In this case it's even in the name! note
In Real Life rabbits come in a variety of colors. Most of these colors are a result of breeding for appearance in domestic breeds of rabbit (though as with any animal, breeding exclusively for color can lead to health problems). Wild rabbits and hares are almost invariably gray or brown in order to aid in camouflage, though some will have white winter coats to blend in with the snow.
In fiction however, rabbits are frequently depicted as pure white, regardless of breed or season.
This may be due to the fact that bunnies and the color white both have associations with innocence and gentleness. It may also be that any animal which is pure white tends to be visually striking and easy to watch. Or it could just be that a white bunny is so darn cute.
It is also likely due in part to The Coconut Effect. White is a color favored in pet rabbits, so if a person's first exposure to rabbits is through someone's pet it is likely to make them expect to see more of the same.
Eye color also plays into this trope. Most colors of rabbits simply have brown eyes. White rabbits however can also have blue or what rabbit breeders call "ruby" eyes. The ruby eyes can be portrayed as sinister red, or as a cute and feminine pink. The sinister red-eyed version would be a tie-in to the idea that Albinos Are Freaks, and the cute version is an aversion or subversion of that idea.
The bunny can be either all or mostly white or light grey. Aside from that, white rabbits in Japanese media may also have a black tip on their ears — this is largely due to the common Japanese snow-hare having such a feature and thus is much more relateable in Japan.
The white or light grey bunny is likely to be played to one of two extremes. It may personify gentleness and innocence, in which case it is likely to be a pet or friend to a pure, innocent character. Or it may play a deliberate subversion of that perception by being evil or vicious, in which case characters will probably approach it unsuspectingly only to get a nasty surprise.
See also White Stallion, White Wolves Are Special, and Great White Feline for other white animals portrayed as good, albeit in a noble way than an innocent one. Not to be confused with Follow the White Rabbit.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Crayola used to have a anthropomorphic white rabbit named Crayola E. Bunny as its company mascot in the early 90s.
- The Trix Rabbit is a white rabbit Funny Animal.
Anime & Manga
- The Mother Bunny who was a one shot characters form the 70's anime Bannertail: The Adventures of Gray Squirrel who is searching for her missing baby bunny.
- Beastars is the story of a wolf who falls in love with a pure white rabbit.
- Dragon Ball: Tō-Ninjinka AKA Boss Rabbit/Monster Carrot, one of the earliest villains Goku encounters on his travels, is an anthromorphic white rabbit with the ability to turn anyone he touches into a carrot, a power he uses to set himself up as the local crime lord of a small town. In a humorous reference to the Moon Rabbit myth, Goku defeats him and his gang by leaving them on the moon using his Power Pole, and according to Dragon Ball Super, over 30 years later, they're still there!
- Clover, the main protagonist of the Happy Happy Clover manga/anime series along with her mother.
- In Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, this is protagonist Bell Cranel's particular form of Animal Motifs; he has white hair and red eyes and a Fragile Speedster turned Lightning Bruiser fighting style, whilst his Born Lucky status invokes the symbolic association of rabbits with luck.
- Ruby, the protagonist of Jewelpet, is a typical albino white rabbit with red eyes. She's very mischevious, however.
- My Hero Academia: Rumi Usagiyama, also known as The Rabbit Hero Mirko, is a Pro Hero whose Quirk gives her certain rabbit features (most noticably her ears), which are covered in white fur that matches her human hair. Especially ironic, considering what her actual personality is like.
- In the "Land of Waves" arc of Naruto Naruto "accidentally" throws a shuriken at a white bunny and narrowly misses. However, Kakashi notes that a wild rabbit should not be that color at that time of year and figures out that it's a decoy; cue rogue ninja with a big-ass sword.
- Carrot, in One Piece, has all-white fur accompanied with blonde hair. The hair, too, becomes pure white when she transforms via the full moon.
- Pretty Cure
- KiraKira★Precure à la Mode: Cure Whip's theme animal is the white rabbit. Her costume includes white bunny ears, white gloves, and white puffballs on her boots.
- Episode 25 of Soaring Sky! PreCure has Elle-chan become protective of a white bunny she meets at a zoo.
- Mimirin, from Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō, although she does have black ear tips in line with most Japanese snow rabbits. Her father, Sota, however, is a pure white rabbit.
- Lulla, the musical bunny from Suzy's Zoo: A Day With Witzy, is an adorable white rabbit, albieit a plush one.
Asian Animation
- Violet from Boonie Cubs is a white rabbit girl who is a Foreign Exchange Student to Pine Tree Kindergarten, coming from the UK.
- In Harry & Bunnie, Bunnie has the look, but not the innocent personality.
