In works with color-coded characters, it is typical for a lookalike (usually an Evil Twin, Evil Knockoff, or Evil Doppelgänger) to be near-identical to the main character except for their palette, which will be complementary instead. This color morality points to the viewer that the character is a dark reflection of the real one.
Often, the purpose of a diametrically-colored doppelgänger is to show the imposter is opposite of the hero in every way, even coloring, to indicate something is "off" when they have colors the hero would never be seen in. In-universe, it's to serve as mockery or scorn of their counterpart. However, if the impersonation isn't meant to be insulting or deceptive, then it's because the double wants to emulate the popularity of their counterpart while still standing out. Occasionally, the color modification isn't intentional, but botched planning on the impersonator's part, though it helps that a different color means other villains won't mistake them for the real thing. A subversion can occur with a villain's Heel–Face Turn where they might keep the off-color look.
A common use is swapping the "color" part of a Color Character's name with its opposite, such as "black" with "white", or adding the color at the start of the name.
Note: This trope is about characters intentionally copying or created to copy another character and have the exact opposite colors. Enemy Without and Superpowered Evil Side characters don't count, since they're aspects of the character. Cases where the double has colors that are not complementary to the original's or has the same colors in reverse (unless the original's scheme consisted of complementary colors already) should both go under Palette Swap.
Sub-Trope of Good Colors, Evil Colors, Palette Swap, and Color Contrast. Sister Trope to Paint It Black. Commonly applied with black/white, red/green, yellow/purple, and blue/orange (or red). Compare Secondary-Color Nemesis for villains with a secondary color scheme against a Primary-Color Champion. Contrast Costume Copycat. May overlap with Photoshop Filter of Evil. See also Evil Brunette Twin.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Common throughout the Digimon franchise with darker versions of certain heroic Digimon:
- Angemon and Devimon's Rookie forms are the identical Patamon and Tsukaimon, respectively, but where Patamon is orange, Tsukaimon is purple to denote it as the evil version.
- BlackGatomon, as its name suggests, is the dark counterpart to the white-furred Gatomon, embodying evil and darkness to Gatomon's good and light.
- In the Renamon line, the Youkomon is a purple variant of the golden-furred Kyubimon, but it is a bewitching beast that brings destruction and decay. It does change its tune in its Ultimate and Mega stages, where it becomes more grounded and harnesses its powers for divine purposes.
Comic Books
- DC Comics:
- Batman: An obscure character called The Wrath is an Evil Counterpart of Batman, right down to having the same costume but in red/orange instead of blue. Not only does he act as an evil version of the caped crusader, Wrath's backstory ridiculously mirrors Batman's; his parents were career criminals who were gunned down by the police in front of him the same day as Bruce Wayne's parents were killed. Thus, instead of fighting crime and injustice, Wrath is dedicated to fighting law and order.
- Black Canary: During the "Brightest Day" storyline, Black Canary runs into White Canary, a villain with a grudge against the Black Canary who modeled herself after the heroine as retribution.
- The Flash:
- Heavily downplayed with the original Reverse-Flash Eobard Thawne, where the only parts that are opposite of Barry's are the black circle of his chest logo and his inverted red eyes, but his costume is the same red and yellow merely swapped. This is justified, however, as the choice reflects Eobard's desire to be the Kid Flash and his secretly looking up to the Flash in his youth.
- Inertia originally resembled a black and green version of Impulse. When he became Kid Zoom, he likewise adopted a swapped red-yellow Flash suit like the Reverse-Flash. He was also blond as opposed to Impulse's brunet.
- Nightwing: Deathwing is a doppelgänger of Nightwing, with both versions of him starting out as unlucky youths abducted and brainwashed to believing they were Dick Grayson/Nightwing. While the original was a perfect copy of Dick (until his disfigurement), the second Deathwing was a surgically-altered victim of Professor Pyg's experiments and brainwashed by Dr. Simon Hurt. Due to this, the second Deathwing was heavily mutilated and had white hair instead of black, while donning the same costume as Dick's but with the blue parts replaced with red.
- Superman: Downplayed with Bizarro, Superman's imperfect clone, who sometimes wears a pale version of Superman's red and blue suit, maing him appear rather desaturated.
- Marvel Comics:
- The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk is a green-skinned heroic monster, while his Evil Twin is the red-skinned Red Hulk. Red Hulk is actually Hulk's long-time nemesis General Ross, who became a Hulk as a means of evening the playing field at the cost of his humanity.
