Race Lift / Diversifying a Cast

Examples of Race Lift where the ethnicity of minor characters are changed to prevent the entire production from being homogeneous.

---

Advertising

• This was emphasized, and possibly parodied, by State Farm when they updated their ongoing "Jake from State Farm" campaign in 2019 with a new "Jake from State Farm" that was Black. They did this by doing a new version of the original "Jake from State Farm" commercial where the new Jake asks the agent in the cubicle behind him about the situation. The agent in the cubicle behind him is the original Jake from State Farm.^{justification}The original Jake was an actual State Farm agent, as State Farm wanted real insurance agents to appear in their commercials at the time. "Jake from State Farm" just became memetic enough to be a representative for the company in the public consciousness. Eventually, the original Jake left the company, and they decided to hire an actor to be "Jake" from then on.
  New Jake: Hey, do they ever ask you what you're wearing?
  Old Jake: Uhh, yeah.

Anime and Manga

• While most of Osamu Tezuka's "Star System" relies on Mukokuseki when playing explicitly non-Japanese characters, his recurring schoolboy character Kenichi (or simply Ken) has had two Race Lifts. While usually portrayed as a dark-haired Japanese kid, in a few anime produced by Tezuka's company in the 1980s (most notably the second Astro Boy series), he was redrawn as a brown-haired, blue-eyed white kid. This was somewhat reversed in the Metropolis (2001) film, but in the 2003 Astro Boy anime series he has brown skin.
  • Similarly, Shibugaki has one in the 2003 anime series, where he is redesigned to look white, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
• In Riding Bean, Bean Bandit's partner Rally Vincent is blonde and appears white. When she became the main character in Gunsmith Cats, she was dark-skinned with black hair, and her father is East-Asian Indian, making Rally biracial with an English mother.
• In a very subtle and tricky one, the Appleseed 3D animation's secondary protagonist, the full-body cyborg Briareos Hecatonchires is shown in the original manga to have been African-American before becoming a Cyborg, while in the second Appleseed film he appears to be turned into a generic Japanese-looking Bishōnen. Even in the manga you can only tell through some certain artwork pieces Shirow did: Briareos doesn't really have much of a face most of the time. In the new anime series, he's black again.
• In-universe example in Mobile Suit Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer, the Stylistic Suck film within a film which is a fictional adaptation of the main character's battle in the main series, took the cast of predominantly bishounen Gundam pilots and made them into an ensemble team. Setsuna was played by a generic looking guy with clearer skin and a scar, Lockon was turned into a bespectacled stoic, Allelujah became a pre-teen pink-haired girl and Tieria was adapted into a Scary Black Man.
• As with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and numerous Western Animation projects mentioned below, Nick Fury is depicted as a black man in Iron Man: Rise of Technovore and Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher.
• In Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog, the President's secretary was a white blonde woman. When she appeared in the Sonic X anime, she was changed to an African-American woman with dark hair.
• In the 1987 anime adaptation of Little Women, Hannah, the family maid, is changed from Irish to African-American and looks how you'd expect her to look, though the anime avoids blackface styling. Some in-show dialogue hints she was a slave at some point in her life before she worked for the March family.
• Pokémon Evolutions gives some of the characters darker skin, presumably to make the cast more diverse. Notably, both Victor and Elaine had pale skin in their respective game appearances, but have brown skin in the anime.

