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The treatment of albinism in fiction is often startlingly harsh. The condition seems to have been declared officially creepy with Moby Dick. The most common depiction of people with albinism in fiction is that of the inimical, violent villain, especially the hitman, assassin, sociopath or crime boss. A whole lot of them have names or nicknames that reference their albinism, if a name beyond "The Albino" is even bothered with. This should tell you about where this trope falls on the Sliding Scale of Creativity.
What is worse is that albinism in and of itself is treated as a distingushing mark of evil (in some real cultures it was) without any actual signs of albinism in the story. Got an albino, sharpshooting hitman? How? Albinism often causes impaired eyesight, especially at a distance. Got a scene where your evil albino chases the hero in a desert? Albinos have no UVA protection, and literally risk their skin by setting foot in a desert.
This can even apply in areas of the world where pale skin is actually considered attractive; the villains are just more likely to be physically attractive themselves. An albino, especially if they're female, will then often have other weird physical quirks. Red eyes fall under this category, as most human albinos have very pale blue eyes [1]. A few rarer variants of albinism in humans produce Purple Eyes, and, yes, even red or pink eyes because of enlarged blood vessels. Count on a fictional albino, though, to fall under Red Eyes, Take Warning.
Compare Blond Guys Are Evil and Blondes Are Evil. See also White-Haired Pretty Boy, White-Haired Pretty Girl, and Undeathly Pallor. For tropes about villains with other health conditions, see Depraved Dwarf and Evil Cripple.
Notable aversions and subversions of this trope should be listed under Heroic Albino.
Anime & Manga[]
- Kaworu from Neon Genesis Evangelion is frequently assumed to be an albino. Some artists hypercorrect this aspect in fanart: white vs blue hair, red eyes vs blue eyes. The original character designer tends to use one when he thinks it looks cool, Hideaki Anno nixes the idea (re: Kaworu and Rei) that's anything more than cueing the audience they're odd characters, and show up well in animation.
- Angelo Sauper from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.
- Accelerator (formerly) from To Aru Majutsu no Index because his powers deflects the UV light making unnecessary to produce melanin.
- In a sense, Enishi from Rurouni Kenshin. He's not properly an albino as he had black hair as a kid, but it turned white after his beloved sister was killed.
- Dilandau from Vision of Escaflowne is one of the greatest examples in anime. It's a shame that Bat Shit Insane Albino isn't a trope.
- Princess Hinoto from X 1999 is a sterling example of a subversion of this trope. That is, until it's revealed that she has an Evil Twin personality buried deep within her psyche that was only gathering the heroes together in order to off them at her leisure one by one.
- Makoto Isshiki from RahXephon, who is even nicknamed "White Snake".
- Haine from DOGS Bullets and Carnage in a case of Enemy Within.
- The real Tohno SHIKI from Tsukihime. However, it's implied not to be natural as Akiha states that his appearance changed. In the manga, at least, it was black as a child.
- Hokuto in Shikabane Hime
- Fate Averruncus in Mahou Sensei Negima.
- Muraki in Yami no Matsuei
- Subverted (of course) in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Kuze, the most wanted top terrorist of Japan, is a cyborg who had his body build with very pale skin and white hair, and even got the face sculpted by a famous artist. He only wears white, including a long white coat, and uses a silver katana in his attempt to assassinate the prime minister. But it being Ghost In The Shell, there's a lot more to him.
- Worth noting however, that his gray hair is a later addition to his appearance; in flashbacks his hair is brown. And he only wears white while he belongs to the anti-refugee terrorist organization Individual Eleven. After he quits and joins the refugees' cause he switches to more utilitarian brown leather coat and blue jeans for the rest of the series.
- Prozen from Zoids: Chaotic Century
- Mao from Code Geass is a White-Haired Pretty Boy version of this trope. The thing is, not only is his albinism never played up at all, but there is another albino character in the series who is much more benign. And both of them are Chinese...
- Mao is also one of the few examples who somewhat sidesteps the Red Eyes, Take Warning trope: his eyes are more pink than red, and they're shown to be naturally blue or purple; but they turned reddish-pink when his Geass overtook them (instead, the good albino character has red eyes).
- Subverted by Miyabi from the manga Madness. She was a Badass Unfettered Calm-but-Ax Crazy Blood Knight Dark Action Girl who was pretty much universally feared... but that was due to Mind Control. Once she's free of the "madness", she becomes a Heroic Albino — and, surprisingly, retains all of her Badass combat abilities.
- Jin from Innocent Venus.
Comic Books[]
- Tombstone, in the Spider Man comics is an African-American with albinism. He is a mob hitman.
- In The Spectacular Spider-Man Animated Adaptation, he's the Big Bad crimelord the Big Man, a Villain with Good Publicity whose public persona is mega-philanthropist L. Thompson Lincoln, despite his skintone and pointy teeth.
- Tombstone existed in the 1990s animated series as well, but was normal-looking until the accident that rendered him Made of Iron.
