Making a reference or basing your character into some element of the culture.

[BrobyDDark]

Ive always had a fascination for the mafia and the wild west and the past in general so I tend to base most of my characters backstories about certain fictional events based around what was going on at that time. Recently, however, Ive been interested with post apocalyptic society and the Steampunk genre. That results in some characters I have expierimented with in the past living after a nuclear war.

[Brovo]

Allusions and metaphors are second hand nature to me. I do them almost without thinking about it now. I've been doing them for years. I almost view life itself as a giant metaphor.

Here's a few examples since the OP seems to like examples.

Princess Kouri from the Legend of Renalta: Reborn started out with blue hair, blue eyes, wearing a blue dress and with a picture that displayed a naive, innocent young woman for her appearance. Blue is one of two colours required to create purple--the colour of royalty. Most importantly, blue is a colour often associated with water--water never stays as one shape. It's always changing. Ergo why water is often used in romance films to signify with a relationship is about to change. (Two people on a boat changing together, one sitting by a city fountain who then suddenly realizes his feelings and runs off to confess to the other, etc.) Kouri was also often a calm character, thinking out all of her decisions before committing to them--also traits often assigned to blue.

Later on, as the journey tears apart her innocence and makes her weary of the world, and the idea that she really has lost her home and her family truly hits her, she changes. She gets kidnapped and tortured from the group. By the time they rescue her they find she was tortured in a magical fashion--a necromancer wanted to steal her body to continue a cycle of "eternal youth"--and her once blue hair was black, her blue eyes also turning black, and her skin pale, lacking life. This symbolized her change from an innocent, cautious, thinking character to a scarred, wounded character surrounded by death. (Considering how often her team mates would die, this isn't entirely inaccurate either.) She only really showed extreme emotion after that when she used her magical powers, which controlled the realm of fire--fire is passionate, destructive, and violent.

As she continued her journey she continued to change. The group started to solidify into two camps: Newcomers who often left but occasionally stayed, and a core group who remained and stayed alive for a long time. She grew to have relationships with these people. These relationships changed her. They helped to start healing her, to give her something to fight for other than revenge. Her eyes turned back to a blue colour, the healing process slow but steady. One character in particular, Alex, eventually came to be her love interest.

As the journey progressed, she got her hair dyed by her love interest back to blue. Its natural colour is still black. Nobody knows if it will ever "heal" back to a natural blue. Her skin is still pale, but her eyes are a natural blue again. Blue... Colour of royalty. She is scarred on the surface, but within her eyes, is still the colour blue, and her magic summons fire to her fingertips. Fire is passionate. Fire is emotion incarnate. Fire is red.

Red and blue make purple.

Purple is the colour of royalty.

Kouri is a princess, and her greatest moments are often when she is in combat and needs to order others around (contemplative planning, blue) and use her magic (fire, red).

I love my metaphors.

This is just one character.

LoR is tons and tons and tons of metaphors.

[Foster]

Heh, that reminds me of an RP...

One character was a stoic introverted soldier, while another was an extreme extrovert pacifist that could only feel emotions through empathy.

They made an ironicly good pair.

[Asune]

I have a character who is kinda a very nuts girl, who plays a subplot in an RPG
The thing is that she is a psycho cannibal. Who love different and unique species.
So she traveled around the world recollecting information of different species.
Then she got angry at the fact that the evolution favors the common and the unique one are usually left away... (Btw, herself was special).
So she is kinda forcing her will over others, has burn villages, cannibalized people, kill those that opposite her, etc.

The thing is in one of her travels she met an old man called Charles... who was blind.. and different. Her wife Msr. Darwin was forcing him to live a common live, but the man didn't want to. As a punishment, the girl approached the blindness of the man to make him eat her own's wife flesh (The girl killed her and cooked part of her into a soup).

Then she took the name of the two as a pseudonym to write a book about her studies, this because her reputation was already stained
Thus she called herself Charles R. Darwin in the book. The Origin of species, in the one, despite she narrates the truth of evolution and survival, she hid a critics about how society and species works this way and is unfair. Now she'll leave the papers to be found in the future by anyone who could claim her title. As long as her idea are spreaded she doesn't even care if it's some random old man in the future.

[Brovo]

Heh, that reminds me of an RP...

One character was a stoic introverted soldier, while another was an extreme extrovert pacifist that could only feel emotions through empathy.

They made an ironicly good pair.

Introverts and Extroverts can actually make very good pair-ups if you play your cards right. Generally speaking they can complete one another and fill in the gaps so long as they can see one another as appealing choices. Not arbitrary ones.

[Foster]

Well, they were such total and complete opposites.