History UsefulNotes / GreenIsBlue

* Yuno's drunken rant in ''Manga/HidamariSketch'', currently NonindicativeName's page quote, is about green traffic lights.

* This is referenced in ''Manga/MassuguNiIkou'' when Hanako notices a green bug and wonders why it's called an "aomushi" (which translates to "blue-green insect").
* Misty's eye color is very inconsistent in the ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries''. Sometimes, she has blue eyes and other times, they're green. Since the switch to digital, she's ''usually'' been a SignificantGreenEyedRedhead though.

* In ''Manga/YonaOfTheDawn'', which takes place in a pseudo-ancient, semi-medieval East Asian fantasy kingdom, there are characters known as the Blue Dragon and the Green Dragon. However, it's the Blue Dragon who is the focus of a story arc with the title translated variously as "The Lushing Forest" or "The Forest Lushing Blue." ''Aoku naru mori'' literally means 'the forest becoming blue,' but is understood to mean 'the forest flourishing with new, lush plant life.' The old word for green is used, to signify the double meaning: the forest is 'blue,' because it used to be the home of the Blue Dragon village.

** Menelaus, the king of Sparta whose wife famously ran off to Troy with young Paris, is often called the red-haired king in English translations because he's called "Menelaus Xanthos" in the texts. Xanthos means "foreigner" and was how ancient Greeks referred to blondes, because only a foreigner would be blonde. So... he's a red-head? Like all of the "blue" examples above, it means "fair" or "light" rather than referring to a specific color. In Rome, it came to refer to red-heads because the Romans thought of red hair as lucky, so coppertop slaves were more valuable.
* This trope causes a bit of confusion when it comes to translating Chinese epics; for instance ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'' has a handful of translation difficulties, most commonly in trying to determine if Guan Yu's iconic spear is the Green Dragon Saber or Blue Dragon Blade. Since ''Three Kingdoms'' uses color prominently in its descriptions, this has led to something of a lack of consistency in translations as well as in [[VideoGame/DynastyWarriors derivative]] [[VideoGame/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdomsKoei works]].
* Chinese poems are just... complicated, especially due to linguistic drift of Chinese itself. One verse of ''Remembering Jiangnan'' (憶江南/忆江南) by the famous Tang dynasty[[labelnote:*]](618-907 AD)[[/labelnote]] poet Bái Jūyì (白居易) uses ''lǜ'' (綠/绿, now the word for 'green') and ''lán'' (藍/蓝, now the word for 'blue'), the latter to mean a grass named "''lán'' grass" that is used to extract green pigment.[[note]]As a result of the linguistic drift, most contemporary Chinese books on classical Chinese writings as a whole have long annotations sections every page and sometimes even ''translations'' into written vernacular Chinese (i.e. modern written Chinese, or ''báihuà'') to help readers and students understand the passage.[[/note]]

* ''Franchise/SuperSentai''/''Franchise/PowerRangers'':

* In the early days of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'', the color of Luigi's clothes was inconsistently portrayed as blue or green. It took a little while before the vivid green color became firmly established.
* Fox [=McCloud=] from ''VideoGame/StarFox'' is one of the better documented examples of this {{trope}}. In the 1993 comic, his eyes were green in the early pages, then blue through the rest of the comic. They remained blue in ''VideoGame/StarFox2''. ''VideoGame/StarFox64'' had a particular ArtShift that did not show eye color at all, but ''Farewell, Beloved Falco'' and ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures'' firmly established him with emerald green eyes. But this began to slip again in ''VideoGame/StarFoxAssault'', where most of the official art showed him with green eyes, but at least one picture not only showed him with blue eyes, but the blue faded to green within the same irises. They're green again in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Super Smash Bros. Brawl]]''.
* In ''[[VideoGame/StyleSavvy Style Savvy Fashion Forward]]'' the "green" color category consists mainly of teal colors. The colors most western players would call green is under "yellow greens".

** This extends to the name of the player's rival, known as "Green" in Japanese (which ties in with his family's plant themed names, the fact that green and red are complementary colors, and the green rug in his bedroom) and "Blue" internationally.

