Race Lift / Mixed-Race or Miscellaneous

Examples of Race Lift where characters and actors who are ambiguous to begin with and thus are interpreted differently.

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Anime

• The Death Note adaptations vary between depicting Rodd Loss as black or white. In the black and white manga pages, his skin is light though his exaggerated facial features are similar to a few other darker-skinned gang members, suggesting that he could possibly be biracial. In the anime, he definitely appears more on the white side. The DS game goes in the opposite direction and depicts him as an unambiguously dark-skinned black man.
  • Death Note (2017) does quite a lot of this. It changes the originally-Japanese Light Yagami, Misa Amane, and Soichiro Yagami into the white American Light Turner, Mia Sutton, and James Turner. L, who was originally depicted as of mixed European and Asian descent, is black in this film. The only Japanese character in the entire film is Watari, who was ironically one of the few unambiguously white characters in the original series.
  • The Japanese live-action Death Note movies and TV series make L and Watari fully Japanese.
• In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro is Japanese-Canadian. Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin changes his birthplace from Canada to California, with him now being half-Hispanic instead of half-white.

Comic Books

• Final Crisis managed to do this twice to two different characters completely by accident. In the original comic run, Mister Miracle (the second one, a black man) was accidentally colored as white in one issue. DC acknowledged the error and corrected it in the trade paperback - resulting in Sonny Sumo (an Asian sumo wrestler whose skin tone happened to be the same as the botched color scheme for Miracle) appearing as black in those same panels. None of this had anything to do with the story.
  • The lead-in series Mister Miracle performed a major Race Lift on the New Gods by forcing them into human bodies. Most of the evil gods ended up black, which has Unfortunate Implications until you consider that Shilo Norman is himself black, and having a large white man named Boss Dark Side putting him through nine layers of Hell would have been unfortunate in a completely different way. (The Black Racer, incidentally, became white, and a lot closer to evil than Kirby's "death as inevitability" version.)
    • In Final Crisis proper, Glorious Godfrey, originally a red head, became G. Gordon Godfrey, a combination of Al Sharpton and Don King. And he was much more fun to read this way.
  • It used a lot of body surfing that ended up subverting this. Darkseid went from a large black man to the white Dan Turpin, who he ended up remaking into his old gray-skinned self. Then Desaad swapped out for a pink-haired Mary Marvel and Granny Goodness traded up for a blue-skinned alien cyborg. None of this is the weirdest thing that happened in that series.
• The wizard Shazam!'s back story has long established him as being from ancient Canaan, and he was drawn white up until the New 52; however, now his ethnicity has been changed to Aborigine. Darkseid War: Shazam reveals that he's Mamaragan, the Aborigine god of thunder.
• Before the New 52 reboot, Huntress, Helena Bertinelli, was Sicilian-American and was drawn as being white. When she was reintroduced post-reboot, her appearance had changed dramatically, probably to make her more visually distinct from the other Huntress, Helena Wayne; her last name was still Bertinelli, suggesting Sicilian ancestry, but her skin tone was much darker, possibly suggesting a mixed-race background. It's not clear, however, because the comics have so far revealed very little about her in the new continuity.
• The Star Trek: The Original Series record-and-comic "A Mirror for Futility" by Alan Dean Foster managed to feature a white, blonde Uhura and an African-American Sulu, apparently out of sheer ignorance.
• Monet St. Croix is the most controversial example in Marvel. The fact that she changes between artists and colorists from book to book is what qualifies her for this trope, or Uncertain Depictions. When she first appeared during Phalanx Covenant, she was black, ranging from light brown◊ to caramel and darker brown. When she went to Generation X, she started off more ambiguous◊ for the first 9 issues, and ping-ponged ever since. She was usually depicted as black◊, sharing skin tone range with African American teammate, Synch.◊ However, she still had cases of going back to light ambiguous◊ appearances. At the start of X-Factor, she was depicted as white◊ and stayed that way for most of the series. Toward the end, she was depicted with a darker complexion that contrasted her white teammates which varied between light & dark tan or brown. During this period, she could appear black◊ or European / Middle-Eastern◊, depending artist & viewer interpretation. Starting with Uncanny X-Men (2016), she was undeniably black◊ again which stuck◊ in following book, Generation X (2017). But the ping-ponging started again in Weapon X (2017). Many times, she was depicted as black◊ with a noticeable brown complexion that contrasted the other characters. But just as often, she was depicted looking white◊ with little to no difference between her and Sabretooth or Deathstrike. Her next major appearance will be in X-Men (2019). She's been shown on two covers for House of X. The first has a yellow light shining over the cast, so her complexion is questionable. However, the most recent cover shows her with a clear brown complexion that contrasts her white teammates◊. The same artist & colorist will also be doing the book's interiors. Thus far, it appears she isn't white this time around but whether it will stay consistent from here out remains to be seen.
  • To top things off, Monet's father has race-changed a couple of times, which adds to the confusion. He was introduced as black & consistently depicted as black◊ in major appearances but had two cameo showings in the X-Men volumes where he was white◊.
  • David Yardin, who did many of the X-Factor covers, always depicted Monet as black and recently made a twitter statement that he intentionally made her darker because she started getting shades lighter than her original look.
• The Flash: Iris "Irey" West II initially debuted in the possible future story Kingdom Come as Kid Flash, and was drawn to be a Distaff Counterpart of her father Wally West, i.e. pale skin, green eyes and red hair. The identity of her mother was never revealed but Kingdom Come!Irey appears to have been intended to be white. When she was brought into the main continuity in The Flash (1987), her mother was Wally's wife Linda Park, making Irey half-Asian, but she continued to be drawn as a light-skinned, green eyed redhead. This was balanced out by her twin brother Jai being designed to look more Asian with darker skin and black hair.
• Star Trek (IDW): The originally-unnamed girl who has white hair and is seen infrequently throughout the reboot films is revealed in the comics to be Yeoman Zahra, who was African-American in the original series.

