Basic Trope: Evil characters are dressed in black.
- Straight: Wicked Witch Alice always wears black while Kind Princess Betty never does, preferring white, gold, and pink.
- Exaggerated: Alice dyes her hair black, has a house painted black with black furniture, black tableware and a garden full of black trees. Same goes for her mooks. Betty is afraid of even a glimpse of the color.
- Downplayed:
- Alice fancies darker colors, including, but not limited to, plain black.
- Alice, the jerkass wears dark grey.
- Justified:
- The villains purposefully wear the colors that the heroes hate.
- Alice the Card-Carrying Villain wants to underline her villainy in every way possible.
- The villains are nocturnal creatures and wear black to be less noticeable.
- Inverted:
- Good Wears White
- Wicked Witch Alice wears white, gold, and pink and Kind Princess Betty wears black.
- Subverted:
- Alice turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Alice turns out to be in mourning.
- Alice is evil but doesn't exclusively like black.
- Double Subverted:
- ...and then it's revealed she's more of a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
- She's in mourning, but it doesn't mean she's not evil.
- But Evil Overlord Bob does!
- Parodied:
- There's a store called "Villains' Fashion" that sells exclusively black attires.
- When Alice is in black, she's a Card-Carrying Villain. Make her dress in any other color, and she becomes the Team Mom.
- Bob decides to wear a black shirt and everyone treats it like he crossed the moral event horizon.
- Zig-Zagged: Wicked Witch Alice wears black. Then she does a Heel–Face Turn but still wears black. Then Kind Princess Betty starts to wear black too and also discovers her darker side...
- Averted:
- Nobody specifically prefers to wear black.
- Alice wears black clothes, but she's a normal woman who just happens to like black because it's practical.
- Enforced:
- Creators deliberately dress all villains in black to underline Black-and-White Morality.
- In a Grey-and-Gray Morality story, the author subtly points out who usually wears black to hint on the characters they believe to be villains.
- "We need to make the villains wear black, or the audience won't know who the bad guys are!"
- Lampshaded: "The black cape looks great on you. The best outfit for interrogation of our prisoners."
- Invoked: Alice embraces her dark side and decides to become the next Wicked Witch, so she sews a long black dress and makes herself a conical black hat.
- Defied: Wicked Witch Alice loves black clothes, but she doesn't want to get recognised as a villain by Betty the kind princess, so she won't wear it.
- Discussed: "That lady's all in black. I think we shouldn't trust her."
- Conversed: "So the guy who only wears black is the main villain, big surprise."
- Deconstructed: The color black is outlawed and everyone who wears it or associates with it in any way is treated like a villain and prosecuted.
- Reconstructed: But everyone who breaks the new rule really is a villain.
Back to Evil Wears Black.