Comic Books

• The Ultimate Marvel incarnation of Nick Fury is black. Or rather, deliberately styled after Samuel L. Jackson. This was to lead up to Jackson having a role in the Iron Man movie as the man himself (he allowed the usage, having it written into the deal he would play the part when/if a movie(s) were ever made). Within the series, this has undergone some lampshading with a conversation with Nick being asked who he would like to see in a biopic about himself. The answer? Samuel L. Jackson.
• While the Marvel Universe Wasp is white, her Ultimate counterpoint became Asian-American. She even mutters about Lucy Liu being suggested to play her, as they look nothing alike. Later, though, the new artist started drawing her as white in a rather egregious case of artistic license. Alas, it will never be known if she would have stayed white or not, as soon thereafter she was eaten by the Blob.
• The Ultimate version of Tony Stark changes his mother Maria into a Hispanic woman, making Antonio Stark half-Hispanic.
• Snowbird is an Inuit demigoddess with white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. The Ultimate version of Snowbird looks closer to a realistic depiction of an Inuit woman, sporting brown skin and black hair.
• Ultimate versions of the Abomination and Crimson Dynamo are Chinese (the originals were both Russians), Hurricane is a North Korean woman (the original was a white male), and Swarm is a Syrian woman (the original was a white male).
• The second iteration of The Vision is a black man.
• Ultimate Spider-Man features several race-lifts.
  • Ox, a minor mook in the mainstream continuity, is a black man in the revamp, and given more of a personality (the other one was known for being a Silent Antagonist). He's even shown to consider reforming at the end of his first arc (but doesn't, in favor of becoming a Goldfish Poop Gang).
  • The Ultimate version of Ben Reilly is a young, African American lab assistant, rather than a clone of Peter Parker.
  • The second Scorpion is Maximus Gargan, a Mexican version of Mac Gargan, who was the original Scorpion in the 616 universe. This also makes him an Affirmative-Action Legacy of sorts since the first Scorpion in the Ultimate universe was a clone of Peter Parker.
  • Taskmaster is black.
• In the Spidey: School's Out mini-series, the Shocker is a black man, likely as a nod to Bokeem Woodbine's portrayal of the character in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • In the 2004 Legion of Super-Heroes reboot, Star Boy was changed from white to black, with this incarnation being used in the short-lived Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon. Sadly, black Star Boy also suffered from having every defining characteristic of the character stripped from him (right down to having his girlfriend Dream Girl reassigned to be Brainiac 5's love interest).
  • Karate Kid (no connection to the movies) has also been Race Lifted back and forth to and from Asian a couple of times. Though to be fair, in his original version, he was Eurasian with a Japanese father and a white mother.
  • In the 2019 reboot by Brian Michael Bendis, Lightning Lad and Light Lass are now black (though still redheads), while Cosmic Boy is Asian and Shrinking Violet is Ambiguously Brown.
• In the Age of Apocalypse universe, X-23 is half-Japanese due to being the daughter of Wolverine and Mariko Yashida, rather than simply a clone of Wolverine like in the main continuity. Accordingly, her civilian name is Kirika rather than Laura.
• The Batman foe Killer Croc had his origin told in one of his first appearances, Batman 359, which showed that young "Waylon Jones" was African American before his severe skin condition left him looking like a monster. But since he was a green crocodile man in all his appearances in "the present," some people assumed he was originally white (including at least one colorist doing a flashback). More recent interpretations (including some Alternate Universe stories such as Joker) have undone this unintentional racelift and correctly portrayed Waylon as an African American.
• The publisher of Dilbert (not cartoonist Scott Adams) colorizes the Sunday strips and picks the race of minor characters. This results in unfortunate implications as when they made a corrupt security officer black (he's white in later reprintings). This happens because there isn't anyone in Dilbert who isn't either corrupt, an idiot or severely flawed in some other way.
• Nighthawk and Blur are both black in Supreme Power, a modern day update of the original Squadron Supreme series. The former's race lift was carried over to the version of Nighthawk who appears in The Avengers (Jason Aaron) and Heroes Reborn (2021).
• In the Multiverse of the DC Universe, there are several worlds where normally-white heroes have their races changed. Earth-D, a retroactive addition to the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Multiverse, sported an Asian version of The Flash, black versions of Superman and Supergirl, an Arab Wonder Woman, a Hispanic Green Lantern^note This was before Kyle Rayner's Suddenly Ethnicity, or the introduction of Jesscia Cruz. and a Native American Green Arrow. In the post-52 Multiverse, Earth-23 features a black Superman and Wonder Woman ^note Superman's rocket was found by the black Ellises rather than the white Kents in this world, while another unidentified Earth from Countdown had Korean American reporter Linda Park as her world's Flash.
• Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe has Batman as a black teenager and Wonder Woman coming from Peru rather than Paradise Island.
• Marvel used to run a title called Marvel Tales, which reprinted old Silver Age comics for newer readers. During the 80s, colorist Andy Yanchus would sometimes change the skin tones of one-shot characters or people in crowd scenes to make The Amazing Spider-Man's version of New York City more realistically diverse.
• Greg Pak's X-Treme X-Men featured a black version of Cyclops.
• Power Girl is Chinese in the Tangent Comics universe, while Superman is black.
• The Green Lantern's daughter Jade is Chinese in the Ame-Comi Girls universe. Her civilian name is changed from Jennifer-Lynn Hayden to Jade Yifei.
• Heather Hudson is changed from a white redhead to a black woman in Exiles.
• The hardcover edition of Kingdom Come identifies Angela Margolin (white) as the mother of Irey West, the new Kid Flash and daughter of The Flash. When Irey was made canon in the DCU years later, her mother was changed to Linda Park (Korean American), making her half-Asian.
• In the Batman/Doc Savage crossover, this is done to Doc, who is of mixed-race in this continuity. Rather cleverly, this explains his old school nickname of "The Man of Bronze", as his unique skin tone is now a result of his mixed European/Asian ancestry.
  • The sketchbook at the back of the one-shot suggests that if DC's whole "First Wave" line of Two-Fisted Tales hadn't collapsed, their version of Black Canary would have been non-Caucasian (probably Indian-American, but possibly of Korean or Middle Eastern origin).
• In the Marvel Mangaverse, The Punisher is Japanese. And a woman.
  • Mangaverse Doctor Doom is Wakandan.
• When first introduced, the minor X-Men supporting character Cartier St. Croix was a white Monacan but was changed to a black Monacan with an Algerian wife in his subsequent appearances (with the white guy who first appeared retconned into being Cartier's father). This retroactively made his daughter Monet (of X-Factor), as well as her siblings, Afro-Algerian as well. Not too much of a stretch since she was already Ambiguously Brown.
• Obscure comic book character Marie Thirteen (the wife of Doctor Thirteen) was pretty consistently portrayed as a blonde white woman in most of her appearances. After several decades in limbo, Doctor Thirteen returned to the DCU with a half-Asian daughter named Traci, with references made to Marie having passed away. This would count as something of an offscreen race lift since Marie was retroactively established as having been an Asian woman.
• In the Silver Age, Rick Jones (the Kid Sidekick of Captain America and The Incredible Hulk) belonged to a group of youths who called themselves the Teen Brigade. The more recent Avengers: The Origin limited series Retconned two of the boys into being black and Asian-American respectively.
• One of the Alternate Universes shown in Spider-Verse is a world where "Spider-Man" is a 14-year old Japanese girl named Peni Parker, who was adopted by Aunt May and Uncle Ben. She also pilots a Humongous Mecha.
  • Other alternate Spider-Men include a Masked Luchador from Mexico and an African-American punk rocker from a Dystopian Police State.
  • Spider-Man has a lot of these. There's Pavitr Prabhakar from Spider-Man India, as well as Izumi (Japanese) and Anansi (African) from the Spider-Man: Fairy Tales anthology.
• In Superman: Secret Identity, Lois Lane is modernized as the Indian American reporter Lois Chaudhari. She ends up marrying Superman and producing two mixed-race daughters who become their Earth's equivalents of Supergirl.
• Likewise, the Superman: American Alien version of Lois is Asian-American, while Jimmy Olsen is black.
• Punisher Max made Elektra an actual Japanese woman, rather than a white lady who dressed up like a ninja.
• In the DC Comics New 52:
  • Superman villain Morgan Edge is black.
  • Captain Atom antagonist General Eiling is black.
  • Wonder Woman's friend Etta Candy is now a black woman.
  • The Flash's enemy Weather Wizard is now Guatemalan, with his name changed from Mark to Marco. This also holds true for his brother Clyde, now changed to "Claudio".
  • Turbine, the modernized version of the Top, is a black man, although the original version is introduced later.
  • The Earth-2 version of Hawkgirl remains half-Latina, but now has a much darker skin tone.
  • The original Crimson Avenger is a black woman, similar to the second Crimson Avenger.
  • According to Word of God, Black Orchid is Latina.
  • Deathstroke's ally Wintergreen is black, though this change was undone with DC Rebirth.
  • The main universe's Doctor Fate is Egyptian-American, the son of an Egyptian immigrant and an American woman. Earth-2's Doctor Fate is Egyptian, while Earth-20's Doc Fate is black.
  • Uncle Sam is black.
  • Captain Steel is Filipino (and born in the Philippines).
  • As of May 2014, ginger-haired Wally West has been reintroduced in The Flash (2011) as half-black — though DC Rebirth later subverted this by revealing that the original Wally is still around and that the new Wally is in fact a younger cousin of his, both of whom are named after their great-grandfather.
  • The Bloodlines reboot makes Gunfire black and Anima half-Asian.
  • The Green Arrow villain Clock King is now black.
  • Serafina, the Gender Flipped version of the blond Serifan from The Forever People, is black, because she's now Vykin's sister.
  • Mercy Graves is now Asian-American, much like she is in The Batman and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
  • Julia Pennyworth (Alfred's daughter), a minor Pre-Crisis character, is now half-black.
  • The Flash villain The Folded Man is changed from a white American named Edwin Gauss to a Zulu named Xolani.
  • The Nightwing and Robin villain Pamela Swiegeld/Mouse is African-American.
  • The youngest of Billy Batson's fellow foster-kids who he shares his power with is an African-American girl called Darla Dudley, presumably based on Mary Dudley/Freckles Marvel, the youngest member of the pre-Crisis Marvel Family.
  • Jenny Steam, the 19th century counterpart of Jenny Sparks, is introduced in a Stormwatch 1880 back-up strip as an African-American who also goes by Jenny Freedom.
  • Helena Bertinelli is an Ambiguously Brown Sicilian American woman. According to Tim Seeley, this was done to avoid confusion with her Earth-2 counterpart Helena Wayne.
• In Mastermen #1, Earth-10's Freedom Fighters represent ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities targeted by the Nazi Party. The Ray is homosexual, Doll Man is a Jehovah's Witness, Phantom Lady is Romani, and Black Condor is African.
• In DC's short-lived revamp of the Red Circle properties, the Black Hood's identity was changed from Matthew Burland, a white man, to Mateo Burland, a reformed Latino crook.
  • The later Dark Circle revival included a modern reboot of the Web. The character was changed from John Raymond, an adult college professor, to Jane Raymond, a 14-year old Korean American schoolgirl.
• An in-universe example took place in an issue of Catwoman where Harley Quinn tried to pitch a movie based on the exploits of the Gotham City Sirens. For the sake of diversity, one of the studio execs suggested making Harley an Asian American teenager for the film, despite the "real" Harley being a white adult with blonde hair and blue eyes(ironically enough since there were multiple Harley Quinns according to the Joker there's a slight possiblity that at least one is Asian American).
• There were plans to make Stephanie Brown into a black teenager in the Smallville comic book, which the artist felt would better fit the character's working-class background. This plan fell apart, and Stephanie herself would then wind up completely taken out of the book by editorial interference.
• In the "new look" Archie Comics Archie stories, Midge is depicted as being Asian. This at least makes some sort of sense, as the only really consistent things the artists have kept about Midge's appearance over the decades have been "petite" and "black-haired", so making her Asian doesn't alter her look too much. She still keeps her decidedly not-Asian surname of Klump, however.
• Annabel from "KWYNK en zijn zusje Annabel", the byline character and sister of the Dutch digital comic magazine Kwynk's title character, was changed from a fair skinned curly redhead to Afro-Surinamese, Word of God has it that this was to improve the balance, which makes sense in context.
• Isis from the original The Secrets of Isis TV show (as well as the tie-in comics) was a white woman named Andrea Thomas. When Isis was imported to the DC Universe some 30 years later during 52, she was depicted as an Egyptian woman named Adrianna Tomaz.
• In New Mutants and Loki: Agent of Asgard, the Norse hero Sigurd is a black man.
• Super-obscure Earth-One Batman supporting character Batman Jones reappeared in Battle for the Cowl as a "renowned Batman and organised crime expert" in a ski-mask and Batman hoodie. The Earth-One version was a blond Caucasian, the New Earth version, even with the ski-mask, is visibly African-American.
• When Janice Lincoln, the new Beetle, first appeared in Captain America as a foe of Cap and Black Widow, she was very clearly white. She suddenly became Ambiguously Brown in the pages of The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, which served as a bit of foreshadowing for the eventual Reveal that she's the daughter of Tombstone.
• Batman '66, the official continuation of the '60s Adam West Batman (1966) show, has Warden Crichton (a white man played by David Lewis in the original series) depicted as an African-American woman.
• Earth One:
  • Teen Titans: Earth One:
    • Raven is Native American.
    • Wonder Girl is black.
  • Wonder Woman: Earth One:
    • Steve Trevor is black.
    • Similar to the Teen Brigade example from above, the Holiday Girls are now a multicultural group instead of just being a bunch of white girls.
  • Batman: Earth One depicts Gillian Loeb (much like in The Dark Knight Trilogy) and Robin as black.
• Likewise, The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) makes the Holiday Girls more diverse than the Golden Age version, with Glamora Treat and Lita Little from the Golden Age books now depicted as an Ambiguously Brown girl and a black girl respectively.
• Also, while this is true for Earth One and Legend, it could also apply to the Amazons in general. In the Golden Age Wonder Woman stories, all of the Amazons on Paradise Island were white, but Post-Crisis, they've been shown to be racially diverse. For instance, Philipus, probably one of the more prominent Amazons, is black.
• Taking a note from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the comics Retconned Daisy Johnson into being half-Chinese on her mother's side. Prior to that, she was white and explicitly designed to resemble a young Angelina Jolie.
• Perhaps in response to the Skyfall example below, the James Bond series by Dynamite Comics has Ms. Moneypenny as a black woman. M is also black in this version.
• In DC Comics Bombshells, Zatanna is half-Jewish and half-Romani, while Lois Lane and her little sister Lucy are half-Cuban. In the sequel series, Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark are both introduced as Nisei Japanese-Americans, with Cassie being biracial.
• In the Silver Age Rip Hunter Time Master, Rip's associate Jeff Smith was white; the post-Crisis version introduced in Time Masters was African American.
• Examples from IDW's Hasbro Comic Universe:
  • In the 2016 M.A.S.K. reboot, Matt Trakker is black and Gloria Baker is Indian (the latter being a Composite Character with Ali Bombay, the franchise's previous character of Indian descent).
  • Jem and the Holograms (IDW) makes Jetta from the Misfits half-black and half-Japanese. This is actually a Development Gag, as she was originally going to be a black American in the animated series before Executive Meddling resulted in her being a white British woman instead. Riot and Minx are not white, unlike in the cartoon. Riot is half-Asian and Minx is a German of East Asian descendance.
  • In Transformers vs. Visionaries, Leoric is black.
• In The Wild Storm, the rebooted versions of Michael Cray and the Midnighter are black, and the rebooted version of Jenny Sparks is Asian.
• The Baby-Sitters Club: Tying into the Adaptational Diversity of Stoneybrook as a whole, several minor characters have been changed from their original whiteness from the book series.
  • Jenny Prezzioso is now Ambiguously Brown, as are Logan (and his family), Shannon, the Dawes family (and Nancy), and the Perkins. So are the two boys Mary Anne and Stacey meet in Boy-Crazy-Stacey (Toby and Alex); the popular actor Mary Anne crushes on, Cam Geary; and artist Ashley Wyeth.
  • The Papadakis family (and Hannie) are now black.
  • The Fielding family from Kristy's Big Day—the children of Watson's friend Tom—are biracial, with a white mother and unstated but brown father.
  • Charlotte (and her mother, Dr. Johanssen) are now East Asian.
• Immortal Hulk reimagined Jack McGee from The Incredible Hulk (1977) as a black woman.
• Spider-Gwen:
  • Black Cat is of Afro-French descent.
  • Reed Richards and Baron Blood are black.
  • Wolverine is an immortal Japanese samurai rather than a Canadian mutant.
  • Kitty Pryde is Ambiguously Brown, though it's unknown exactly what ethnicity she is.
  • Doctor Strange is a neurologist of Middle Eastern descent named Asim Strange rather than Stephen Strange.
• The Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass graphic novel reimagines Pamela Isely (a.k.a. the future Poison Ivy) as a young mixed Afro-Asian girl named Ivy Du-Barry.
• Poison Ivy is Asian-American in Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero.
• Alicia Masters is black in Fantastic Four: Grand Design.
• Crime Syndicate (2021):
  • The Lex Luthor of Earth-3 is black.
  • Power Tower, the Legion of Justice's Giganta analogue, comes from the Philippines.
  • Venus, Poison Ivy's Good Counterpart, also appears to be non-white.
• In Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story, Lois is biracial with a Japanese mother, while Cat Grant is Filipina.
• The Batman Elseworld Batman: The Blue, the Grey and the Bat (where Batman is active during the American Civil War) reinterprets Batman's traditionally Caucasian sidekick Robin as a Native American named Redbird.

Fan Works

• In Aeon Natum Engel several characters were lifted into Nazzadi and Xenomixes (Nazzadi/Human Halfbreeds). In various Shows Within a Show previously human characters were lifted to Nazzadi, for example in the thread where the story is posted, The Nerv Bridge Bunnies are watching the Sci-Fi marathon MST3K-style, and argue about this trope (Blade Runner with Nazzadi, anyone?).
• Ask the Famous 8!: Almost everyone working on the NWR is either of non-white minorities or of mixed race.
  • Thomas and Edward are British Indian, Henry is of mixed race (Armenian Italian-Vietnamese), Gordon is British-Chinese, James is Latino-Spanish, Percy is Ethiopian, Toby is British African-Israeli, and Duck is German-British.
  • To list the side characters: Donald and Douglas are Afro-British, and Bash, Dash, and Ferdinand are of mixed ancestry (Japanese-African-Caucasian-Jewish).
• The Everyone Makes It to the 31st Century project race lifted many characters from the Legion Of Super-Heroes threeboot, backlashing against how very white the future was.
• Several characters in Undocumented Features are of races that don't exist in the character's original source material. The most common race to get more representation this way are Salusians (Gil Grissom, Hikari Shidou, and Master Chief, among others), but Umi Ryuuzaki is Hyeruulian, Adam Savage is Kryptonian, Bastilla Shan is Bajoran, etc.
• In the Equestria Girls fanfic Seven Days in Sunny June, the story (and accompanying art changes the cast from Amazing Technicolor Population to real ethnicities and skin tones (e.g. Fluttershy is 1/4 Japanese, Rainbow Dash is Hispanic). The artwork for the fourth book in the series goes one step farther by eschewing the cartoon stylization for photorealism.
• In Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts, part of why Selina Kyle is an outsider is that she was raised by very white adoptive parents in a very white neighborhood but her genetic heritage is Latina.
• Hunters of Justice based Mercy Graves on her The Batman and DC Extended Universe counterparts, Perry White on his DCEU counterpart, and Cat Grant on her DC Animated Movie Universe counterpart, thus Mercy is of Asian descent, and Perry and Cat are black.
• In the videogame novelization Breath of the Wild, the author lists certain actors to be imagined playing the various characters. For Zelda, the author chooses actress Yara Shahidi as the basis for her appearance. This means that the white blonde Zelda is reimagined as a black girl.
• Friday Night Funkin': B3 Remixed: In the base game, Boyfriend and Girlfriend are caucasian. In B3 Remixed, B3 is Asian (more specifically, South Korean), while Shaya is black.