- Actually, it is hinted the accident made him The Undead
- Tobias Whale in The DCU is an African-American albinistic mobster whose villainy induces character Jefferson Pierce to become the superhero Black Lightning.
- The Autumn Brothers, in the Jonah Hex comics are half-human villains for the main character to fight. They were thinly-disguised caricatures of real-life albinistic musician brothers, Edgar and Johnny Winter, who filed a lawsuit.
- Batman's archenemy Ra's al Ghul becomes albino after he is forced to inhabit the body of his albino son Dusun, a.k.a. "the White Ghost". Prior to this, Dusun was shown as being slavishly loyal to his father and his schemes for world conquest, despite Ra's having rejected him for being less than physically perfect.
- In the Marvel Universe, Blackout is a psychotic superpowered assassin, descended from a race of demons, who had surgery to make himself resemble a vampire.
- Minor Batman villain Linda Friitawa, a.k.a. Fright, a geneticist who lost her licence for unauthorised experiments on human beings.
- Another Batman foe, the Snowman, was the mutant albino offspring of a human female and a male Yeti.
- The second Icicle in The DCU, who admits he enjoys hurting people. His colouration is supposedly a result of his ice-based powers.
- Neozoic is outwardly about humans versus dinosaurs, but the real villains of the story are an entire race of telepathic Evil Albinos.
- Paradox from The Flash Annual #4.
- The Great White Shark in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell. This one's a variant, as he doesn't turn pale and freaky until he's been locked in a freezer for a few hours.
- The Pierce Brothers from Nightwing.
- Trolus, The Dragon bodyguard to the Evil Overlord from the first Red Sonja solo story in Savage Sword of Conan #1.
- Dr. Finitevus from the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie comic is an albino echidna who tried to uses Knuckles to destroy the world.
- And then there's Dr. Zachary from the UK Sonic the Comic.
- Mr Sinister from the X-Men comics has been portrayed as an albino in at least some of his incarnations (his physical appearance having changed greatly over the ages). In particular, during World War Two, when he was worked for the Nazis as a geneticist in a concentration camp and was known by the nickname "Nosferatu".
- The villain T-Ray from Deadpool.
- At least one Elseworlds has portrayed the Joker as an albino. The one This Troper recalls had his green hair the result of a failed attempt to dye it blonde.
- JLA villain The Key. Blind white supremacist Blind Faith once begged him to let her touch his pale-ass skin and he callously told her it was a dye job.
- Omega Red, foe of the X-Men, although his chalk white skin and red eyes are the result of the experiments by the Dirty Commies that gave him his superpowers.
- Kid Gloves, the "Albino asshole half-brother" of Story Johnson in Outlaw Nation.
- Nekra from Marvel Comics is never explicitly called an albino, but she's paler than the moon and was born to black parents; This is implied to be a result of her mutation, itself due to radiation that her mother had been exposed to. Nekra's sometime lover/accomplice/friend Mandrill was a black boy born to white parents for much the same reason.
- The Ultimate Marvel version of Mojo is human and an Albino.
- Pre-reboot Gen 13 #8-9 featured an Evil Albino Rubber Man named The Albino.
- An experiment transforms Desolation Jones into one of these, even if he is our hero, he's a Heroic Sociopath.
- Vic Slaughter, the Evil Counterpart to Morbius.
- Janus Valker in Rat-Man, though he loses points becomes he isn't naturally albino, but made so by the power of the Shadow.
- Rulah, Jungle Goddess fought a villain called the Albino. This monster of the jungle was an albino exile who had a disease that he could pass to others by touch, with fatal results, when they died, they turned white like the Albino himself. He was the assistant of a girl who set herself up as a rival to Rulah, the Jungle Goddess, and pretended that she could root out the mysterious killer. In the end, the Albino died of his disease, but not before he killed the girl with his deadly "petrifying" touch as an act of revenge.
- One arc in Hitman features a villain named Skull, a Flying Brick who is a black African albino.
- Garn Daanuth is an Evil Sorceror who seems fairly inspired by Elric of Melnibone. He first appeared in the Arion backup-story of The Warlord, before spinning off into Arion's own series and The DCU proper on occasion. The relationship between him and Arion was apparently and inspiration for later stories of Aquaman and Ocean Master.
Fan Fic[]
- Widget Hackwrench, from the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers fanfic "Under the Bridge" (part 1 msted here), was Gadget Hackwrench's twin sister, born albino and missing an arm, and dropped from an overpass by Monterey Jack when she was a baby. She was "raised" by an abusive street mother who called her "Li'l Freako" and used her to get handouts before ODing, and had to fend for herself on the streets, building her own artificial limb. Thus, she comes to obsessively hate her more fortunate sister Gadget (before eventually having a Heel Face Turn). Yes, it's a Darker and Edgier version.