- Any rabbits that appear in the Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf series are almost invariably colored white. This extends to the spin-off Pleasant Goat Fun Class with Miss Earth, the rabbit woman who guides the goats through the carnival in the season The Earth Carnival. Averted in the main series' season Martial World Rescue, in which most of the rabbits are blue.
- Qiube from YoYo Man has her appearance fashioned after a bunny, with white fur to match.
Comic Books
- Bunny vs. Monkey: The protagonist of the series, Bunny, has white fur.
- Max from the Sam & Max franchise is a hyperactive borderline psychotic white rabbit.
- Sami The Samurai Squirrel: Doug and his older sister are white rabbits.
- The Multiversity version of Captain Carrot is a white rabbit. (The original version was brown.)
- Usagi Yojimbo: This trope applies both to The Hero Miyamoto Usagi himself, as well as most other rabbit characters in the setting, though it's hard to tell since most of the artwork is in black-and-white, but confirmed by the covers as well as the occasional color issues. It's probably harder to find a rabbit character who isn't white.
Fan Works
- Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily: Kisaragi is a large bipedal talking white rabbit denizen who resides in the 400 Rabbits Car.
Film — Animation
- Timmys Gift stars a young angel named Timmy
, who's following a light from Heaven. Throughout the film, he encounters various talking animals. One animal that he befriends is a timid white rabbit who becomes Timmy's travel companion◊. By the end of the film, Timmy and his animal friends encounter Mary and Joseph after Jesus' birth.
- Boingo in Hoodwinked!. He seems to be a white bunny of the innocent variety until he is revealed as the movie's villain.
- Wandi and Queen Luna from Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - Moon Castle: The Space Adventure, as with other Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf installments' rabbits, are white rabbits.
- The Secret Life of Pets gives us Snowball, the Cute and Psycho leader of a group of pets who weren't treated right.
- Madame Hermione from Rabbit Academy and Rabbit Academy Mission Eggpossible.
Film — Live-Action
- Harvey the pooka is depicted as a giant white rabbit. His best friend Elwood is a very sweet, gentle man.
- Hayride 2: After tying Amanda to a tree, Ol' Pitchfork takes a white rabbit he caught out of its trap and kills it with a Neck Snap. He then takes a chunk of its flesh and tries to make Amanda eat it.
- Jurassic World Dominion: Blue the Velociraptor is shown teaching her baby to hunt in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Their initial target is a rabbit, and it's very clearly an albino domestic rabbit rather than a more appropriate native (brown) cottontail.
- The Killer Rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Definitely of the deceptively gentle-looking variety.
- In Resident Evil (2002), Alice recovers a memory of life in the Hive before the T-virus outbreak. An Umbrella researcher injects first the T-Virus and then its antidote into a white rabbit. The whole film is about the extreme evil of the Umbrella MegaCorp, so using a white rabbit could represent the innocents put at risk by Umbrella's research (as well as another Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reference, of which the movie has several for whatever reason).
- The title character of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is white-furred with blue eyes.
- Us (2019): The rabbits that live in the underground tunnels and seem to be the only food source for The Tethered are all white - it possibly ties into Red's theory that The Tethered are the result of some sort of bizarre government experiment, and the rabbits themselves are descended from lab rabbits, who are usually white.
Literature
- The Ur-Example might be the White Rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and subsequent adaptations. Averted by the March Hare who is usually shown as brown.
- Flop the rabbit from Art the Gecko Makes a Friend.
- In The Emerald City of Oz Dorothy travels to Bunnybury, a city created by Glinda for all the pink-eyed white rabbits of the forest.
- In Frost Dancers, whe the main protagonist, Skelter the hare, is first taken into human captivity, he encounters a jerky snow-white lop-eared rabbit, appropriately named Snowy. Skelter himself fits the trope because, being the mountain hare, his fur turns white during winter, leading the brown hares to mistake him for a ghost (because their fur remains the same throughout the year).
- Ludde: This popular Swedish picture book series has the titular rabbit (and others) with white fur.
- The main characters Max and Ruby by Rosemary Wells.
- Survivor Dogs: The dogs require pure-white rabbits for a puppy's Rite-of-Passage Name Change Ceremony. White rabbits are harder to find than darker coloured rabbits, but there's always a few around the hunting grounds.
- Simon: The universe is this franchise is populated mostly by white rabbits, including the titular character.
- Mr. B in Teddy And Co is revealed to be white once he's washed all the dirt off.
- Largely averted in Watership Down where most rabbits are natural gray or brown. Played straight however with Silver, who is teased at Sandleford Warren because his fur is so light it's almost white.
