Being as jet-black as Zorro's costume enables horse and rider to more easily elude capture at night.
In the second season episodes that take place in Monterey, he is replaced by an equally fast and strong white horse named Phantom, the former steed of a murdered Army lieutenant.
In The Family Channel's 1990s TV series, after Diego/Zorro's first exploit (freeing his father and Victoria Escalante from jail), he decides that he needs a fast horse that nobody in the area has ever seen.
In Sony's film The Mask of Zorro (1998), when Diego returns to his home after being imprisoned for twenty years, he finds that everything, including the original Tornado is gone.
It is an intelligent animal, but was at first poorly disciplined and seemed to deliberately make life difficult for his would-be master.
[2] Another horse, the Friesian gelding Tonka, was used in the film as a backup in some galloping scenes and when Ariaan, a stallion, didn't want to cooperate.