"(Brunette? Redhead? You really can't tell, actually)"
Cartoon hair colors tend to be a little on the loud side. For instance, it's not uncommon for old people, normally thought of as grey-haired in Real Life, to be purple-haired. Or perhaps for seemingly black-haired characters to really, upon closer inspection, have blue highlights in their hair. This can also be done for art reasons, as solid black tends to look very poor in animation.
Long-term exposure to these exaggerated hues will eventually make characters' hair look more "normal"-colored than it actually is. After looking at garish hues for a few minutes, your mind's going to fill in a few details and tone things down a bit. Your average viewer might see the blue-haired Kaz after reading Gil Thorp the first time, and yet after they finish reading it, their toned-down and more "realistic" mental image of Kaz might have black hair rather than blue.
You can find this phenomenon with all sorts of hair colors that are separate from what we perceive them to be. For instance, lavender-haired characters can also appear to be gray haired. People with bright orange hair can appear blond, redheads can appear to be brunettes, and those with hair in all sorts of odd grayish tones can just look like they have mouse or light brown hair.
Animal characters are not safe from this phenomenon either. For example, animal characters with black fur or feathers in real life, like black cats and crows, appear dark grey in cartoons. Also, grey fur represented by blue or purple occurs frequently on animal characters.
This is typically not even realized or noticed by viewers until attention is called to it in some way, such as using the inkdrop tool in a paint program over a graphic from the show in question or having another person point out the character's "true" hair color. Adding to the issue is that many artists, especially those who often work in specialty mediums like black and white, may have multiple ways of coloring the exact same characters.
In a way, it's a form of Weirdness Censor. Alternately, it's similar to the practice of exaggerating motions and forms to make them look right when animated; when trying to exactly mimic realism, it can come across as slightly off and dead. It's not so much the Weirdness Censor acting up as an intentional manipulation of the eye and how it perceives color.
Note that most of these are Truth in Television, since hair, seen in certain lighting conditions, can appear this way. Black hair appearing blue or purple is common (in no small part due to its prevalence among the Japanese); this overlaps with Purple Is the New Black.
See also Adaptation Dye-Job, Early Installment Character-Design Difference, Suddenly Blonde, Inconsistent Coloring, and Shading/Colour Dissonance.
Examples:
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Examples of black hair represented by green, brown, or dark brown
- Daimos: Princess Erika has black hair, but many meta
◊ material◊ depict it as green.
- Hello! Sandybell: Marc's hair is red, but is depicted as brown in other instances.
- Akira Touya of Hikaru no Go has green highlights.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers: China and Korea presumably are supposed to have black hair, but are colored to look more brown. Concept art for the original anime series appeared to even give Korea outright chestnut brown hair.
- Sailor Moon: Sailor Pluto's hair has green highlights, and in some shots and artworks it's actually drawn as dark green. Officially, it is black. Sailor Mars also has black hair, but with purple highlights. Tuxedo Mask's Hair is also somewhere between green and black.
- Some fans believe that Jun's hair in Science Ninja Team Gatchaman is a case of this, insisting that it's so black that it only seems to be green. Later artwork, merchandise, and the sequel series have her hair lightened/brightened to be more obviously green. This confusion is averted in the '90s OVA, where her hair color is a mousy brown.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Tracey had a full head of black hair in the Orange Island saga, but then it developed a greenish tint in later seasons.
- Ash has a greenish or blue tint to his own black hair, which tends to vary by season. His hair seems to become greener when wet, however.
- Sabrina's normally black hair also has a green hue in the anime.
- If one were to assume Jimmy, based off of the male main character Ethan from Pokémon Gold and Silver, who had black/dark navy hair, was supposed to have the same hair color as his game counterpart, his hair appears to be a bluish color several shades lighter in the anime.
- Max also presumably has black hair; it looks dark green.
- Fakir in Princess Tutu appears to have black hair, until he's in bright enough light that it has lighter shading and you realize it's been colored green the entire time.
- Gon Freecss in Hunter × Hunter has green highlights.
- In the original light novels and 2017 anime, Kino from Kino's Journey has black hair that's stylized as a dark green.
- D.Gray-Man: Lenalee's hair is officially black, but dark green in the anime. The same thing happened with Kanda, who has blue hair in the anime, and possibly Komui, whose hair is purple. The Noah, who are mostly black haired, on the other hand, don't get this at all.
- Leon's hair from Black Cat is probably supposed to be a stylized black.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is a confusing example, since official sources are inconsistent. For example, some say that Heero's hair is moss green, while others say it's dark brown (which is what it actually looks like).
- Mobile Suit Gundam's Captain Bright's hair is officially black, and is even noted in-show. Cima Garahau from Stardust Memory has hair that switches between this and its normal colour.
- Code Geass: Nina Einstein's official hair color is black, though it has a greenish tint in the anime.
- Ouran High School Host Club: Whether the photophobic (and possibly porphyric) Nekozawa has a black or green wig (or even just deep shadow turning his hair green) is at least occasionally disputed amongst fans.
- Cowboy Bebop: Spike Spiegel has dark green hair.
- YuYu Hakusho: Yuusuke Urameshi has green highlights in his hair.
- Seitokai Yakuindomo: Hata's hair looks black/gray in low light, but green when well lit.
- Toradora!: Played with with Kitamura — he's drawn with desaturated green hair, but bleaches it later in the series, making it blond.
- Symphogear: Miku Kohinata had green hair in season one, but it becomes black in season 2.
- My Hero Academia: Considering that the author is a fan of classic American superhero comics, this trope was expected:
- Izuku "Deku" Midoriya has dark green highlights in his black hair.
- Tsuyu Asui's hair is either black, black with teal highlights, or teal entirely.
- In The Garden of Words, Yukari's hair is vaguely dark green. When she appears in Your Name, it's more obviously black.
- Waver Velvet and Maiya Hisau in Fate/Zero have strangely similar dark-green hair in the anime, which is described as black for both in light novels. Waver somehow manages to outgrow the green hair and have greyish, brownish, or jet-black hair as an adult.
- Fakir of Princess Tutu has black hair with green highlights.
- Pollyanna: In the original Pollyanna novel, Pollyanna was a blonde. In the anime, her hair is coloured dark brown◊ or bright red◊ at various points.
- Voltes V:
- Word of Godnote says that Heinel's hair is blonde. However, at many points in the anime it appears to be of a reddish shade.
- Katherine's hair is blonde◊. It appears to be bright ginger in the official DVD illustration.
- Word of Godnote says that Heinel's hair is blonde. However, at many points in the anime it appears
- Wonder Woman: In the closing arc of Volume 1 Kore is depicted with blue-green hair that's meant to be interpreted as black.
- TWICE's Tzuyu appears to have black hair in the music video for "Cheer Up", but the lighting for several shots reveal her hair is actually tinted green and blue.
- Annet Myer from El Viento has black hair in the American box art, but green hair in the game.
- Inverted by Jade of Beyond Good & Evil—given that everything else on her is green, and the lighting of the game, it's often claimed that her hair is green. It's actually more or less pure black, but she's frequently depicted with greenish-tinged hair in Fan Art.
