Basic Trope: A blond character is good and has a heart of gold.
- Straight: Blond-haired Alice is sweet, wholesome, and good, making her a big contrast from the dark-haired witch who is out to get her.
- Exaggerated:
- Hair like pale spun gold, Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
- The Always Lawful Good race are all blonde and the Always Chaotic Evil race are all black-haired.
- Downplayed:
- The dirty-blond hair of the sweet, naïve team newbie (who's nonetheless a complex and dynamic major character) only particularly stands out because the rest of the central cast are dark-haired and/or shaved head.
- The blond-haired Alice is mostly a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Justified: Alice grew up with love and affection because she's so pretty (and she knows this and is kind to those who did not get treated so).
- Inverted:
- The evil blonde attacks the poor innocent brunet character.
- Blonde Alice is cynical or a broken cutie.
- Blonde Alice is an asshole and is very mean, she regularly punches Bob, has an awful temper. and she's very aggressive in general which makes everyone hate her.
- Subverted:
- Blonde Alice is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
- Blonde Alice is The Mole.
- Double Subverted:
- Açoce is a Sheep in Sheep's Clothing
- Except that Good Is Not Nice and she had to worm her way into the villain's confidence.
- She's a Knight in Sour Armor.
- She's blonde, and appears to be cold-hearted and cynical, yet she's secretly quite kindhearted and sweet, and has a strong reason to act aloof and pretend she's a jerk.
- Turns out she's a Punch-Clock Villain who leaves the villain at the first opportunity.
- Parodied: A villain dyes her hair blond and undergoes an instant Heel–Face Turn. Her Mooks kidnap her and dye it bubble-gum pink. She reverts and kills them all for laying hands on her.
- Zig-Zagged:
- She reveals that she dyes her hair. Cue the Costume-Test Montage as her younger self goes through a dozen hair styles and colors before settling on blonde. No one is really sure what her alignment is supposed to be now.
- Alice has blond hair but she frequently switches from being nice to being mean and vice versa.
- Averted: Hair color is not connected to morality; the good character can just as easily be a brunette or a redhead.
- Enforced: How will the audience tell if they're not Color-Coded for Your Convenience?
- Lampshaded: "Hair dye might do more to make the world a better place than all the magic and fighting we do."
- Invoked:
- Nice Girl Alice dyes her hair blond to look the part.
Alice: Trust me, I'm good now.
Bob: You're good? After being responsible for turning me into a cynic 20 years ago, i'm supposed to forgive you and believe that you turned good?!
Alice: (Dyes her hair blond) I'm blonde so that means I'm good, right? ([["Oh, Crap!" Smile Smiles sheepishly) - Exploited: Alice uses her blonde hair to look innocent and pure-hearted, when it's a façade.
- Defied: "I'm not going to turn into some namby-pamby Incorruptible Pure Pureness because of my hair color!"
- Discussed: "What, you expected me to save you idiots just because I'm blonde?"
- Conversed: "Brown ... black ... brown ... blonde ... Gee, I wonder which one is going to betray the bad guy?"
- Deconstructed:
- Alice treats Bob as good because he's blond ... and he horribly betrays her.
- Alternately, Alice is so good and pure that she doesn't understand that other people are capable of being evil, so she routinely gets tricked by people with bad intentions.
- Reconstructed: But then Charlie rescues her and reveals Bob dyed his hair.
Back to Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold
