated to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
  • All of the Japanese characters have more realistic (as much as stylized can get) features. The two Japanese blondes (Masaomi and Shizuo) have both explicitly stated that their hair is dyed, and according to Word of God, Walker, who has dark blonde hair, is biracial.
  • We also meet Russian tourists and an Italian immigrant with somewhat stereotypical, but entirely realistic hair: dirty blonde and black respectively.
  • There is another, more minor foreign character, a young woman who is shown holding up signs to advertise for different businesses, and she is blond and blue-eyed.
  • Celty is Irish (well, a mythological creature from Irish legend) and, when she had a head, she was a redhead. However, Celty's head is an entirely different character altogether, and, in contrast to a Nice Girl Celty, is quite an asshole. Celty herself, with her shadow manipulation ability, better fits the Raven Hair, Ivory Skin, which is also common for the Irish.
• Eyeshield 21:
  • Played extremely straight. All the major players of the Nasa Aliens are blonde with the exception of Patrick "Panther" Spencer (who's black) and the Gonzales brothers (who are most likely Latino).
  • Not to mention the World Cup arc. In particular, the "Pentagon" of Team America is made up of Panther, two blondes (who are also extreme jerkasses), a Native American (he has braided hair and wears face paint at all times), and a Hollywood action star. At first, it seems the Hollywood star, Bud Walker, appears to simply avert the blonde stereotype (his hair is black) till you realize it's because he's a parody of American action movie actors like Brad Pitt.
• Elza Saijo in Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver is half-German and half-Japanese, so she has red hair and blue eyes. Her deceased son, Luca, inherited her hair color. (In fact, it's the exact same shade as Emiya Shirou's, which has led to fan speculation that Shirou is an alternate-universe version of Luca.)
• In FLCL, Naota's brother has a girlfriend in America. She's only shown in a photograph but we do know that she is blonde.
• One of the protagonists of Flower Flower is a blonde haired girl with green eyes. She comes from a fictional country called "Adingala" which seems European.
• Momiji Sohma of Fruits Basket is half German and half Japanese; he has blond hair like his German mother despite the fact that it isn't the dominant phenotype. It's actually subverted since his hair is blond not because of his mother, but because his being possessed by the spirit of the Rabbit of the Eastern Zodiac makes it his natural color. His younger sister Momo has a darker shade of blonde, almost being light brown. In the 2001 anime, it's not a result of the curse, since the fact that he's half German is never brought up and Momo has the exact same hair color as him.
• Zigzagged in Full Metal Panic!. Ethnically German (though born and raised in Japan) Kurz Weber is blond-haired, blue-eyed, and about six feet tall. On the other hand, the resident American of the trio, Melissa Mao, is black-haired and clearly of Chinese descent. Ethnically Japanese Sousuke, while hitting the phenotype part, displays none of the other stereotypically Japanese traits, due to being raised mainly on the battlefield by the two father figures who are clearly not the very best father material (and not Japanese, at that).
• In Future GPX Cyber Formula, several of the characters have those: the British Clair Fortran (light blond hair, blue eyes, light skinned), the American Jackie Gudelhian (dark blond hair, blue eyes) and the Austrian Karl Lichter von Randoll (blond hair, green eyes, light skinned).
• Hello! Sandybell takes place in Scotland so a lot of characters are redheads or have reddish-brown hair. Sandybell, however, is blonde — but it's later found out that she's adopted.
• In The King of Braves GaoGaiGar, we have the American-born 3G Bridge Bunny Swan White. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, she even speaks Japanese in a clumsy, amateurish fashion compared to the Japanese crew members. Later on, we meet her brother Stallion, who's been working with the American counterpart to 3G and is as blue-eyed and blond as his sister.
• Likely because of its Only Six Faces Show Within a Show gimmick, Genshiken goes out of its way to give its "real" characters distinct facial features with more subdued coloring than is usual. Two American otaku make an unfortunate appearance late in the second season of Genshiken. Pale, loud, blond, respectively blue- and green-eyed, and without much sense of decency and personal property (respectively). Gratuitous English abounds.
• In Get Backers, we have Ban the (quarter) German with having blue eyes, and Hevn the American with blonde hair. Fair enough. Then again, when Ginji and Himiko hear that der Kaiser is German, they both automatically assume he is related to Ban. He is, but that's not the point.
• Ghost in the Shell: The trope is thoroughly wrung out (used, subverted and inverted). Dr. Willis from America has a strong jawline and blonde hair. The CIA agents in the episode "Jungle Cruise" are so stereotypically Japanese the Japanese main characters wonder if they're for real. Various other Russians, Americans, Israelis, Brits, Chinese and Germans also appear, with their own range of hair and skin colours, including a black Brit.
• Hilariously averted in Girls und Panzer, what with the cast having hair colors all over the place despite nearly the whole cast being Japanese. A chapter from Motto Love Love Sakusen has Kei wonder why Akebi of Duck Team isn't in Saunders after drawing attention to the fact that both of them are tall, blonde, blue-eyed and stacked, to which Anzu comments that they're both Japanese. The one exception is Pravda School's Clara, who is actually Russian and plays this trope straight anyway.
• Golden Kamuy:
  • Hijikata speculates early on that Asirpa has European ancestry upon seeing hints of green in her blue pupils. Later, it's revealed that her father, Wilk, is half-Polish.
  • Fina and Svetlana are Russians with light-colored hair.
• Kujou from Gosick is called Dark Reaper partly because of his black hair which the students from Sauville see as uncommon. In actuality, black hair (often called "raven hair") is not uncommon among Europeans, especially around the Mediterranean (Sauville is said to border Italy — which could make this an example of ignorance or oversight on the part of the author); Victorique specifically mentions that their classmates are just bored and stupid (although, she thinks almost everyone is stupid) and that Kujou just happened to fit the description of the latest horror story being passed around.
• Gravitation:
  • Yuki was shunned by his father for looking "too American."
  • Shuichi's American manager "K" is a deliberate sendup: handsome, straight-forward, carries a gun everywhere he goes, and is usually addressed "Mister K."
• Played with in Gunslinger Girl, which takes place in Italy. Henrietta has brown hair and her handler black. The blondes are Triela (who is from a North African country) and Rico, while Claes and Angelica both have black hair. Petra is Russian and was originally blonde but her appearance was greatly altered when she became a cyborg, along with her hair becoming red.
• Hanaukyō Maid Team: La Verite features two American characters, both of which are blond and have bright green eyes.
• Heroman is set in America and has a blond-ish protagonist with a blonde crush. There are quite a few subversions though, such as Joey's Ambiguously Brown best friend Psy.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers is hit hard with this trope — justified, since the characters are supposed to be walking stereotypes. Every country (except Lithuania and Hungary) north of Austria is blonde, getting paler and paler until one hits the platinum blonde-haired Russia, Belarus, Finland, and the stark white-haired Iceland, which is exaggeration of Truth in Television since the percentages of blonds goes up the higher North you go, as shown by a blond map of Europe◊. And all of them, this time including Hungary and Lithuania, have blue, green, or purple eyes. Hungary having green eyes is a bit of Truth in Television, as Hungary and Turkey are tied for having the highest percentage of green eyes of any country in the world: 20% each. The North American brothers are similarly blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Some micronations avert this; Molossia (American micronation) has black hair. Hutt River and Wy (Australian micronations) have brown hair and brown eyes. Ladonia (Swedish micronation) is the first red-haired character. This might be a sign there will be less Phenotype Stereotype in the future.
• Hiiro no Kakera has exactly two German women in it and both of them are blond.
• If Her Flag Breaks: The half-Japanese Nanami, who's from a fictional country in Europe called "Bladefield," stands out from the rest of the members of the main cast for having blonde hair and blue eyes. Her half-sister Hakua, who shares Nanami's ethnic makeup, averts this, having white hair and purple eyes.