* The Orange Star army of ''VideoGame/NintendoWars'' has red to orange units depending on the game and pink fatigues (they're called the Red Star army in Japanese, but --[[RedsWithRockets for some reason]]-- this got changed internationally).
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'''s Overworld theme is called "Blue Fields". Obviously, the fields are green.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'':
*** The first {{summon|Magic}} that Arcanists learn, [[BlowYouAway Emerald Carbuncle]], has a clearly blue body.
*** The Kojin beast tribe, native to the [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Japan-analogous Far East]], are split into two factions, the Kojin of the Blue and the Kojin of the Red. The Kojin of the Blue are in fact green.
** In ''VideoGame/CrisisCore'', Aerith comments that Mako energy makes Zack's eyes 'glow blue like the sky'. Zack's eyes ''are'' blue, but the way she phrases it makes it clear she's referring to Mako energy itself, which is green.
** In the 2015 trailer for ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIIRemake'', Cloud, who has been blue-eyed in every one of his other appearances and described as such in the text of the original game, has green eyes. In the 2019 trailer, this was reverted.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'', a can of hot chocolate powder in Undyne's house is described as a 'green cylinder' despite clearly being blue on-screen. Since the game was written by [[Creator/TobyFox an American]] and pays homage to ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}'' and other '90s [=JRPGs=], it's likely a nod to this trope.
* The coin-op ''Super Locomotive'' has blue go signals.
* The Japanese coin-op "Blast Off" has danger ("condition") alert levels of red, yellow and... blue.

* The "Emerald Butterfly" in ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon64'' is blue.
* The conflation of blue and green in Japanese causes one line to come across very strangely in the English dub of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006''. The word for blue/green in Japanese has connotations similar to the words "green" or "greenhorn" in English: someone who is a bit naïve and new to their position. When Mephiles describes the Iblis Trigger as a "blue hedgehog," Blaze's response is to look at Silver and mumble "blue hedgehog...?" The game isn't necessarily implying she knows Sonic: in Japanese, she interprets Mephiles' mention of a "blue hedgehog" as a "green hedgehog" instead, so she turns to Silver, a naïve (i.e., "green") hedgehog. The blue/green distinction in English makes this line fairly untranslatable in the context of the ''Sonic'' series (English speakers don't see Sonic as green, they see him as blue, so the wordplay doesn't work) without a lot more work that [[ChristmasRushed the game absolutely did not have time for]].

However, these color terms are not universal. Ask a Russian, and they might say that pink is just light red. They might also say that sky blue is a completely different color to ocean blue. In the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinosphere Sinosphere]] -- the regions that either speak one of the Chinese languages (such as China, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.), or have languages that incorporate massive amounts of Chinese-derived extended vocabulary and have historically made widespread use of Chinese written characters (such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam), these regions traditionally have [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language the same word for both blue and green]], indicated with the Chinese character [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/青 青]] (or its simplified glyph 靑).[[note]]This character is read as reconstructed Middle Chinese ''tsheng'', Mandarin ''qīng'', Vietnamese ''thanh'' (poetic) or ''xanh'' (daily usage), Korean 청 ''cheong'', indigenous Japanese あお ''ao'', さお ''sao'' and しい ''shii'', and Sino-Japanese せい ''sei'' and しょう ''shō''.[[/note]] Most natural and traditional uses of both blue and green are represented by this word, including the color of the sea, the color of forests, etc. In more recent centuries, there has arisen a greater need to distinguish the concepts that English-speakers would understand as blue and green. The newer compound Chinese character 綠 (Japanese simplified: 緑, Chinese simplified: 绿) came to use in Chinese, Japanese and Korean to specifically mean green as opposed to blue.[[note]]This character is as reconstructed Middle Chinese ''ljowk'', Mandarin ''jī'', ''jí'', ''lǜ'' and ''qī'', Vietnamese ''lục'', Korean 록 ''rok'' and 녹 ''nok'', indigenous Japanese みどり ''midori'', and Sino-Japanese りょく ''ryoku'' and ろく ''roku''.[[/note]] Meanwhile, in China, the character 藍 (simplified: 蓝)[[note]]Mandarin: ''lán'', initially used to refer to the indigo plant -- as in the Xunzi quote "青、取之於藍，而青於藍／青、取之于蓝，而青于蓝" (lit. "blue [dye] is derived from the indigo plant, but is bluer [more vibrant/dark/pure] than the indigo plant", fig. "the student has {{surpassed the teacher}}", often simplified as the idiomatic phrase "青出於藍/青出于蓝")[[/note]], has been implemented to phase out the ambiguous 青 as the definitive character for blue.