Films — Animation

• The Muses are a black Gospel choir in Hercules, in a film where all of the humans are white (of Mediterranean origin) and the gods/spirits tend to be from an Amazing Technicolor Population. Considering, though, that there's only a sea between Egypt and Greece, and there was lots of trade between the two people (they even had gods and myths in common), it's not too far-fetched.
• Like in Smallville and Young Justice, Justice League: Doom made the Martian Manhunter's "John Jones" identity African-American. Like Nick Fury, this version seems to be catching on to the point that the original comics character is becoming the black sheep. Only time will tell if, being a shapeshifter, the Manhunter in the comics will have something happen that requires him to change his standard human disguise, and choose one that looks a lot like Phil Morris.
• The Big Hero 6 cast was entirely Japanese in the original comic, but the Disney film makes Fred (ethnically Ainu in the comics) white, Wasabi African-American, Honey Lemon Hispanic, GoGo Tomago Korean, and Hiro half-Japanese instead of fully Japanese.
• Taking a page from The Ultimates, The Wasp is Asian American in both of the Ultimate Avengers movies.
• One of the three Batwomen in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman is an Expy of Kathy Kane named Kathy Duquesne. While Kane is white in the comics, Duquesne is a light-skinned (possibly biracial) African-American woman.
• Barbara Gordon is black or Latina (possibly Afro-Latina) in The LEGO Batman Movie in order to match her voice actress, Rosario Dawson, though possibly leaning towards Latina given the casting of Héctor Elizondo as Commissioner Gordon. Taking after the casting of Eartha Kitt in the '60s show and Billy Dee Williams in the '89 movie respectively, Catwoman and Two-Face are black, the latter of whom is even reprised by Williams (mentioned below as another example of this trope).
• The Death of Superman sees Cat Grant as African-American.
• Batman: Soul of the Dragon:
  • Richard Dragon is a Bruce Lee Clone instead of a Mighty Whitey like the original character or Latino like his villainous usurper in the New 52.
  • Silver St. Cloud is now Ambiguously Brown instead of a very pale-skinned white woman.
• Taking a note from the Arrowverse, Iris West is a black woman in Justice Society: World War II. Hawkman is also explicitly Egyptian, rather than a white American who was reincarnated from an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
• In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Jessica Drew is African-American, with her voice provided by Issa Rae. Lyla, Spider-Man 2099's A.I. assistant, is also changed from a Marilyn Monroe-like blonde bombshell to an Asian woman.