• HuGtto! Pretty Cure: Henri Wakamiya has blonde hair and blue eyes to signify his half-French heritage.
• The third season of Inazuma Eleven tends to zig-zag this trope.
  • The captain of the America team, Mark, is blond and blue-eyed. His best friend Dylan is also blond, but his eyes are never seen. Ichinose and Domon aren't blonds, but they're of Japanese ethnicity. But there are also members in their team who aren't blond, neither are Fideo (Italian's team's captain, though one of his teammates, Angelo, is) nor Edgar (England's team's captain).
  • There's also Aphrodi, who is blond despite being at least partially Korean ^note (one that lives in Japan, which still makes him fully Asian. Also, Asian characters in general don't look very much so.
  • Argentinian Terres, as well as all Brazilians, are dark-skinned, but other Argentinians are not.
• Isabelle of Paris takes place in 1870s France, and most characters are pale-skinned with chestnut brown hair, while the invading Prussians are almost always blonde or ashen-haired.
• Bell from Jagaaaaaan is half-American, so you can guess what color her hair is.^note Blonde
• Subverted with Hayasaka in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, who has blonde hair and blue eyes, but is actually a quarter Irish (which would normally be depicted with red hair). Then again, Shirogane also has blonde hair and blue eyes and he's 100% Japanese (Word of God says that it's artistic license).
• Elizabeth "Liz" K. Strawberryfield from Kamen no Maid Guy, from England.
• Kill la Kill: According to the light novel, Gamagoori's dark-skinned blond looks are how he knew his father was a foreign man — possibly American. His huge build is attributed to his heritage as well.
• In Kill Me Baby this appears to be the case with Sonya, who has blond hair and blue eyes, although her background is shrouded in mystery.
• Kiniro Mosaic plays the basic trope straight but averted the extended characteristics. The two English girls — Alice and the mixed Japanese-English Karen — are both blonde and blue-eyed, something the title, meaning Golden Mosaic, refers to. However, Alice is short by Japanese standards, and Karen is only taller than her in the main cast. In addition, Alice's and Karen's personalities do not much the Japanese perspective of a British character stereotype. ^note Japanese anime and manga often portray British characters are Jerkass Deadpan Snarkers.
  • Hanayamata's case is similar to the case above. Hannah, an American, is blonde and blue-eyed — but shorter than the main character, Naru.
• Katri, Girl of the Meadows is set in in 1900s Finland, so a lot of characters have extremely pale skin, blonde hair and light blue eyes.
• Kodocha's half-American has blue eyes. This is even more noticeable because every other (Japanese) character in the show has brown eyes.
• Little Witch Academia:
  • Diana Cavendish is a blonde, blue-eyed British girl.
  • Amanda O' Neil is a Significant Green-Eyed Redhead of Irish-American background.
  • TV series: Andrew Hanbridge fits the stereotype of British men as Tall, Dark, and Handsome with pale skin.
• In Love Hina, the American Sarah McDougal has blonde hair and blue eyes. Lampshaded a little when she tells Motoko, "Kaolla and I are not Japanese!"
• Lucky Star's Patricia Martin has reddish blonde hair, and is notable for being unable to say her own name.
• Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: The anime centers around British settlers to Australia in the 1800s, and many characters of English descent have brown hair (or blonde in the case of Pettywell). In stark contrast, the Aboriginal Australian characters have very dark, curly, afro-like hair.
• Alisa Bannings of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, from America. Fate, who has blond hair, was also able to pass herself off as a foreign student.
• Maid-Sama!: The male lead, Takumi Usui, is only part-English (his maternal grandfather is from Britain) yet he has blond hair and blue eyes — the Japanese characters usually assume that foreigners are blondes. However, it's actually something of a subversion: Takumi's half-brother, Gerald Walker, has black hair, yet he is actually 3/4 foreign (he shared Takumi's mixed mother and has a full-European father, who also has black hair).
• Mariya and his sister from Maria†Holic have some Italian genes in them, and are blonds.
• Maria Watches Over Us: In the episode of the anime adaptation featuring a school trip to Italy, the first two times we see Italians in the foreground, both are blue-eyed and dark blonde, which while not impossible in Italy, don't show up much. Later, we see a woman with light brown hair and pale blue eyes. All other extras in crowd scenes and such are more realistically Mediterranean, i.e. dark-haired and brown-eyed. One suspects that the makers knew that the latter look is the most common in that country, but could not resist throwing in a couple of Gaijin stereotypes. The series also features the blond haired and blue eyed Sei being mistaken as an American by Eriko.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has Chloe, a blonde-haired blue-eyed girl from Minnesota. William and Emily (who are presumably British) also appear to have blonde hair and blue eyes, though it's difficult to tell due to them not having official color pallets.
• Played straight with the most of the cast of Mobile Fighter G Gundam, but unlike many examples, only to a certain degree. Surprisingly still, the Japanese characters, Domon and Rain, fit the bill to this trope; the only one who doesn't is the Swedish Allenby Beardsly, who has sea-green hair. The cast may play this straight, but the mecha design plays it even straighter — to the point of stereotyping.
• Monster, which is set in Germany, has many blonds with blue eyes, along with several Asian characters including the protagonist.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Subverted with All Might. His blonde hair and blue eyes fit his Westernized All-American Face image, but he's actually Japanese.
  • The Japanese Yaoyorozu is an elegant Yamato Nadeshiko with pale skin and dark hair, holding onto the ideal of female Japanese beauty while quirks have caused Japanese people to naturally develop pigmentations that aren't native to the nation. Her only subversion of this trope is being slightly taller than even a lot of the boys in her class given that a tall height signifies western heritage in anime and manga.
  • Pony Tsunotori has blonde hair and blue-green eyes to signify her half-American heritage.
  • The Vigilantes spin off prequel manga has Captain Celebrity, a hero with blond hair and a buff western styled image that is actually American unlike All Might.
• Nadia's appearance in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water played with the concept, where Nadia appearance is halfway between psuedo-Indian (costume-wise) and African (her skin color). The designers later admitted initial designs had Nadia's appearance more obviously towards black (particularly her hair) but were never happy about how shoddy the texture and movement looked in the early designs.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Evangeline A.K McDowell. Born in some part of western Europe (implied to be Scotland), is blue-eyed and completely blond with long hair.
  • Ayaka Yukihiro is also half-Japanese and blond.
  • On the other hand, you also have the dark-skinned blonde Chinese Ku Fei, and the freckled/redheaded Natsumi.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has several examples:
  • Part-German Asuka has red hair and blue eyes. Her mother was half-German and in at least one adaptation had blond hair.
  • Most of the (all-Japanese) cast have brown or stylized black hair, like Misato's black which occasionally looks purple, except for Fuyutsuki (whose hair is grey with age), Rei (albino-like), Ritsuko Akagi (flashbacks make it clear she dyes her hair blonde), and Kaworu (albino-like Humanoid Abomination). Some of the Japanese characters sport non-Japanese eye coloring, including the aforementioned albino-like Rei and Kaworu because they weren't really regular humans to begin with. There's also Shinji's eyes, which are dark blue and which he seems to have gotten from his mother, Yui. The Classified Information revealed she was the daughter of a prominent member of SEELE; Fanon generally takes him to be one of the international members, or at least a Japanese man with foreign ancestry, to explain her blue eyes.
  • Kensuke's hair is a lot lighter than one would expect a full-Japanese person's hair color to be. He also seems to have blue eyes. This has never been explained, but fans usually agree that he must have a foreign ancestor somewhere in his family line.
  • There's also a scene in the second Rebuild of Evangelion movie, where the American division of NERV has people who look like they're of Nordic descent — blue eyes, light blond hair, and even detailed facial features associated with white people. But then you have Kaji standing right behind them looking like the only young, cool (not to mention bishonen) guy in the room.