- In Will You Be My Friend?, sequel of Guess How Much I Love You, Little Nutbrown Hare befriend with his contemporary, a female hare named Tipps who has white fur.
- Wish: The rabbit protagonist of this picture book is portrayed with white fur, to represent positivity.
Live-Action TV
- Lost named an early episode that used the Follow the White Rabbit plot "White Rabbit." In later seasons,actual rabbits appeared — white rabbits. They were often associated with Ben, and their scenes with him caring for them as a boy showed his own innocence.
- Justified in the Sherlock episode, "The Hounds of Baskerville": The rabbits Dr Stapleton are working on are pure white: genetically engineered lab animals are usually white, because it's easier to see bioluminescence in a light-coloured specimen than in a darker one.
- White Rabbit Project - there is no rabbit in the show, but it's in the title (itself an Alice Allusion).
- On Utopia (US), Mr. Rabbit is a white rabbit in the Utopia comic and there are several pure white rabbits grazing in the grass at Home. The rabbits at the petting zoo, though, have various fur shades, including white with black spots and at least one entirely black one.
Music
- German music company Jamster/Jamba gives use Snuggelina (Schnuffelienchen) whose fur is mostly white but with a mix brown fur mostly around her ears, paws and feet. She is Schnuffel's girlfriend.
- The Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit", whose enitre lyric is an Alice Allusion.
Newspaper Comics
- Garfield featured white bunnies in the June 06, 1982 strip, August 25, 1987 strip and May 30, 2007 strip.
Popular Culture
- The Easter Bunny is usually shown as white.
- Whenever there's a magician, they will almost always pull a rabbit from a hat, and that rabbit is most always white.
- Somewhat justified, as a white rabbit will be easier for the audience to see against any dark-colored backdrop. In the days before electric stage lighting, this was likely to be a prime consideration.
Puppet Shows
- There's a group of innocent white bunnies in later The Muppets productions, whose main role in life is being Swallowed Whole by Big Mean Carl.
Toys
- Mattel had a line of infant toys called Angel Bunny (more info here) that ran from 1984 to 1985. The main character is a white rabbit with golden angel wings.
- White rabbits tend to appear in the Precious Moments franchise quite often.
- Mattel's "Miracle Baby" toys has a female white bunny who is the mascot for the toys.
- Several in the Sylvanian Families toyline: The Periwinkle milk rabbit family and the Chocolate rabbit family (who despite their name, are mostly white save for the tip of their ears) are the most prominent.
- In the Tamagotchi series, the white-furred Lovelitchi resembles a rabbit with her rabbit-like ears.
Video Games
- The rabbit villager named Ruby in the Animal Crossing games is white with red eyes. She specifically describes herself as albino.
- In the Bloody Roar series, Alice's beast form is a giant, anthropomorphic bunny (the fur can vary depending on the color pallete selected, but the default form is always white and she's depicted as such in official art).
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Normally, the rabbit animatronics shown in this series, Bonnie, Springtrap, and their respective variants, are aversions, however there are some exceptions.
- One of Bonnie's skins in Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery is Easter Bonnie, who's white with blue eyes. One of Springtrap's skins is a downplayed version as Clown Springtrap is implied to only be white due to clown makeup.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: Vanessa's alter ego is Vanny, a white rabbit who hunts down children to kill.
- Funtime with Buffy: Buffy is a white rabbit with pink ears, paws, and belly.
- Mario Party Advance: A special case in a franchise like Mario where bunnies do come in different colors. The minigame Grabbit has a solo player catch as many white rabbits, which are mischievously running within a prairie and hiding in their burrows, as possible. If the player fails to capture a rabbit and clashes against a wall, they'll be stunned and waste precious time. Every captured rabbit grants points and adds extra seconds to the time limit. In Shroom City mode, seven rabbits have to be captured under a time limit.
- General Makora from Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- represents the Rabbit in the Eastern Zodiac and thus he has white hair and clothes with a largely white color scheme.
- The titular character in The Night of the Rabbit is Marquis de Hoto, a white-furred anthropomorphic rabbit with magical powers.
- The Fire-type starter Pokémon in Pokémon Sword and Shield, Scorbunny, is a white rabbit with orange/yellow fur accents. Its evolutions have white fur too, though Raboot also has black/red fur fashioned like a training outfit while the fur on Cinderace's lower body resembles red-orange football shorts and blue football socks and boots.
- In Potion Permit, Bubble has a pet white rabbit named Cotton, and she gets worried when the latter gets sick because there aren't many rabbits like her on Moonbury Island due to habitat destruction. Bubble used to have another white rabbit as a kid, which was a gift from her mother before she passed away. Conserving Cotton's species is what inspired Bubble to become a ranger.