- Val Kazkani from the Steven Universe fanfic We Can Be Heroes is an albino Hopkoblin (small goblin alien) and a ruthless mob boss feared by the citizens of Krapton. He's prone to personally breaking the fingers of people who don't pay their debts back to him, owns a child slave that he treats like crap, and in general loves to lord his authority over the town.
Film[]
- The Twins in The Matrix Reloaded.
- Word of God makes them angels from a failed incarnation of the Matrix.
- Snow in Vamp is the violently-inclined leader of a street gang composed of albinistic people and others with appearance problems. He meets a violent end.
- Joseph in Contact is a religious extremist turned suicide-bomber.
- Mr. Joshua in Lethal Weapon is a seemingly psychopathic hit man. He was specifically referred to as "albino" in the film and yep: he's both an expert sniper and appears in an extended desert scene.
- Bosie in Cold Mountain is a U.S. Civil War-era "sneering albino killer ...[who] seems to have wandered in from a Lethal Weapon movie".
- Dragon in the The Eiger Sanction is an underworld kingpin also described as being unable to stand light and requiring frequent blood transfusions.
- The Albino in The Princess Bride is an Igor-like henchman and torturer, depicted as diseased, with visible sores. This is slightly subverted though, in that outside of his job, he comes across as a fairly personable guy.
- It was completely subverted in the book, and the Albino in the film was most likely changed to better fit the personality of the guy who played him. In the original novel, the Albino was a timid, merciful character who offered to give Westley a painless death by poison, rather than subject him to any further torture at the hands of the Count.
- Albino (played by the genuinely albinistic Victor Varnado), in End of Days is a menacing "servant of Satan" who meets a grisly death.
- Satan in The Passion of the Christ is portrayed here as an androgynous, albino-like figure.
- "Whitey" Jackson a.k.a. "The Albino" in Foul Play is another heavily-armed killer, this time in a comedy.
- Moke in Stick is a ruthless criminal, who likes to shoot people in the back.
- Moke is taunted with the nickname "bunny-eyes" by Burt Reynold's character, Stickley.
- Albino in Freefall is a menacing figure who drugs the film's heroine.
- Otis B. Driftwood in House of 1000 Corpses leads a clan of psychopathic backwoods serial killers. Despite being played by the same actor, in the sequel The Devil's Rejects he has a normal skin tone.
- Whitey, one half of the Evil Duo of rats from Flushed Away (although he proves to be something a Gentle Giant).
- The Strangers in Dark City (though this is somewhat justified; the Strangers as we see them are actually human corpses animated by the real Strangers, insectile lamprey-like aliens, residing in the corpses' skulls; the pallor is presumably the result of total exsanguination, perhaps as part of the alien process that makes the bodies into vehicles).
- Subverted in Me, Myself, and Irene, in which Casper/Whitey is believed by both the audience and the main characters to be a very creepy albino who may have murdered his family. Turns out, he's a nice guy whose family all moved to Arizona, where he couldn't follow ("I mean, look at me; I wouldn't last two minutes in the desert!"). He's still a little creepy in a clingy way, though.
- The main villain of Hellboy II, Prince Nuada, plays this trope straight. Justified by the fact that his entire elf species are albinos; the other elves in the film lean more towards the Heroic Albino side.
- The Uber-Morlock in the Time Machine remake.
- Members of "The Family" in the 1971 movie The Omega Man.
- El Blanco, a man-eating graboid from the third Tremors movie, was an albino. Probably a combination of a Moby Dick Shout-Out and Did Not Do the Research, as its lack of pigment is blamed for why El Blanco never gives birth to shriekers. (Apparently, the writers thought albinism makes you sterile.)
- Probably more of a subversion in truth, as he's actually easier to have around than a normal Graboid.
- The White Witch from the Disney version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Although in the books (and the BBC adaptation) she was an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette, in the Disney version she was blond.
- Bad Bob from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
- Lord Shen from Kung Fu Panda.
- The Big Bad of Kamen Rider Blade: Missing Ace is an albino version of the Joker Undead. Though when it comes to Joker Undead, their natural state is pretty evil to begin with.
- An obscure German thriller had an "albino" African terrorist leader and woman-stalker leave fear and horror in his wake. Of course the movie is called "Albino".
- Blade Runner has Roy Batty, a cruel, sadistic, and exceptionally fierce albino.
- Which would make this an Invoked Trope on part of Batty's creators, since he is an artificial human.
- The Albino Pirate from The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! is a non villainous, Cloudcuckoolander subversion of the fictional stereotype. In fact, the fact that he's albino is touched upon no more than any of the odd traits of any of the other pirates.
- Adam Brandis, the serial killer from Spiker.
- Possibly Chop Top from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Literature[]
- Although not evil as such, Lehmann in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series is merciless in achieving his goals, and doesn't hesitate to kill innocents when needed. To his underlings he appears to be without emotions.
- Silas, in the book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, (played by Paul Bettany in the derived 2006 movie) is described as being albinistic. He is a religious fanatic and an assassin who murders several people, although 'repents' at the end of the book, praying to God for mercy and forgiveness.