• In Noir, most of the background Corsicans are obviously Mediterranean. The exception is the lead Mireille, who is blonde and blue-eyed. Similarly, Kirika might not actually be Japanese (it's never clarified either way) but is obviously designed to look 'familiar' versus Mireille being 'a hot foreign chick from Europe'.
• Now and Then, Here and There has the American Sara, who's blond and blue-eyed. It's actually a plot point since she gets mistaken for Lala-Ru.
• Nurse Angel Ririka SOS:
  • Ririka is blonde but doesn't count as she's Japanese (plus, her hair colour is plot related). When she finds a lost dog, his owner turns out to be an American named Edward, who has blond hair and speaks in both Japanese and English. It turns out to be a trap and "Edward" is actually a redheaded villain.
  • It's never stated what country the one-shot character Gene is from, however he is a large-nosed, dark blond haired soccer player who peppers his speech with English.
• Ayase from Okane ga Nai is described as "mixed race," his blonde hair and blue eyes making him seem a foreigner. In the manga it is explained via flashbacks that this is one of the reasons why he was discriminated against while growing up. His amazingly fey looks and occasional crossdressing did not help either.
• Played for Laughs in the first episode of Osomatsu-san. Iyami is redesigned as a French Long-Haired Pretty Boy with blond hair and blue eyes.
• Ouran High School Host Club:
  • The half-French Tamaki has the typical look. In fact, his extremely violet eyes often appear to be fluorescent. His hair was originally brown but the anime made it blond, and subsequently, the manga followed.
  • Also, Umehito Nekozawa, who is of Russian descent and has blond hair and blue eyes. However his eyes and hair are hidden under a black (well, green) wig and black cloak at almost all times.
• Marie Chupacabra W. Whitebear from Penguin Musume, from America. Has a bit of Red Eyes, Take Warning too.
• Pet Shop of Horrors has Leon and Chris. Leon, who is blond, blue-eyed and aggressive, is designed to be an example of Americans and American/Western philosophy, a foil to the clearly Eastern Count D. The show otherwise takes place in a fairly diversely colored Los Angeles.
• Planetes. Fee is American, but has darker hair and skin than either of the Japanese characters (she's explicitly black in the manga, and from the Deep South at that), and the Arab and South American characters also have realistic complexions. On the other hand, the Russian Yuri and German Edel both have blonde hair and green eyes.
• Please Teacher!: While it's not brought up in-series, Huge Schoolgirl Kaede Misumi has red hair and freckles. Word of God is that she is one-quarter Irish.
• Pretty Series:
  • Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream: Mion Takamine has blonde hair and blue eyes through her presumably Italian father, Pietro.
  • Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live: Mary Fukuhara is an American with blonde hair and blue eyes, the latter of which her son and granddaughter inherit.
• Psychic Squad had the Liberty Bells, a team of ESPers from Comerica. Ken McGwire, the male half of the team, fit this trope. Mary Ford, the other half of the team, was dark-skinned and white-haired.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Mami Tomoe. Her hair and her eyes are gold. Her first name is also a Spanish word, her final shot is in Italian, and she was modeled after a western gunner. Word of God has confirmed that she isn't fully Japanese, but her exact ethnicity has yet to be revealed.
• In RahXephon the Alpha Squadron plays this straight with Cathy, the hot-tempered, rock-and-roll playing American, but averts the trope with Elvy who is Indonesian and Jean-Patrick who possibly supposed to be either African or French.
• Fumio's grandfather in Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo looks, talks, and acts like John Wayne... assuming of course that John Wayne was a practitioner of Chainsaw-Fu.^note He's implied to be Dennis Hopper's character from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
• Zig-Zagged in Sakigake!! Otokojuku, where the only foreign student at the titular school is the blond-haired American J — but since J's Big Ol' Eyebrows and Go Nagai Sideburns are black, his hair is probably dyed.
• Kaere Kimura from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, who's a stereotype in more ways than one; she has blue eyes, blonde hair, and she'll sue you at a moment's notice. It should be noted that Kaere is actually Japanese, but she spent some years studying abroad and came back a little different. It should also be noted that the entire series is built upon cliches and stereotypes, including the personalities of all the characters. Her fitting this trope was definitely intentional.
• In Shaman King, Magical Native American Silva actually has the closest to mongoloid features in mukokuseki; he has (ridiculously) slanted eyes, even though real Indians (with the exception of Inuit) often don't even have the epicanthic fold. Oddly, he's built like a bara character.
• The Russian Vladimir from Shounen Note has blond hair and blue eyes, which contrasts with Yutaka's black hair but equally blue eyes. Vladimir does have some Japanese in him though, from his grandmother's side.
• Kate from Sketchbook is a blue-eyed, blonde Canadian with a thick accent.
• In the Slam Dunk 3rd OAV, a half-American player named Michael Okita came to Japan and joined the Ryoukufu team. His eyes are blue and his hair is blond, of course.
• Liz and Patty from Soul Eater are both Americans (New Yorkers, in fact) and are blonde and blue-eyed. Though blonde/very light-brown-haired Maka's exact ethnicity is never really specified besides being at least partially Japanese, her surname is "Albarn" (which points to her being at least part Anglo-Saxon).
• Ana in Strawberry Marshmallow is British, so of course she is depicted as having light blond hair and blue eyes (much to the delight of Nobue). Her last name "Coppola" is actually Italian though, but probably sounded foreign enough — not to mention funny to Japanese ears (and hey, it's not impossible that her family moved to Britain from Italy). Italians (and most Europeans) have been immigrating to Britain for over two centuries (though less significantly than to the United States): Antonio Panizzi devised the basis for all modern library classification schemes as Chief Librarian of the British Museum in the 1850s. For a more modern example, Tony Iommi, the lead guitarist of Black Sabbath.
• Superman Vs. Meshi: The Japanese characters are often depicted with thin features, pale skin and short black hair, whereas the Caucasian characters have wider eyes and more untamed hair.
• This Ugly Yet Beautiful World has a character with orange, purple, pink, green, and blue hair, yet the only blonde is the American Jennifer Portman.
• Tonari no Kashiwagi-san has Tina, who is German and the only blonde member of the cast.
• Lampshaded pretty hard in the Touhou Project doujin God's Children's Day by Kagero. In a prescient anticipation of her characterization as daydreaming Wrong Genre Savvy Nerd in the then-unreleased Undefined Fantastic Object and Hisoutensoku, Sanae immediately categorizes the blue-eyed (that day) and blonde Alice as "some kind of super-foreigner" and tries to speak to her in English. The comic then goes on a tangent about what Sanae must have thought of the equally blonde, but ethnically Asian Marisa (Or so we're told).
• To make sure the audience gets that a very short scene is taking place in the US, Toradora! briefly focuses the camera on the roommate of the central character of that scene, a busty grey-eyed blonde.
• Transformers: Armada (which was Japan-made but apparently set in America) has the blonde-haired blue-eyed Rad as the de facto leader of the human sidekicks. His best friend Carlos is...well, a walking Hispanic-American stereotype.
• In Witch Hunter Robin, the Japanese characters have dark hair, while the Italian Robin and the American Michael have blonde hair and blue eyes. But Yurika Dojima, who seems to be Japanese, is also blonde-haired and blue eyed — maybe because she's a spoiled rich girl.
• Chizuru from You and Me is a half-German transfer student with blue eyes and blond hair.
• You're Under Arrest!: In one episode Natsumi befriends an American kid with green eyes, freckles, and blond hair. Somewhat subverted since he's half-Japanese.
• Bandit Keith from Yu-Gi-Oh! actually started the trope of Wearing a Flag on Your Head because of how American he is.
• Zig-zagged in Yuri!!! on Ice, where many of the figure skaters are from different countries. Some characters hit their national stereotypes (eg. Russians Victor Nikiforov and Yuri Plisetsky have pale hair and light eyes but lithe builds), but others don't (eg. American Leo de la Iglesia isn't a blond and blue-eyed white guy but a dark-skinned, dark-haired Mexican-American).