* The ''Manga/YuGiOh'' manga gave Bakura blue eyes while the [[Anime/YuGiOhFirstAnimeSeries first anime adaption]] gave him green eyes. The [[Anime/YuGiOh second adaptation]] (the one which made it overseas) said "screw it" and made them brown.
* Yuno's drunken rant in ''Manga/HidamariSketch'', currently NonindicativeName's page quote, is about green traffic lights.

* ''Manga/CaseClosed'': Detective Takagi has been given several contradictory witness statements about a robber in the case ''Sato's Omiai''. Some of his confusion is cleared up when he realizes that an elderly witness used the old word for "green" (あお ''ao'') instead of the new word (みどり ''midori''), and that therefore the witness had said that the robber was wearing green, not blue (as he'd originally thought).

* Misty's eye color is very inconsistent in the ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries''. Sometimes she has blue eyes and other times they're green. Since the switch to digital she's ''usually'' been a SignificantGreenEyedRedhead though.
* In the [[Anime/AceAttorney2016 anime adaptation]] of ''Franchise/AceAttorney'', the three Signal Samurai which represent the colors of a traffic light are Red, Yellow, and Blue.
* In ''Manga/YonaOfTheDawn'', which takes place in a pseudo-ancient, semi-medieval East Asian fantasy kingdom, there are characters known as the Blue Dragon and the Green Dragon. However, it's the Blue Dragon who is the focus of a story arc with the title translated variously as "The Lushing Forest" or "The Forest Lushing Blue." ''Aoku naru mori'' literally means 'the forest becoming blue,' but is understood to mean 'the forest flourishing with new, lush plant life.' The old word for green is used, to signify the double meaning: the forest is 'blue,' because it used to be the home of the Blue Dragon village.

* ''Anime/PrettyCure'' has traditionally been shy to include {{Magical Girl}}s with green as a primary color. The lead protagonists are typically [[PinkHeroine pink]] and blue, followed by yellow, purple, and red. ''Anime/StarTwinklePrettyCure'' subverts this, though, with the counterpart to the pink Cure Star being the ''turquoise'' Cure Milky. Her ColorCodedForYourConvenience scenes can skew that shade into blue or green depending on what's required, and her transformation sequence prominently features both colors. When the predominantly blue Cure Cosmo is introduced later on, Milky's theme color leans more concretely toward green.
* The 1999 ''Manga/HunterXHunter'' anime adaptation gives Kurapika [[AdaptationDyeJob blue eyes]], which can look greenish in certain scenes.[[note]]His eyes are brown in the manga. That is, [[RedEyesTakeWarning when they're not scarlet]].[[/note]]
* In ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'', nearly every member of the Joestar family is depicted with blue or greenish-blue eyes, though this is more noticeable in the anime where they're often differing shades. Joseph, for example, has turquoise blue eyes in Part 2, while his older self in Part 3 is shown with teal or aqua green eyes. His grandson, Jotaro, is sometimes depicted with either color.

* ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' and ''Literature/TheIliad'' never mention the color blue. It might be slightly odd, given all the sea-faring in the ''Odyssey'', but this was because the ancient Greek language did not have a word at the time that meant 'blue'. Instead, the sea was called 'wine-dark'. The word that in middle-Greek came to mean blue (or blue-green, as the case may be) ''κυανό'' (where we get 'cyan') was used to describe the color of grass (i.e. what we would call green), as well as honey and the hair of blond people (i.e. what we would call yellow).

* In ''Series/TokkeiWinspector'', the heroes are meant to reflect the traffic lights. With that said, Walter was more bluish than greenish.
* ''Franchise/SuperSentai''/''Franchise/PowerRangers''

** And before them was robot policeman Signalman from ''Series/GekisouSentaiCarranger'' - or Blue Senturion from ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo''. He has a prominent traffic light theme ("fighting for traffic safety" being the Carranger motto), and is covered in red, yellow and blue lights.
** Oddly inverted in ''Series/SamuraiSentaiShinkenger''. The Shinkengers are meant to be the [[LegacyCharacter latest descendants of]] five ([[SixthRanger later six]]) mystical bloodlines dating back to ancient Japan. Despite this, there are separate blue and green rangers even though Japan didn't have a concept of blue being different from green when they supposedly originated.
** What makes this especially annoying is that the first ancient Japan-themed ''Franchise/SuperSentai'', ''Series/NinjaSentaiKakuranger'', got this right. Not only did it omit the green ranger (the team colors being red, white, blue, black and yellow) but their blue ranger's costume used a greenish/cyan shade of blue in contrast to most blue rangers' deep royal blue coloration.
* [[Series/TakeshisCastle Count Takeshi]]'s Emerald Guard wore jumpsuits that were far closer to blue in color than any shade of green usually associated with the name "emerald".
* The three forms of [[Series/KamenRiderDouble Kamen Rider Accel]] are supposed to be based off of the three colors in a traffic light. These forms are colored red, yellow and, you guessed it, blue.

* [[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Miku Hatsune]]'s thematic color tends to fluctuate between any given shade of green or blue, depending on the artist.

* Recap/TheAmazingWorldOfGumballS5E11TheCopycats: Darwin's ripoff is a blue frog, but the translated website describes him as green.

However, these color terms are not universal. Ask a Russian, and they might say that pink is just light red. They might also say that sky blue is a completely different color to ocean blue. In the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinosphere Sinosphere]] -- the regions that either speak one of the Chinese languages (such as China, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.), or have languages that incorporate massive amounts of Chinese-derived extended vocabulary and have historically made widespread use of Chinese written characters (such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam), these regions traditionally have [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language the same word for both blue and green]], indicated with the Chinese character [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/青 青]] (or its simplified glyph 靑).[[note]]This character is read as reconstructed Middle Chinese ''tsheng'', Mandarin ''qīng'', Vietnamese ''thanh'' (poetic) or ''xanh'' (daily usage), Korean 청 ''cheong'', indigenous Japanese あお ''ao'', さお ''sao'' and しい ''shii'', and Sino-Japanese せい ''sei'' and しょう ''shō''.[[/note]] Most natural and traditional uses of both blue and green are represented by this word, including the color of the sea, the color of forests, etc. In more recent centuries, there has arisen a greater need to distinguish the concepts that English-speakers would understand as blue and green. The newer compound Chinese character 綠 (Japanese simplified: 緑, Chinese simplified: 绿) came to use in Chinese, Japanese and Korean to specifically mean green as opposed to blue.[[note]]This character is as reconstructed Middle Chinese ''ljowk'', Mandarin ''jī'', ''jí'', ''lǜ'' and ''qī'', Vietnamese ''lục'', Korean 록 ''rok'' and 녹 ''nok'', indigenous Japanese みどり ''midori'', and Sino-Japanese りょく ''ryoku'' and ろく ''roku''.[[/note]] Meanwhile, in China, the character 藍 (simplified: 蓝)[[note]]Mandarin: ''lán'', initially used to refer to the indigo plant--as in the Xunzi quote "青、取之於藍，而青於藍／青、取之于蓝，而青于蓝" (lit. "blue [dye] is derived from the indigo plant, but is bluer [more vibrant/dark/pure] than the indigo plant", fig. "the student has {{surpassed the teacher}}", often simplified as the idiomatic phrase "青出於藍/青出于蓝")[[/note]], has been implemented to phase out the ambiguous 青 as the definitive character for blue.

* ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'': Although the text says that Saber's eyes are green, she is more often than not drawn with blue-green or even just flat-out blue eyes.