- The Sakamoto family and the Doctor in Cave Story look supposedly Japanese, and they have green hair.
- Luigi's sprite in Super Mario Bros. due to technical limitations of the time.
- Soren from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn appears to have black hair, but it's actually a very dark green on close examination. This is likely done to hide his true heritage as Almedha's son and a half-dragon Branded.
- Linhardt from Fire Emblem: Three Houses probably falls under the "stylized black" category since his hair is much darker than several characters whose hair is supposed to be green. (Likely to avoid confusion with his classmate, Hubert, whose hair is clearly black.)
- Uraha in AIR (the Visual Novel) is said to have deep black hair in the text, but it is more like a dark grey with a green tinge so slight you might not even be able to tell against green backgrounds (or her green clothes—the "ha" in her name means "leaf", by the way). In other AIR media (like the anime) and a lot of fanart, the green is more noticeable.
- Fate/stay night: Rin's hair is supposed to be black, but in the original VN sprites, it's actually very dark, very dull brown. As a result, most viewers consider it black but a few see it as brown.
- Nameless: When Yuri is talked about in a descriptive way, he is mentioned to have black hair. Depictions of him always show him with a dark brown shade of hair.
- Lisa Nielson in Snatcher, who's described by Metal as having black hair.
- Frog Raccoon Strawberry's human friend, January O'Kaye, has normal black hair, but it is outlined with minty green.
- Shego from Kim Possible has black hair with a green hue due to her superpowers.
- Depending on the lighting, Stork from Storm Hawks either has black hair or very dark green.
- Xiaolin Showdown's Chase Young has black hair with a greenish shine. However, back when he was good, it was just plain black, so the green tinge may have something to do with his green reptile form. Meanwhile, Xiaolin Chronicles gave him mostly dark green hair that sometimes appears black, depending on the light.
Examples of black hair represented by purple, dark grey, dark blue, or blue
- Azumanga Daioh: In color artwork, Tomo and Sakaki's black hair is represented with a bluish tint. Osaka and Kagura appear to have black hair at first glance, but theirs are really dark brown, which is nonetheless represented by black in the monochrome manga.
- Ciel from Black Butler seems to have black hair, however in many of the art and scenes from the anime, it often appears blue or grayish.
- Bleach: Yoruichi has purple hair in the anime, black hair with very strong purple highlights in the manga.
- Kurono/Blackie from Chi's Sweet Home is meant to be a black cat, but his fur is colored a very dark grey.
- Cowboy Bebop: Faye Valentine is another example of purple-seen-as-black.
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the series' creator, Koyoharu Gotouge, gives most of the black haired cast different colored hair tips with a gradient effect. The major example is one of the main characters, Inosuke Hashibira, having black hair but with blue hair strand tips that is merely an artistic choice, as the setting states Inosuke has full black hair.
- Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic! is described in the original light novels as having black hair, but the Animated Adaptation instead makes her hair very dark blue.
- Futari wa Pretty Cure: Honoka is designed to have Raven Hair, Ivory Skin (being Cure White), however her black hair is usually rendered as a very dark blue/indigo (still fitting with the design, as Cure White's secondary colour is blue).
- Golden Kamuy:
- Asirpa is portrayed in the manga artwork and the anime as having dark blue highlights in her black hair. Her hair is outright dark blue on the covers for Volumes 2 and 11 of the manga.
- Inkarmat has magenta highlights in her black hair on the cover of Volume 12 of the manga.
- Otonoshin Koito is meant to have black hair as a Japanese but has dark purple hair in the anime and dark blue hair on the cover for Volume 16 of the manga.
- In the OVA of GTO: The Early Years, Ayumi's hair is dark blue/lavender. In the manga, one cover◊ shows her hair as brown.
- Hikaru no Go: Fandom is pretty evenly split over whether Fujiwara no Sai has purple or black hair.
- The Love Live! franchise has several characters with dark blue or purple hair, but it's implied that these are really supposed to be stylized shades of black (for instance, Umi's charm point is stated to be her "long black hair" even though it's colored dark blue).
- Satsuki Kiryuin from Kill la Kill has black hair, however, in some shots, it appears to be a very dark blue. It can be generally agreed that her hair possesses a dark blue tint. This also goes for Ryuko, whose black hair is sometimes colored navy blue like Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
- Aya Koomichi from Kiniro Mosaic is stated to have black hair yet clearly has blue hair.
- Hakuryuu Ren from Magi: Labyrinth of Magic has dark blue hair that often looks black.
- My Hero Academia: Tenya Iida's hair is either black or dark blue depending on the artwork.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Misato Katsuragi has purple hair, although it's debatable that it's supposed to be black. Considering that every other case of strange hair color in the series is explained by special circumstances (Rei is heavily implied to be part Angel, Asuka is mixed-race and Ritsuko explicitly dyes her hair blond), it's worth a bet.
- Pokémon: The Series: Possible example for Erika, who was given blue hair in the first season while the games portray her with black hair. The movie Pokémon: I Choose You! as well as the Journeys season show her with black hair, though.
- Pipimi from Pop Team Epic has dark blue hair in the manga and anime, but the series' Line stickers instead makes her hair black.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: Anthy Himemiya has purple hair in the anime series and movie, while it's black in Chiho Saito's original manga pages. It most likely falls under the "stylized black" category.
- Fabia from Bakugan: Gundalian Invaders has dark blue hair, but Dan describes her as a "brunette".
- Famously, Superman a.k.a. Clark Kent.
- Beast from the X-Men is known for his iconic blue fur, but when he first debuted this new look back in Amazing Adventures #15, his fur was explicitly stated to be black. However, since black hair is usually colored with a blue tint in comics, this gave off the perception that the fur was supposed to be blue, which was later made canon by subsequent creators.
Film - Animated
- Berlioz and Scat Cat from The Aristocats are meant to be black cats, but their fur is colored dark grey, and in Berlioz’s case, grey and brownish grey as well.
- TWICE's Tzuyu again in the music video for "TT" and in the photoshoot for "Formula of Love: O+T=<3", where her long locks look black but is actually a really deep shade of purple.
- ENHYPEN has at least 3 members in three eras with hair that looked black but is actually dark blue: Heeseung in "Dimension: Dilemma" (though his hair was more on the teal shade), Jungwon in "Dimension: Answer" and Jay in "Manifesto: Day 1".
- Yuri Lowell of Tales of Vesperia has black hair to go with his black outfit but it's often depicted as purple.
- Inverted: In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, it's pretty hard to tell what color Lucas and Dawn's hair color is in their official artwork (much like Red, noted above). Judging from their game sprites, it's meant to be dark blue, but you could easily argue that their hair is black if you're looking at the promotional art. The anime does make it clear that Dawn's hair is supposed to be blue, though.
- Inverted in Fear & Hunger: Cahara is meant to have blue hair, as Dungeon Nights shows with his special character portrait, but his sprites and normal character portrait represent it with a grayish-black color.
- Ensemble Stars! has a few characters with straight-up black hair, but traditional Samurai-themed Souma's dark purple hair is clearly meant to represent black as well. In one chapter Kaoru even refers to him (before realising he's a boy) as a 'black-haired Japanese beauty'.