Films — Live-Action

• Fantastic Four (2005): The Thing's girlfriend, Alicia Masters (a white blonde in the comics), was played by African-American actress (and future Scandal star) Kerry Washington.
• Fantastic Four (2015): The Human Torch is played by African-American actor Michael B. Jordan with Reg E. Cathey playing his father, Franklin Storm. In an aversion, the Invisible Woman (his sister) is played by Kate Mara, with the explanation being that she was a refugee from Kosovo that was adopted by the Storm family.
• Father of the Bride (2022): Ethnicity swap. Unlike the source material and both previous film adaptations where the characters were Anglo Americans, this film involves the union of a Mexican family and a Cuban-American family.
• Persuasion (2022): Jane Austen characters are implicitly white, being members of the middle and upper middle classes during the Regency. Here, Lady Russell, Captain Benwick, and the Musgroves are played by black actors, while William Elliot is played by half-Malaysian Henry Golding.
• Power Rangers (2017):
  • Billy and Kimberly, both white characters in the original TV series, are played by black and half-Indian actors respectively.
  • Trini (Asian in the original) was recast as a Latina, and Zack (originally African-American) is played by an Asian actor. As a result, the team is now majority non-white, with only Jason as the Token White. Funnily enough, the original actress cast as Trini in the show was Latina, but she left over pay issues.
  • Previous incarnations of Rita Repulsa were played by a Japanese actress (stock footage) and other Asian actresses (original footage). The latest actress to portray her is Elizabeth Banks, who's white.
• The Kingpin is a black man in Daredevil (2003). The white actors who auditioned for the role (all pro wrestlers), were deemed inferior to Michael Clarke Duncan.
• Red, in The Shawshank Redemption, is played by Morgan Freeman; the character is a white man in the novella. In both versions, he tells Andy he got his nickname because he's Irish, but in the movie, it's a clever joke. Both start out in 1940s Maine. We hear at roll call and see on his file that it's actually from his last name, Redding (while his first name is Ellis).
• Freeman's character in Gone Baby Gone was, in the original novel — you guessed it — Irish.
• Morgan Freeman also plays Colonel "Curtis" in the adaptation of Dreamcatcher, taking the place of the extremely Irish Colonel Kurtz from the novel.
• In Congo, Charles Munro is changed from a white South African to an African-American man named Munro Kelly, played by Ernie Hudson. There's even a bit of lampshaded:
  "Munro Kelly. I'm your Great White Hunter for this trip, though I happen to be black."
• In Robin Hood (2018), Little John is played by Jamie Foxx, as he is now a Moorish man, similar to Morgan Freeman's role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
• James Bond:
  • For Live and Let Die, the white Rosie Carver from the novel became black in the film, played by Gloria Hendry.
  • CIA agent Felix Leiter (a blond Texan in the James Bond novels) is played by the black Jeffrey Wright in the Daniel Craig films (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and No Time to Die).
  • The same goes for the 1983 non-canon Bond film Never Say Never Again, where Leiter was played by former athlete and Blaxploitation star Bernie Casey.
  • Moneypenny is played by British Afrio-Caribbean actress Naomie Harris in Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die. The character was white in the original novels and each of the prior films she appeared in (as played by, in chronological order, Lois Maxwell, Caroline Bliss and Samantha Bond).
• Batman Film Series:
  • In Batman (1989), Harvey Dent (Two-Face's original identity), who is white in the original comics, is played by Billy Dee Williams, who campaigned for the role specifically to be Two-Face in the sequel, but the role eventually went to Tommy Lee Jones, averting the trope. The comic Batman '89 ignores Forever and uses this as a plot point, Harvey viewing himself as a success story of what a black man can accomplish.
  • In a rather famous almost example, Marlon Wayans was cast as Robin in Batman Returns, but was cut at the last minute due to the film having numerous characters. They were far enough along in the process that Wayans even went in for a costume fitting and had an action figure made in his likeness. Like with Dent, this version of Robin came to pass in Batman '89.
  • In 2017, Coolio revealed that his Batman & Robin Character, Banker, was supposed to have been the Scarecrow, who (like Two-Face and Robin) is white in the comics and is played by a black man here.
• In Venom (2018), Carlton Drake, a white man in the comics, is played by Riz Ahmed, who is of Pakistani-English descent.
• Wesley Snipes was cast as Sean Connery's kouhai in the movie adaptation of Rising Sun, which led to a disagreement over which the script writers Michael Crichton (whose novel it was based on) and Michael Backes quit the project. The character is written as a racist white man in the original book.
• Sgt Bilko has a black actor play Cpl Henshaw. (Bilko's other sidekick, Cpl Barbella, gets a Gender Flip).
• According to Sylvia Anderson, one piece of Executive Meddling during the early days of the Thunderbirds movie was "Could the main cast be more ethnically diverse?" Since they're all brothers, the answer was "No."
• Color Out of Space (2020): Both the unnamed narrator and Ammi Pierce are merged into the character of Ward Phillips, a black man.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: The Last Stand:
    • Bolivar Trask is played by an African American actor, Bill Duke, while his original comic book incarnation was a white guy. However, the version seen in The Last Stand was later made into a different person thanks to X-Men: Days of Future Past opting to redo the character.
    • Kid Omega also becomes Asian American, though this is definitely a case of In Name Only since he has almost nothing in common with his comic counterpart. Kid Omega had much more in common with Quill and is even referred to as such the director's commentary. This would still make this a race lift since Quill was white too.
    • Callisto is also played by a dark-skinned Latina actress.
  • Agent Zero is a white guy of East German descent in the X-Men comics, but is played by Korean actor Daniel Henney in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
  • Blink, a white Bahamanian in the comics, is played by Chinese actress Fan Bingbing in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Not too much of a stretch, since Blink is purple in the comics despite her white ancestry.
  • Blind Al, a white woman in the comics, is played by African-American actress Leslie Uggams in Deadpool (2016).
  • Logan sees X-23 as half-Mexican and Rictor, a canonically Mexican character, as half Greek as his source DNA is listed as Dominic Petros^note which itself in an alias in the comics, as his real name is Dominikos Petrakis, best known in the comics as Avalanche.
  • In Deadpool 2, Domino is portrayed by Afro-German actress Zazie Beetz. Like the Blink example, it's downplayed since Domino has an unnaturally chalk white, inhuman-looking skin tone in the comics anyway.
• The 2005 film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has the Oompa-Loompas played by Indian actor Deep Roy, while the book has the Oompa-Loompas as Caucasians (after a Bowdlerisation from their original description as black African pygmies!).
• In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a black extra was identified in the credits as having played Lavender Brown. When Lavender appeared again in the sixth movie (with actual lines this time), blonde, white British Jessie Cave was cast in an open audition. While one of the novels released after that film did mention that Lavender had the same skin tone as white Ron Weasley, there's no indication that the recast was an attempt to "correct" the original casting or even that the producers noticed the one minor mention of that fact.
• The movies of The Twilight Saga diversified the entire pure-human cast. In the book, all of them are assumed white and the ones Bella interacts with the most are all blond or brunette white people. The movie makes Angela Hispanic, Eric Asian, and Tyler black. In the movie, one of the vampires is black, but in the books, it's made perfectly clear that when you become a vampire, you become white-skinned.
• Harriet the Spy made Janie black, and also made Rachel Hennessey and a family that plays a minor role Asian (the latter was originally VERY stereotypically Italian).
• Ripcord is played by a black actor in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. (The original character and action figure is a red-headed white male.) Supposedly, the original plan was for him to be Stalker, but the name had Unfortunate Implications and it was felt the more comedic turn the character underwent wouldn't be well-received as Lonzo Wilkinson, so they went with a more obscure Joe name. Likewise, to diversify the origins of the character, Heavy Duty became a black British man (rather than a black American man) and Breaker became French Moroccan (rather than a white guy with a southern accent). Some of these changes went on to influence future adaptations, with Ripcord especially almost always being black afterwards.
• In G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Dwayne Johnson (half-black/half-Pacific Islander) plays Roadblock.
• In the book High Fidelity, we are led to picture Marie De Salle as white after Dick describes her as "kind of Sheryl Crow-ish crossed with a post-Partridge Family pre-L.A. Law Susan Dey kind of thing." In the movie she was played by Lisa Bonet; Dick now describes her as "kind of Sheryl Crow-ish crossed with a post-Partridge Family pre-L.A. Law Susan Dey kind of thing, but, you know, black."
• An in-universe example: In The Specials, the Minute Man action figure is made black, in the interest of taking a "multi-cultural approach".
• The unproduced live-action Voltron script made Lance into a young black guy.
• In the film version of Mystic River, Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon)'s partner is played by Laurence Fishburne. In the novel, he is white and supposedly looks a little like Brian Dennehy. However, after casting Fishburne they did not change the character's name: Whitey Powers. Dennis Lehane, author of the original book, admits that the character's name was a pun in the book, but that it actually became funnier when Fishburne was cast.
• In Carrie (2002), the character of Sue Snell, who was white in the book and movie, was played by black South African-Canadian actress Kandyse McClure. This seems to have been more a case of colorblind casting than a deliberate Race Lift; her race is never brought up over the course of the film.
• Carrie (2013) does this with Tina Blake. She's a redhead white girl in the book but played by the mixed-race Zoe Belkin in the film.
• In Children of the Corn (2009), Kandyse McClure plays Vicky, who was originally played by the white Linda Hamilton.
• When The Wild Wild West was adapted to a movie in 1999, Jim West, played by white Robert Conrad in the original TV show, was played by black Will Smith in the movie. This also resulted in many racist remarks, as much of the film takes place in the Southern states shortly after the American Civil War.
  Artemus Gordon: [picking out disguises] How about this? You could come as my manservant.
  Jim West: [excited stereotype "Negro" accent] Why, yessuh, Masah Gordon, why, I swears, I'd be delighted, I'll sing, I'll dance for ya, sir, and I swear, none of the other white folks'll know that [in normal voice] I'd rather shoot myself than play your damn manservant.
• Joseph's brothers in the film version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat include two black brothers. The two brothers involved were Judah (son of Leah) and Benjamin (son of Rachel). Both women had also, in this version, produced quite light-skinned and otherwise "white"-looking sons, and the twelve brothers in that cast covered a wide range of apparent ethnicities.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Superman's boss Perry White was played by African-American actor Laurence Fishburne.
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice sees Japanese actress Tao Okamoto play Mercy Graves, who is traditionally depicted as a white blonde woman.
  • Suicide Squad (2016) has Deadshot portrayed by Will Smith. The movie also sees Slipknot, another white man in the comics, played by Adam Beach, a First Nations Canadian.
  • Wonder Woman (2017) has the Amazon Artemis, a white, redheaded woman in the comic, played by Ann Wolfe, who is black.
  • Aquaman is usually depicted as a white man with blond hair and blue eyes in the comics. He's played by Jason Momoa (who's of mixed heritage) in the movies and has a white Atlantean mother (played by Nicole Kidman) and a Polynesian father (played by Temuera Morrison) in his eponymous movie.
  • In Birds of Prey (2020), Black Canary, typically depicted as white and blond in the comics, is played by Jurnee Smollett, who is of mixed African-American and Polish-Jewish descent. Also, Renee Montoya is played by Afro-Latina Rosie Perez.
  • Iris West is a white redhead in the original Flash comics. In Zack Snyder's Justice League, she's played by Kiersey Clemons, who is black.
  • Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984 is played by Chilean-American Pedro Pascal. It's even part of his character background, as his birth name was Maxwell Lorenzano, and he used to face racism from bullies.
  • Black Adam (2022) features Aldis Hodge as Hawkman. Cyclone, another white character in the comics, is also played by Quintessa Swindell. Additionally, Sabbac, who has variously been American or Russian in the comics, is from the Middle Eastern nation of Khandaq in the movie, and is played by Tunisian-Dutch actor Marwan Kenzari.
  • The Flash (2023) features Colombian-American actress Sasha Calle as Supergirl.
• The Batman (2022):
  • Catwoman is played by the half-black/half-Ashkenazi Jewish actress Zoë Kravitz. In fact, the casting process was open ethnicity and the people who screen tested ranged from Zazie Beetz and Ella Balinska, who are also half black/half white, Ana de Armas, who's a white Cuban, and Eiza González, who's Mexican. Swede Alicia Vikander also got very far into the casting process.
  • The film also sees the usually-white Commissioner Gordon played by African-American actor Jeffrey Wright. Like Catwoman, the casting call for him was also open ethnicity.
• The Great Gatsby (2013) has Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim, who is an extremely stereotypical white Greedy Jew in the original novel.
• Annie:
  • The 1999 TV-movie remake had Grace (the personal assistant who brings Annie to Daddy Warbucks's mansion) be played by a black actress - which raises eyebrows at the very end when Daddy proposes marriage to Grace. (Interracial marriage was not illegal in New York in the 1930s, but it is extremely far-fetched to suppose that such a rich and powerful character would publicly attempt it.)
  • The 2014 remake has African American actress Quvenzhané Wallis playing the title role. Similarly, Jamie Foxx plays Will Stacks, the film's analogue to Daddy Warbucks.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) is an interesting case. Ford Prefect is played by rapper/actor Mos Def (An American playing an extraterrestrial living in England and speaking English to British people who don't have a Babel Fish in their ears). It doesn't really come up in the original radio series, though since Arthur evidently lived in a quite rural part of the UK in the 1970s one can draw certain inferences, but the books describe Ford as white -somewhat unnaturally so even- with wiry ginger hair. The TV series, incidentally, completely ignored this. Of course, Mos Def's portrayal of Ford was In Name Only anyway...
• The Amazing Spider-Man: Sally Avril (white in the comics) is played by Kelsey Chow, who is half-Taiwanese. Its sequel sees African-American actor Jamie Foxx play Electro.
• In the film adaptation of Charlie's Angels (2000), one of the angels is Asian (portrayed by Lucy Liu), though she's not supposed to be one of the angels from the original series.
• Oz the Great and Powerful is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz; while Oscar the "wizard" and Witches of Oz are white the people of Oz are much more diverse.
• The 2010 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights had a black actor play Heathcliff. In the book, he looks white but with a noticeably dark complexion, causing people to suspect that he's part Romani.
• The Cloud Ten Pictures' 2000-2005 Left Behind films have Clarence Gilyard and Arnold Pinnock playing Bruce Barnes, T.D. Jakes playing Vernon Billings, and Louis Gosset Jr. playing Gerald Fitzhugh. Verna Zee, who is given a Race Lift, also doubles as a Composite Character, with her being a combination of herself and Lucinda Washington, the African-American editor-in-chief of the Global Weekly office in Chicago.
• In Gridiron Gang, the real Sean Porter is white (as shown in the credits), but is played by The Rock. Dwayne has light enough skin to pull it off, but there is a scene where Sean visits his dying mom, who is much darker.
• RoboCop (2014) sees Anne Lewis become an African-American man named Jack.
• Pan has black actress Leni Zieglmeier as Wendy and Adeel Akhtar as Smee.
• In What Dreams May Come, Albert is played by black actor Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Leona is played by Chinese-American actress Rosalind Chao. While the book never explicitly identifies either character's race, the most logical assumption is that both are white, since Chris himself is white, Albert is his cousin in the book, and there's one scene where he remarks that he hardly ever saw people of "other races as well as my own" when he was alive.
• In the original Jem cartoon, Roxy from The Misfits was Italian-American. In the movie, she was played by Korean-American actress Hana Mae Lee.
• In the novel A Little Princess, the maidservant Becky is white; she's described near the end of the book as having "a round, pink face." In the film adaptation A Little Princess (1995), she's played by the young African-American actress Vanessa Lee Chester. Part of this is Cultural Translation due to the setting change; the book was set in Victorian London, where Becky was a low-class cockney girl. The film relocates it to 1910s New York, so Becky becomes a black servant.
• The film adaptation of The Dark Tower features Idris Elba as the main character. In the books, he's described as white, with blue eyes, and is based on Clint Eastwood.
• In Bride and Prejudice, a modern day adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the Bennett family is Indian, and Bingley family is Indian-British.
• In Murder on the Orient Express (2017):
  • Arbuthnot is a black man rather than a white South African. This adds an interesting subtext to Arbuthnot's secret romance with Miss Debenham, as a relationship between a black man and a white woman would've been far more controversial back in the 1930s.
  • The Swedish Greta Ohlsson is now the Spanish Pilar Estravados.
  • The Italian Antonio Foscarelli is now the Cuban-American Biniamino Marquez.
  • The French Pierre Michel is being played by Tunisian actor Marwan Kenzari, although the character is still stated to be from France. He is presumably a Frenchman of Arabic descent in this version.
• In Beauty and the Beast (2017), Plumette (the maid turned feather duster) and Mme. de Garderobe (the opera diva turned wardrobe) are both black in their human forms, as is Père Robert, the priest who corresponds to the animated film's (white) bookshop owner, and various background characters.
• A Wrinkle in Time (2018):
  • The Murry family were all white in the book. They become a mixed race family in the film, where Kate is African-American and the children are biracial.
  • The Mrs don't necessarily have their races stated in the book, but artwork depicts them as white. Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which are played by Mindy Kaling and Oprah Winfrey respectively.
• S.W.A.T. (2003) sees Sgt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson, who was white in the original series, played by Samuel L. Jackson.
• In Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Tim is played by Justice Smith, an actor of mixed African-American and French-Canadian descent, in contrast to the game, where Tim was just white.
• The Beast Must Die is based on the James Blish short story "There Shall Be No Darkness," which involves a wealthy English couple, Tom and Caroline Newcliffe, inviting people out to a weekend getaway in Scotland - only for one of the guests to turn out to be a werewolf. In Blish's story, Tom and Caroline are both Caucasian. For The Beast Must Die, however, Amicus cast black actor Calvin Lockhart, who was born in the Bahamas, as Tom, and black actress Marlene Clark, who was American, as Caroline (however, for whatever reason, they ended up having Clark dubbed by white actress Annie Ross in post).
• For The Witches (2020), the main character and his grandmother are black Americans, where as in the book and original film they were white British people.
• The Green Knight: In Arthurian legend, Sir Gawain is a white Briton. In the film, he's played by Dev Patel, a British Indian.
• In Shiverstone Castle, Dampfwalze is played by a black child actor.