- In the MTV Movie Awards' spoof of The Movie, Andy Dick, who plays a wannabe Silas, lampshades this trope.
- There's also The Albino Code, which takes the Evil Albino trope and mercilessly rips it apart. The actor/writer Dennis Hurley points out that most albino people, with impaired eyesight, would make terrible assassins.
- Griffin, the main character of The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells is of questionable sanity and a thief by nature, obsessed with color and pigmentation due to his albinism. The text of Wells's novel implies that Griffin's invisibility formula works on him (and a white cat in an early experiment) only because of albinism.
- Amadeus, the dhampir antagonist of the Slayer horror series by Karen Koehler is a blind albino, as well as a vampire.
- Kobra, an albinistic biker in Robert R. McCammon's 1981 novel They Thirst who is depicted as sadistic and violent. He eventually becomes a commander an army of vampires besieging Los Angeles (but was albinistic before becoming a vampire).
- Monsieur Zenith, a pulp fiction villain in the Sexton Blake series by Anthony Skene. Zenith is a world-weary gentleman thief who uses opium, commits crimes, and feuds with Blake simply to relieve his ennui.
- Elric of Melniboné, the main character of an eponymous series of fantasy novels by Michael Moorcock, borders on this due to his Anti-Hero nature.
- In The Stars My Destination, one character is a young noblewoman who is an albino and something of a Psycho for Hire, although this actually makes her more appealing to the Anti-Hero. The novel has it as somewhat common in the future for men to marry albino women, in that the skill of "jaunting" (teleportation) depends on being able to envision the target you wish to reach, and it's explained that because of the poor eyesight associated with albinism, albinos cannot do this, making them the perfect trophy wives.
- No H.P. Lovecraft fan shall forget that Lavinia Whatley, the woman who gave birth to the titular character of The Dunwich Horror and its brother, was a crazy albino creepy woman. And Lovecraft makes it very clear right in the beginning of the story.
- Lavinia wasn't evil, though. Just in over her head. She didn't object having creepy children, but the destruction of the world as we know it got her squeamish.
- There were also albino penguins in At the Mountains of Madness; while they weren't evil or any sort of threat, they added to the eerie atmosphere.
- There's something of it in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, of Edgar Allan Poe. At the end of the book, there are the natives that fear the colour white and, right at the ending, something huge and white that clearly is either evil or some kind of god.
- Vilkata, the Dark King, in Fred Saberhagen's Third Book of Swords, Sixth Book of Lost Swords: Mindsword's Story, and Last Book of Swords: Shieldbreaker's Story. He gets double spookiness points, since, in addition to being an albino, he also has no eyes, having put them out himself as part of a terrible curse he cast on one of his enemies. He gets magical vision from his demonic familiars.
- Lien from the Temeraire' books by Naomi Novik. She's incredibly high ranking but her coloring marks her as bad luck in the Chinese tradition and she's ostracized by most of society. It doesn't help her cause any that her human counterpart is trying to usurp the Chinese throne and she ends up helping Napoleon try to take over Europe.
- Cinder, one of the Chandrian from Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind, is described this way. Everything about him seems to have an aspect of winter about it, except his completely black eyes.
- In the Gormenghast novels, Steerpike's physical description borders on this.
- Ser Brynden Rivers from A Song of Ice and Fire. In the short story "The Sworn Sword" we learn that he is feared as a spymaster and wizard, but the validity of the rumors is never confirmed. We learn in the series that he eventually served as Lord Commander of the Night Watch, so he probably wasn't that bad.
- The lessers from Black Dagger Brotherhood.
- Not evil, but very creepy - Peter Stillman from The New York Trilogy.
- The Redwall book Triss features an entire Big Screwed-Up Family of albinos. The Royal House of Riftgard are all albino ferrets, referred to in the book as the "Pure Ferrets".
- Garry Kilworth's little-known book House of Tribes features Little Prince, the albino pet mouse owned by a Creepy Child, who feeds him on other mice. Although after the wild mice broke their collective arms scaring off Cthulhu, he goes through a Heel Face Turn.
- The stoat Prince Poynt of the Welkin Weasels doesn't exactly count, but he possibly comes close; he's not an albino, but he stays in his white ermine pelt all year round, so the physical impression is similar.
- Judge Holden, in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. In McCarthy's novel, Holden is a wanton mass-murderer. There is no historical evidence to suggest that the non-fictional Holden was albinistic.
- The clairvoyant albino Juni Swan in Darren Shan's The Demonata series is characterised by her deceptive and sadistic nature (as well as by her exceptional beauty, one of the characters claiming that "unconcealed evil suits her"). However, in Death's Shadow, the seventh book of the series, she appears as a hideously deformed monster.
- Mr. Skimpole, a character in The Somnambulist is an albino who at first seems evil, but is made more likeable through his crippled son, whom he cares for. Although the narrator insinuates that his son might be a fabrication to make him seem more sympathetic.
