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Sandbox.Names To Run Away From Really Fast
Single Words: Adjectives (The Adjective One) | Nouns (Animal | Body Part | Colors | Weapons) | Verbs | Titles (Noun X | The Person)
Etymology:Ancient Dead Languages | Foreign Language Names
Named After: Conquerors | Notorious Killers | Redneck Names | Religious Names (Biblical Names | Demons or Angels) | Shady Names
Sounds and Letters: K Names | Mor | Names Ending In Th | R Names | Xtreme Kool Letterz | Unpronouncable Names
Various: Mix and Match

A form of Names to Run Away from Really Fast.

Villains often favor certain colors of clothing and weapons, so it's not surprising that such colors should be in their names as well. Black and Red are by far the most popular, as they are seen as the most evil colors around; see Dark Is Evil and Red and Black and Evil All Over.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Black 
Especially popular. (Blackguard, Blackheart, Blackthorne, Blackout, etc...)

Anime and Manga

  • The morally ambiguous contract killer who stars in Darker than Black is codenamed Hei - Chinese for "black". Hei also has a Red Baron-style nickname, "The Black Reaper."
  • Schwarz (German for "black"), the Slave-summoning villains from My-Otome.
  • Black☆Star from Soul Eater.
    • And his father, White☆Star.
  • Akuha Shuzen, infamously known as the Black Devil from Rosario + Vampire.
  • Blood Knight Omnicidal Maniac Karasuba (who's name translates literally to "raven feather") is known as the "The Black Sekirei".
  • The eponymous Black★Rock Shooter and her/its supercharged form, Insane Black Rock Shooter.
    • Her arch-nemesis Black Gold Saw (who is actually red).
    • Also, the rarely mentioned Black Matagi.
  • Kokushibo from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, one of the series' most powerful demons and his name literally means The Black Death.
  • Kuro meaning black, usually in the kanji 黒 tends to be reserved for more intimidating characters in anime and manga. Examples include Kurogasa from Rurouni Kenshin, Kuroda from Case Closed, another Kuroda from Saike Matashitemo who was the antagonist of an arc and Captain Kuro from One Piece, although that last one is spelled in the katakana クロ which can also be seen as meaning claw.

Comic Books

Film

  • Lord Blackwood from Sherlock Holmes (2009) featuring Robert Downey Jr. .
  • Discussed in Reservoir Dogs. Joe assigns the robbers their color-coded aliases himself. When they ask why they don't get to choose, he explains that he tried that before but it didn't work, because most of the guys were arguing over who got to be "Mr. Black".
  • Most of The Wolfman (2010) takes place in sleepy little English hamlet of Blackmoor, that's not ominous at all!
  • Kurogane from Ran: The name literally means "black steel" in Japanese.

Literature

  • Dr. Raven Sable.
    • All the Horsemen are this, named for the colors of the horse's they ride according to the original Biblical lore. Along with Dr. Sable (Famine) there's War, who goes by the names Carmine and Scarlett (both shades of red) and Pollution/Pestilence who has gone by such names as White, Blanc, Albus, Chalky, Weiss and Snowy (white in four languages, and two slang terms for white). The only exception is Death, who has no human identity and is just Death.
  • Sirius Black, although this turns out to be somewhat misleading. It definitely applies to most of the rest of his family, though. His family attempts to deliberately invoke this trope with astronomical names multiple times. Sirius, Andromeda, Regulus, Draco, probably several of the others do this also, but I don't know astronomy well enough to tell you for sure.
  • The Laundry Files is home to the Black Chamber, the rather...morally unsound US paranormal agency.
  • Black Dow. Among an entire nation of Named Men, he's still infamous.
  • Parodied and subverted in Grunts!, when the various orc squads pick names. There are an over-abundance of black, sable, ebony, etc...And then Pink Squad. They're kind of worried about Pink Squad.
  • The Big Bad of the first Faeries of Dreamdark book is commonly known as "the Blackbringer". If that's not sinister enough for you, his real name is the Astaroth.
  • Randall Flagg goes by the name of The Black Man in The Stand.
  • The Dresden Files features the Knights of the Blackened Denarius. Actually much, much worse than they sound.
  • The Dark Sisters; Mrs. Dark and Mrs. Black from The Infernal Devices.
  • The largest and most dangerous dragon ever seen in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien was Ancalagon the Black, who was bred by Morgoth himself in the First Age and was so big that when he died he broke two mountains.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • The most infamous of all the Targaryen dragons was Balerion, aka The Black Dread. His teeth were the size of large swords, it was said that he could swallow a mammoth whole, and entire towns would be in his shadow when he flew overhead. And supposedly his flames were also black.
    • The Ironborn, who are basically Viking raiders and pirates taken to the max, managed their greatest conquests on the mainlands under House Hoare, which was also frequently called "the black line" or "the black blood" for their cruelty and tyranny. While many members of the House had interesting Red Baron titles like Priestkiller, Demonlover, the Redsmile, etc., many simply went by "The Black". It took Aegon Targaryen and the infamous Balerion described above to put an end to them.
  • In Warrior Cats, Blackstar began the series as a villain.