Live-Action TV

• 13 Reasons Why's book counterpart left the races of several characters ambiguous. The Netflix series makes Tony Hispanic, Courtney and Zach Asian, Jessica biracial (white mother, black father) and Marcus and Mr Porter black. Book character Jenny Kurtz is implied to be a white girl and becomes Sheri Holland, who is black.
• Adventures in Wonderland: The Queen of Hearts, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum and the Walrus are played by African Americans.
• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow:
    • Deathstroke is played by Māori actor Manu Bennett.
    • Brother Blood is depicted as Latino.
    • Walter Steele is depicted as Black.
    • Ted Grant is played by a Latino actor.
    • Komodo, a white guy in the comics, is played by black actor Matt Ward.
    • Baron Reiter is played by black British actor Jimmy Akingbola. Particularly notable since his comic book counterpart was a Nazi (Baron Blitzkrieg).
    • In the comics, Liza Warner: Lady Cop is a blonde woman. In the series, she's played by African-American actress Rutina Wesley.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Iris West is an African-American woman played by Candice Patton rather than a redhead. Her father Joe is likewise African-American, portrayed by Jesse L. Martin. When Wally West joins the show in the second season, he's black as well (although by this point a black Wally had already been introduced in the comics; see above).
    • Obscure villain Null goes from a white guy to an African-American woman.
  • Constantine (2014):
    • Mary "Zed" Martin, a white Englishwoman in the Hellblazer comics, is portrayed by Mexican-American actress Angélica Celaya.
    • Astra Logue, a blonde girl in the comics, has been played by a series of black actresses through Constantine and Legends of Tomorrow.
  • Supergirl (2015):
    • Jimmy Olsen is played by African-American actor Mehcad Brooks, while Hank Henshaw is played by Afro-British actor David Harewood. Both characters are white guys in the comics.
    • Martian Manhunter is again black in human guise, as is Miss Martian's human guise, Megan Morse.
    • Maggie Sawyer is a white blonde in the comics, and a Latina woman in the TV show.
    • As mentioned in the Smallville section, Roulette is usually depicted as a white girl who wants to be a Dragon Lady. She's actually Asian in Supergirl, and is portrayed by Dichen Lachman.
    • Brainiac 5, usually played by white men in animated and live-action appearances, is here played by Indian and Jewish Jesse Rath.
    • Manchester Black, a white Englishman in the comics, is played by black Englishman David Ajala.
    • Colonel Lauren Haley, based on a blonde Bronze Age Wonder Woman character, is African-American.
  • Black Lightning (2018): Inspector Henderson, a supporting character from the original The Adventures of Superman radio show, is now a black man and one of Jefferson's oldest friends.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender is based on a show that has just one South Asian-esque character (Guru Pathik) in a setting otherwise predominantly influenced by East Asian and Inuit cultures. The adaptation turns Omashu into an Indian-esque city, with Teo, his father, and King Bumi all being played by Desi actors.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003)
  • Boomer, who had been played in the original by black actor Herb Jefferson Jr., was changed into Korean-Canadian actress Grace Park (also a Gender Flip). As Boomer is a Manchurian Agent Cylon in the new series, this one also counts as a Species Lift. The race and species part also applies to Athena, who is Park's other major "Number Eight" character; in the original, Athena was white (and Adama's daughter).
  • Commander Adama, originally played by white Canadian Lorne Greene, was recast as half-Hispanic with Edward James Olmos in the role. Or Colonel Tigh, who in the original series was black, played by Irish-Canadian actor Michael Hogan, who is (of course) white— and, like Boomer, Tigh is a Cylon. In the case of Tigh, this might have been to avoid Unfortunate Implications, given that the re-imagined Tigh begins as an alcoholic who isn't very good at his job.
• Beauty and the Beast (2012) has Kristin Kreuk playing the role originated by Linda Hamilton in the original series. Her partner was also originally written as an Irish-American, but ended up being played by a Latina actress.
• The Bible (2013) portrays Samson and his mother as black, unlike most Israelites who look stereotypically middle-eastern (brown hair, olive skin).
  • The three angels who appear to Abraham are nicely varied: one white, one black, one east Asian.
• In the 1963 film The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Mrs. Livingston was a white woman played by Roberta Sherwood. In the 1969 TV adaptation starring Bill Bixby, Mrs. Livingston was played by Japanese-American actress Miyoshi Umeki.
• The unaired pilot for the proposed 2004 Dark Shadows revival had longtime character Dr. Julia Hoffman played by Asian American actress Kelly Hu.
• Dickensian:
  • The Artful Dodger is played by black actor Wilson Radjou-Pujalte.
  • Mr Venus (from Our Mutual Friend) is played by Middle-Eastern actor Omid Djalili
• Doom Patrol (2019):
  • Crazy Jane is played by Latina actress Diane Guerrero.
  • Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man is played by Alec Mapa, who is Filipino-American.
• The 2012 Sherlock Holmes update Elementary has John Watson both race-lifted and gender-flipped into the Asian American surgeon "Joan Watson", played by Lucy Liu.
  • The cop in the pilot who corresponded roughly to Inspector Lestrade, Detective Abreu, was Latino. In the second episode, he was replaced by the African-American Detective Bell (named for the real-life surgeon who was the inspiration for Holmes), who swiftly became less Lestrade-like than his predecessor.
• Emerald City:
  • Dorothy, who in the original books was a white girl, is portrayed by a mestizo Latina actress. To account for this, Uncle Henry has also been turned into a Latino.
  • The Wicked Witch of the East is usually depicted as Caucasian (when she's not just a pair of feet sticking out from under a house); here she’s black.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Xaro Xhoan Daxos is played by Nonso Anozie, a Black British actor. In the books, Xaro is a native Qartheen, who are so pale that Dothraki call them "Milk Men." In the show, he described himself as an immigrant to Qarth from the Summer Isles, where the other Black characters in the series are from.
  • Benerro, the Red Priest from Volantis who foresees Daenerys Targaryen as the reborn Azor Ahai, is described as a bald man with skin as fair as milk. In the show, his role is taken by an unnamed Red Priestess played by Japanese actress Rila Fukushima.
  • Areo Hotah, Doran Martell's bodyguard, came from the vaguely Slavic Norvos, and is depicted as a white man in artworks. He is portrayed by British Nigerian actor DeObia Oparei in the show.
  • The prequel House of the Dragon depicts House Velaryon as a black family, with Corlys Velaryon being fully black and his children Laenor and Laena being mixed-race (as their mother, Rhaenys Targaryen, is kept white). Interestingly, if the show follows the books' chronology, this implies House Targaryen as a whole is mixed-race.^note Many Velaryons have married into House Targaryen, including the mothers of Aegon the Conqueror and Jaehaerys the Conciliator, both considered Westeros' greatest kings. It may also mean that the ancient Valyrians were not racially homogeneous, as the Velaryons are descended from them.
• Gotham
  • Sarah Essen, a white woman in the comics, is portrayed by Latina actress Zabryna Guevara.
  • Morena Baccarin, a Brazilian actress, plays Leslie Thompkins.
  • Tigress is played by Jessica Lucas, who is African-American.
  • Firefly goes from being a white man to a young woman played by Latina actress Michelle Veintimilla.
  • Hugo Strange, a white guy (with a vague European accent Depending on the Writer), is played by B.D. Wong.
  • Asian-American Jamie Chung is cast as Vicki Vale's aunt, Valerie, suggesting the Vale family may at at least be partially Asian.
  • Headhunter, who is white in the comics, is played by African-American actor Kyle Vincent Terry.
• In the Gossip Girl novels, Kati and Isabel are both white. The actresses who play them are Chinese and black, respectively.
• Fox's live TV version of Grease had Keke Palmer as Marty and Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo.
• Hannibal:
  • Jack Crawford is white in Red Dragon, as well as the various film adaptations. In the show, he's depicted as a black man and portrayed by Laurence Fishburne.
  • In the novel and film adaptations, Dr. Beverly Katz was white, presumably of Jewish descent. Her TV counterpart is portrayed by Asian-American actress Hettienne Park.
  • In the novel and film adaptations, Dr. Frederick Chilton is white, but in Hannibal, he's played by Hispanic actor Raúl Esparza.
• Hawaii Five-0 changes a few characters from the original Hawaii Five-O:
  • Officer Kono Kalakaua, a man in the original, is now played by a woman. Ethnically, he was a native Hawaiian and she a Korean-American, but in practice the two ethnicities are visually close enough that "Asian/Pacific Islander" is often a category on surveys and you could honestly mistake one for the other with no malice. Furthermore, given the history of interracial marriage in Hawaii, most people would just figure that Kono is a mixed Asian/Hawaiian anyway.
  • Dr. Max Bergman, white in the original, is now Asian (but adopted by Jewish parents).
  • Captain Lou Grover, also white in the original, is now black.
• Herc-Xenaverse cast black actresses (including Gina Torres) as Cleopatra, presumably on the principle that Egypt is in Africa. However, not only are Egyptians not black, but Cleopatra was the last of the highly inbred Ptolemaic line of rulers, so she was pure Greek.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022):
  • The TV adaptation has both Louis de Pointe du Lac (and, consequently, his mother and siblings) and Claudia played by mixed-race actors of partial Black ancestry. This results in Louis' profession being changed from plantation (and slave) owner to pimp.
  • Armand's ethnicity is not explicitly stated in Season 1, but his actor is of Bangladeshi descent.
• LazyTown:
  • The English language version turned the Icelandic Latibær plays' red-headed hellion Halla and pale computer geek Goggi into Asian (and slightly less wild) Trixie and black (and possibly more computer-obsessed) Pixel. The mayor's skin also darkened several shades, but given he's closely related to a character who stayed white, and not very dark (and a puppet, so actor race gives no clues), it's unclear if he too had his race changed, or if he's just meant to be tanned.
  • In the original play, Goggi was a white baldling wearing green glasses and pyjamas!
• In Legends of Tomorrow:
  • Dr Mid-Nite of the Justice Society of America is African-American. In the original comics he's white.
  • In the seventh season finale, Booster Gold is played by Donald Faison, who is African-American.
• In the CBBC series Leonardo, one of teen Leo's friends is a streetwise black kid called Mac. Short for Machiavelli.
• Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman:
  • The series starred Dean Cain, who is one fourth Japanese. Deborah Joy LeVine stated Cain's unique look was part of the reason she cast him as Clark/Superman.
  • Inspector Henderson was made into a black man.
  • Winslow Schott, the Toyman of the comics, was played by African-American Sherman Hemsley.
• The BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit features Freema Agyeman as Tattycoram, only described in the book as "a handsome girl with lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very neatly dressed."
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves are well-defined races on their own in the books, which includes them uniformly being Caucasian-coded along with the Western Men or humans (in contrast to the Eastern and Southern humans). For this reason, The Amazon showrunners desired to hire actors who are people of color for the Western peoples, leading to places like Numenor looking less homogenous, when in the books they are described as looking like the Elves with having dark or blonde hair and fair skin. This is inverted for the future Eastern and Southern humans (technically the show takes place before the world is made round) as the "Southlanders" (a show-original term) are represented by mostly Caucasian actors instead.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Agent Carter has Happy Sam Sawyer, a white guy in the comics, played by African-American Leonard Roberts.
  • In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daisy Johnson from Secret Warriors appears as one of the main characters under the name "Skye". While she is white in the comics, in the show she's a biracial girl from Hunan province in China, and is played by half-white, half-Chinese actress Chloe Bennet. (This was later Retcanoned into how she was drawn in the comics).
    • Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie is a white Texan in the comics, but in the show he's played by African-American actor Henry Simmons.
    • Agent 33 is a white blonde in the comics, but in the show she's played by Maya Stojan, who is half-Sri Lankan and half-Czech.
  • Daredevil (2015)
    • Ben Urich is portrayed by African-American actor Vondie Curtis-Hall.
    • Night Nurse, a white woman in the comics named Linda Carter, is made into a Composite Character with Claire Temple, an African-American woman from the Luke Cage: Hero for Hire comics.