- One of these appears in The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay. Almost uniquely it mentions that his eyesight is impaired by his condition, and he's not a fighter.
- However, this does not prevent Ivarr from being inexplicably proficient with projectiles, even in low-contrast situations where the average albino would be struggling not to walk into trees. In fact he's stated to see better in half light.
- The Bane from The Underland Chronicles. Subverted with the Underland humans, basically a race of violet-eyed heroic albinos.
- The Tale of Despereaux--a rather creepy albino rat controls the violent pastimes of Ratworld.
- Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen have the Tiste Andii race, which normally have black skin. Silchas Ruin, an albino Tiste Andii, is a fairly brutal Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain and described as "the most cruel of the three sons of Mother Dark".
- In Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar series, the Gorbuses are a subterranean race of cannibalistic albinos who are apparently resurrected surface-world murderers.
- Francis Davey, the vicar of Altarnun in Daphne du Maurier's novel Jamaica Inn is an albino whose status as a 'freak of nature' is explicitly linked to his rejection of conventional morality and hence his villainous actions including murder.
- Lampshaded in RL Stine's Snowman: the title character points out several times that, despite his own questionable actions and sanity, he can't be an evil albino because he has white hair and dark brown/black eyes. Having grown up with white hair, he apparently got used to explaining what eye colors albinos actually have a long time ago.
- "The Albino" in "The Albino's Dancer", a Time Hunter novella; the character is a mobster
- Pollution from Good Omens
- In the relatively obscure children's book The Secret of the Loch (published in 1965), the villain is not just albino, but the latest in a very long line of villainous albinos in the Maclure family.
- In the book The Silver Kiss, by Annette Curtis Klause, the villain is a small vampire who is pretending to be an albino child.
- The Looking Glass Wars has Vollrath, adviser to the Big Bad in Seeing Redd, as this trope to counteract Bibwit Harte advising the Hero.
- Billy from the Children of the Red King series is a subversion/deconstruction. He's continually passed over for adoption, apparently because of his albinism, and the villain manipulates him by claiming he'll help him find a family. Billy remains sympathetic throughout, though, and eventually gets both a Heel Face Turn and a family.
- North, from Vonda N. McIntyre's Dreamsnake, is an odd reconstruction; he blames the setting's medical practices for not being able to do anything about his albinism (and gigantism).
- The eponymous whale in Moby Dick, though his role as the antagonist isn't so much a case of being genuinely evil as it is not taking too kindly to being harpooned.
- Moby Dick isn't an albino in the original novel; merely being possessed of a white head. But various adaptations seem to be unaware of this fact and have made the whale a fully-fledged albino.
- The narrator, Ishmael, also extensively discusses the fact that purely white things--such as albinos or white whales--are deeply unsettling even though white is the color of good. In fact, it's suggested this psychological factor drove Ahab to hate the whale even before Moby Dick took his leg.
- The Banned and the Banished goes all the way, with albino Creepy Twins who never show emotion. They're corrupted spellcasters who produce rats from pustules on their skin.
- Voldemort's overuse of Horcruxes pretty much turned him albino (and destroyed his nose).
- Kronski from Artemis Fowl seems to be this. He is described as having nearly transparent white skin and purple eyes. Since some forms of albinism manifest with purple eyes, and Eoin Colfer is not known for giving his humans odd eye colors, it suggests he may he albino.
- Played with a bit in the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel Well of Souls. The character Pahl is an alien child who is more or less his race's equivalent of an albino. He's definitely creepy, but he himself is certainly not evil; his role in the novel, though, is to be a target for possession by a demonic intelligence. His "albinism" correlates with other genetic factors (latent telepathy) that make him uniquely suited for the possession. Basically, the "evil albino" trope is still touched upon, with albinism indirectly marking a vessel for evil.
- Matisse, the so-called 'King of the Romans', in the Matthew Hawkwood novel Rapscallion. Hawkwood speculates that one of the reasons the Romans lurk in the lowest decks of the hulk is because of Matisse's sensitivity to light.
- The psychotic former government killer Lamprey, in the first book of the Col Sec Trilogy, verges on this; he's described as being deathly pale and prematurely white-haired.
- The main villain of Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, Vicar Roberts, has an albino raven for a familiar. It's unclear if she's as evil as her owner, but she definitely plays a part in messing with the good guys.
- The chieftain of a half-elven street gang Garrett tangles with in Cold Copper Tears is an albino called Snowball.
- Phobos and Deimos, Mars's albino satyr minions from The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.
- Artemis Butler in the web-novel Domina is this...maybe. Not only is his morality in question (he could be a Heroic Albino instead), but so is his albinism. This is the kind of story where that can be faked.
- Mrs. Zork from "Aliens Don't Wear Braces," the seventh book in the Bailey School Kids series. She's implied to be an alien from a planet without color. When we first see her, her skin and hair are pure white and her clothes are black, white, or gray. Over the course of the book, the town gradually appears to lose its color, while Mrs. Zork gets more and more colorful, leading the kids to believe that she's stealing color and bringing it back to her home planet.