- Rean Schwarzer in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is often described as having black hair like his father, Giliath Osborne, despite his hair appearing to be navy blue.
- In Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS, Setsuna's black hair is actually shaded a blueish grey. When she's with the other original characters her hair is of a similar tone and so it reads as intended. However, when she stands next to Shioriko, whose black hair is much closer to actual black, Setsuna's hair suddenly looks far more washed-out and unusual. This is especially pronounced in the anime, which shades Setsuna's hair even paler◊.
- Fate/stay night calls Sakura's hair black (a detail left out of the Mirror Moon translation), but it's always illustrated as a rich purple. In the same illustrations, Rin's black hair is visibly much closer to black. Weirder still, Sakura's hair before she was adopted by the Matous is shown as the same color as Rin's. Possibly, the illustrations showing it as near-black before and purple afterward are an out-of-story representation of the biological alterations Zouken carried out on Sakura after adopting her.
- In Morenatsu, Tatsuki's hair is dark blue and Shin's fur is dark purple. In both cases, the shades are supposed to represent black.
- Almost all members of the Beldrobbaen clan in Drowtales have black hair, dress in all or mostly black, and have a fortress where the majority of it is the same tone, but in their spotlight chapter 48 most of them are drawn with hair that's a very dark navy blue, presumably to give some level of visual variation since otherwise pages would be virtually monotone. Ironically the Beldrobbaen's black hair is otherwise one of the few realistic hair colors in the whole series, where the most common color among their ancestors the dark elves seems to have been a shade of purple.
- Inverted by Susan in El Goonish Shive. Her hair is coloured black with blue highlights, but it actually is dark blue in-universe. Most readers assume that her hair is supposed to be black, not helped by it rarely being commented on since EGS is a World of Technicolor Hair.
- Katrina from The Noordegraaf Files has essentially black hair which technically is an incredibly dark purple (it's nearly black - there's a comparison picture here◊.)
- Spooky Month:
- The series' outlines are in dark purple rather than black, meaning every black-haired character is visually purple (the exception being Lila, whose hair actually is purple, and is a much lighter shade to distinguish it as such).
- As Ross' hair is already black - er, purple - the highlights in his hair are instead drawn in a light blue.
- Star Wars Rebels: Ezra Bridger has black hair. However, the mop-top haircut he sports in the first two seasons has a tendency to look blue in the right light. By Season 3 he's gotten a much shorter haircut that brings an end to this.
- In X-Men: The Animated Series, Wolverine refers to Psylocke as a "beautiful, black-haired mutant psychic", and Archangel describes her as having raven hair. Despite this, her hair is clearly purple.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, Marinette's navy-blue hair is repeatedly described in-universe as "jet black". This is a deliberate homage to older comic books that often had black hair colored with blue highlights.
- Animaniacs:
- Averted with the Warner Sibs, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, as well as their parents shown in Wakko's Wish as they are shown to have as jet black a fur color as it is to represent.
- Played straight with the other black furred and feathered animal characters (such as the crows that appeared in the show) as their fur and feathers are colored a rather dark shade of grey that represents black. This also includes the Animaniacs appearance of the Looney Tunes character, Pussyfoot, despite being colored jet black otherwise.
- Although oddly played straight with Animaniacs appearance Pussyfoot, this is averted with Animaniacs appearance Daffy Duck as his feathers are jet black as usual.
- Sisters Emma and Kitty and Devin from Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race are Asian characters with black hair, which looks like a very dark shade of blue.
- Elisa Maza from Gargoyles has blue hair that's likely supposed to be black.
- Lampshaded in an episode of Pepper Ann where the titular character decides to dye her hair green to stand out at school. She attempts to justify the decision by pointing out that her friend Milo has blue hair, only for Milo to correct her and claim his hair is such a deep black that it looks blue.
- Ellen Yin from The Batman. Her hair is black, but is highlighted with blue similar to Batman's costume. The blue highlights are gray in daytime scenes, showing that her hair really is black.
Examples of brown or dark brown hair represented by green, black, or purple
Film — Animation
- Iduna from Frozen looks black-haired in certain scenes. Her hair is dark brown.
Film — Live-Action
- While Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings films is a brunette, his hair almost looks black in some scenes.
- Final Fantasy: Dyne is depicted as having purple hair in Final Fantasy VII - the same shade of purple as Cloud's uniform, leading some to assume it was supposed to be black. In his more realistically-styled cameo in Final Fantasy VII: G-Bike, it's just brown.
- Nameless: Protagonist Eri's hair is supposed to be brown, though her narrative portraits make it look purple. Depending on the CG, it switches between brown and purple, too.
- H₂O: Mermaid Adventures: Cleo has purple hair that is referred to as "brunette."
- Luz in The Owl House appears to have dark brown hair... until you look closer and notice it's a warm dark shade of purple, which seems brownish within her overall color scheme.
Examples of grey hair represented by blue, lilac, or lavender
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Rei Ayanami's distinctive light blue hair is presumably meant as white (even though she isn't intended to be albino). Intentionally chosen to distinguish her from Asuka.
- Tenchi Muyo!: Ryoko's hair is supposed to be considered silver, but it's colored cyan/light blue/turquoise.
- Sakata Gintoki from Gintama, whose silver hair is colored in light blues. Sometimes his hair is colored with actual gray, though.
- In the Spiral anime, Eyes Rutherford's hair is white (sometimes with gray or light-blue shades). In color images from the manga, it ranges from white with light blue highlights to sort of lavender-ish to light purple in the most recent pieces. It's officially silver.
- Boris Kuznetsov from Bakuten Shoot Beyblade has hair that is a a light lavender in Season 1, light grey in Season 3, and white in the 2010s art. As well, Rei's hair has always been black, but the 2010s art uses purple (other black-haired characters keep having black hair). And Michael's red hair has been rendered as red-red, burgundy, strawberry blond, and auburn.
- The title character of A Certain Magical Index is described in the original light novels as having silvery-white hair. Most artwork of her, even in the light novel illustrations but especially in the anime adaptations, however, depicts her hair color as light-blue.
- Sailor Moon:
- Queen Serenity is implied to have silvery hair and is shown with white hair in the color pictures associated with the manga. In the anime, her hair is depicted as light purple.
- Diana is supposedly gray to represent that she is the daughter of a black cat and a white cat, but in the anime her coloration is a pinkish lavender.
- In the Fruits Basket anime, Yuki's grey hair often looks purple.
- In the Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin anime, the titular protagonist Gin is an Akita Inu with silvery fur (which his name lampshades). For no apparent reason, in the sequel Ginga Densetsu Weed both his fur and that of his son Weed are blatantly blue.
- BNA: Brand New Animal: Marie Itami's hair (and fur, when she's in her beastman form) is a very grayish mauve.
- Italian comic Lupo Alberto features Alberto, a wolf with blue fur. Word of God says his fur was meant to be pale grey, but since the hue translated poorly on paper blue was chosen as a shortcut.
Film - Animation
- Remy from Ratatouille has greyish-blue fur. Rats can be this color, but it is uncommon in the wild.
