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Jyrras: Remember that time you thought Alexsi went evil because she wore a black dress? Dan: Oh come on! I was twelve! Jyrras: The other time. Dan: Hey! I was very drunk! Jyrras: No, Dan. The other time. — Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures
A specific form of Evil Costume Switch, one that requires no effort whatsoever on the part of the newly evil party.
See, your Transformation Trinket, your Empathic Weapon and your costume aren't too happy with your Face Heel Turn. Being inanimate objects, though, the only way they can express their disapproval is to turn black and evil-looking — goodbye Frills Of Justice, hello Spikes Of Villainy. The transformation usually, if not always, happens right before your eyes and those of your astonished friends, just for dramatic flair.
A possible variant is when a character happens to be split between good or evil or gain an Enemy Without (sometimes just for a Mirror Match); the Evil Twin (or both) might immediately get Colour Coded For Your Convenience in the process. In visual media, it naturally helps the viewer telling apart the good guy and the bad guy.
A Sub Trope of Colour Coded For Your Convenience.
This trope is named for the Rolling Stones song "Paint It, Black", although they are completely unrelated.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Sara in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch flashes back to her Freak Out that destroyed the Indian Ocean and killed Kaito's parents; she used to have bright red hair, but once she embraced her hatred and fear, her hair and pearl (and, in the manga, costume) turned black.
- Messenger Nia in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gets this with Tron Lines.
- Brainwashed Tuxedo Mask fights by throwing black roses. In some I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight scene in the anime, the rose in his hand is flickering between red and black.
- The Devil Suit in Corrector Yui is an insta-corrupted Angel Suit.
- Inverted in Bleach — Ichigo's normal outfit is black, and his Enemy Within is a completely white version of himself with black teeth and eyes. While Ichigo's Super Mode turns his sword black, "Ogichi"'s version turns it white.
- ShineGreymon Ruin Mode (a berserk, corrupt power-up), in Digimon Savers, is a darker, duller palette swap of ShineGreymon Burst Mode (the true power-up), though in this case the dark version occurs first.
- Also, in Digimon Adventure 02, Ken forces Agumon to become Metal Greymon when under control of a Mind Control Device, and when he does, he's gray instead of his usual orange, (if you take the card game as canon, this means he's a Virus type instead of a Vaccine type now - think of it as Digimon's version of Elemental Rock Paper Scissors.) though his Agumon form remains unchanged.
- In Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, in the latest chapters, Sasazuka gets this along with his (partial) Face Heel Turn. Cue fangirl drooling.
- Black Diamond Nina in Mai-Otome. Even her school uniform and transformation silhouette change to darker colors.
- The normally black-clad antagonist Sailor Tin Nyakano only gets partially purified by Sailor Moon, resulting in a half black and half white costume.
- Trisha Elric in the Fullmetal Alchemist anime has brown hair, but when she is "resurrected" as a homunculus named Sloth, her hair is jet black.
Comics
- Spider-Man has his supersuit do this, with some
symbiote semblance of a reason.
- Note that Spidey did not become evil or even more aggressive with the black suit in the original comics. That came later.
- Mary Marvel's white costume switched to black when she received Black Adam's powers — which had the side effect of turning her evil. Subsequent events were regarded by her fans as one gigantic Wall Banger.
- Inverted for Raven of the Teen Titans, who usually switches from her dark-blue to a white outfit when her demon father Trigon's influence becomes too great.
- When Supergirl was exposed to black kryptonite in a ca. 2005 storyline, she was split into her normal self and an evil (and obnoxiously oversexed) alternate personality that wore a black-and-silver version of her normal costume.
- Superman has gone here a few times, most notable in the DCAU with two Alternate Universe versions of himself, both overly violent Knights Templar. One of his alternate-reality doppelgangers in the comics, a Soviet communist Superman, is more morally ambiguous and gets to wear gray. Subverted with Overman in Final Crisis, his doppelganger from a world where the Nazis won World War II; Overman wears black and is a Nazi, but was born into that world after the war and hates what Germany did to attain global stability.