Live Action TV[]
- "The Albino" from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath", who is a dishonorable Klingon warrior and murderer.
- Mr. White from The Pretender.
- The Observer from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- The Doci from Stargate SG-1.
- Samuel Aboah from The X-Files episode "Teliko". He was a Burkinabe immigrant who, lacking a pituitary gland and harvested them from other African or African-American men to restore his skin tone. He is compared unfavourably to a vampire like creature from West African folklore (the eponymous Teliko) by a Burkinabe ambassador. He is depicted as a merciless killer with a seemingly inhuman ability to squeeze into small spaces.
- Spartacus: Blood and Sand gives us Theokoles, the Shadow of Death. A 6'10" berserk killing machine covered in scars from his career as an undefeated gladiatorial champion. His light-sensitive albinistic eyes are what ultimately enable him to be defeated.
- Played for Laughs in My Name Is Earl. When Earl is in prison, one of the prison gangs is the albino gang.
Music[]
- Iron Maiden's Mascot Eddie the Head.
Machinima[]
New Media[]
- This creepypasta.
Tabletop Games[]
- The shadow elves from the Dungeons and Dragons setting Mystara are that world's answer to the dark elves found on other worlds, but unlike the drow, the shadow elves have pale white skin and hair. They're not technically albinos, being white-skinned due to thousands of generations of subterranean life. They also aren't inherently evil, but their society's rulers are extremely violent and expansionist.
- The bakhna rakhna are a breed of deformed, albinistic goblins from Ravenloft. Not all that tough as villains, but they're nasty, thieving little creeps.
- The Grey Seers, in the tabletop game Warhammer Fantasy Battles are albinistic prophets and powerful wizards of the Skaven rat-people. While this character race are generally "evil", from their own viewpoint the albinistic Seers are venerated.
- Except for when they're not.
- 'Normal' Skaven seldom (ok, less often) backstab seers because skaven society bases itself on the Klingon Promotion, and non-seers cannot become seers even if they kill another seer. The most probable cause of death for a grey seer is being backstabbed by another grey seer for its position: Non-seers will usually only do so as a last resort if the seer hinders them politically, as there's little to gain from it otherwise.
- Except for when they're not.
- From Living Force, the role-playing game scenario of the RPGA for Star Wars (think Living Greyhawk), there's Len Markus.
- Siberia from the Dark Champions supplement Murderer's Row.
- And Darkling from Underworld Enemies.
- Songbird, a disfigured musician turned supervillain, who appeared in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" column in Knights of the Dinner Table.
- The Dune People from Exalted are not simply evil, they're murderous, nearly subhuman cannibals who regard the entire rest of the human race as their enemies. They live in the deep desert, hide from the sun by day, hunt by night, and cannot be reasoned or bargained with. The only thing they want from any other group is for the other group to be dead.
Video Games[]
- Mark Purayah (Mark II) and Mark Parchezzi (Mark III) ("the Albinos"), in Hitman: Blood Money are clones of an unseen Mark I, and all are assassins.
- Caulder/Stolos from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Fortunately, his clone-son Cyrus is somewhat less evil.
- His clone-daughters Tabitha and Penny fit as well, though Penny is less evil and more just crazy. It's revealed that Isabella, then called Lusitania, was as well.
- Also appeared in Nintendo Wars.
- Goh Hinogami of Virtua Fighter fame is a blue haired albino, judo master and cold blooded assassin who works for a heartless corporation.
- The true form of Mir, the ultimate antagonist in Ar tonelico, is that of a deathly-pale, red-eyed, emaciated girl. Probably doesn't count as a technical albino due to her hair colour, but they're definitely playing on the creepiness factor.
- They do play it up, but her subsequent appearance in the second game doesn't have quite that deathly pallor. The skin tone seems to come from her having not seen natural sunlight in 400 years. She's still very pale, but it's not as exaggerated. The eyes seem to have been caused by the experiments done on her in her youth.
- Albedo from Xenosaga. Once again, it's a shame that Bat Shit Insane Albino isn't a trope. Interestingly, he has purple eyes, which some real life albinos do have as well.
- May only be this Trope by dint of hair and eye color (granted, there's such a thing as albinism that ONLY effects the hair and eyes). He otherwise has exactly the same pigmentation as his siblings.
- Kun Lan in Killer 7; one could probably list Kevin Smith as well.
- Specter from Ape Escape.
- Claudia from Silent Hill 3, as part of her Deliberately Monochrome colour scheme.
- Selvaria from Valkyria Chronicles. Though it may be part of her Valkyria heritage, she definitely possesses the classic physical traits of an albino.
- Burfields hitman in Mirror's Edge wears an all white version of the Ikarus suit that appears in later levels, and is also blond and pale skinned under the mask.