Fan Works

• To Hell and Back (Arrowverse): A very minor example. In Vixen, Mari and Kuasa are of pure African descent. Here, they're one-fourth Caucasian, due to changes making it so their grandfather is Amaya Jiwe's First Love Rex Tyler (a.k.a. Hourman, the leader of the Justice Society of America) rather than an unnamed man from Zambesi like in canon.
• It's become quite popular for Harry Potter fans to depict Harry and/or Hermione as non-white in fanart, generally based on the argument that the books never say that they're Caucasian (though there are some lines that imply it, while Harry's is confirmed to be by the book covers). Hermione's canonically frizzy hair almost always makes her black; Harry can be Ambiguously Brown or mixed race, given that his mom is a redhead. Ron and his family, famous for their red hair and freckly skin, generally remain white.
• Amoridere:
  • This was accidental in Rei's case from Kill la Kill AU, as Amoridere forgot Rei's canon ethinicity when she made the final edits of the Beer Run comic and opted to leave it where it was, presumably making her Japanese like the rest of the cast. However, this could be further forgiven as Beer Run debuted before the OVA explained Rei's origin as implied to being African. In an unrelated fic The Outside, her hyphenated surname of "Hououmaru-Hubbard" implies she's of mixed ancestry, as it's not mentioned if she's married, while in earlier (also unrelated) fics, Kiryuuin Chronicles and Cellar Secrets, this could be inferred to be averted.
  • In Nui's case from Lost, Found, she's mentioned to be of "partial European descent" but it's unclear in The Outside but we know that her Adaptation Dye-Job pegged her as a brunette.
  • In Shiro's case, it's implied be a But Not Too Foreign case in The Outside because Rei dyed his hair black (it's easier to dye lighter colored hair without bleaching it), though it's very unclear.