Comic Books

• Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were all designed to conform to the same ideal attractive Anglo-Saxon phenotype: tall, fair-skined, physically fit, glossy straight black hair, deep-sunk blue eyes, straight narrow noses, long faces, prominent chins. This results in the odd situation of three people, only one of whom is an actual human being, who could easily pass for siblings. This could actually count as an inversion in Wonder Woman's case, as she's supposed to be linked to the Greeks, who are generally of average stature, brown-haired, brown-eyed, medium-faced, and tan-skinned with wavy or curly hair. Similarly; Connor Kent, Donna Troy, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne also fit that same phenotype.
• Puerto Rico Strong: In the autobiographical short comic Blame It On 'Rico, Tito is Puerto Rican. When he moves to Rio de Janeiro, he runs into this stereotype. One guy even says he must be Mexican, not American because he isn't a blue-eyed blond.

Fan Works

• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku is astonished by how tall Mercy is, initially mistaking her for a teacher. Then he remembers that she's American, so it's only natural that she'd be tall.
• We Bare Bears fanart that depicts the trio of bears as humans draw Panda as East Asian with pale skin and black hair, Ice Bear as Caucasian with pale skin, hair and eyes, and finally Grizzly as of black African descent with dark hair. Given that three are Chinese, Russian and North American respectively, these pieces of fanart fall into this trope, and became borderline Ascended Fanon in the actual show when their human counterparts were revealed and used the Phenotype Stereotype designs the fans tended to envision.

Film — Animated

• My Hero Academia: Two Heroes:
  • Melissa Shield is from America, has blond hair, aqua green eyes, and is taller than the Japanese cast. Izuku initially mistakes her for being actually related to All Might when they first meet.
  • Cow Lady is an American with blond hair and blue eyes.
• Marnie from When Marnie Was There has blonde hair and blue eyes. It fits her though, and puts her at contrast with the brunette (but equally blue-eyed) Anna (who is multiracial as Marnie is her grandmother).