    • Elektra, a Greek woman in the comics, is played by French-Cambodian actress Élodie Yung. Her Greek name is kept, with it being shown in flashbacks that she was an Asian child who was adopted by a wealthy Greek couple after the rest of the Chaste tried to kill her.
    • Blake Tower is black.
  • In the live-action Inhumans TV series, Karnak and Gorgon, who are white in the comics, are played by Ken Leung and Eme Ikwuakor, who are Asian and black, respectively. Triton is played by Mike Moh, another Asian actor, but this is an odd example. He's technically caucasian in the comics by virtue of being Karnak's brother, but his skin color is pretty irrelevant since his entire body is covered in green scales. Even with the race lifts, all three, along with Black Bolt and Maximus (who remain white) remain blood-related as they are in the comics (Karnak and Triton are brothers as already noted, as are Black Bolt and Maximus, and both pairs are cousins to each other and to Gorgon).
  • The Hood is a white guy in the comics, but in Ironheart, he's played by Puerto Rican-American actor Anthony Ramos.
  • Jessica Jones (2015) has Malcolm, a white redhead from the Alias books, played by Jamaican-Australian actor Eka Darville.
  • Moon Knight (2022) has Marc Spector's wife changed from the white blonde Marlene Alraune to an Arab from the same Egypt where Moon Knight gets his powers, Layla El-Faouly. Likewise, Marc himself has been changed from white to Latino.
  • In Hulu's live-action adaptation of Runaways, Molly Hayes, a white girl in the comics, is reimagined as a Latina girl named Molly Hernandez.
  • She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has Titania and Mallory Book, both white women in the source material, portrayed by Jameela Jamil and Renée Elise Goldsberry, respectively. Luke Jacobson, a white blond man in the comics, is also played by Griffin Matthews in the series.
• In the Mercy Reef pilot that was not picked up, Thomas Curry was portrayed by Lou Diamond Phillips, who is multiracial.
• Merlin (2008):
  • The BBC series has cast multiracial actress Angel Coulby as Guinevere (or Gwen as she is initially known). Ironically Guinevere's name means "white phantom" in its older Welsh form, "Gwenhwyvar". Perhaps to make the casting more plausible, the traditional background of Guinevere (as the daughter of a king) is dropped in favour of making her a commoner and a servant. The character of Sir Elyan, one of the Knights of the Round Table, is made into Guinevere's brother and is portrayed by a black actor - ironically, the character was often known in the legends as "Elyan the White."
  • There are several Black background characters as well, including various one-off knights and nobles, particularly during feast scenes (non-white characters are NOT all servants.) Also, Gwen was written as a servant before Angel was cast when (presumably) a white actress was expected to take the role. Also also, according to Word of God, Angel Coulby was cast because of Ability over Appearance, not specifically to fulfill some sort of diversity requirement.
  • Lancelot is also played by Hispanic Santiago Cabrera.
• Les Misérables (2018): Since the novel was set in 1800's France, the characters were implicitly all white. Here, Javert and Montparnasse are portrayed by black actors (David Oyelowo and Jumayn Hunter, respectively), while Thenardier's actor, Adeel Ahktar, is Pakistani/Kenyan. Since Mme. Thenardier is played by a white actress, the Thenardier children, Eponine and Gavroche, are played by mixed-race actors and sport natural hair.
• The Musketeers: Porthos, who was white in the original The Three Musketeers, is played by Howard Charles who is black. Porthos' backstory was altered to draw inspiration from Alexandre Dumas' ancestry. Dumas' father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman making him mixed race.
• The 2007 BBC adaptation of Oliver Twist features Sophie Okonedo as Nancy.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • African American actor Sinqua Walls (of Teen Wolf and Power fame) plays Sir Lancelot in Season 2.
  • Yvette Nicole Brown from Community plays Goldilocks in a series of DVD extras.
  • Their first version of Rapunzel is played by the half-black, half-white Alexandra Metz.
  • Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid is played by African-American actress Merrin Dungey. King Poseidon (her father in this version) is also black, and played by Ernie Hudson.
  • Maid Marian is played by Afro-Latina actress Christie Laing.
• The Outsider: In the book, Holly is white, but she's changed to a black woman because series co-creator Jason Bateman wanted to work with Cynthia Erivo. Holly's habit of saying cheers in Lithuanian is turned into a eccentricity rather than a reference to her ethnic background.
• Paul Drake (white in the original novels and TV show) is black in Perry Mason (2020). This change affects the plot in a fairly significant way, with the character now having to deal with the institutional racism of 1930s Los Angeles.
• Pretty Little Liars:
  • Emily and her father are half-Asian and Asian respectively. In the original novels, they were both white, with Emily being described as a redhead.
  • The TV version of Mona Vanderwaal is likewise played by a biracial actress, Janel Parrish, who is half-Chinese and was born in Hawaii. In the books she is described as having blonde hair and blue eyes. At a later point in the series, Mona does dye her hair blonde shortly.
• Power Rangers takes the universally-Japanese casts of Super Sentai and modifies them into a Five-Token Band.
• In the TV adaptation of Powers, Deena Pilgrim, a white blonde in the comics, is played by Susan Heyward, who is African-American.
  • Likeswise, Zora, another white blonde from the comics, is played by African-American actress Logan Browning.
• In Riverdale multiple white characters have been changed:
  • Veronica Lodge is played by Camila Mendes, a Latina actress. Her mother Hermione (played by Marisol Nichols) gets a similar treatment, with the show establishing that her maiden name is "Gomez."
  • Reggie Mantle is played by Ross Butler (and later Charles Melton), who is Asian-American.
  • Dilton also becomes Asian, played by an actor named Daniel Yang (then by Major Curda and then by Daniel Yang again).
  • Josie and Melody of Josie and the Pussycats both become African-Americans.
• The BBC Robin Hood series has a black Friar Tuck. And he's not the easy-going tubbo associated with the name, either.
• In The Sandman (1989), Death, the Walkers, Hector Hall, Unity Kincaid, Lucien, Death, and the Fletchers were all white. In The Sandman (2022), Kate Fletcher is changed to a woman of Asian descent and the rest of reimagined into black people (and in Lucien's case, a woman).
• Many of the characters in the Netflix version of A Series of Unfortunate Events:
  • Arthur and Eleanora Poe are played by K. Todd Freeman and Cleo King, who are both black.
  • Aunt Josephine is played by Alfre Woodard, who is also black.
  • Uncle Monty is played by Aasif Mandvi, who is Indian.
  • Fernald/The Hook-Handed Man is played by Usman Ally, who is of South Asian descent.
• Shadowhunters:
  • Simon Lewis was white in the books, but will be played by a Hispanic actor in the series.
  • The Lightwoods are now a mixed-race family with Isabelle being played by a Hispanic actress, although strangely her brother Alec is still white. Depending if the series follows the book plot of Robert Lightwood having had an affair, this could end up being significant.
  • Luke Garroway was white in the books, but will be black in the series.
  • Camille Belcourt was white in the books, being described as having silvery blonde hair and green eyes. In the series, she is played by a Chinese-Irish actress.
  • Magnus was half Dutch and half Indonesian in the books, but is played by a Chinese-American actor in the series, which could also qualify as a case of Interchangeable Asian Cultures.
• The Shannara Chronicles:
  • The books describe Eretria as "dusky", from a people based on the Roma. Here, she's played by a white Spanish actress.
  • Allanon, described as white, is portrayed by Maori actor Manu Bennett.
  • While Tamlin and Lyria have no book counterparts, in the books are described as white. On the show they are played by black actors, along with Garet Jax.
• Smallville
  • Pete Ross was changed from white to black.
  • Dr. Hamilton was made into a Decomposite Character, one of whom was black, and the other of whom was Ambiguously Brown (played by a mixed race actor).
  • Lana Lang, who is a white redhead in the comics, is portrayed on the show by Kristin Kreuk, who has Dutch, Chinese, and Indonesian heritage.
  • Roulette is a weird one; in the comics she's a white girl who wants to be a Dragon Lady, but in Smallville she's really Asian. It's hard to escape the suspicion that the writers just didn't get the joke...
  • The Martian Manhunter's "John Jones" identity is made into an African-American. However, the character is actually a green-skinned alien to begin with.
  • Plastique is a white Canadian in the comic books. In the show she was played by the half-black, half-white Canadian Jessica Parker Kennedy.
  • Neutron, a white Superman villain, was played by an Asian-American actor.
  • Lashina of the Female Furies is depicted as black in the show.
• The Sound of Music Live! had Audra McDonald as a black Mother Abbess.
• Stargirl (2020)
  • Likely influenced by the popularity of Young Justice (2010), the show's version of Tigress is Asian-American, while her daughter Artemis is half-Asian.
  • Likewise, Jade is half-Asian.
• Swamp Thing:
  • Liz Tremayne, a white redhead in the comics, is black.
  • Madame Xanadu is also black.
  • Matt Cable is biracial, with a black mother and a white father (who turns out to be Big Bad Avery Sunderland).
• S.W.A.T. (2017):
  • Hondo is played by Shemar Moore, the son of a black man and a woman of Irish and French-Canadian descent.
  • Tan, a character of East Asian descent, is also introduced.
• Titans (2018):
  • Beast Boy is half-Asian like his actor, Ryan Potter. A photograph of his deceased parents shows that his father was Asian in this continuity.
  • The original Don Hall Dove is played by black actor Elliot Knight, and made Hank Hall's half-brother.
  • Deathstroke is played by Esai Morales, who is of Puerto Rican descent.
  • In the comics, Deathstroke's son Joseph Wilson/Jericho is white, while his daughter Rose Wilson/Ravager is half-Asian (as Slade fathered her while having an affair with a Hmong woman in Cambodia). The TV series instead makes Jericho half-Asian like his sister, which also results in his mother Adeline being made Asian.
  • Slade's ally Wintergreen is black.
  • Lex Luthor's assistant/bodyguard Mercy Graves is black.
• In the books True Blood is based on, the character Tara is described as having olive skin and a pageboy haircut. In the show, she's African American.
• The Warrior Nun Netflix series depicts Shotgun Mary, a white blonde in the comic, as a Black woman.
• Watchmen (2019):
  • In the original Watchmen comic, while his identity was never confirmed, it is speculated in-story that Hooded Justice is a white, German man named Rolf Muller. Hooded Justice also makes statements that are construed as pro-Nazi. In the series, it's confirmed that its version of Hooded Justice is a black man named Will Reeves who wears make-up around his eyes to make himself seem white. His pro-Nazi leanings are not addressed, but Word of God effectively ret-cons these as lies to maintain his cover as a white man. The change in background also greatly changes the context for the trademark noose around Hooded Justice's neck, now serving as a reminder America's history of lynching African-Americans.
  • An In-Universe case: Dr. Manhattan was born Jon Osterman, a white man. His physical appearance shifts to a blue-skinned and hairless version of Osterman. The show has depicts him changing his appearance from Osterman to that of Cal Abar, an African-American man. Even when he reverts to his blue-skinned and hairless look, he maintains the features of Abar instead of Osterman.
• The Witcher:
  • Yennefer de Vengerberg is white originally. She's portrayed by the half-Indian half-English Anya Chalotra here.
  • Triss Merigold, aside from Adaptational Dye-Job, is described in the books as a pale white-skinned redhead. In the series, she's played by olive-skinned Anna Shaffer.
  • Vilgefortz is a white sorcerer in the books, yet is played by Mahesh Jadu, who is of half-Mauritanian and half-Indian descent.
  • Istredd is also a white character in the books, but played by non-white actor Royce Pierreson.
  • Fringilla Vigo is a short-haired white woman in the book series, but is played by black actress Mimi Ndiweni.
• The Wonderful World of Disney made liberal use of this, especially in musical adaptations from The '90s.
  • Polly and Polly: Comin' Home! retell Pollyanna with a with a mostly-African-American cast, and with the location and time period changed from Vermont in the 1900s to segregated Alabama in The '50s.
  • Their take on Cinderella (Rodgers and Hammerstein) stars Brandy as Cinderella. Additionally, Whitney Houston plays the fairy godmother, African-American Natalie Desselle plays stepsister Joy (renamed Minerva), Paolo Montalban, a Filipino actor, plays Prince Christopher, black actress Whoopi Goldberg plays his mother Queen Constantina, and white, Canadian Victor Garber plays his father King Maxamillian.
  • Their version of Annie features Audra McDonald as Miss Grace Farrell, as mentioned above, and also adds girls of other races to the orphanage.
• The Wonder Woman (2011 pilot) had Etta Candy, Diana's blonde and blue-eyed best friend from the comics, played by African American actress Traci Thoms. This was carried over into the New 52, see above.
• In L.J. Smith's The Vampire Diaries books, Bonnie was a petite redhead of Scottish descent. In the CW show she's played by a black actress.