- Moon Knight: In Vengeance of the Moon Knight (2024), following the events of Moon Knight (2021), Marc Spector is dead. However, a new Moon Knight clad in black claiming to be Moon Knight reborn appears, where he threatens the Midnight Mission into giving up ownership to him. Suspecting the new Moon Knight's a fake, the Midnight Mission gang corners the imposter and expose him as Maximillian Coleridge, aka the Shroud. Shroud wanted to honor his friend's legacy, and in a (misguided) attempt to make Marc proud, Shroud took up his mantle to continue Marc's work and prove himself a hero.
- Miles Morales: Spider-Man (2022) introduces White Cat, a mercenary based on Black Cat who dons an identical but inverted outfit. His powers also contrast Black Cat's—he can grant himself good luck by stealing it from others. Lamphshaded by Black Cat herself.
- She-Hulk: Jennifer Walters gets her own Red Hulk evil twin in the Red She-Hulk, who's none other than the brainwashed Betty Ross mutated by the Leader. Fortunately, after Betty is freed from mind control, the two progress into a stable rivalry.
- Spider-Man: In one Spidey Super Stories issue, Doctor Doom creates a duplicate of Spidey called "Web-Man", whose costume colors are inverted.
- Spider-Boy: To taint Spider-Boy's reputation, Madame Monstrosity makes a mutated clone of Spider-Boy and orders one of her experiments, a dog-human hybrid named Mr. Muttman, to make the clone a costume identical to Spider-Boys. Unfortunately, since he inherited a dogs color blindness, Muttman ends up swapping the red and blue, giving the clone an inverted version of Spider-Boy's costume instead.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Downplayed. Evil Sonic was originally just Sonic wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket, and black boots. However, when he gains a power boost with the Master Emerald, he gets green quills, blue eyes, and changes his name to "Scourge". While not a complete contrast, it's justified as it's a nod to the infamous "Ashura glitch" from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which caused the Sonic sprite to distort its coloring.
- This is also downplayed with Dr. Finitivus, an albino echidna who initially looked like Knuckles until his attempt to absorb Knuckles' Chaos energy turned his fur white. Like Scourge, it is a nod to the "Wechidna glitch" from Knuckles' Chaotix.
- Transformers: Shattered Glass: As the Big Bad of the Shattered Glass universe, Optimus Prime has a black and purple color scheme compared to the normal Optimus's blue and red. Downplayed in that aside from Cliffjumper, none of the Autobots or Decepticons from the normal G1 universe interact with the Shattered Glass universe so the two Optimus Primes never meet.
Fan Works
- Angel of the Bat II: Times of Heresy: The main villain's dragon, the Odmience, wears what is essential a copy of Cassandra's Batgirl uniform without the central Bat symbol and with the bat ears slightly altered to look like devil horns. Prior to Cassandra switching to the Angel identity, this would have just left the two dressing very similarly, but since Cassandra's Angel uniform is mostly white, his black ends up contrasting.
Films — Animation
- Leroy & Stitch: Stitch's evil clone, Leroy, is essentially a red feral version of him. Hämsterviel deliberately wanted Leroy colored red, because one, he hates the color blue, and two, he wanted an experiment that matches his red cape. However, Leroy can change his fur to blue and hide his feral traits to pass as Stitch, and it almost fools Lilo, except Leroy's missing the tiki necklace she gave Stitch, blowing his disguise.
- The Swan Princess: Odette wears a white dress with a green collar and sleeves. When Rothbart captures Odette, he sends Bridget to the ball in her place. While disguised as a perfect copy of Odette, Bridget's dress is similar to Odette's, except it's black with a red collar.
Live-Action TV
- Lucifer (2016): Lucifer and his Evil Twin Michael are completely identical, but the main difference is the color of their wings; Lucifer's wings are white, while Michael's wings are black. The two often rely on this to confirm their identities.
Theatre
- Swan Lake: In most modern renditions of the play, the white swan Odette is opposed by Rothbart's daughter, Odile, who is an exact double of Odette but wears black and turns into a black swan. Some versions attribute this to being a result of Rothbart's sorcery disguising Odile as Odette.
Toys
- Masters of the Universe: Faker is a clone of He-Man, but physical resemblance aside, Faker has blue skin and blue-purple armor as opposed to He-Man's peach skin tone and red armor. His chest plate is also different.