- In Roco Kingdom, one of the ice mons, Daermaodou, is a white creature greatly resembling a bunny.
- Sprunki averts this trope with a pink rabbit instead. Said rabbit's name is Pinki.
- The Wolf and the Waves: The bunnies on the island are defenseless white fluffballs the player can kill for health.
Web Animation
- Snowball, the main character of Bunnykill, is the only major white bunny of the main cast.
- Chikn Nuggit: In this world of cute chibi funny animals, Iscream appears to be a white rabbit...but is really an Animalistic Abomination.
- Melody Briar, one of the main characters in True Tail.
Webcomics
- Pooky Bunny, the protagonist of AntiBunny is a blue eyed white rabbit. However, Pooky is also a chain smoking cynic with depression.
- By the Tail has Ivory Monroe, one of the call girls of Melody's.
- In Freefall, Florence's Lunch and Dinner.
- Kevin & Kell: White tends to be the predominant color for rabbits in the comic, but the trope ranges from being played straight (both versions of Danielle is one of the nicest characters) to being played with (Coney's nice, but she's also an omnivorous predator thanks to her hybrid heritage, with all that entails, and Harvey looks like a rabbit, but is actually a long-eared coyote), to subversions (Bentley is a career criminal and Wendell is a little too fond of troublemaking) to double subversions (Angelique is a Corrupt Corporate Executive, but since she lost her rabbit license for selling their secrets to R.L., legally she's not a rabbit, and passes herself off as a rat), to aversions (Kevin's political opponent Fran Caudal is a cream yellow rabbit, and Donna is a brown rabbit albeit one-eighth coyote), and even an inversion (one of Miranda's dads is a black rabbit, but he's a nice if overprotective man). Then there's whatever Edward is: he's not even biologically a rabbit, but a coyote who used Magic Plastic Surgery to make himself a rabbit. He kept his yellow fur. Make of that what you will.
Web Original
- The short-lived e-card service Zoobe (the idea was, you could record a message and then use their software to pitch it up and lip-sync one of many animal characters to it) had a white bunny character that became a viral breakout star when people started making... interesting videos with her. You can learn more about it here.
- The Chinese reaction character Tuzki is a humanoid who resembles a bunny, with rabbits ears on top of his head. He is purely white.
Western Animation
- Arthur: Buster Baxter, D.W.'s friend Emily, Binky's friend Molly, her little brother James, the Show Within a Show superhero Bionic Bunny, and Prunella's friend Marina are all white rabbits. Some background rabbit characters are brown, however.
- Big Buck Bunny: The titular character is a white rabbit. After he snaps, he applies camouflage to his face and body before heading off to set up the traps for revenge.
- The cast of Alice's Wonderland Bakery includes Fergie, a descendant of the white rabbit from the 1951 Disney film.
- Blue's Clues & You!: One of Blue's classmates is a white bunny named Pearl. She's shown to have albinism, needing a walking stick and outdoor shades to find her way around better.
- Brandy & Mr. Whiskers: The titular rabbit character is white.
- Bugs Bunny: The prototype Bugs from 1937, dubbed "Happy Rabbit". He didn't become something closer to the familiar old grey hare until two years later.
- Codename: Kids Next Door: The class pet of the first grade class at Gallagher Elementary is a white bunny named Mr. Fluffalupagus.
- Elinor Wonders Why: Elinor is a white rabbit. By extension, her parents and other extended family members as well.
- Molang: The titular Molang is a white rabbit.
- Miraculous Ladybug: Fluff, kwami of the Rabbit Miraculous, is a white rabbit with blue eyes and ears. Her Miraculous is a pocket watch and grants time powers.
- My Little Pony:
- My Little Pony 'n Friends: Habbit, the Moochick's long-suffering assistant, is an all-white rabbit, complete with pink ears and a pink nose. Notably, in his debut in Rescue at Midnight Castle, he's brown — his all-white appearance was created for the TV series.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Fluttershy's pet is a white rabbit named Angel Bunny. Fluttershy is the sweetest and kindest member of the mane six. Angel himself is rather questionable in his disposition. Outside of Angel, most regular rabbits are also depicted as pure white; other colors, like brown or grey, usually only turn up when multiple rabbits are present in a single shot.
- Peter Rabbit (2012): Lilly Bobtail is mostly of the light-grey variety.
- Ricochet Rabbit and Droop-a-Long Coyote: Ricochet has white fur except for his tan muzzle.
- South Park: In an Easter episode parodying The Da Vinci Code, the secret heir to the papacy is revealed to be a white rabbit named Snowball.
- The Tale of the Great Bunny: The titular great bunny is white all over.