Multimedia

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Despite being primarily inspired by the classic Marvel continuity, Nick Fury in the MCU is played by Samuel L. Jackson. This is understandable though as mentioned above, the Alternate Continuity The Ultimates series portrayed Fury as a black man with Jackson's likeness. The right of first refusal to play the character in any future movies was actually part of the deal for allowing Ultimate Fury to look just like him.
  • In the short film All Hail the King, the Iron Man villain Fletcher Heggs (AKA the Knight) cameos as a black prison inmate.
  • Jasper Sitwell, an Anglo blond in the comics, is Honduran-American in the movies.
  • In the Thor movies, several roles changed race.
    • Heimdall is played by Black-British actor Idris Elba, despite being based on a white Marvel character. This is particularly ironic given that Heimdall is described in the Eddas as being "the whitest of the gods." The word might also be translated as "brightest," however.
    • In Thor: Ragnarok, Tessa Thompson portrays Valkyrie. Tessa Thompson is black, while in the comics, Valkyrie is a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes.
    • Asgard in general seems more diverse in the films than in the comics. There are non-white extras seen in crowd scenes, despite it being established in the comics that there are no people of color there. In a New Mutants issue where the team went to Asgard, the Asgardians were shown to be confused by Roberto's coloring, implying that they were unaware of the concept of non-white skin tones.
  • In Captain America: Civil War, Miriam and her son are both black, while they were white in the original Civil War comic book.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy sees Korath the Pursuer played by Djimon Hounsou and depicted with black skin rather than blue. This is notable since, in the comics, Kree are explicitly stated to all have either blue or pink (resembling white humans) complexions. Dave Bautista also played Drax, but given the movie reworked his origin to be that of an actual alien and not a resurrected human whose real name was Arthur Douglas, that is more Adaptation Species Change. Its sequel sees Lady Starhawk and Charlie-27, both of whom are white in the comics, played by Michelle Yeoh and Ving Rhames, respectively.
  • In Doctor Strange, Baron Mordo, a white Romanian in the comics, is played by Nigerian-Brit Chiwetel Ejiofor in the film adaptation.
  • Several characters in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Liz Allen, Flash Thompson and Ned Leeds are all white blondes in the comics, but in the film, Liz is black, Flash is Latino and Ned is Filipino. The Shocker, a white brunet, is also African-American. Played with in some cases, as Liz's surname is never stated and she is the daughter of Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, and there are two Shockers, one white and one black. Mac Gargan, the Scorpion, also takes after the second Ultimate version and is Latino. Michelle "MJ" Jones, the franchise's Expy of Mary Jane Watson, is played by the half-black Zendaya.
  • In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the leader of the Flag Smashers is a half-black woman named Karli Morgenthau rather than a white man named Karl Morgenthau.
  • In Loki, Princess Ravonna, a white woman in the comics, is played by Gugu Mbatha Raw, who is the daughter of a Black South African father and an English mother.
  • Uatu the Watcher is Ambiguously Brown in What If...?, with his voice provided by Jeffrey Wright. Showrunner Ashley Bradley explicitly pushed for this, not wanting a character as powerful and near-omniscient as the Watcher to be a white man, which she likened to stereotypical Western depictions of God.
  • In the original Eternals comics, most of the characters were white. In the movie adaptation, there are multiple changes:
    • Sersi is played by Chinese-English actress Gemma Chan.
    • Gilgamesh is played by Ma Dong-seok, who is South Korean.
    • Makkari is played by Lauren Ridloff, who is of black and Mexican descent.
    • Ajak is played by Salma Hayek, who is of Mexican and Lebanese descent.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has Kang the Conqueror played by Jonathan Majors, who is black.
  • Werewolf by Night (2022) has Jack played by Mexican actor Gael García Bernal.
  • In the comics, Namor is the son of an Atlantean mother and a white American father. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor's parents were instead of indigenous Mexican descent. Additionally, the undersea kingdom his mother came from is renamed "Talokan," and sports a distinct Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican influence rather than a Greco-Roman one.^note In the comics, the people of Atlantis worshiped the Roman god Neptune, while in the film, the Talocanians worship the Mayan god Kukulcan. As such, Namor's cousin Namora (a white blonde in the comics) and the rest of their people are also played by actors of Latino descent.
• The Three Musketeers:
  • The low budget 2023 British version has D'Artagnan (a white 17th century Frenchman) played by black actor Malachi Pullar-Latchman.
  • The big budget 2023 French version has Algerian-born Lyna Khoudri in the part of Constance Bonacieux (a 17th century white Frenchwoman).

Theatre

• An interesting example in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Stephen Schwartz's musical Children of Eden: Adam was white and Eve was black, apparently also allowing them to have children of different skin tones. However, this also had possible, unintended Unfortunate Implications (see that trope entry).
• The musical version of Jekyll & Hyde almost always casts Utterson as a black man.
• Aside from race-specific roles and shows like Aida or Miss Saigon, Broadway's casting is remarkably color-blind. Black/non-white actors have had major roles in nearly every Broadway show around. For example, Chicago (Velma/Roxie/Billy Flynn), Les Misérables (Javert, Madame Thenardier, Fantine, Cosette, Eponine), Wicked (Fiyiero), Beauty and the Beast (Belle), Miss Saigon (John) and most notably Robert Guillaume (on tour) and Norm Lewis (on Broadway) as the titular The Phantom of the Opera. Even applies when such casting would result in Black Vikings or be otherwise implausible—like a black/Asian Eponine playing the daughter of the white Thenardiers in Les Misérables. There have even been some cases where a white actress has played Young Eponine or Young Cosette and a non-white actress has played the older versions of those characters, or vice versa.
  • Les Mis's 10th anniversary concert had Lea Salonga, a Filipina, as Eponine, plus "Chairman Kaga" as one of the international Valjeans and the 25th anniversary concert featured a black Javert (Norm Lewis) and Filipina singer (Lea Salonga again) as Fantine.
  • Elphaba from Wicked can be played by any actress, no matter her race, considering that she has to be painted green anyway. Actually, Glinda is the only character who is explicitly required by the plot to be white. Not that it stopped Japan◊. It also didn't stop South Korea◊.
• Miss Saigon's Ellen (the American wife of Chris) was always played by a white actress, especially a blonde or redhead. However, towards the end of the show's Broadway run, Ellen was cast with an Asian actress, which added a new dimension to the show. Rather than moving on with his life, as Chris insisted that he had, it now seemed very likely that Chris only married Ellen because she reminded him of his Lost Lenore Kim.
• A 1994 production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice by noted director Peter Sellars (not to be confused with the film actor) implied the location to be multi-racial Venice Beach, California. A clip of Shylock's speech is available on YouTube.
  • Shylock and his compatriots were played by Black actors.
  • Portia and her retinue were actresses of Asian ancestry.
  • Antonio, the titular merchant, was Latino.
  • The only significant characters played by Anglo actors were the clown Gobbo and his son (played by a pre-stardom Philip Seymour Hoffman).
• Collins, from RENT, was intended to be a "kind of Tom Waits" character, but the playwright changed his mind once Jesse L. Martin auditioned. Similarly, at least half the cast ended up being played by non-white actors; this has varied from production to production.
• In Freehold Engagement Theatre's 2012 production of King Lear, Edgar, the Fool(a puppet held by a white actress), and one of the ensemblists were black, and Edmund and Cordelia were Hispanic. In the 2010 Donmar Warehouse production, the Afro-British actress Pippa Bennett-Warner played Cordelia.
• Theatrical adaptations of A Christmas Carol are often multiracial, such as a black actor playing Christmas Present(as in the aforementioned film of the Off-Broadway musical) Bob Cratchit, Fred, or Scrooge himself, and an Asian actress playing Belle and/or Fred's wife.
• In the 2001 Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show, Magenta was played by Panamanian-born Daphne Rubin-Vega, Columbia was played by Aiko Nakasone (who's Japanese), and Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Eddie, and Dr. Scott were, at one point, played by African-American actor James Stovall.
• Hamilton features an almost entirely non-white cast playing America's founding fathers (and mothers). The only main character to be played by a white actor is King George.
• In Southwark Playhouse's stage adaptation of Kiki's Delivery Service, Osono is played by a black actress.
• Actresses of various ethnicities, orientations, and sizes have played the wives of Henry VIII in Six, historically a group of white women married to a man. The casting call has stated that it's open to people of all genders who are comfortable playing female roles. Openly gay composer and writer Toby Marlow stepped in to cover Catherine Parr for an emergency.
• A Gender Flip production of 1776 consisting entirely of women and non-binary, transgender, and genderqueer actors of various ethnicities directed by Diane Paulus has been slated for a tour and a Broadway premiere in 2021.

Video Games

• Pokémon:
  • The international version of Pokémon Battle Revolution added the option to change skin tones. Rosie and Sashay in the game had their skin color changed as a result.
  • Several characters from Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire became Ambiguously Brown, most notably the entirely of Team Aqua.
• Birdie from Street Fighter Alpha — he originally appeared in the very first Street Fighter game as white, but when his character underwent a complete visual overhaul, he became black. One of his victory quotes is a Lampshade Hanging: "You mean before? I was pale because I was sick!"
• In Mortal Kombat, the character of Jade has been portrayed as every race under the sun. In her original MK II & Ultimate MK 3 appearances, she and Jax were the token black characters. On the port for MK II to the Sega Genesis and the Amiga, she became white (this might have something to do with the fact that, skin tone augmentation aside, she was portrayed by the same actress as Mileena and Kitana). However, in Annihilation she was played by the pale, Asian Irina Pantaeva (who is ethnically Buryat, i.e. Russian Mongol). Over time, her appearance has shifted to just being Ambiguously Brown.
• The X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game:
  • Taking after the original adaption of Bolivar Trask in X-Men: The Last Stand, Trask (a white man in the original comics) is depicted as a black man in the game.
  • The game also heavily implies that Nightcrawler's father is the African-American character John Wraith. Of course, it'd be difficult to tell anyway since Nightcrawler's skin is depicted as blue due to his mutation.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is primarily based on the Marvel 616 continuity, but uses the black version of Nick Fury.
• New Dynamic English does this twice. The 2000 version of the cast was diversified from having the same skin color, then they did the inverse by giving less diversity in the 2013 version.
• Several characters in the third installment of Style Boutique were given darker skin tones compared to the Japanese version to diversify the cast.
• Dr. Morgan Michaels is black in Spider-Man (PS4).
• Much like in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Ghost is depicted as a black woman in Iron Man VR.
• Taking a nod from the 2016 movie, the version of Deadshot in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is black.
• Originally in World of Warcraft, the skin tones available to humans, dwarves, and gnomes ran the gamut from white to vaguely tan, with a few pale white and green skins available to death knights. After Shadowlands gave them several options for darker skin tones, many formerly white NPCs in Stormwind were updated with darker skins and new hairstyles.

Webcomics

• Cobweb and Stripes is starting to do this, as the comic version of characters from the cartoon are sometimes of a different ethnicity than they were originally drawn; for example, Prudence has been changed from a tiny white girl to a dark-skinned redhead.