- Georgette's fur color from Oliver & Company looks blueish instead of white or grey.
- An episode of Screenwipe had David Quantick, talking about how soul-sapping it is to participate in I Love the Exties shows, recount a time where he was asked to describe the hair of Dynasty (1981) character Blake Carrington as blue when, in the picture they had on the monitor, it was clearly just gray.
- Married... with Children: This is Al Bundy's go to insult whenever he is mad at an elderly woman, he'll call them a "blue hair", regarless of hair color.
- Franziska von Karma from Ace Attorney appears to have blue hair, but many fans believe it to be silver. Capcom's no help: some of the promo art tinted it green.
- In The Great Ace Attorney, Barok van Zieks's hair appears to be a muted purple. The game's official twitter lists it as dark gray, but discussing the Red-Headed League with the man reveals he actually has no idea what his hair colour is supposed to be. He then proceeds to have a minor existential crisis over it.
Van Zieks: Sadly, my own hair could no more be described as black as it could red... What coloured league should I then join?
- The Viera race from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance have purple or green hair, and it's obvious that they're supposed to have white hair (especially in the art), right? Ritz's albino hair in St. Ivalice seems light lavender, though her friend comments that it's "as white as snow".
- Which makes the whole "She wants to stay because her hair is red in Ivalice" thing into total Narm.
- Adelle from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 was like this as well.
- This happens in Pokémon with Steven Stone, whose hair has been depicted as powder blue as frequently as it has been grey. For example, his Generation III sprite is clearly grey-haired, but his Generation IV and V sprites have powder blue hair. The anime also gave him blue hair. This even extends to his eyes, since Pokémon is known for eyes usually matching hair.
- Inverted with Super Macho Man in Punch-Out!! - his hair is supposed to be silver-blonde, but it looks gray. This, combined with his leathery skin, leads people to think he's an old man; he's actually twenty-seven. (His skin is leathery because he tans way too much; the Wii game makes this clearer.)
- Final Fantasy:
- Cecil of Final Fantasy IV has white hair in art and all succeeding iterations, but his original map and combat sprite have blue hair.
- Sephiroth in his cameos in Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015) and Mobius Final Fantasy has blue hair, which is especially noticeable in contrast to his silver armor. One of his alt costumes in Dissidia (2015) shows him with realistic silver hair that does match his armor, showing off why this trope is used - in the game's art style, it appears blond.
- In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Deirdre, Julia, Tailtiu, and many others are all depicted in-game with silvery white hair. However, official art usually colours Tailtiu and her relatives' hair in a medium purple, and Julia's a pinkish lavender. But Deirdre's hair is much more complicated, with official depictions running the gamut from the pale silver she had in game, to lavender, to deep purple. This can be seen very clearly in Fire Emblem Heroes, where her original base art◊ had very pale purple/grey hair, but her replacement Resplendant art has darker purple hair than even Ishtar.
- Kade and his mom from Savestate, both blue merle Australian Shepherds, are literally blue. In real life, blue merle fur is actually gray◊.
- The Simpsons:
- Mr Burns has light blue hair, but it does appear grey sometimes under the right lighting.
- Patty and Selma both have gray hair that appears bright lavender.
- Tom and Jerry: Tom the cat has a blue-grey tinge in his fur. Depending on the Artist, he can look outright blue, bluish grey, greyish blue, or straight-up grey.
- Bugs Bunny in The Looney Tunes Show has either a lavender tinge to his grey fur or looks outright lavender-furred.
Examples of mousy or light brown hair represented by gray or green
- Karasuma Kirika from Kamichama Karin.
- In Pokémon Adventures Sapphire is supposed to have brown hair, as with her other counterparts, but instead it looks grey.
- In The Prince of Tennis, Atobe's hair in the anime can only be described as a mix between dark gray, steel blue, and purple. He even has silver hair in the Musicals.
- Miles Edgeworth from Ace Attorney has brown hair in artwork, but in-game, it's most definitely grey. A big question amongst the fanbase is "What the hell hair color does he have?!"
- In Metal Gear, Otacon's hair is often grey in artwork, while in-game, his brown hair seems to get darker as the series progresses.
- Red from Pokémon, specifically his design used from Fire Red and Leaf Green onwards. His hair tends to vary between light brown and mousy, very grayish brown. His female counterpart, Leaf, also has a similar issue.
- Sumia from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Is her hair grey or brown? Her in-game model leans more towards brown and even has a tinge of purple or pink, but it looks greyer in artworks of her. Sumia's daughter Cynthia has a similar issue as well, but her artwork definitely looks grey. Less of an issue in-game, since Cynthia's hair color, is determined by her father.
- Jack from Gunnerkrigg Court is drawn with grey hair, but it might take a while to realize that because it's a darkish grey that looks like it could just be a particularly muted shade of brown. And until Annie actually said he had grey hair in a recent comic, it wasn't really clear whether his hair really was grey or if it was mousy brown hair (similar to his father's) with some artistic license applied to the colour, like how Annie's hair is red in-universe but shown as rosy pink.
- Madeline: In the earlier episodes, two of Madeline's schoolmates have greenish olive-brown hair, but later seasons changed them to dark brown or black.
- The Simpsons:
- Both Smithers and Principal Skinner.
- Helen Lovejoy's hair color is somewhere between grey and brown. It often changes shades depending on the episode.
- In HBO Storybook Musicals, Alexander's mother is probably supposed to have light brown hair, but her hair has a greyish hue.
Examples of blond or dirty blond hair being represented by light brown
- Nuts/Natsu from Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
- Omiya, the Edo counterpart of Miyako (Bubbles), from Powerpuff Girls Z.
- More than a few fans seem to consider Nunnally, the young Charles, and Odysseus from Code Geass to be blondes, despite having what seems to be really light brown hair.
- Belgium and Hungary of Hetalia: Axis Powers were both described as blondes, but most official art gives them light brown hair.
- France's and Monaco's hair colors are all over the place, varying from platinum blond to brown. However, France tends to have golden blond hair and Monaco dirty blond most often, and fans tend to associate them with such.
- Alphonse in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has very dark blond hair to the point where it passes for brown.
- Aztek: Uno's bios says his hair is either blond or light brown.
- The very brunette Clint Eastwood as "Blondie" in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Justified since Hair Color is relative, in Latin American countries black hair is the norm, so most people consider any other color of hair as fair, many shades of brown can be even mis-classified as dark blonde in many countries.
- Peri Brown from Doctor Who canonically has blond hair and light blue eyes but, due to budget constraints, they ended up casting brunette, light-brown eyed, not-American-at-all Nicola Bryant.
- Calvin in Harvest Moon: Animal Parade. His official art clearly shows that he's a golden blonde, but in-game, his model has light brown hair.
- According to the script on the Making Of compilation, Iroquois Pliskin in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
- Bianca in Dragon Quest V has blond hair, but it looks light brown in the SNES game. The DS remake makes her hair look a very bright yellow color instead, which can be a noticeable difference if you are used to the old version.
- Heloise in Jimmy Two-Shoes looks like a brunette, but she's actually a dirty-blonde.