Literature

• In the Darkness Series, hair color, along with clothing (kilts vs trousers vs tunics) is the main racial identifier. Algarvic (Fantastic Germanic) peoples like the Algarvians, Sibians and Lagoans (Fantastic Germans, Danes/Norwegians and British) have red hair and wear kilts. Kaunian (Romance and Jewish) peoples like the Jelgavans, Valmierans and the Kaunians of Forthweg (Low Countries, French and Jews of Poland) have blond hair and wear trousers. The 'Slavic' peoples of Unkerlant, Forthweg and Grelz (Russia, Poland and Ukraine) have brown hair and wear tunics. The Gyongyosians (Japanese) have tawny hair, while the Kuusamans (Americans) resemble East Asians (while speaking Finnish). The Zuwayzans (Finns) are dark-skinned, and the Yaninans (Italians) are short, swarthy, and big-nosed.
• In Fate/Requiem, Voyager is speculated by Erice to be the Little Prince from the story of the same name, and if not him, his author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. As both the author and story are French, both would fit with the "Blonde, blue-eyed Frenchman" stereotype. It turns out to be more of a general "Blonde, blue-eyed foreigner" stereotype; Voyager's the Anthropomorphic Personification of the American space probe, but took on some aspects of the French story as to better appeal to his Master.
• Played With in Honorverse, where, despite the melting pot running full tilt for two more milennia from now, producing such fine examples as Chinese-Germanic Andermanis and Americano-French Havenites, and where even the main character is of Irish-Spanish-Chinese mix, still exist such proudly steteorypical people like the prominent Manticoran family of O'Daleys — who are so texbook "Red Irish" that it hurts.
• In I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, Azusa became a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde Cute Witch in a Medieval European Fantasy universe after reincarnation.
• Show up in the second trilogy of The Powder Mage Trilogy in the Palo and they Dynize. These two ethnicities are related, every single one of them has red hair. The text even points out from time to time about their gatherings being filled only with redheads.

Live-Action TV

• All Rise: Most of the Latino characters have the standard black hair and olive skin. Sara has slightly lighter skin and chestnut brown hair, attributed to her actress being half-Caucasian, though she is still a Latina who's appearance visibly shows she's a woman of color.
• Blackadder: Scottish characters are generally portrayed as redheads.
  • Dougal MacAngus, Duke of Argyle, in series 1.
  • Series 3 has a cameo by Edmund Blackadder's Scottish cousin MacAdder, who is identical to Edmund except that Rowan Atkinson wears a red wig while playing him.
  • In Blackadder Back & Forth, the ancient Scots (who appear to have wandered over from the set of Braveheart) are, as Centurion Blaccadicus puts it, "ginger maniacs" with "huge orange beards."
• In Itaewon Class, everyone assumes Toni, who is black with long dreadlocks, is American — Yiseo even hires him primarily because she assumes he speaks English. Actually subverted. He's Guinean-Korean, identifies as Korean, and and doesn't speak any English (Guinea's primary European language is French).
• Kamen Rider 555 has a black American called Mr. J, a villain who is quite big and doesn't have much hair.
• Catherine of Aragon in real life had strawberry blonde hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. In The Tudors she has dark hair because she's, ya know, Spanish. She does have pale-ish skin and blue eyes though, which is a darn sight (no pun intended) better than most depictions that go dark on all three features.
• In an episode of The Windsors, Prince William wanders onto a stereotypical Scottish Highland farm and encounters a stereotypical-looking Highlander with deep red hair. It's actually (sandy blonde) Nicola Sturgeon wearing a red wig as part of her "holiday persona."

Manhwa

• Girls of the Wild's has the blond, blue eyed Charles Wilds.
• The two most prominent American fighter girls in Flight High School, the F-22/F-35 sisters, are green-eyed blondes.

Music

• Eminem created an image for his Slim Shady alter ego by bleaching his hair platinum blond and raising the pitch of his voice, in order to present the image of a stereotypical white American in contrast to his overwhelmingly Black peers.