Web Original

• In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, several main characters have been race lifted. Considering the original took place in 18th century England, and the adaptation in the modern-day United States, this makes sense.
  • The Bingleys become Asian, likely Chinese, with Charles Bingley becoming Bing Lee. Caroline Bingley is Caroline Lee.
  • Charlotte and Maria Lucas become Charlotte and Maria Lu, also of Asian descent.
  • Colonel Fitzwilliam becomes Fitz Williams, who is a Token Black Friend (and gay).
• The Autobiography of Jane Eyre is a Setting Update vlog of Jane Eyre, inspired by The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. It's set in present-day Canada.
  • Adele Varens was a French girl in the book, while Adele Rochester has light brown skin, and her father Mr. Rochester doesn't. It adds mystery as to who Adele's mother might be and whether Mr. Rochester is her biological father.
  • Grace Poole, a Composite Character of scary and mysterious Grace Poole and kind Mrs. Fairfax, looks as if she was of Asian origin.
• Emma Approved, made by the same team behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, has several cases of this too:
  • Emma Woodhouse is played by a half-Japanese and half-German actress.
  • Izzy Knightley, Emma's married sister, is played by a Hawaiian actress.
  • Mrs. Bates becomes the African-American Maddy Bates and her niece Jane Fairfax becomes African-American too.
  • Frank Churchill becomes Asian and Ryan Weston's stepbrother instead of his son to justify their different races.
• SuperF*ckers: Ultra-Richard goes from white in the original comics to black in the animation. He also went from having nearly no personality in the comics to basically being a vaguely-super powered Chef expy.

Western Animation

• In The Spectacular Spider-Man did this to a large portion of the (very white in the comics) cast. Word of God has had to tell us what some the Ambiguously Brown characters were. Liz Allan is now Hispanic, as are her brother (stepbrother in the comics) Mark and the Enforcer Ox. Likewise, police officer Jean DeWolff is Native American (according to Word of God). Ned Leeds and Kenny "King Kong" McFarland also go from white to Asian (with names changed to Ned Lee and Kenny "King" Kong), while Raymond and Miles Warren are both Indian. Fancy Dan, Debra Whitman and Roderick Kingsley, all white in the comics, are now black.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series changed the Black Marvel from a white man named Daniel Lyons to a black man named Omar Mosely. As a Mythology Gag and pulling a Decomposite Character, Lysons is Mosely's employer who lets people think he's Black Marvel in order to protect the real deal's identity.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Superman: The Animated Series has Angela Chen, who is essentially an Asian Expy of the comic book character Cat Grant. Her role as the Daily Planet's gossip columnist and rivalry with Lois Lane are all directly lifted from Grant. Also, Inspector Henderson, who was white in the Superman radio show and The Adventures of Superman, was a black man. Until DC vetoed the idea, Perry White was also supposed to be turned into a black man (what a difference 17 years can make).
  • Puff was a white blonde in the original Static comics, but was depicted as an African American in Static Shock.
  • Justice League reimagined Copperhead as Hispanic.
• DC Super Hero Girls 2019:
  • Catwoman is black.
  • Giganta is biracial, with a white father and a black mother. She still has her red hair from the comics, which is now curly to reflect her mixed heritage.
  • Hawkman is Ambiguously Brown, perhaps as a nod to his comic counterpart having been an Egyptian prince in a past life.
  • Ursa is also Ambiguously Brown.
  • Harvey Dent is black.
• X-Men: Evolution does this more than once, with originally blonde and very white Amanda Sefton becoming possibly Middle Eastern (or a brown-skinned ethnicity, anyway; it isn't apparent from dialogue or appearance, though she doesn't look quite like the series' black characters) for the series. The Lift is extended to her parents, naturally.
  • Also, Magma goes from white to Brazilian (in the comics, she was disguised as a Brazilian when she was first seen, but proved to be a blonde from a Romanesque society hidden in a remote area of Brazil).
  • Amanda Sefton in the comics is a Roma. A pale, blonde Roma. Her mother, Margali, has a more "traditional" Roma appearance.
  • Mystique receives a mid-series version of this trope. In the first season, Mystique had light blue skin, white eyes with gray pupils, dark red hair, and violet lips. From the second season onwards, her skin is a dark bluish-green, her eyes are yellow with black pupils, her hair is a lighter shade of reddish-orange, her lips are dark blue, and her facial structure is also different in shape.
    • Mystique's an interesting case, and doesn't really change in the show. It's worth explaining fully anyway, because many fans and even the comic artists don't catch this: Mystique's day-one outfit, the white dress with the skulls, actually has a bodysuit, or it did in early appearances. This makes her face more green and her arms and legs more blue. Artists since have forgotten it was there, and now make her entire body whichever color they feel she should be — sometimes the color of her face, sometimes the color of the rest of her. By now, any shade of green or blue goes. X-Men: Evolution gave Mystique a fairly faithful representation of her day-one outfit, remembering the bodysuit. Eventually, she changed to her second, black outfit, which lacked the bodysuit, so later seasons have her entire body the color that was once reserved for her face. Before.◊ After.◊
• Lady Jaye is white in G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. In G.I. Joe: Renegades, she becomes a Latina. Also Ripcord, following in the movie and IDW comic's footsteps, is now black.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, The Super Hero Squad Show, Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Wolverine and the X-Men (2009), and Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) all use the Ultimate version of Nick Fury.
  • Earth's Mightiest Heroes splits the difference, making him a black man with hair more like the original Fury in Season 1. Season 2 made him more Ultimate-like by shaving his head and having him grow a beard.
  • Additionally, it has Kang's lover Ravonna changed from a white woman with red hair to an Ambiguously Brown woman with jet black hair. Maria Hill also becomes ambiguously brown. This led to a minor controversy when Cobie Smulders was cast as Maria Hill in The Avengers. Some fans who were only familiar with Maria from the cartoon complained about a pale-skinned, blue-eyed actress being cast to portray the character in the film, even though that's how she usually looks in the actual comics.
• Corresponding to the above-mentioned Race Lift of his brother Nick Fury, Scorpio is depicted as an African American man in Ultimate Spider-Man.
  • Rather than being a white guy, the Scorpion is from K'un-L'un, the hidden Tibetan city where Iron Fist received his training.
  • Arcade also goes from being a white adult to an Asian teenager.
• Young Justice (2010):
  • The show does this with Artemis and her mother Paula, both of whom were blue-eyed white women in the original comics. Here, Paula is Vietnamese, while Artemis is biracial. Artemis keeps her blonde hair from the comics, but is given brown eyes, darker skin and Asian facial features to highlight her mixed heritage.
  • Variant with Aqualad: the original holder of the title from the comics, Garth, is white but hasn't been Aqualad for a long time anyway. In this continuity they created a new character, Kaldur'ahm, whose father, Black Manta, is African-American.
  • Martian Manhunter might count as well. In the comics his human guise is usually a white man; in the show he adopts the appearance of a black man, though it probably is a Shout-Out to his Smallville appearance.
    • This also leads into an interesting visual pun and bit of foreshadowing with M'Gann. Her guise is as a white teenage girl. Meaning she's white, and a Martian. She really is a White Martian.
  • Halo is a blonde woman in the comics, but a dark-skinned Muslim refugee from Qurac in the show.
  • Dolphin is Indian.
  • Mist is Ambiguously Brown and voiced by a Latina actress.
  • Fury from Infinity, Inc. is black.
  • Dabney Donovan is a white Mad Scientist. Here, "Donovan" is a disguise assumed by Dubbilex with his psychic powers and is presented as black.
  • The Phantom Stranger is black.
  • Avia, the Highmother of New Genesis, is black, as is the minor New God Celestia.
  • Taking a note from Krypton, General Zod is black, as is his follower Faora. His wife Ursa is still white, so their son Lor is now biracial.
• The Batman:
  • Lex Luthor's female bodyguard Mercy Graves is reimagined as an Asian woman.
  • The Chinese American police officer Ellen Yin was also a race-swapped (and much younger and prettier) version of Ellen Yindel, the female police commissioner from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Doubly so, as she fills the same role as Renee Montoya, a Latina character.
  • Chief Rojas is a Hispanic amalgam of Gillian Loeb and Harvey Bullock.
  • Hamilton Hill and Roland Desmond (the alter ego of the original Blockbuster) were made African-American.
• The Royal Flush Gang that appeared in the 80's Superfriends cartoon had Ten changed from a grown white woman to a black teenager.
• As the name would imply, the Bat Man of Shanghai shorts from DC Nation have Catwoman changed to a Chinese thief operating out of Shanghai in the 1930's. Batman and Bane become Chinese as well, though Bane is Latino in the comics.
• The Halloween special Toy Story of Terror changes Combat Carl, briefly seen in the original film as a generic white "Little Green Man"-type soldier, into a black G.I. Joe Expy with a mustache. It's not unheard of for toy lines to Retcon characters into being more diverse, so it comes off as a bit of a Meta joke.
• Beware the Batman's version of Marion Grange changed the character from Caucasian to African-American.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: The original cartoon actually used footage from an anime, so the characters all fit the usual "supposed to be Asian but look white to Westerners" trope. In this reboot, Princess Allura, Hunk and Lance are all Ambiguously Brown (with Word of Saint Paul claiming Lance is Cuban and Hunk is Samoan), Shiro (formerly Sven) is Japanese, though same doesn't apply to the Sven that shows up in Season 3, who is very much based on the one from Lion Voltron, and Keith retains that "might be white or Asian" look. Pidge and Coran are the only ones who look obviously white.
• In DuckTales (2017), Fenton Crackshell (the alter-ego of Gizmoduck) is Latino, and now named Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera.
• In Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, April O'Neil is changed from Caucasian to African-American.
• In Dennis And Gnasher Unleashed, Olive, the Bash Street School dinner lady, who in the comics looks like this,◊ is a younger Afro-Carribean woman. (The comic explains this as there being two separate Olives.)
• The Castlevania animated series changes Isaac from a pale-skinned redhead to a Black man.
• Likewise, the sequel, Castlevania: Nocturne, changes Annette from a blonde European villager to a Black former slave from the Caribbean. Olrox is also Aztec in this adaptation.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Bow went from a red-headed white dude◊ in the original to having fairly dark skin and African-textured hair; Mermista went from one of the palest characters to South Asian, specifically Indian-coded (she even wears a sari in "Princess Prom"); and most of Glimmer's onscreen family - her father Micah and her aunt Castaspella - are coded East Asian and voiced by Daniel Dae Kim and Sandra Oh respectively (Glimmer herself is, by extension, mixed-race, and indeed she is shown to be measurably more tan than Adora).
• Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes follows the 2005 movie in making Alicia Masters African-American, and makes her stepfather, Puppet Master, black as well.
• In Harley Quinn (2019), Catwoman, Lex Luthor, & Queen of Fables are black (though Lex and Catwoman have been made black before); siblings Golden Glider and Captain Cold are both Asian; and while Nightwing's background isn't described, he has tan skin and is voiced by the Hispanic Harvey Guillén. Since the other non-white characters are voiced by a matching actor, one could infer that Dick is meant to be Hispanic as well.
• In M.O.D.O.K. (2021), D-list villain Poundcakes is black instead of white, and voiced by Whoopi Goldberg.
• Much like in Titans (2018), Wintergreen is black in Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons.
• In Avengers Assemble, Dr. Spectrum/Bill Roberts is black, possibly just for the Casting Gag of having Phil LaMarr voice a Captain Ersatz Green Lantern.
• In My Adventures with Superman, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White are black, Lois Lane is Asian-American, while Livewire is Ambiguously Brown (possibly Pakistani-American given her voice actress). All of these characters were originally white.
• Arcane:
  • Caitlyn is biracial in this series, with an East Asian father and a white mother^note Her parents were figures in her backstory prior to Arcane, but their ethnicity was never specified, and depicted with slightly more Asian facial features as opposed to the purely Caucasian look she was previously shown with. This likely has to do with how her primary English voice actor is of Chinese descent, though this aspect has since also found its way back into League with her 2021 art and sustainability update
  • Very subtly done, but Jayce here has a more olive-skinned complexion than how League usually depicts him. Additionally, he is voiced by a Hispanic-American voice actor, and his mother Ximena has a fairly prominent Hispanic accent.
• Teen Titans Go! makes their interpretation of Doom Patrol member Elasti-Girl black rather than Caucasian.

---