Examples of blond and strawberry blond hair represented by orange and reddish shades
- Death Note:
- Mello's hair looks reddish.
- The anime seems to use hair color more as symbols than anything else: in particularly dramatic scenes, L and Light inexplicably have vivid blue and red hair, respectively. As do the rest of their bodies, what you're seeing is the dramatic lighting effect that's used when the main characters are thinking dramatically. Matsuda does it too, once!
- Code Geass: Shirley Fenette maybe this.
- In Bleach, Matsumoto is seemingly blonde, but like Orihime, she has the same orange hair color as Ichigo in the anime.
- Hellsing: In the original television series, Seras Victoria has hair that could best be described by the crayola crayon "orange-yellow". However, this effect is only displayed in the dark. When she walks through day in the open, her hair is normal shaded blond.
Film
- Inverted in the two live-action Tintin films, "The Golden Fleece" and "The Blue Oranges", where red-haired Tintin is played by blond Jean-Pierre Talbot.
- Inverted in Disney's Cinderella. In the film, she has strawberry blonde hair, but in all Disney Princess merchandising it's blonde.
- Anna's hair in Frozen is strawberry blonde according to licensed books but it looks more red than blonde, and some doll versions have hair that looks more orange.
- Hurdy from Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
- Roxas and Ventus in Kingdom Hearts have blond hair in the production artwork and in pre-rendered cutscenes, which turns orange in anything using the game engine.
- Final Fantasy V has Lenna/Reina, a platinum blonde in the official art, a very loud pink in her sprite. Faris is similar, going from the same platinum blonde to bright purple. Justified in that there's a status effect that turns a character's hair white, and all five characters' official arts were either platinum blonde or white.
- Peach in the original Super Mario Bros. due to the limitations of the hardware.
- In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Link has pink hair in-game, and has pink fur in rabbit form in the Dark World, but has dark blond hair officially.
- Monkey Island series: On the cover of The Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush's hair appears red, but in the game, it's blond. In Monkey Island 2, his hair looks reddish brown on the box but is clearly brown in game. The later games all make his hair blond, both on the cover art, and in-game itself. It's speculated that his hair was always meant to be a shade of red, but they couldn't get it right due to not having enough colors in the palette.
- Inverted in Harvest Moon. Gray's red hair is blond in certain games, such as Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, due to oversaturating the colors to work better on the handheld hardware.
- Dragon Age:
- Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins is supposed to be blonde, but his in-game model looks more dirty blonde or reddish-blonde. Fan art often depict him as strawberry blonde or redheaded because of this. Doesn't help that Alistair is redheaded in recent incarnations.
- Same with Anders. His hair looks more red than blonde, which makes Varric's nickname "Blondie" a bit confusing.
- Agatha in Girl Genius. Early color jobs tend to have her hair as a color gradient from yellow to red-orange, and later pages settle in the middle at a more yellowish orange.
- Gadget from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. Note that this isn't even constant; her hair changes its color from episode to episode. Her Doppelgänger Lahwhinie, however, is only shown with orange hair that's supposed to be blond.
- Arnold in The Magic School Bus is a blond in the books but looks like a redhead in the cartoon.
- Summer Smith from Rick and Morty is a strawberry blonde.
- In Big Hero 6 Honey Lemon is a blonde. In Big Hero 6: The Series she is a redhead.
Examples of blond or dirty blond hair represented by light green
- Kio Kaidou from Loveless. While usually a true blonde in the anime, the manga (and most fanart) gives him greenish locks.
- The Cavendish family from Little Witch Academia have tea-green highlights in their platinum blonde hair.
- Momoko◊ from Ojamajo Doremi almost always has a strange green tint to her hair in merchandise◊.
- Marika from Bokura no Hentai canonically has blonde hair. A lot of official art gives it a green tint and one cover even outright has it green.
- In the second ending to Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Edward's normally blond hair has a green hue.
- Dragon Ball: Broly's Legendary Super Saiyan form is either blond with a green tone or actual green.
- Eva from Tweeny Witches has blonde hair that looks light green in some scenes.
- The recurring Pathfinder NPC Shalelu Andosana has been portrayed with pale green hair at least once in official art. Until she was confirmed to canonically be blond (and for some time after, as well), this was the subject of much fan debate.
- Final Fantasy VI:
- Tina/Terra Branford is officially a blonde, but her sprites depict her with green hair (presumably due to palette limitations).
- The same applies to Locke, who goes from blonde to a pale, greyish green. To be fair, in the Yoshitaka Amano art for FFVIcharacters, EVERYONE'S hair is different shades of blonde or white (in the case of Setzer and Strago.) At least the green hair adds some variety.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Link's hair is blonde, but in The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, it's green. It's supposedly the same guy in both games.
- Tetra has greenish-blonde hair in certain The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker scenes, though the other blond characters don't.
- Sniper Wolf of Metal Gear Solid.
- All characters named Nina in the Breath of Fire series have blond hair, but the hair of the fifth Nina tends toward a greenish hue, possibly due to underground lighting/living conditions.
- The Sims 3: Boyd Wainwright is supposed to have white hair and his hair may appear whiter, blonder, or bluer depending on circumstances. Getting technical, his hair is desaturated light green with light blond streaks and tips.
- Ignatz in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is likely this, as his hair is distinctly more yellowish green than several other characters whose green hair is an important hint so it's likely a stylized blond.
Examples of brown, chestnut, or auburn hair represented by reddish, red, or orange
- Naruto: Gaara's hair was originally brown in the manga (much like his family). The anime made his hair red and it was later retconned in the manga to fit.
- Orihime from Bleach has caramel hair in the manga. In the anime, it's much closer to the same orange shade the anime gives Ichigo (whose hair color is officially 'honey' in the manga).
- Lina Inverse from Slayers. Though in the novels, her hair is specifically stated to be chestnut, the anime gives her an auburn shade that, over the course of the series, turns bright red. It's easy to forget that it used to be brown.
- Serial Experiments Lain: The main character, Lain.
- Code Geass: Kallen's mother and late brother.
- In Death Note, Light (and Yotsuba Group member Mido, for that matter) have chestnut-to-red hair, which, judging by the series' color palette, would translate to Real Life as reddish-black. Although Light's hair is often rendered as a more typical dark brown, depending on the (cough) lighting.
- YuYu Hakusho:
- A complication arises with Kurama, who was originally intended to have long black hair which was highlighted pink/red to match his school uniform in some official art. The anime then gave him inhumanly red hair for effect, which then became his official hair color. Opinion is extremely split on whether Shuichi Minamino goes around with long magenta hair, a more human/foxy shade of orange, or a merely reddish-brown believably Japanese color exaggerated for effect. Also about whether the color is Kurama's fault since he was a grey fox in his first life.
- Kuwabara's hair is generally taken by fans to be this trope since he's a Japanese human, the abnormal bright orange color of it never comes up, and alongside extreme redheads like Kurama, Jin, and even Mukuro, it looks positively understated. To the extent that people grouping Kuwabara with the redheads get seriously assaulted by Fan Dumb.
