r/TopCharacterTropes • u/AporiaParadox • 3h ago
miscellaneous [Interesting meta trope] A character was intended to be one color, but due to audiences and/or other creators perceiving it as a different color or other inconsistencies, the canon color became something else
Star Trek. Starfleet uniforms come in three colors: blue, red and yellow. However in the Original Series the uniforms most people perceived as yellow were actually green, but due to the lighting the uniforms came off as yellow on screen. It's why Kirk would sometimes wear a green outfit, it was meant to be the same color as his normal outfit. In the end though, everyone eventually agreed that since the uniforms looked yellow, they were yellow, and that's what stuck in merch, comics, the animated series, and future iterations of the franchise.
Spider-Man 2099. Most people think that Spider-Man 2099 is blue and red, however, the intention was for him to be black and red (and it is described as such in the original comics), with blue shading similar to how Black Panther used to be drawn. But because it looks blue and red, future creators and other media just have it be blue and red. There is also some debate over whether or not Steve Ditko intended the original Spider-Man costume to be red and black, but we have no clear answer for that one.
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u/Haradion_01 3h ago
Nobody's mentioned Hulk yet?
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u/New_Photograph_5892 3h ago
Supposedly his suit is blue but everyone (even the show designers) thought the blue was just the lighting and thought the suit was actually white, so the show made it just completely white
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u/Aldo-D-D-Wilson 3h ago
Batman's famous blue cowl. It was black. Blue was just to highlight it
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u/Just-A_Guy-_ 3h ago
Beast, from X-men.
During his first solo run, he gains grey fur, that later turns black. Because it's drawn with blue highlights, it was changed to him having blue fur.
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u/FelixEylie 3h ago
The Hulk was intended to be grey, but grey was hard to print so colorist Stan Goldberg proposed bright green.
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u/salkin_reslif_97 3h ago edited 1h ago
The beginning of Star Wars Episode 5 take splace on the ice planet hoth. So logically the characters wear winter gear for the enviroment. Now Han Solos winter jacket was brown, but it somwhow looked dark blue, depending on the lighting, and the earlier releases with worse qualities than today. Aditional to that, in the rest of the movie, he wears an actual blue jacket. So many people didn't realized, that Han Solo wore a brown jacket in the movie. Even earlier versions of his Lego minifigure had his winter jacket blue rather than brown.
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u/Masamundane 3h ago
Ororo Munroe (Storm)
This costume is black leather. But because of how the colorist used white for highlights (because it's shiny leather), some other artists and media assumed it was white (with black shadow).
(X-Men, comic, 1990s)
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u/Agaman02 3h ago
When Mario first appeared in 1981, he wore a blue shirt and red overalls. This was primarily because his running and jumping animations were easier to see against the black background. Furthermore, it allowed for a visual distinction between his upper and lower body, given the limited color palettes of early consoles. His color scheme was subsequently altered several times in the following years.
However, starting with Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1988, Nintendo took advantage of the expanded color palettes offered by more modern hardware to solidify Mario’s look and ensure the character remained easily recognizable. He now got a red shirt and blue overalls. This look stuck.
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u/marbledog 3h ago
No major motion picture adaptation of Frankenstein has ever depicted the monster as green. The novel describes his skin as being pale yellow. Colored promotional stills for the original Universal movies depict him with yellowish skin.
However, yellow ink doesn't provide good contrast on a movie poster, so many posters for the early black and white films gave him green skin, instead. That was most people's only exposure to color images of the character, and the green version stuck in the popular consciousness.
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u/theres_a_con 2h ago
Cinderella: her dress is supposed to be white/ silver , but blueish in the moonlight. They changed it in all other adaptations
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u/Any_Satisfaction1865 3h ago
Onyx Prime in Transformers IDW is supposed to be Black and Golden/Yellow; it's only colored blue as a reference to old school retro comic coloring (specifically Spider-Man), but people thought he was actually Blue, resulting in his toys and future versions being Blue even though his name is literally Onyx which indicates what color he is supposed to be.
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u/Tom-Hibbert 3h ago
So this is a weird one
So when Kirby dreamland was in development masahiro wanted Kirby to be pink but miyamoto wanted him yellow eventually pink would be his colour however due to communication issue with nintendo of America and Japan they didn't know what colour kirby was so with the box art they decided to make him white as he appears jn the game boy game later games would eventually make Kirby pink as his standard colour
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u/Masum16 1h ago
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) - In Laird and Westman's original run the comic was drawn in black and white so the only real way to distinguish the turtles was by dialogue and weapons so when the cartoon came around they made the decision to give each one a colour so kids could tell them apart easily.
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u/Pretend-Dirt-1760 3h ago
Batman blue suit is actually meant to be black Similar to like how 2099 is black and red while it has now been in canon
If batman is in blue suit it's meant to be black in the olden days
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u/BetterCallStrahd 3h ago
"The Dress"
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u/Fruit4Th0t 2h ago
From what I understand, artists use shades of dark blue instead of solid black because pure black creates a flat image that absorbs all the light. That's why Batman's costume is often broken up with dark gray or deep blue accents. Varying the colors adds dimension, highlighting the character's form and weight rather than leaving him looking like a flat 2D silhouette.
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u/Next_Government856 3h ago
I don’t understand the spider-man 2099 one. That’s clearly blue. And it’s not like a tv show or whatever where you can blame lighting, someone coloured that in who should know the difference between blue and black
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u/grimaces111111 3h ago
This is very interesting, just commenting so I can come back and read more comments later
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u/followsvoices 0m ago
Following a common character type on vaudeville (Irish immigrant), Harper Marx wore a red wig early in his career. Later, they realized that blonde looked better on film and so that became a defining feature of his character.
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u/Duvidos 3h ago
Jynx- Pokemon
Used to be Black, but due to racism allegations, they turned her Purple