Films — Live-Action

• The Scooby-Doo made-for-tv movie Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins has Hayley Kiyoko, who is half Japanese, playing Velma Dinkley. She does look the part with the glasses and hair.
• The Last Airbender: The races in the show are fictional, but heavily inspired by specific real world cultures. The film adaptation has varied examples of the trope:
  • In the original series, Katara◊ and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe have tan skin, blue eyes and brown hair, coming from a culture inspired by Inuits. The Northern Water Tribe characters are similar in appearance. In the film, Katara and Sokka are played by white actors with brown eyes and brown hair. Most of the background extras appear Inuit, with Asian-looking features, black hair and brown eyes. Nicola Peltz was ultimately revealed to have been cast as a favor to her father rather than for her appearance or ability.
  • From the Air Nomads, a culture based on Tibetan monks, Aang◊ in the show has light skin and eyes that alternate between grey and brown in various shots. In the film, he's played by a mixed-race Native American actor with brown eyes. Monk Gyatso, a fantasy Expy of the Tibetan Dalai Lama, is black in the film.
  • The villainous Fire Nation is based on East Asian cultures in the series, with members sporting light skin and black hair. The film cast dark-complexioned actors, including Indians, a Maori, and various brunettes in the background. Notably, the director M. Night Shyamalan is of Indian descent and cast himself in a cameo as a Fire Nation guard. He later explained that he made the Fire Nation dark-skinned because they live close to the Equator.
  • The Earth Kingdom island of Kyoshi is primarily inspired by Japan in the show. In the movie, most of the extras are black, while the Kyoshi Warriors◊ are still Asian.
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation:
  • Elodie Yung portrays Jinx. The character is normally depicted as a full-blooded Japanese woman while Yung is half-Cambodian and half-French. Still Asian, but the French features are very obvious.
  • African-American soldier Roadblock is portrayed by the half-black, half-Samoan Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
• The film Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom portrays all of the defendants at the Rivonia Trial as being black except Ahmed Kathrada (who was Asian/Indian). In actuality, another of the defendants (Billy Nair) was also Asian/Indian, and another three (Lionel Bernstein, James Kantor, and Denis Goldberg) were white men of Jewish descent (although Bernstein and Kantor were acquitted).
• The Crow (1994): Eric is fully white in the original graphic novel, but Brandon Lee, who was of mixed European-Chinese descent, plays him in the film.
• The Power Rangers movie changed just about everyone: Billy and Kimberly, originally white, are now played by a black actor and a white/Indian actress, respectively; Zack, originally black, is now Chinese; and Trini, originally Chinese, is now Hispanic. The only Power Ranger to stay the same is Jason, who is white in both versions.
• The T-1000 in Terminator Genisys is a Composite Character of the first cop Kyle Resee ran into in The Terminator and the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but is played by Asian Byung-hun Lee rather than either a white guy like Robert Patrick as the original T-1000 or a black guy like the original cop.
• The Japanese live-action Fullmetal Alchemist (2017) has characters who were clearly Caucasian and with Western names in both animes cast by Japanese actors.
• In Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan Noonien Singh's ethnicity is somewhat vague. He's implied to be an Indian Sikh, which is confirmed in other branded material, but never within the series or films themselves. His name is an ethnic muddle: "Khan" is generally a Muslim surname with Turkic-Mongolian roots, "Noonien" is a nod to an old Chinese/Indian friend of Roddenberry's, and "Singh" is a Sikh surname. Being played by the Mexican-American actor Ricardo Montalban doesn't clear anything up. In the film Star Trek Into Darkness, however, the character is played by the overtly white and English Benedict Cumberbatch.
• Absolute Power (1997):
  • Gloria Russell in the book is part Native American. Here she's played by a wholly Caucasian actress.
  • Both agents in the book are White. Here Collin is Black.
• 2023's The Three Musketeers has François Civil as the white D'Artagnan. Civil is of French, Spanish (Catalonian) and native Tahitian descent, although the latter isn't noticeable.

Literature

• The Belles is set In a World… where everyone except the titular Belles are born with grey skin, stringy grey hair and sallow yellow eyes, which according to myth is due to the curse of an angry god. The Belles have the power to make people beautiful, and as a result skin colours, hair colours and textures, and eye colours are subject to beauty trends. Several characters in the first book, due to Belle treatments, go through wildly different appearances as a result.
• Scavenge the Stars: The cast of The Count of Monte Cristo are French in the original, but this book duology depicts their counterparts as the fantasy equivalent of Southeast Asians.

• Race Lift: None of the main characters' ethnicities are specified in The Sopranos (Warner). Much as the book talks about the details of the girls' outfits, there's never really a moment when we're given a clear expository overview of their appearances. Given the time and place in which the book is set (rural Scotland in the 1990s), and that the only time race is mentioned is in reference to the "Pakistani lads" who come in from out of town for the Saturday market, it's possible to infer that the characters are white (specifically from The Irish Diaspora in Scotland) from context clues. In the play and the film, both of the actors who play Kylah are East Asian Scots.