- Italy of Hetalia: Axis Powers is probably supposed to be a brunet (like most Italians). In old official art, this was quite clear. But once the anime and Art Evolution came along, it became difficult to tell if Italy's brown hair is just strongly saturated by the pretty colors or he's become a fair-skinned redhead. The fact that there are no characters who are officially red-haired, and that the author is very inconsistent with color schemes, doesn't help.
- Rosario + Vampire:
- Outer Moka's hair is obviously pink, but other characters describe her hair as chestnut-brown... It's only in the final chapter of Season II where it's mentioned to be pink.
- Similarly, Moka's younger sister Kokoa has red hair, but other characters say it's orange.
- Aiko from Goodnight Punpun canonically has a dark brown color. Several officially colored manga pages have her with a reddish tone.
- A Silent Voice's Shouko has a brown hair officially - the shade varies, however, it's supposed to be rather dark - but the manga shading is light. Most of the official art involving her gives her reddish, almost dark pink, hair. The anime adaptation also used her reddish hair instead of the canonical dark brown.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Asuka’s hair is canonically reddish-brown, but is often depicted as bright orange, especially in promotional art and merchandise.
- Post-Crisis Lois Lane of Superman.
- Inverted in Tintin. The eponymous character appears to have brown hair but is actually a redhead.
- Aside from 52, Kate Kane is consistently depicted with bright, fire-engine-red hair. However, her hair cannot be dyed this color because it's shown as this same shade when she's in middle school (too young to dye her hair) and when she's a cadet at West Point (such a hair shade is specifically prohibited by Army regulations). In 52, however, her hair is a much more realistic light auburn, indicating her actual shade is that color.
- Aiko from Goodnight Punpun has dark brown hair but most fan-artists give her red hair.
- Psychonauts:
- Although sometimes rendered in fanart with brown hair, in the game Raz actually a purplish red hair color. Other fanart takes this to the opposite extreme and makes his hair an even louder, more exaggerated shade of red or purple.
- The same goes for the character Lili, who has brownish-red hair, but is depicted sometimes in fanart with either darker brown or brighter red, and, in one case, purple (???).
- Frequently inverted with Daisy from Super Mario Bros.. Her canonically orange hair is often colored brown in fan-art.
Film — Animation
- The eponymous character of Wreck-It Ralph is an Evil Redhead in his old school 8-bit form, and a brunette in his CGI form. Truth in Television: 1980's video games tended to have limited color palettes that made the character's colors different from the intention; for example, Princess Peach originally appeared with red hair in the games, but artwork always depicted her as blond.
- Anastasia from the 1997 20th Century Fox film, Anastasia. In reality, she was apparently a strawberry blonde.
Film — Live-Action
- Inverted in The Outsiders. Cherry is nicknamed after her signature red hair. The problem is that her actress looks like a brunette, not a redhead.
- When perky blonde Lu Ann receives her makeover during the I Dressed in the Dark storyline of Apartment 3-G, the stylist compliments her on her new "rich brown curls", yet Lu Ann's hair is inked the exact same color as her canonically redheaded roommate Tommie. The Comics Curmudgeon made a not of this. Stylists Kat and Kit receive similar treatment, as their (presumably) brown hair is just an orange a few shades lighter than Tommie's.
- Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House is either orange or light golden brown. He looks to be the latter in most episodes, but looks closer to the former in promotional photos and merchandise. In-universe, he's sometimes stated to be brown, and sometimes said to be orange, muddying the issue even further.
- In EarthBound (1994), some of the NPCs have reddish-brown hair.
- Kratos from Tales of Symphonia is often drawn with brown hair in fanart. Like dirt brown, even though his official portraits◊ all show it as a red. Might have something to do with matching it to his son, Lloyd, whose hair is unmistakably brown.
- A character in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade refer to Priscilla as auburn-haired. Her official art◊ is slightly excusable, but her game sprite clearly shows her as a redhead.
- Ryu from the Street Fighter fighting games, whose hair is depicted with a lighter shade of brown that almost looks red in Street Fighter and the Alpha series, despite being dark-brown and black in every other game.
- Princess Daisy from the Super Mario Bros. games:
- Daisy actually has more orange-toned hair, to the point that it ranged, since her first two appearances, from burnt-orange to bright-orange. Like her first two appearances, it was recently reverted to being so orange as to match the shade on her clothing. It has also been depicted as auburn in a few artworks regardless of the fact it has never been so in-game.
- Regardless of the fact that her hair has been stated by Nintendo as orange, fan-art constantly depicts her with dark brown hair. Although this is strange as even real redheads have burnt-orange hair that ranges in brown tones of light shades.
- In the NES versions of the Double Dragon games, Billy Lee's hair color is colored red in the games, even though its actually depicted as a dark brown or black in the official art. To make matters more confusing, it was actually blond in the original arcade game.
- Sodina from Thousand Arms, who has red hair on the game's cover and one of the discs but brown hair in the game.
- Torn from Jak and Daxter has either brown or red hair depending on who you ask. The concept art is clearly brown, but in-game, it's slightly red.
- Misty from Grand Theft Auto III is portrayed in the official artwork as having brown hair, yet her hair is a bright red in-game.
- Inverted with the secret ending to Kingdom Hearts. It shows a girl that is presumably Kairi, however, her hair is a dark brown instead of red.
- In Sonic Adventure 2 Tails' fur is described as "fox brown" on his G.U.N. profile. Tails' fur is red. In early western portrayals, he was brown, but he's long since been portrayed with a yellow-orange or orange complexion, and is generally described as "yellow" (which is still an example).
- The common Mirages in Silhouette Mirage are depicted with Orange hair in-game, but they're seen with brown hair in the opening Intro.
- Questionable Content has several characters with supposedly brown hair of varying shades that appear red or orange. Specifically Faye, Angus, Sven, and Steve. Oddly enough, Sven actually did have brown hair in his first few appearances.
- Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius: Jimmy's hair is canonically a medium brown, but in some episodes it looks orangey in the light, giving the appearance of auburn hair.
- All too common in Hanna-Barbera cartoons from the late 80's and early 90's.
- Velma from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo had brown hair that was a little more reddish than her other incarnations.
- Not even Celebrity Toons distributed by HB from the 80's and 90's were immune to this. In Gravedale High, the main character and Token Human teacher Max Schneider had red hair, when in reality, Rick Moranis, the person he was voiced by and modeled after, had brown hair.
- Inverted with Azrael the cat in The Smurfs (1981). Azrael's orange fur appears light brown in the TV show, whereas in other incarnations (the comics and the live-action movies), his orange fur appears orange.
- Inverted with Princess from The Powerpuff Girls (1998), who is an expy of Annie from Little Orphan Annie. Sometimes her hair looks brunette rather than red. This extends to her anime counterpart, Himeko from Powerpuff Girls Z (whose brownish-red hair actually turns bright red when she transforms into Princess).
- Jazmine from The Boondocks has red hair however it's more than likely meant to be brown. In the comics her hair looks more of a light brown.
- Inverted with Prunella's hair in Arthur. It is red in official artwork and in certain episodes, however often looks brown instead. Starting with season 16's transition to Flash her hair looks red consistently.