Video Games

• In Katamari Damacy, one of the characters you can roll up is a fat blond man with an American flag on his shirt. His name is, of course, "American Guy." He's even fatter than the sumo wrestlers. Hilariously, he also wears a ball-cap, has glasses and is bearded. He looks like Michael Moore (who has worn American flag shirts before).
• Street Fighter varies its approach with this:
  • Characters are from all over the world and they, for the most part, have varied physical appearances that would seem appropriate to their nationalities (although Sagat must have had a rather excitable pituitary gland, and doesn't look the least bit Southeast Asian). It still shows a disproportionate number of blond Americans, since only Americans who aren't blond are Guy (of Asian descent), Balrog (Black), Poison (pink hair, natural color unknown,) Sodom (always masked, although it can be seen on his Alpha 3 artwork that he has blue eyes — another side of the stereotype, which also plays up the Occidental Otaku trope for him) and Crimson Viper (implied to be mixed, possibly of Latino heritage). They're outnumbered by the blond Ken, Guile, Charlie, Cody, Alex, Rufus, G, and Lucia, though it's All There in the Manual that Ken dyes his hair.
  • Vega (Balrog in Japan). Because he is European, in Japan he has light skin and bright blond hair (sometimes light brown or red), following the Japanese stereotype (according to Soulcalibur, the Japanese seem to mix up Spain and France, the same way Americans mix up Korean and Japanese culture). Because he is Spanish, in the American film adaptations he is played by dark-skinned and black-haired actors of variable Native American descent, following the American stereotype. The most common hair color in Spain in Real Life is dark brown.
  • The original Street Fighter 2 in particular was very guilty of this, all "white" characters (Cammy, Guile, and Ken) were all blonde and blue-eyed. In addition, every single one of Guile's stage bystanders cheering him on was, as well. These bystanders were eventually diversified in the hair color department for the HD Remix.
• Tekken:
  • The series has virtually all its European and European-American characters blond-haired or blue-eyed. Or both. The ones who aren't are because they're old and their hair has grayed out (Dr. Bosconovitch, Sebastian, both still have blue eyes nevertheless) or they are of artificial origin (Alisa, who has pink hair and green eyes, and some Jack models, although even the blond ones have red eyes, with Jack-7's hair following suit). Claudio has dark hair with a bluish tint, but otherwise ticks the fair-skinned and blue-eyed boxes.
  • The glaring exception to this rule is Miguel, a Spaniard who has brown hair and brown eyes, but then, he's likely a case of Bandai Namco adhering to Latino Is Brown, since they also dress him up as a mariachi-player in one case (truth to be told, most Spaniards are brown-haired and brown-eyed...).
  • Lili's has platinum blonde hair which would place her unquestionably as a Northern European in real-life. Yet, she's from the Principality of Monaco on the French Riviera, where (naturally) even being simply dark blond is exceedingly rare (blondism in France is restricted to the north, mostly in Normandy, Brittany, and the parts bordering Germany, where the Vikings, Celts, and Franks settled down respectively). Of course, she may well help it along by dyeing it cosmetically, and Monaco's population is incredibly heterogeneous, so she could well have a Dutch, English or Swedish parent.
  • Strangely, the black characters avert this. Only Bruce and Leroy are officially American. The rest: Armor King is Mexican, Eddy and Christie are Brazilian, and Raven and Master Raven are possibly Canadians^note  sort of; a guide lists Raven as Canadian, but further bio doesn't include that tidbit again. Then again, both are secret agents., whose black population is minuscule (less than 1 million, or 2.9% of the total population) compared to the US (42 million, or 13% of total).
• The Soul series, meanwhile, has a strange subversion in the Greek Alexander family, whose members (Sophitia, Cassandra, Patroklos, and Pyrrha), like Lili of Tekken, have platinum blond hair and clear blue eyes. Greeks, like other Mediterranean peoples, are mostly dark brunets and brown-eyed, and while blonds are not entirely impossible, the chance of them being Asgardian-like blond without dye is rather slim, to say the least^note  Then again, the family is explicitly blessed by the Olympians themselves, so their phenotypes might have been divine-inspired. Who knows..
• Harukanaru Toki no Naka de has blond, blue-eyed Shimon (a quarter French, according to the manga). Considering the huge amount of colors used for the main cast's hair, this doesn't look too unusual at first... except that in Kyou these features are mostly associated with the Oni Clan, and poor Shimon, who was bullied for his appearance even in his world, keeps getting mistaken for one of its members... The Oni Clan itself probably counts as well, considering their origins.
• Persona:
  • Persona 2: This is the fulcrum of a lot of Lisa's internal conflict. Lisa is a naturalized Japanese citizen with an intense desire to assimilate into modern Japanese society, but can't because her stereotypically white American appearance means her peers immediately mark her as "a foreigner," despite Lisa having been denied American cultural markers by her parents, even English. In fact, her character development only really begins during the Aoba Park concert sequence where she, as the lead singer of MUSES, reluctantly admits to the audience that she doesn't know English.
  • Persona 3: Bebe is a blond, blue-eyed French transfer student.
  • Persona 5: Ann Takamaki has blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin to mark her as a quarter American. As with Lisa, the fact that she stands out with her steryotypical American looks makes her the subject of gossip, and she's who people turn to in order to get stuff translated to English, which unlike Lisa, she does know thanks thanks to having lived abroad. As a bonus, "Takamaki" is also a Finnish surname, and Ann too fits the stereotype of Finns being blond haired and blue eyed. Ann also willingly takes advantage of this trope to pose as a British royal in order to trick an enemy who believes her on apperance alone.
• Rival Schools plays this partly for laughs like all its exaggerated tropes from old-school shounen mangas. All three American students have blond hair and blue eyes... including the token black guy.
• Dead or Alive: Frenchwoman Helena is light-skinned and very blond with blue eyes. Half-Japanese/Half-German Hitomi averts the stereotype of Germans being depicted as blondes and is instead depicted as having brown hair and green eyes. English woman Christie has white hair and La Mariposa/Lisa is designed to look like a dark-skinned, likely mixed-African woman. And Tina Armstrong, an American blonde ^note though she appeared as a brunette in the first game and it's explained that she bleaches and dyes her hair who, when the game contains English voice-acting, has a Texan accent and she also has multiple outfits that somehow involve the American flag, either by depicting it on it or having an article of clothing have its pattern.
• The Tokimeki Memorial series is guilty of this: the only two characters having the Blonde Hair/blue eyes combo in the series are Patricia McGrath of Tokimeki Memorial 1 Pocket, and Elisa Dolittle Naruse of Tokimeki Memorial 4. The first is an Eaglelander; the second a case of But Not Too Foreign.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Red and Blue has the blond blue-eyed "Lightning American," Lt. Surge.
  • However, Morty, Agatha, Glacia, Greta, Volkner, Palmer, Barry, and Cynthia are clearly not American. Glacia is a blue-eyed blonde from an unspecified region so it's possible she still counts. Her Japanese name, "Prim," isn't associated with any country.
  • Unova, which based on New York, has its fair share of blonds. It's Averted in a lot of cases. Most of them are NPCs, and the only four of significance are Elesa, Caitlin, Bianca and Colress. Caitlin's hair is light brown in her Generation IV appearance, so she might use dye. Elesa also has black hair in the sequel, which means either she dyed it black or her blond hair was dyed.
  • Aarune from Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire is Unova born and a blond.
  • Orre, which is based on Arizona, also averts this in many cases. Wes, the protagonist, is a dark-skinned blond while his best friend Rui is a redhead.
  • Kalos, which is based on France, seems to have a sizable amount of blonds (both player characters can be blond — and Viola, Korrina, Clemont, and Siebold are all blond as well). However, like Unova, there are many aversions. There are also many dark-skinned NPCs and two dark-skinned Gym Leaders — Olympia, who is tan, and Grant, who is black.