Live-Action TV

Music

Radio

  • From Adventures in Odyssey, the evil Dr. Regis Blackgaard. Arguably subverted in that he has a twin brother, Edwin, who shares the name but is only guilty of being a Large Ham.

Tropes

Video Games

Webcomics

  • Jack Noir of Homestuck. On the other hand, his name is technically "Jack Black", rather than Black Jack.

Western Animation

  • The Simpsons
    • In the episode "Bart Gets An Elephant", Stampy the elephant is nearly sold by Homer to an ivory dealer (and onetime whale hunter, seal clubber, and president of the FOX network) named Mr. Blackheart.
    • In "Kamp Krusty", there's Mr. Black, the evil camp councilor who torments Bart, Lisa, and the rest of the kids attending the eponymous camp.

Real Life

  • The All Blacks, New Zealand's national rugby union team. They are currently ranked #1 in the world and are the World Cup champions. The name came from a typo; one writer called them "the all backs", meaning they all play fast, running games typical of the backs, but it was misprinted and the name stuck. Black is now the country's national colour, with many other sports teams being named "X Blacks" or "Black Xs".
  • Bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death which was so named because it was carried on the black-rat species.
  • Edward "Blackbeard" Teach.
  • Emperor Nero's name means black in Italian.
  • The Black Panther Party.

    Red 
Or any variation. Crimson and Scarlet sound especially badass. Vermillion, less so, but you can work with it. See also Red Baron.

Anime and Manga

  • For High School D×D, there is the Crimson-Haired Princess of Ruin. We know her best as Rias Gremory.
  • The Red Comet. Also the Crimson Lightning, but he often gets confused with the other guy.
  • Rezo the Red Priest of Slayers has a piece of the Dark Lord of his world sealed in his eyes, making him steadily more evil through his life. Lampshaded by Lina when she comments that his name sounds like a villain's after they meet and he tries to play her into giving up a powerful artifact.
  • Porco Rosso is just a badass.
  • Erza Scarlet is one of the few character who can discipline Natsu.
    • Now we also have Mavis Vermillion, Fairy Tail's first master, who might be joining Makarov and Gildarts as the Big Good.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Solf J. Kimblee, the Crimson Alchemist, could be considered this, especially considering what he did in the War of extermination in Ishval.
  • The Red King, Suoh Mikoto of K also qualifies. While he's usually pretty laid back and downright lazy, once he gets down to business there is no stopping him. He is more than once described as violent and a berserker, blows up whole buildings and takes down an elite team without even blinking. Just ask Awashima how dangerous he is.

Comic Books

Fan Works

Film

  • Red Sonja is definitely someone you tread carefully around, unless you're Ahnuld.
  • Red Mist from Kick-Ass.

Literature

Live-Action TV

MMORPGs

  • While not a person's name, the Scarlet Crusade from World of Warcraft. Originally devoted to slay undead, but turned into an army of insane religious zealots bent on killing anyone who's not one of them. Also, their leader is a demon/vampire in disguise.

Music

  • King Crimson. The name sounds much more intimidating than the actual sound/image of the band, however.