- Amanda from Milo Murphy's Law is probably meant to have black or dark brown hair, but it actually looks more plum.
- Inverted in Jem. Ba Nee makes a big deal out of her Disappeared Dad having red hair. He looks more like a brunette.
- The Loud House: Aside from Lucy who has black hair, all the girls from the Loud family canonically have either blonde or brown hair, and so do their parents. However, while the blonde ones are clear, most of the brown-haired girls have hair more akin to auburn than to actual brown hair. It doesn't help that their father looks more like a brunette than they do.
- In the earlier Madeline cartoons, one of the twelve little girls (later named Monique) has dusky reddish-pink hair. In later episodes, it's changed to brown.
- American Dad!: Inverted with Steve Smith, who has referred to himself as a "ginger-haired boy" and his first pubic hair is said (and shown) to be red. His hair appears brown, or perhaps auburn, since it's slightly reddish compared to his friend Snot.
Other examples
- Higurashi: When They Cry: Rika has purple hair, but it turns teal in low light.
- The original series of Hetalia: Axis Powers gave Russia, who in the comics has pale, buff blond hair, grayish white hair. This was rectified after the post season 5 Art Evolution, however.
- His sister, Belarus, who also has light blonde hair, occasionally appears to be platinum blonde in official art.
- Death Note: Matt's hair in the anime adaptation appears as either a mousy brown or a dull olive green shade depending on the lighting. His hair in the guidebook appears to be dark and a sort of muddied brownish-green. Fans are split between simply referring to him as a brunet or green-haired.
- K: Neko either has really light pink hair, pink hair with white highlights, or white hair with pink shading. It could even be seen as pale lavender. It is as light in color as Shiro's white-with-grey-shading hair (which is really impressive considering it's white), but it's often interpreted in fan-art and cosplay and even some promotional artwork as bright cotton-candy pink. Of course, it doesn't help one bit that the color seemingly changes from scene to scene.
- My Hero Academia: In the anime, Tenya Iida's eyes are blue, but in the manga, they're red, orange, or gold.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Lance's red hair looks pink in the anime.
- Fans have been stumped on whether James has purple or blue hair for years. This is lampshaded in one Pokémon Advanced episode:
Meowth: "Don't worry that pretty blue head of yours. I got a plan."James: "It's lavender!"
- A similar thing has happened to Jessie, whose hair shifted from magenta to bright red to dark pink and, when the show switched to digital coloring, to her current magenta. In concept she's still a redhead.
- CLANNAD does this indirectly when Fuko announces that Sunohara's hair is a weird color. It's blonde, a rather rare color for Asians. The trouble is that Fuko herself has dark green hair, the guy she's hanging out with has blue hair, Kyou and Ryou and Kotomi have purple hair... all of which are apparently meant to be shades of brown or black. And she doesn't say what color Sunohara's hair is. We later learn it's black.
- Cardcaptor Sakura: Yue's hair and wings are either a light gray/blue or white.
- Rosario + Vampire:
- Outer Moka is said to have chestnut hair very early on in the manga, but it's completely pink with no indication of brown whatsoever. The final chapter, however, Retcons this as being pink.
- Kokoa is said to have orange hair, but it's definitively red, in both, the manga and anime.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Rather than Hair Color Dissonance, it's "Scale Color Dissonance" with Blue-Eyes White Dragon. The manga, the anime, and the Trading Card Game depict her more as blue as white. More often than not, the anime makes her completely blue. And if she is depicted as white, it's usually with blue highlights.
- Haikyuu!!'s Sugawara has light blond or ashen blond hair in the manga. It's outright gray in the anime.
- The Quintessential Quintuplets: In-Universe, the Nakano Sisters are all supposed to have the same hair color (presumed to be a shade of pink given their childhood flashbacks), but for the sake of helping the viewers tell them apart more easily, they're given different hair colors in the anime adaptation and the manga's colored pages. Ichika has bright pink, Nino has light purple to magenta, Miku has deep red to maroon, Yotsuba has orange, and Itsuki has bright red.
- In Gorgeous Irene, Irene's Older Alter Ego's hair is drawn as black with light orange highlights in color pages. Her World of Hirohiko Araki figurine appears to confirm it as light orange, meaning the black was shading.
- The Wedding Peach manga depicted Momoko with pink hair in color illustrations, but the majority of the black-and-white manga had her hair depicted as black.
- Black Cat is officially listed as having platinum blonde hair, and some depictions of her do have blonde highlights in her hair. Most of the time however her hair is snow white.
- Inverted with Wolf Link of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. He's gray and cream with a green mane and tail, but in fanart, he's often green and cream or green and white. The main reason is that the game's heavy use of Real Is Brown, and various effects like bloom and blurring, can make it hard to actually see the gray, so many players really thought he was just green and cream. His appearance in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild makes this easier to see.
- Due to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars hair color mix-up mentioned under Western Animation below, it is common fan perception that Anakin Skywalker has dark brown hair instead of the sandy blond of Hayden Christensen described in official written material. Because of this, a good chunk of fanart and a sizable amount of fanfic give him, especially his look in Revenge of the Sith, his TCW hair color, to the confusion of some fans who have only seen the movies.
- His son, Luke, often has the opposite problem; he starts with golden blond hair in A New Hope, and as the trilogy goes on it darkens into a very dark blond, even appearing slightly darker than his father. Despite this, it's common for fanart and other fan works, even those depicting him in Return of the Jedi, to give him bright blond, even occasionally almost bleach blond hair; something that becomes even more apparent when depicted alongside his father pre-Darth Vader, who he's supposed to resemble, with the abovementioned dark brown hair.
- While not as common, occasionally younger Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is strawberry to dirty blond, is depicted with orange-red or even light blond hair.
Film — Animation
- A common debate amongst fans of Frozen over almost all the main characters. Is Anna's hair blonde, strawberry blonde, light reddish brown, brown, or red? Is Elsa's hair platinum blonde or white? Is Hans' hair auburn or red? As with many examples, the color seems to change in different scenes, merchandise, promotional art, etc. Elsa's hair especially, as it seems to get lighter during "Let it Go" and stays that way for the rest of the movie (though it's not as light as Anna's hair when she's freezing to death). Disney always describes Elsa's hair as "white-blonde", but official descriptions of Anna's hair are inconsistent. Anna is a "strawberry blonde" in many books, the art-book for Frozen II calls Anna and her father auburn-haired, and Kristoff calls Anna ginger in Frozen II. Scriptwriter Jennifer Lee described her hair as "light strawberry brown" in the movie, and noted that one doll versions hair seemed "a bit more orange."
- The Willoughbys: The titular family are supposed to have red hair, despite it being magenta. Additionally, they were brunettes in the book.
Film — Live-Action
- Peter Quill/Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) was blond in the comics, no one seems to agree on what color his hair is in the movie. It doesn't help that it seems to change in different scenes under different lighting. This wiki refers to him as strawberry blond, while fanart and fanfics depict him with many different shades of blond, brown, reddish, and even orange hair.