  • The Galar region has one gym leader, Kabu, that is explicitly said to have immigrated from Hoenn (based on Japan's Kyushu region). He's the one with the dour face, greying black hair, and small eyes — which is played with, as these are all qualities that no person in the rest of Hoenn has at once.
• Final Fantasy VII has the oddly red-skinned people of Cosmo Canyon (which is based on American Indian stereotypes). And of course Barret is a Mr. T lookalike.
• Story of Seasons:
  • Story of Seasons averts this in most cases. The entire series takes place in Western towns in an unidentified country that resembles the Americas and occasionally Europe, with a lot of Japanese influence. Since the cast is western, it can't have every game plagued with blonds and red-heads. It's partially justified by the choice of giving potential partners a distinctive look. Each of the potential husbands and wives has different hair and eye colour. Usually, it became distinctive of their respective relatives.
  • Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns went a bit overboard with this trope. It contains three towns: a wild-west town, a tropical town, and a traditional Japanese town. The western town, Westown, consists completely of blond people.
• Averted with Angel, from The King of Fighters series, who is a fair-skinned, white-haired buxom woman who happens to be from Mexico. And nope, not even a sombrero in sight. Otherwise quite a few characters play it straight, with the Bogard brothers, Blue Mary and Geese Howard being blond, blue-eyed Americans (Clark Still is also a blond, but since he's always wearing sunglasses, there's no consensus on his eye color, while Rock Howard's eyes are a rather unnatural shade of red), Heavy D!, Lucky Glauber being black Americans (as well as Duck King and Seth, who seem to dye their hair — what with the latter's dark-colored beard contrasting with the white tuft of hair on his head), and on the "blond, blue-eyed European" subject, we have Billy Kane (British), King (French) and Rugal and his children (German), while Chris provides another noticeable aversion by being a dark-haired Swede.
  • Despite being nominally a Mukokuseki, Benimaru Nikaido also falls into this because him being a natural blond is said to be due to him having American ancestry.
• Vert's design in Neptunia is based on the American Stereotype of being Blonde, Blue Eyed and Busty. Justified in that she is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Xbox 360, the only console that belongs to an American-based company.
• Yo-kai Watch 3 takes place in America. The game features many blond Original Generation characters and "Americanized" versions of the previous youkai. Tomnyan, the American version of Series Mascot Jibanyan, is blond furred and blue eyed. Averted with Nate's human American friend Buck, who is a brunette.
• Played with concerning the foreign ships in KanColle:
  • Many of the Kriegsmarine ship girls are blonde, blue-eyed and busty, saving the petite Z1 Lebrecht Maass. Prinz Eugen and Z3 Max Shultz (green-eyed light redhead and brown-eyed brunette, respectively) avert the trope, however.
  • The first few USN girls, like Iowa and Fletcher, play it straight by being curvy blue-eyed blondes (though Iowa has an excuse in that her design is based on wartime pin-up posters), but later USN girls have a variety of builds and hair/eye colors.
  • Ro-500 is depicted as blue-eyed and light blond thanks to her real-life counterpart being a remodeled German U-boat. When the game released that earlier form, U-511, we also see she was very pale and serious.
  • The Royal Navy ships are mostly blonde and blue-eyed, with redheaded (but still blue-eyed) Ark Royal being the only exception.
  • The Russian ship Gangut is fittingly an albino with pale skin and hair alongside red eyes.
  • Averted completely with the Regia Marina vessels, which run the spectrum from brunette to redheaded, to blonde, to silver. Going by stereotypes, the only blonde is Luigi Torelli and the only tan one is Libeccio.
• All Nazi enemies in Wolfenstein 3-D are stereotypically Aryan blue-eyed blondes. In fact, only one Nazi, Super-Soldier Trans Grösse, doesn't have blond hair. The trope goes so far that the black hair of Mutants is understood by fans as signs that they were originally Allied POWs.
• Averted in Touhou Project, where a vast majority of characters are East Asian.
  • A number of characters are blonde (Yuugi Hoshiguma, a Statuesque Stunner oni, Suwako Moriya, a frog goddess and Ran Yakumo, a kitsune; as Japanese a monster can get). Parsee Mizuhashi, known for her jealous green eyes, is described as a Persian bridge youkai. Others have Western names but are never shown as anything other than Japanese (Marisa Kirisame is often described as oriental, Alice Margatroid the puppeteer and doll collector is a servant from Makai, the world of demons, Maribel Hearn is possibly the past version of Yukari Yakumo (a Reality Warper) and comes from an Alternate Universe Japan). Maribel is not Japanese but her ethnicity is never confirmed.
  • Three Chinese characters show up, one red-haired with blue eyes (Meiling), one blue-haired with blue eyes (Seiga) or blonde with red eyes (Junko).
  • Perhaps reminiscent with Clownpiece, a blonde fairy wearing American flag clothes... because it reminds the Lunarians of the times people landed on the Moon, which seriously messed up the Moon as being a place of purity untouchable by mortals (American fans, of course, have given her the typical 'murican personality). She's actually a lampad, a madness-inducing spirit from Greek myth, brought over by her boss Hecatia (whose hair cycles between red, blue and yellow).
  • The closest it gets is with the lost poltergeist Kana Anaberal (described as a European girl), who has yellow hair and yellow eyes. Flandre Scarlet (also supposedly of European Descent) also has yellow hair but her sister has blue to purple hair.
• Azur Lane initially had one Russian shipgirl in the form of Avrora, and she's of course given white hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. Later updates added more Russian/Soviet shipgirls, with Gangut, Sovetskaya Rossiya, and Stremitelny in particular being portrayed as albino-esque. The other Soviet shipgirls aren't quite as stereotypical in appearance, but are still universally pale-skinned and tend towards light-colored hair and eyes (with the exception of dark-haired Pamiat Merkuria).
• Common in the verse of The Idolmaster:
  • THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage has the blond, green-eyed Frederica Miyamoto as a member of LIPPS. Layla is a blue-eyed dark-skinned blond from Dubai, but her true ethnicity is as mysterious as her personality.
  • THE iDOLM@STER: SideM has the Italian-Japanese Mario Ando as a candidate for the New Idol Discovery Project, who comes with the prerequisite blond hair. This is also played with using Rui, who is blond but ethnically Japanese like other members of the iM@S verse, but also teaches English, uses it in his dialogue, and refers to himself as "Michael" on occasion. Played completely straight with Pierre, who is a foreigner who comes from a vaguely defined country only referred to as "over there," and is blond.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Of the US Servants introduced, four of them (Billy the Kid, Paul Bunyan, Abigail Williams, and Calamity Jane) are blonde, with Nikola Tesla and Geronimo serving as the few brunettes of the group on account of being also counted as a European Servant and the sole Native American respectively. Only Bunyan doesn't have blue eyes (even Geronimo has them), instead sporting eyes as yellow as her hair. Thomas Edison is a whole different story, what with being summoned as a superhero lion-man and all.
  • EMIYA Alter is initially mistaken for a black man from Detroit by Tamamo-no-Mae due to his dark skin and Scary Black Man demeanor. Considering he's an Alternate Self of a man who is ethnically Japanese (who also doesn't fall into the typical Japanese phenotype), this couldn't be further from the truth.
  • Played with in regards to the Indian Servants; only three of them (Ashwatthama, Arjuna and his Alter self) are as swarthy as the stereotype implies, and even then Ashwatthama is a dark-skinned redhead. The others are as pale as they come (Karna, Rama/Sita) or possessing the body of various Japanese women (Parvati, Kama, and Ganesha).
  • Zig-Zagged with Scheherazade. While being dark skinned would fit the non-Middle Eastern steryotype of people from Iran having dark skin, hair and eyes, within the Middle East itself, people from Iran are seen as always paler than their neighbours.