Video Games

Web Comics

  • A very bad example is Scarlet Foxfire, which has a color, animal, and fire, from the Webcomics of David Gonterman. Gonterman probably does actually intend her to be a badass, but seeing as how she's some sort of superpowered vixen fursuit (worn by a guy), well, her status is dubious, at best.
  • Redcloak from The Order of the Stick.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • The Red Scare.
  • The very, very obvious The Red Baron.
  • Scarlet fever.
  • The Humboldt Squid, which is sometimes known as "diablo rojo" or "red devil" in Spanish.
  • Red Fuming Nitric Acid: Nitrogen dioxide dissolved in pure nitric acid. Corrosive, a strong oxidizer, instantly burns with some chemicals, gives off toxic fumes, not something to spend time around.

    Yellow 
The Victorians and Edwardians loved to associate this with madness and decay as the symbol of the plague is a yellow flag with a single black spot flown above an infected vessel or building. In other cases, it might just be related to inherent abilities of lightning and/or awesome reflexes. If the word "gold" is used instead, it may simply be a reference to wealth and/or greed.

Anime and Manga

  • Minato Namikaze A.K.A. the Yellow Flash. The ONLY Ninja listed in the Black Book with a "Run On Sight" tag...
    • ...Not that it would help much if he was after you.

Film

  • The eponymous villain Auric Goldfinger. Bonus points for his first name meaning "gold" in Latin.

Literature

  • The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers more or less launched the idea of the Brown Note to the modern world with "the yellow sign"
  • The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • H. P. Lovecraft also had a King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign
  • Emmanuel Goldstein from Nineteen Eighty-Four—we don't know what he's really like, or if he even exists, but the Party portrays him as a Satanic Archetype opposed to the godlike Big Brother.
  • In Warrior Cats, Yellowfang is a grumpy elderly medicine cat who was a warrior before becoming a medicine cat. However, she has grown close friends with some of the cats in her life such as Runningnose, Cinderpelt and Firestar.
  • The mysterious villain in Tuck Everlasting is only known as "the man in the yellow suit"; author Natalie Babbitt went with that colour simply because the phrase "the man in the yellow suit" flows so well. She also deliberately avoided red and black because she didn't want readers assuming the villain to be Louis Cypher or The Grim Reaper.

Live-Action TV

Tropes

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Yellow fever, which could make a sufferer adopt yellow-tinged skin due to liver failure.
  • In North America, certain wasps are popularly called yellow jackets.

    White/Light 
Occasionally used as a subversion. Bonus points if the guy in question is an albino, and/or if Light Is Not Good comes into play.

Anime and Manga

  • Light Yagami of Death Note is a variation.
  • The manga of Cowboy Bebop featured a reporter following the crew as they chased the White Siblings, Ash and Blanche, who preyed on the elderly.
  • White Devil already spread fear since 1979 as the nickname Zeon forces gave to the RX-78-2 Gundam and his pilot Amuro Rei.

Film

Literature

Live-Action TV

  • Albert "Chalky" White, from Boardwalk Empire is either a Villain Protagonist or an Anti-Hero, but he's most definitely someone you do not want to cross. Extra irony points for Chalky being a black man with three names meaning "white".
  • Lucien Lacroix from Forever Knight...granted, his original Roman name was 'Lucius', but he still gets points for being a villain with a name that means 'white' or 'light'.
  • Sociopathic meth cook Walter White is the Villain Protagonist of Breaking Bad.

Music

Theatre

Video Games

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Simo Häyhä, AKA The White Death. With the total kill count of 700 in 100 days, he is the most deadly (identified) soldier in the history of warfare.
  • The great white shark, once also known as "white death".
  • Tuberculosis, the disease likely responsible for killing more people than any other in history, (it's been with humanity since pre-historic times and at certain points in European history it may have been responsible for as many as 1 out of every 4 deaths) has had many nicknames over the years, including the great white plague and the white death.

    Gray/Grey/Silver 
Often used for characters whose morals or motivations tend to come in, well, shades of gray, or just generally to connotate people with powers or badasses.

Anime and Manga

  • Various versions of Greymon from Digimon (And BlackWarGreymon has two of the colors on this list, so you know he's a force to be reckoned with)
  • D.Gray-Man

Comic Books

Film

Literature

Live-Action TV

Tabletop Games

  • The Grey Knights from Warhammer 40,000, a Space Marine chapter tasked to fight the Warp daemons with specialized weapons and psychic powers. Also kills any bystanders for fear of Chaos corruption.
  • The Gray Gardners (of Galt) in Pathfinder. In a country where the Reign of Terror never ended, these are the guys with soul-sucking guillotines.