- Marg Helgenberger is a natural redhead. Therefore, the writers of CSI consider the character she plays, Catherine Willows, to be a redhead too. However, somewhere between the show's hairdressers, the lighting, and the effects of sunlight on light red hair, she almost always looks blonde. Fair enough: if redhead Marg Helgenberger can turn blonde, so can redhead Catherine Willows. The problem comes in when scripts - which are written with no idea of how red or blonde her hair is going to look on the day of filming - have people who've never laid eyes on Catherine before referring to the very blonde woman as "the redhead".
- This happened during the early seasons of The X-Files. Though Scully would become infamous for her red hair, in the early seasons, Scully looks far more brunette than red-headed.
- Video cover artwork for Doctor Who (especially that done by Andrew Skilleter) had a reputation for depicting Peter Davison's blonde Fifth Doctor as having silver hair.
Music
- Eminem:
- Eminem's initial intention when first bleaching his hair to portray Slim Shady was for his hair to be white, which was how both he and his collaborator Royce da 5'9" initially described it to others. However, because of Eminem's lack of knowledge of peroxide technique, it came out a platinum blond colour. He eventually decided he preferred being a blonde - starting from The Marshall Mathers LP he changed to a more yellow shade, nicknamed himself 'the Angry Blonde', and repeatedly described his hair as blond in his lyrics.
- Eminem has been known to write songs boasting about having blond hair, even when he's wearing his hair its natural dark brown/almost black colour.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- It's debated amongst fandom whether Dr. Eggman is a redhead or has brown hair. His mustache color is brown in the pre-Sonic Adventure games, more explicitly red in the American cartoons, auburn in Sonic X, and anywhere in between in the comics and every game after Sonic Adventure.
- Tails' color was very inconsistent at first. He's supposed to be yellow with a slight orange tint, but earlier works depicted him as reddish-orange, bright orange, or even brown at times.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VII has quite a lot, owing to Art Shift both within the game and between it and its spinoffs:
- Cloud's always blond, but he's anywhere on the spectrum from just 'yellow', to dark ash blond verging on brown, to warm honey/golden blond, to cold platinum blond, depending on who's texturing him in this cameo. Even within the original game, his map sprite has very vivid, almost orange-yellow hair, his main battle sprite's hair is a pale yellow, his hi-res battle sprite is a golden brown, his menu portraits are platinum, his FMV render is light blond and his motorcycle portrait is light brown. Dissidia Final Fantasy and Super Smash Bros. lampshade this slightly (or at least fail to ignore it) by giving him lighter hair when he's in his Advent Children variant costume. In a couple of his appearances in Advent Children trailers, he has bleached-looking hair with visible dark roots, though these were never used for released products. Early trailers for Final Fantasy VII Remake depicted him with golden blond hair, but the eventual game showed him with light blond hair similar in shade to the FMV model from the original.
- Tifa has light brown hair in some depictions, while other times it's dark brown or even black (Advent Children).
- Aeris's hair in the original game and Crisis Core might have been a light brown or a dark reddish-blond, but in Advent Children it's dark brown.
- Rufus's name indicates that he's supposed to be red-haired and his sprite depicted him as ginger, but in the more realistically-styled Advent Children his hair is mousy blond. In Final Fantasy VII Remake, it's steely platinum.
- Cid's sprite has grey hair, his menu portrait has white-blond hair and his Compilation depiction has hair the same shade of blond as Rufus'.
- Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII was assumed by many fans to be blond at first, but her hair's actually pink (and increasingly so in her later appearances).
- Ardyn's hair in Final Fantasy XV is very inconsistent depending on lighting and art style. Sometimes it's dull brown, sometimes it's auburn, sometimes it's brown with a distinct pinkish tone, sometimes it's red, sometimes it's stark raving purple.
- Noctis's hair is implied to be some shade of traditional raven black but is depicted as various shades of black, silver, gray, and/or blue.
- Final Fantasy VII has quite a lot, owing to Art Shift both within the game and between it and its spinoffs:
- Ren in Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is known as the "silver-haired girl" for most of the game before Seto and the audience learns her name. However, animated and in-game cutscenes clearly show Ren's hair is white. Of course, Seto also calls the moon silver, while Ren herself calls it white, which suggests the dissonance comes from Seto's point-of-view, not the audience.
- Is Ao Oni's title character purple, or blue like its title says? Blame the dark color tints...
- In Fire Emblem Fates Takumi officially has grey hair. However, in his various appearances across the Fire Emblem franchise his hair runs the gamut from actually grey, to beige, to a very light brown.
- Raku is supposed to have forest green hair in Neko Sugar Girls (according to the intro) however the series itself uses a sort of olive-green, almost blonde, shade.
- RWBY: Ruby's usually hair looks either black or black with red highlights. It's meant to be dark red, but the lighting affects it often.
- The members of the Sturmvoraus/von Blitzengaard extended family in Girl Genius all have hair in varying shades of reddish purple. This color palette may represent shades of auburn. Of course, given that there's a character with green hair that is described in-universe as such, maybe they really do just have Crayola hair.
- The author of Another Gaming Comic accidentally drew everyone's hair shaded green in early comics due to being colorblind. However, it blends in well so it's easy to overlook.
- In Sister Claire both Claire and Catharine are noted by the narration to have red hair, something that's actually a Chekhov's Gun in the former's case, but they're represented by two very different shades, with Claire being a much brighter orange and Catharine being closer to burgundy.
- Due to the watercolor art style, Robbie's hair is inconsistent in Ignition Zero. It looks varying shades of blond, brown, or even red.
- Brittany from Alvin and the Chipmunks has an inconsistent hair color. It switches between shades of light red, light brown, and occasionally blond.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Suki's official hair color is auburn according to the wiki. However, in the show it mostly just appears to be medium brown.
- Superman got a slight redesign between Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League, which included adding a grey highlight to his hair. This combined with a couple of extra lines on his face led to fans complaining that he looked too old. This lessened when Superman's face got tweaked to remove the lines.
- Jem:
- Kimber's hair is red however it has a pink tint.
- Riot's hair isn't the issue, it's his eyes. They're supposed to look green however look dark brown to black depending on the scene.
- Roxy's hair is confusing: Is it literally white or platinum blonde?
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Anakin Skywalker, originally played by Hayden Christensen, has dirty blond hair, just like his son, Luke. However, The Clone Wars gives him what is clearly not only brown, but dark, coffee brown hair. In all instances where he’s described in novels, he’s described as blond, but in many appearances since like many video games and merchandise he’s still been portrayed with dark hair, making it look like no one can agree on what his hair color is even supposed to be.
- Steven Universe:
- Pearl's hair is (according to Guide to the Crystal Gems) canonically pink however it looks somewhere between a reddish blonde and a light red.
- Steven's skin often has a pink hue. It makes sense considering his parentage however his skin likely isn't meant to seem abnormally colored.
- The pelt colours of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic characters can be this. Rarity looks like she's all-white (which isn't actually possible for most horses but being in a fantasy world gives them liberties), however, she is actually a very off blue (like the G1 pony she is based on, Sparkler). Princess Celestia also looks white but is a very light shade of pink. This was exaggerated in her original toy, which outright just had her as bright pink.
- Madeline is typically shown with red hair. However, My Fair Madeline portrays her with auburn hair.