Visual Novels

• Klavier and Kristoph Gavin in Ace Attorney both are pale-eyed with blond hair. The von Karmas have either white (due to being old) or blue hair. They're all referred to as "German" in the English versions of the game, but in the original Japanese they're from America.
• Sonia Nevermind from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is a princess from the fictional European country of Novoselic. She's tall, the third tallest girl in the series at 174cm/5'8.5" and is blond with blue eyes.
• The Heroic Spirit Gilgamesh in Fate/stay night (and Fate/Zero) is pale-skinned and blond. Uruk lay within the borders of modern-day Iraq, and that combination of phenotypes would have been extremely unusual to say the least. Could be justified by his Semi-Divine origin, though that would raise some Unfortunate Implications, though a steryotype within the Middle East itself is that Levantines are lighter skinned, eyed and haired anyway, but even Fate/Grand Order has much of the common people of Uruk as the typical tanned Iraqi. Most of the other Servants in the game subvert the trope, in part to make it harder to guess their true names. The only one who plays it straight of the summoned group is Saber, a blonde, blue-eyed woman being the King of the Britons in origin.
  • Rin, who's part-European, averts this trope with regards to hair color, but she and her father Tokiomi as well as Rin's sister, Sakura, all get aqua blue eyes. You only get to glimpse the last in Fate/Zero, however.
  • Rin's rival Luviagelita Edelfelt in Fate/hollow ataraxia is a blonde, buxom Finn, though she has brown eyes.^note Which raises questions about whether Rin got her blue eyes from her own Edelfelt ancestor... Also a very Japanese Noblewoman's Laugh.
  • Hollow ataraxia also gives us Bazett Fraga McRemitz, who skirts this trope: She's Irish and her hair is red-violet rather than a realistic red. Given that stay night was guilty of Hair Color Dissonance, Bazett may be intended as a normal redhead.
• Katawa Shoujo's token half-Japanese girl is naturally blond and blue eyed. The other half is Scottish, though, not American. She was originally half-South African so she never really fit the stereotype completely. She's somewhat of deliberate subversion of tropes like this one. People who discover for the first time that she's Scottish (as opposed to German, American, English, or Russian) are comically surprised, because obviously all Scots are redheaded, rowdy, and Hot-Blooded! (whereas Lilly is an impeccably polite, graceful blonde)
• In Shining Song Starnova, the half-American, half-Japanese Julie Watanabe has blonde hair and blue eyes, and she uses her exotic looks to take advantage of gullible men through a Compensated Dating scheme near the start of the game. The epilogue of her route reveals that her hair is bleached; its natural colour is black.
• Muv-Luv does this whenever it can. For instance, Cryska and Inia are white haired Russians, Stella is a tall Swede with light hair, eyes and skin while Tarisa is the complete opposite, a short Nepali with dark hair, eyes and skin.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, the Italian woman Beatrice Castiglioni has beautiful blond hair and blue eyes, and this carries over to her half-Japanese daughter.
• In Kara no Shoujo, Stella has blonde hair and blue eyes and is later stated to be the daughter of a Italian missionary with a Japanese woman. Unless her mother was also half-Japanese and passed down her recessive genes, Stella having those features would be very improbable in real life.

Web Animation

• Despite Senpai Club being an Affectionate Parody of anime and using several cliches, this one is averted. The half-Japanese, half-American Nelly Smith has brown hair and reddish-brown eyes (though her father is a blonde and her mother has black hair). Nelly does have a thick accent though. Her friend ??? does have blond hair and blue eyes but seems Japanese, but then again she never even speaks so it's hard to tell.
• In Issue 10 of Teen Girl Squad, all three of the Scottish guys who randomly show up at The Ugly One's party have big red beards.

Webcomics

• Kaiten Mutenmaru: Shinobu Kajika, Shinuka To'omotta, Crocell Xylel, Mackerel, Anchor Web, Sister Meer, and Anchor Sam have blonde hair, along with blue eyes in the cases of the last five, to emphasize their American origins.

Web Original

• The Republic of Molossia's government ministers are a group of ethnic stereotypes portrayed by President Kevin Baugh in Paper Thin Disguises. Paddy O'Baugh, Minister of Making Things Disorderly, has huge red sideburns, while Angus MacBaugh, Minister of Frugality, has a thick red mustache and eyebrows.

Web Video

• Out With Dad: Nessa, a Latina, has the usual looks in US media-olive skin and black hair.

Western Animation

• Clay Bailey, the American monk from Xiaolin Showdown is a blond and blue-eyed cowboy. His sister, Jesse, also has blond hair and blue eyes. Averted by his father, though, who's a brunette.
• Miraculous Ladybug: The trope is subverted with the two Italian characters: Lila Rossi is tan but with green eyes and reddish-brown hair, with the shade of her skin changing between episodes implying she's naturally paler than that and simply gets tans, while Gina Dupain is fair-skinned. This is quite common in Italy, as millennia of invasions and immigration from all around Europe and the Mediterranean created a great variability in skin tones and hair and eye colors.
• Luz from The Owl House is specified as being of Afro-Latino descent and is shown as having darker skin than her Caucasian classmates back on Earth (but lighter than her mother). Justified by the fact that she's based off of a real person (Luz Batista, a friend of the show's creator) who has a similar complexion.
• The Simpsons:
  • Groundskeeper Willie is a redheaded Scot, as were his parents when they were younger, and (in the comic) his brother.
  • All Willie's presumably Scottish football hooligan buddies in "The Cartridge Family" are also redheads.
  • Mr. Burns, who's of Scottish ancestry, claims to have had strawberry blond hair in his youth. However, most flashbacks show him with brown hair, so it’s likely a case of Depending on the Artist.
  • Willie's Irish rival, Groundskeeper Seamus, also has red hair.

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