The bug
When you have a guardian next to another entity and the guardian fires its beam, it brightens the other entity under some circumstances.
The reason
The following is based on decompiled version of Minecraft 1.8 using MCP. All method and class names are the names used in the decompiled version.
The reason why this happens is very likely that the public void func_177109_a(EntityGuardian p_177109_1_, double p_177109_2_, double p_177109_4_, double p_177109_6_, float p_177109_8_, float p_177109_9_)
method of the net.minecraft.client.renderer.entity.RenderGuardian
class disables lighting, culling and blending but does not enable it again after it rendered the Guardian.
Can confirm.