Basic Trope: Fugitive must dye their hair to help them evade their pursuers.
- Straight: Rachel, forced on the run, dyes her distinctive red hair brown so as to throw off anyone looking for a woman fitting her description.
- Exaggerated:
- Hiro and the rest of his party learn that Emperor Evulz has all his forces out searching for them, so they all dye their hair different colors.
- Or the same color.
- Logical Extreme: In a world where people frequently change their hair colors as a fashion statement, Rachel undergoes a complete makeover, not just dyeing her hair but also getting colored contact lenses, tattoos, and piercings, to ensure she remains unrecognizable.
- Downplayed: Instead of a different color, Alice gets a different hair style. It's still enough to throw off Evulz's minions, though.
- Justified: Alice is dying her hair because she is a part of a witness protection program.
- Inverted:
- As part of an alias she's creating in hopes of catching the eye of her target, Farah dyes her hair a more distinctive shade.
- Maddie's hair was already dyed, so she shaves her head and lets it grow back in its natural color.
- Subverted: Rachel attempts to dye her hair, only to find the coloring doesn't work properly.
- Double Subverted:
- The coloring doesn't work because she was holding the bottle upside down. When she turns it right side up again, the bottle's completely empty.
- ...Just when Rachel thinks she's didn't her hair, she looks in the mirror and realizes that she accidentally used a bleach that washes out the dye, leaving her hair pure white.
- Parodied:
- To avoid being noticed, Rachel dyes her distinctive red hair purple. And it works.
- Bob doesn't understand what he was supposed to do, and dyes his clothes.
- Zig Zagged: After learning that the Emperor's forces are looking for them, Hiro and Ichigo refuse to dye their hair, while Kowalski and Lorelai do. Mana isn't certain she wants to, but Kowalski convinces her to after it becomes clear Evulz is specifically searching for her. Eventually, she stops dyeing it after resolving to stop running.
- Averted: The character in question has no hair to begin with.
- Enforced: The producer of the show feels that Viewers Are Morons and won't be able to tell the main characters apart unless they have different hair colors. To this end, an In-Universe excuse is created to force one or more of the characters to dye their hair.
- Lampshaded: "Didn't Alice have a different hair color when we last saw her? Granted, she wasn't on the run from the law..."
- Invoked: Carl has been trying to get his girlfriend to dye her hair, but she doesn't want to. He makes up a story about the two of them being framed for a crime in the hopes that this will make her decide to do it.
- Exploited: The detective knows that Sally is blonde, and everyone in her family is blonde, so he stakes out her parents' house and watches for any visitors who don't have blonde hair.
- Defied: Betty decides not to commit a crime, because she doesn't want to dye her hair.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs:
- Kenta, an Ordinary High-School Student Trapped in Another World, discovers that everybody in this world has brightly-colored hair, and his brown hair in its simple style stands out. To his horror, he's forced to both dye it technicolor and adopt an Improbable Hairstyle.
- Sharon tries to dye her dark hair a lighter shade... and accidentally bleaches it white.
- Implied: While the story doesn't explicitly show Rachel dyeing her hair, it strongly suggests that she has done so off-screen to elude her pursuers beforehand.
- Played For Drama:
- Rachel's pursuers have a "shoot on sight" order. She tries altering her appearance; as she's working on her hair, a patrol reaches the door of her hideout and knocks, demanding entry...
- Rachel's decision to change her hair color is portrayed as a desperate and high-stakes move to protect herself from ruthless pursuers.
- Played for Horror: Rachel's hair-dyeing attempt goes horribly wrong, resulting in a gruesome and disfiguring accident that leaves her scarred and traumatized.
- Played for Laughs: As Rachel attempts to dye her hair, she accidentally spills the dye all over herself, resulting in a comically disastrous appearance that makes her look even more conspicuous.
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