Tropes

Video Games

  • Silver from Pokémon Gold and Silver and the remakes. One of the most Jerkass rivals in the franchise, at least until the end of the game.
  • The Grey Wardens of Dragon Age are usually good guys, but they are also singularly focused on stopping the Blight, at the cost of all else.
  • In Fable, Lady Elvira Grey is the Vampish Mayor of Bowerstone, who murdered her sister to get the position. The fact that her family estate is a ((Mordor}}-esque ruin crawling with undead somehow doesn't ring any alarm bells in her citizens.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Grey DeLisle is a subversion. She's voiced numerous villainesses and morally ambiguous characters (Mandy, Vicky, and Azula, to name a few), but in real life, she's pretty sweet, and an example of a Genki Girl and The Pollyanna.
  • Silverback gorillas.
  • Grey wolves.

    Blue 
Anime and Manga
  • The deadly, vain pedophile General Blue from Dragon Ball

Literature

  • Possibly subverted by Sonja Blue in the Midnight Blue series of stories. Though blue is often associated with sadness, Sonja is depicted as the preeminent badass of the story universe.
  • In Warrior Cats, Bluestar is the leader of ThunderClan, and a strong warrior. She is a benevolent leader for the most part, until she goes insane thanks to Tigerclaw. She gets better before her Heroic Sacrifice though.

Video Games

Western Animation

  • The cold and ruthless Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender is named after the color of her flames (blue — which is more intense than normal red and yellow). Then there's her brother Zuko's "Blue Spirit" alter-ego, in which he dons a blue mask and ninja garb and carries twin swords.

    Pink 
Not generally a colour considered associated with dangerous or villainous characters.

Anime and Manga

Film

Live-Action TV

  • Pink doesn't seem scary until you remember that in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy it was the Pink Psycho Ranger that was not only the last to be killed, but also caused the death of the first ranger in Western Power Rangers history. Seven seasons in, and it was an elite mook that was pink nonetheless, that finally killed one off.

Music

Real Life

  • "Pinko" is a nickname for a Dirty Communist. Sometimes it refers to Lighter and Softer communists or communist sympathizers, as pink is a lighter shade of red.
    • In Russia, more hardcore communists sometimes call those whom they deem communists in name only "white-pinkies" (belo-rozovy), combining the former use of "pinko" with white, the color of anticommunism since the Civil War.
  • Pink eye.
  • Pinkerton detectives were infamous for their strikebreaking work and their generally ruthless tactics.

    Green 
Comic Books

Film

Literature

Real Life

  • The Green Berets.

    Purple/Violet 
Comic Books

Real Life

  • "Purple drank" (yes, spelled like that) is a narcotic cocktail made from cough syrup. It infamously killed several prominent rappers, including DJ Screw, Big Moe, and Pimp C.
  • Detroit's infamous Purple Gang, mobsters connected to Al Capone's Chicago Outfit during The Roaring '20s.

    Others 

Anime and Manga

  • K's Colorless King. Well, every King would qualify to some degree (what with their incredible psychic powers) but he takes the cake as far as Ax-Crazy and ruthless goes.

Film

  • The entire cast of Reservoir Dogs, with some names acting as subversions.

Tabletop Games

  • Clear World and Clear Vice Dragon in the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game are clearly dangerous. The first inflicts a harsh penalty on each player for each Attribute of monster they have on the field, while the second renders its controller immune to the penalties of the first and attacks with twice the attack power of whatever it's attacking.

Video Games

  • In the Touhou Project series colors can be associated with power. The color purple usually represents power. It stands to reason that the most powerful being/Youkai in Gensokyo, Yukari Yakumo's name is Japanese for Purple. Also her shikigamis, Ran and Chen, have names that mean Indigo and Orange, respectively.
  • The color-themed Sages of Team Plasma in Pokémon Black and White.
  • Monster Hunter likes to assign color-based prefixes to subspecies and Deviant monstersnote . Examples include Azure Rathalos, Ivory Lagiacrus, Black Diablos, and Silverwind Nargacuga.


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