Live-Action TV

• Inspector William Henderson was white when he first appeared in The Adventures of Superman, and when he was later introduced into the comics, but was black in his early appearances in Lois & Clark (first played by Mel Winkler, then by Brett Jennings). Then he was white in later episodes, played by Richard Belzer. He was also black in Superman: The Animated Series (and reprised by Winkler). Eventually, the comicbook Bill Henderson having been promoted to Comissioner, the comics introduced a new Inspector Mike Henderson, who was African-American.
• Attila: It is a bit unclear what the historical Attila the Hun looked like in real life, but a nomadic warlord from the Eurasian steppes probably didn't resemble the blue-eyed northern European Gerard Butler too much.
• Julia Pennyworth in Batwoman is white, but is otherwise based on the mixed-race SRR officer in the New 52 continuity, rather than the white journalist from pre-Crisis Earth-One.
• Brave New World: Mond has become a black woman, while some minor characters are also people of color. All the "savages" too are white (because it would just no longer be acceptable portraying or describing some Native Americans that way).
• Doctor Who:
  • Melody Pond, aka River Song, regenerates from a little white girl (Sydney Wade) to a little black girl who grows up into a woman (Maya Glace-Green, Nina Toussaint-White) to a white woman (Alex Kingston). This was complicated by the fact that the final Alex Kingston form was actually the first to appear in the show, due to time-travel.
  • The same era of the show also explicitly establishes that Time Lords can gender-bend themselves when they regenerate (when the new version of the Master turns out to be the Mistress), and combined the two with the General in "Hell Bent", who goes from Ken Bones (white man) to T'Nia Miller (black woman).
  • "Spyfall" introduces the Master's first (on-screen) non-white incarnation, played by British-Indian actor Sacha Dhawan. This becomes a minor plot point in the second part of the story when the Doctor wonders how the Master can be posing as a Nazi officer with his current appearance, which he explains as being a Perception Filter. The Doctor later disables it after framing him as being a British spy, leading to his arrest and forcing him to take The Slow Path back to the present because the Doctor stole his TARDIS.
  • "Fugitive of the Judoon" introduces a mysterious new female character played by black actress Jo Martin who claims to be a previously-unseen incarnation of the Doctor, making her potentially the first non-white incarnation.
  • "The Timeless Children" features the Timeless Child, who first appears as a young black girl, and goes through multiple incarnations, repeatedly changing ethnicity and gender along the way, and Tecteun, who goes from a white woman to a black man.
• Grey's Anatomy: Creator Shonda Rhimes deliberately did not assign races to any of her characters, allowing for "color-blind casting" in which the best actors to get the roles no matter what their ethnicity.
• The Power (2023):
  • Allie was said to be mixed race in the book, with her exact heritage unsaid. On the show she's clearly just black.
  • Jos in the book was presumably white. Here, she's half Latino on her dad's side, with her last name changed to Cleary-Lopez in reflecting this.
• A rare double Race Lift (crossed with Suddenly Ethnicity) is executed in Saved by the Bell and its spinoff, Saved by the Bell: The College Years. Originally, the character of Slater was intended to be Anglo, but then Latino actor Mario Lopez was cast in the role. His ethnicity was never referred to in the first series, but in The College Years Slater's father appeared and confessed that he changed his name (from Sanchez) to pass as Anglo and get into West Point.
• Utopia (US): Ian is white and Becky is black, while in the original British series, their races are swapped. Also, Jessica Hyde is played by Sasha Lane, who is half African and half Maori, while the actress was white in the original.

Theatre

• An unusual example is the Broadway musical The Wiz, an adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was originally written for and performed by an all-black cast, and this holds for the film adaptation and many subsequent stagings, including NBC's live telecast. However, probably because race doesn't seem like an issue if you take the story at face value, it's not uncommon to see it mounted with color blind casting, particularly in school productions.
• The play Golden Boy (in which the protagonist was an Italian-American) was musicalized as a star vehicle for Sammy Davis, Jr.
• When Pearl Bailey assumed the role of Dolly in Hello, Dolly!, black actors and actresses filled the supporting cast.
• There's a lot of debate over what the title character in Othello is supposed to look like. Does he look like a light-skinned North African, as the Moors historically appeared, or is he supposed to look like the more dark-skinned Africans that were brought to Europe as slaves? The characters frequently call him "black", but "black" to a Englishman of Shakespeare's time was a much more inclusive term. Ultimately the part is usually played by dark-skinned actors of African descent, or white actors in blackface attempting to appear as such. In one instance, Patrick Stewart financed and starred in a production of the play where he played Othello, and all the other roles were filled by black actors.
• In Chicago, the Hungarian girl is often played by performers of various backgrounds speaking their native language, since the important thing about the character isn't where she's from, but the fact that she can't speak English or afford an expensive lawyer like Billy Flynn to defend her.

