The contrast of white and black has a long tradition of metaphorical usage, traceable to the Ancient Near East, and explicitly in the Pythagorean Table of Opposites. In Western culture as well as in Confucianism, the contrast symbolizes the moral dichotomy of good and evil.

In fiction and mythology, a dark lord is an antagonistic archetype, acting as the pinnacle of villainy and evil within a typically heroic narrative.