- Monster High: Played with for Gigi Grant's Evil Twin Whisp; Whisp initially looked like a shadow version of Gigi, but after her Heel–Face Turn, she gains the same colors as Gigi with a few twists: her hair is turquoise as opposed to pink, and her shirt colors swap Gigi's while her pants are white instead of black. However, she later reverts to her old look in the SDCCI diary, due to not wanting to change herself on the outside but the inside.
Video Games
- Die of Death: Inverted with the inverted counterparts to the killers. They have the opposite colors to the killers they're based on, but are otherwise nicer than their original counterparts. Avoider would rather stay away than pursue, Livedroid is meant to preserve rather than kill, and Goodware is a friendly antivirus program (though ultimately given a Face–Heel Turn by the original Badware). The only straight example among the inverted counterparts is Sonorous, the inverted counterpart to Harken, who wants to make the Civilians scream rather than stay quiet.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Downplayed and inverted in the fourth chapter; the boss copies Mario, becoming a solid purple copy, but it's Mario who gets their name and body stolen, while Doopliss will appear with said character's normal colors.
- Skies of Arcadia: The Imposters' clothing is similar to Vyse, Aika, and Fina's with more villain-coded colors. Vize wears a red shirt in contrast to Vyse's blue. Anita and Faina wear similar dresses to Aika and Fina, but both black (instead of yellow and white, respectively) and more revealing. Also, Anita's hair is lilac, in contrast to Aika's red.
- Sonic Adventure 2: Played with. Shadow the Hedgehog has black fur with red highlights and a tuft of white fur on his chest, and while his red motif contrasts with Sonic's, he looks nothing like the latter. Though somehow, people mistake him for Sonic when Shadow is sent by Eggman to steal one of the Chaos Emeralds and Sonic is framed for the crime.
Visual Novels
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Furio Tigre impersonated Phoenix in order to get Maggey convicted for the murder he committed. While Phoenix wears a blue suit, Furio wears orange and even has an orange tan.
Web Animation
- The Amazing Digital Circus: The "Evil Big Tops" in Episode 5 have a couple of instances of this: Evil Pomni is just Pomni with a shifted color pallet (yellow where red should be, red where blue should be, and blue where yellow should be), and most of the rest have their colors inverted.
Webcomics
- Last Place Comics: Santa's Evil Counterpart Negative-Santa looks like Santa but photo-negative, with his suit being teal and black instead of red and white. His speech-bubbles and skin are likewise inverted.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Zig-zagged. Aside from Owlman and Red Hood, all of the Mirror Universe characters are recolored copies of the various heroes and villains. However, while a few like Silver Cyclone and Blue Bowman are a random Palette Swap of their good counterparts, the others are straight-up inverted.
- Ben 10: Alien Force: Albedo is a Galvan who tried to recreate the Omnitrix and accidentally turned himself into a copy of Ben in the process, and began hunting Ben so he could steal his Omnitrix and use it to change himself back to his true form. At the end of the episode, Albedo's Omnitrix is damaged, and it causes his appearance to invert colors: Albedo's green eyes and jacket switch to red eyes and a red jacket with an inverted black "10", and his hair goes from brown to a silvery white.
- Darkwing Duck: The titular superhero is clad in purple, representing his good intentions even with his huge ego. His Evil Twin is the egomaniacal and violent Negaduck, who wears a yellow jacket (and red and black accessories). The latter has taken advantage of this resemblance to incriminate Darkwing (though he'd sometimes switch to wearing Darkwing's colors to better frame him).
- Gargoyles: Hudson, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington's evil clones (Burbank, Malibu, Hollywood, and Brentwood) are colored opposite, as in a photo negative, of each gargoyles' skin tone as a result of the clones' artificial aging. This even extends to them having black teeth and white inner mouths (and in Burbank and Malibu’s cases, dark hair). Doubles as Secondary-Color Nemesis since the clones all have secondary colors to contrast with their donors' Chromatic Arrangement. Partially subverted, as Burbank, Malibu and Hollywood have a Heel–Face Turn, while Brentwood remains evil.
- The Secret Saturdays: Downplayed; Zak's mirror counterpart Zak Monday has Zak's hair colors swapped into white hair and black bangs. The discoloration clues Zac in of his counterpart's true colors, although it only applies with Zak; the other Mondays have obvious physical deformities, which they hide with bandages when they're impersonating the Saturdays.