Video Games

• The WWE: SmackDown vs. Raw series has exaggerated the "Indian-ness" of The Great Khali. Real-life Punjabis can be surprisingly light-skinned, and wrestler/actor Dalip Singh Rana (Khali's portrayer) might have been mistaken for a swarthy white man if there had not been anyone fairer-skinned in the ring with him. The games, however - which, ironically, are based on motion-capture technology - tint the animated Khali a somewhat diabolical mahogany brown, with the red practically burning off the screen. You half-expect him to sprout horns and start breathing fire at any moment.

Western Animation

• Earl from Beavis And Butthead had this within the course of a single series. He was quite inconsistently colored in early episodes, switching between white and black skintones, sometimes within a single episode, before they finally settled on a pale white-looking coloration, probably for fears of being seen as a racist caricature (this is the guy who infamously got into a shootout during class, then had the gun calmly confiscated by Mr. Van Dreissen). However, he does still have some slightly African-looking features, particularly the shape of his nose, and a very deep, black-ish sounding voice. It's possible he's mixed, which would be consistent with his earlier coloring weirdness as the skin color of biracial people in Real Life can vary wildly depending on sun exposure and other factors.
• A common misconception is that DCAU Lex Luthor was changed into a light skinned black man, especially in Superman: The Animated Series. Being voiced by Clancy Brown (who is white, but his voice gives a Scary Black Man vibe) probably aided in this perception. His skin tone is identical to Superman (although not always consistent), but he was often framed in shadow (giving a darker appearance) and had fuller lips because he's meant to look like Telly Savalas, who's Greek.
  • The reason he's so dark is that the show had two basic skin palettes for white characters; one for females, which defaulted as light pink, and one for males, which was supposed to be only a shade or two away from the female mix, but ended up with a lot more red than planned, making most of the show's male characters look deeply tanned. By the time the producers became aware of it, it was too late to do anything about it and they just said "screw it" and stuck with that coloring.
    • This becomes absurdly noted, of all places, in Histeria!: In the "Lewis and Clark" sketch, William Clark is deliberately drawn to look like Superman, and looks even redder than Sacajawea.
  • By Justice League, the same incarnation of Luthor was drawn noticeably whiter.
• Jinx from Teen Titans really bears very little resemblance to her comic counterpart in terms of powers, costume or personality, but for what it's worth, the original version is Indian while the TV show's version is...probably Caucasian? She's really more grayish with a bright pink hair.
• The Silver Surfer's original form has a noticeably darker skin tone in Silver Surfer: The Animated Series than in the comics.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender is something of an odd example, since the cast's ethnicities have never been very stable across prior incarnations to begin with. This time around, Shiro (formerly a Norwegian man named Sven Holgersson) is Japanese and given his original name from GoLion, Takashi Shirogane. Lance (previously the Scotch-Irish Lance McClain) is now an olive-skinned teenager who hails from around Varadero. Allura has gone from a blonde, blue-eyed Human Alien to a dark-skinned, white-haired Space Elf. Hunk (formerly Tsuyoshi "Hunk" Garrett) is now hinted to be Polynesian. Pidge remains white and gets a Gender Flip instead. Keith (Keith Kogane in prior incarnations) still appears to be Asian, but it's not clear if he's still specifically of Japanese and Chinese descent. Though we do eventually learn that he's part Galra.

Real Life

• John Howard Griffin took pills to make himself look black for a few months, during which time he got kicked around in the Deep South. And then he wrote Black Like Me (Trope Namer for Black Like Me) about it. James Whitmore played Griffin in a film adaptation.
• Many medieval illustrators depicted famous historical figures as white instead of "less popular" ethnicities such as African and Arab. In The Renaissance, fashions changed and painters were more eager to depict "exotic" people realistically. Compare this 1493 picture of◊ Aesop (who was said to be of African origin in late Antiquity) to this one◊ from 17th century painter Velázquez.
• The New York Fire Dept. caught flack for trying to Race Lift a statue of three firefighters raising a flag among the wreckage of the World Trade Center after 9/11. The real guys were white, the statue depicted a white guy, a black guy, and a Latino.
• Michael Jackson was often accused of having used numerous plastic surgery operations and skin bleaching creams to try and make himself look more white. He claimed that he'd only had three operations, two nose jobs and and implant in his chin to give it a cleft, and that he bleached his skin to even out blotches caused by vitiligo. There's plenty of proof online that he had vitiligo.

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