- The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia can be either a Heroic Albino or an Evil Albino depending on what choices the player makes.
- Apparently, it is stated in the novel that he was normal as a kid and his look changed due to Trial of the Grasses, so he can't be counted as a real albino.
- At least in the Extended Edition, Eskel makes a comment about how he thought he was going insane when he saw Geralt's hair turn white during the aforementioned event.
- Helter Skelter, a mysterious assassin seen in the opening cutscene of the video game No More Heroes.
- His brother, Skelter Helter, is the first fight in the sequel and is also an albino. That said, for both, their villainy is an Informed Attribute - the former does nothing villainous in the trailer for the first, and the latter's only shown action is to attempt to take vengeance on his brother's killer. That said, they are assassins (perhaps more realistically, given the typical eyesight problems associated with albinism, they try to kill using More Dakka).
- To be fair, Skelter Helter seemed pretty accurate with that BFS of his.
- His brother, Skelter Helter, is the first fight in the sequel and is also an albino. That said, for both, their villainy is an Informed Attribute - the former does nothing villainous in the trailer for the first, and the latter's only shown action is to attempt to take vengeance on his brother's killer. That said, they are assassins (perhaps more realistically, given the typical eyesight problems associated with albinism, they try to kill using More Dakka).
- Arguably Melodia from Baten Kaitos, although this could be a character design choice seeing how other characters have pink and green hair or yellow eyes. Interestingly enough, when Melodia becomes "good", her hair color reverts to its original hair color, blue. Hmm...
- It could be seen as a subtle visual clue that Melodia was Dead All Along.
- Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2 is considered to be an Albino.
- Mostly because, unlike other examples of this trope, he exhibits some actual precautions albinos take in real life, like avoiding direct sunlight and wearing goggles.
- Fallout 3's Broken Steel DLC has Albino Radscorpions. They regenerate their considerable amount of health in the daytime, have defense comparable to you in Power Armor and are incredibly fast even after you cripple theirs legs. They shoo-out the Yao Guai as the most annoying random encounter and the previously useless Entomologist perk suddenly becomes a necessity. Albino Radscorpions compose a trio of new demonic spiders Broken Steel aded, alongside the Super Mutant Overlords and Feral Ghoul Reavers.
- However, this is averted in New Vegas, with Ranger Ghost. She's an NCR Sniper, and pretty tame. Despite the fact that somebody says "You won't hear her until you're already dead."
- Misery from Cave Story has completely white skin... and blue hair. But Cave Story doesn't do the "white skin as a mark of evil" thing, since Misery fights against a pair of Heroic Albinos.
- Godot from Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Trials And Tribulations is an interesting case. While his skin isn't exactly the palest, he has shock-white hair and his face-visor gives the impression of red "eyes". He also happens to be the main prosecutor in the game in which he appears. Despite specifically hating Phoenix, he's not all bad, though. And he's not exactly an albino: The white hair and face mask are the result of a failed attempt on his life by poison.
- In Investigations Shih-na, Shi-Long Lang's pale, white-haired and red-eyed assistant turns out to not only be working for a smuggling ring, essentially being the game's Dragon, but also turns out to actually be Calisto Yew, the culprit in a double murder from seven years ago.
- Kratos in God of War, though he's not a natural albino. He only became one due to the fact that after killing his wife and daughter in a blood frenzy, their ashes were bound to his skin as a Mark of Shame and thus he became known as the Ghost of Sparta.
- "That albino bitch" Commandant Steele of the Atlas Corporation from Borderlands.
- Imperator Ix from Sonic Chronicles. Ix is an albino echidna who captures all seven Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald, in a scheme to break the Nocturnus Clan out of the Twilight Cage, and to conquer Sonic's world.
- Word of God is that Ix was designed as an Expy of Finitveus from the above-mentioned Sonic the Hedgehog Archie comic.
- Liesolette Achenbach from Arcana Heart.
- Though he is a ghost, The Sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater is very pale with white hair (though that may be due to his age) and pale, no-color eyes that glow red at one point. While he's not evil, in fact he helps Snake out of prison at one point if the player is paying attention, he's intended to be creepy. But perhaps, in life, he was not albino at all.
- But perhaps that was the Hideo Kojima's intention (and maybe he and Yoji Shinkawa did their research as The Sorrow wears glasses).
- Strangelove from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is a subversion. Although she is an Albino, and she does work for an evil organization, she herself is not evil so much as she has her own reasons for working for them (Reviving The Boss).
- Baron von Blubba from Bubble Bobble.
- Xion the Unborn, from the Bloody Roar series. Mostly, the other characters are zooanthropes, a sub-race of humankind that can shapeshift into one hybrid human-animal form. He is, instead, possessed by an evil alien entity that grants him an alternate insectoid form. Eeeevil.
- Iska Farkas in Soul Caliibur Legends has white hair and is a Manipulative Bastard who sets the plot in motion just so he can get both Soul Swords for himself. He also has one red eye and one blue eye.