- A reversal: An issue of Star Wars Infinities, that 'verse's For Want Of A Nail series, has Darth Vader, after going through the same betray-the-Emperor-to-save-his-child thing as in the movie, survive, possibly because Leia was there too. At the very end of the comic, we see him again, one of the good guys... and in a costume basically identical to the old one, just white and with a little more cloth, a little less armor. Considering how little space was left, this might just have been shorthand for 'Hey, Vader's part of the Rebellion now!' since readers might not have known otherwise.
- X-Men's Jean Grey/Phoenix. When she first becomes Phoenix, the new suit is just there, and when she becomes Dark Phoenix, it turns red. Later in the original Phoenix arc, she can tell how close she is to losing control by what she sees her costume is doing. In the Endsong storyline, she frequently changes from green to red as her personality shifts between "Jean with Phoenix powers" and "cosmic destroyer." When her issues are finally resolved, it becomes white. (The white suit has its own meaning, which, like all things Phoenix, is needlessly complicated.)
Films
- Variant: When Pepperland is corrupted in Yellow Submarine, it loses color and turns mostly grey.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- Samus' suit changes in Metroid Prime 3 if you get corrupted. It's implied the suit has a psychic and biological link to Samus.
- Although it's not evil, Samus' Phazon Suit in the first Metroid Prime does count, as it's her normal suit mixed with deadly blue stuff.
- In Echoes, EVERY Ing-possessed enemy. Be they bugs, bad guys, or even robots, if an Ing's in charge, expect black-and-purple enemies, maybe with Spikes Of Villainy.
- When Aribeth renounces Tyr and swears fealty to Morag in Neverwinter Nights, her armor is immediately transformed into something blacker and spikier.
- In Shadow of the Colossus, Wander's hair becomes darker and his skin becomes paler as you progress through the game, and then at the end you become the new embodiment of Dormin, which kind of explains everything.
- Fate/stay night. Two words: Dark Saber.
- Aya, the poster girl of the Japanese fan-made fighting game Hi no Kakera, undergoes a radical transformation when the mental blocks on her massive psychic powers are shattered. In addition to a personality change from timidity to a berserk aggressiveness, she gains a new black outfit that is much less conservative than her usual attire.
Web Comics
- In The Order of the Stick, when Miko Miyazaki loses her Paladin powers, her white and blue armor becomes grey and tan. Word Of God says this is because the armor was magically enchanted only to work for a Paladin.
- Inversely, when Belkar gets a temporary Wisdom increase
 , his shirt turns white and his cape a lighter green.
- The most striking example being, of course, when Vaarsuvius acquires ultimate arcane power through a deal with three fiends. His/Her normally red cape turns black (along with instant hair extensions and pointy teeth). Bonus: the strip title is "I See a Red Robe and I Want to Paint it Black".
- Interestingly, the Dragonlance novels had Raistlin undergo the exact same colour change and alignment change; since Raist had the same goal (ultimate arcane power), the same or a very similar alignment (at first; this is assuming V. is True Neutral); and made a similarly dodgy deal.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Omi in Xiaolin Showdown.
- Code Lyoko: When a Polymorphic Clone takes Ulrich's appearance in episode "Revelation", it has gray skin and a black samurai outfit with orange highlights. This is solely for the viewer's benefit of telling it apart from the true Ulrich during the following Mirror Match, since before the Clone had been identical to Odd, up to the color.
- William goes through a full Evil Costume Switch in "Final Round", but it is more XANA altering his avatar than a spontaneous change.
- Happens in reverse for Teen Titans Raven: normally she's under her father's influence but in control of herself and her costume is dark blue, but when she's in a very good mood or completely free of her father's control her outfit turns white.
- Teen Titans also featured evil clones of the characters, who are completely black or dark grey with red eyes.
- Inversely, when Raven was dabbling in Black Magic, or in a Bad Future after suffering an emotional breakdown, she wore white robes.
- In the Kim Possible episode "Bad Boy", you could tell what the balance of good and evil in Ron and Drakken was with their skin color. Drakken's grew to be a disturbing pinkish tone and Ron's became Drakken's usual evil shade.
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