- Ghirahim from The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is one. You actually have to look very carefully to distinguish his skin from his white clothes.
- Dark Souls has Seath the Scaleless (who originated in the Kings Field series) - an insane and blind dragon who was born with pale white flesh instead of scales.
- Amu of Rance Quest.
Web Comics[]
- The Geisterdamen of Girl Genius, an order of ghostly white priestesses who are in the service of The Other.
- Malack in Order of the Stick certainly appears evil, being in addition to an albino a lizardfolk, a cleric of Nergal, God of Death and Destruction, and the chancellor to an evil empire. However he's also at least Affably Evil, and his actual alignment is still not entirely clear.
Western Animation[]
- Dr. Robert Kirkland "Kirk" Langström, also known as the Man-Bat, is depicted as being albinistic in the television series The Batman (which also depicts him as more villainous than other versions of the character, though he does reform). Langström's "Man-Bat" form is also depicted as being albino.
- Averted in Batman the Animated Series and its spinoff comics, where he has a perfectly healthy complexion.
- In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror VIII", Homer mistakes real-life albino musicians the Winter Brothers for flesh-eating mutants and runs them over. ("Die, you chalk-faced goons!") Somewhat understandable, since in Real Life Edgar Winter did portray himself as a vampire-like figure at times.
- Freakshow from Danny Phantom. Although it's possible it could just be white makeup, given his clownish nature. Then again---if it were truly makeup, why wouldnt his real face be shown to the Guys In White? Then once more, it's just a kid's cartoon.
- He has anemia
- The version of the Chameleon from Spider-Man: The Animated Series seems to fit, given that he was always shown as a speechless, white skinned- assassin, even though other versions are clear that he is wearing some type of mask.
- He only speaks when he changes into somebody and uses their voice.
- Pinky and The Brain, even though they have black pupils.
- The Slug from Batman the Brave And The Bold.
- Sloppy Joe from Grossology, on the few occasions when he is shown cleaned up, appears to be an albino.
- Dr. Two Brains of Word Girl due to an experiment gone wrong involving an albino rat, who was also evil.
- In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the main antagonist, named Rudy, is a huge albino Baryonyx. Unlike most other dinosaurs in the film, he is depicted as cruel, vicious, and entirely inimical. The filmmakers explicitly stated that his albinism is a reference to Moby Dick and other pale fictional antagonists
- King of the Hill has a quick shot at this. When Peggy is sent a letter from a previous student of hers, who's currently in prison for murder. In actuality, the man is someone she's never met before and is conning her. When Peggy tries to think of what student she might've had that could become a murderer, she remarks, "I think he might've had wavy blond hair," before adding disdainfully, "Or was he that albino boy?" Although given the character, this is likely less the writers thinking albinos are evil and more Peggy being close-minded.
- Possibly Evil-Lyn in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Pale skin, purple eyes, and white hair from at least late adolescence/young adulthood, according to one flashback.
- Lord Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2, and how. If you read his backstory, this actually plays into his motives - he knows his parents were ashamed of producing an heir with his health issues, and this lead to an Inferiority Superiority Complex. Of course, he's also the person who committed genocide out of sheer paranoia, and that was what lead to his parents' (very unhappy) decision to exile him, so he's still more-or-less responsible for his own misery.
- Though if you want to get technical, his condition isn't Albinism - it's Leucism, which reduces more than just melanin pigmentation. Still counts in principle, though.
- Albedo from Ben 10 Alien Force and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. In his first appearence he looked exactly like Ben before his omnitrix turns him to an Albino.
- Doctor Hamsterviel, the villain of Lilo and Stitch: The Series, is an evil hamster-like alien with white fur and red eyes.
Web Original[]
- Dralnea ler Reltrea appears to be a Complete Monster at first, as her first act in the story is killing a lower-class girl for not saluting her. This will be subverted in later chapters.
Real Life[]
- Though there is no proof that any of this is TRUE, Weird NJ is chock full of stories about "Albino Villages" and albinos attacking people. Most of these places have disappeared, possibly because many modern day teens are more tolerant of Albinos than those of the 70s and 80s, or possibly because most of these myths have been proven false.
- In intensely anti-white families, the unfortunate albino "whiter-than-the-whites" siblings, when there are such, are looked down upon, and when they get to school, they lash out at other kids. They become mean albinos with a Freudian Excuse.
- The Hopi people have an unusually high incidence of albinism, which some anthropologists theorize is a result of, if not Evil Albinos, at least Adulterous Albinos. As generations of albino males weren't able to labor in the great outdoors due to their susceptibility to sunburn, they had ample opportunity to sleep around with other men's wives, who also worked indoors a lot.
- ↑ Sort of an honest mistake, though, since most other albino animals do normally have red or pink eyes, especially rats, mice, and rabbits. And even albino humans' eyes can look red in photographs, etc., whether they are or not because again of no pigment in them and blood vessels