However, these color terms are not universal. Ask a Russian, and they might say that pink is just light red. They might also say that sky blue is a completely different color to ocean blue. In the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinosphere Sinosphere]] -- the regions that either speak one of the Chinese languages (such as China, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.), or have languages that incorporate massive amounts of Chinese-derived extended vocabulary and have historically made widespread use of Chinese written characters (such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam), these regions traditionally have [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language the same word for both blue and green]], indicated with the Chinese character 青 (or its simplified glyph 靑).[[note]]This character is read as reconstructed Middle Chinese ''tsheng'', Mandarin ''qīng'', Vietnamese ''thanh'' (poetic) or ''xanh'' (daily usage), Korean 청 ''cheong'', indigenous Japanese あお ''ao'', さお ''sao'' and しい ''shii'', and Sino-Japanese せい ''sei'' and しょう ''shō''.[[/note]] Most natural and traditional uses of both blue and green are represented by this word, including the color of the sea, the color of forests, etc. In more recent centuries, there has arisen a greater need to distinguish the concepts that English-speakers would understand as blue and green. The newer compound Chinese character 綠 (Japanese simplified: 緑, Chinese simplified: 绿) came to use in Chinese, Japanese and Korean to specifically mean green as opposed to blue.[[note]]This character is as reconstructed Middle Chinese ''ljowk'', Mandarin ''jī'', ''jí'', ''lǜ'' and ''qī'', Vietnamese ''lục'', Korean 록 ''rok'' and 녹 ''nok'', indigenous Japanese みどり ''midori'', and Sino-Japanese りょく ''ryoku'' and ろく ''roku''.[[/note]] Meanwhile, in China, the character 藍 (simplified: 蓝)[[note]]Mandarin: ''lán'', initially used to refer to the indigo plant--as in the Xunzi quote "青、取之於藍，而青於藍／青、取之于蓝，而青于蓝" (lit. "blue [dye] is derived from the indigo plant, but is bluer [more vibrant/dark/pure] than the indigo plant", fig. "the student has {{surpassed the teacher}}", often simplified as the idiomatic phrase "青出於藍/青出于蓝")[[/note]], has been implemented to phase out the ambiguous 青 as the definitive character for blue.

* ''Franchise/MetalGear'':
** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'', Big Boss' eyes are described as blue in dialogue, but they appear pale green. His eye appears bright blue in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidGroundZeroes''.
** Snake's eyes are dark green in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2'', but described in his bio in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'' as blue and appear clearly blue in that game. They've appeared genuinely blue ever since.
** Snake's (and Big Boss's) bandanna has also varied between blue and green. In ''VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake'' it's green, in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' it's blue, and in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'' and in Snake's ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'' appearance it's green again.

** Menelaus, the king of Sparta whose wife famously ran off to Troy with young Paris, is often called the red-haired king in English translations because he's called "Menelaus Xanthos" in the texts. Xanthos means "foreigner" and was how ancient Greeks referred to blondes, because only a foreigner would be blonde. So... he's a red-head? Like all of the "blue" examples above, it means "fair" or "light" rather than referring to a specific color.

* In the [[Anime/AceAttorney anime adaptation]] of ''Franchise/AceAttorney'', the three Signal Samurai which represent the colors of a traffic light are Red, Yellow, and Blue.

Recent advances in neuropsychological and archeological research suggest that the conception of colors in different civilizations depended on how reliably each civilization could produce dyes of that color on demand. In most cultures, the technology for manufacturing blue dyes was most difficult and came last and contributed to the conflation between blue and green. [[http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/ For more details, listen to this audio clip.]]

* This trope causes a bit of confusion when it comes to translating Chinese epics; for instance ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'' has a handful of translation difficulties, most commonly in trying to determine if Guan Yu's iconic spear is the Green Dragon Saber or Blue Dragon Blade. Since ''Three Kingdoms'' uses color prominently in its descriptions, this has led to something of a lack of consistency in translations as well as in [[VideoGame/DynastyWarriors derivative]] [[VideoGame/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms works]].

* This trope causes a bit of confusion when it comes to translating Chinese epics; for instance ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'' has a handful of translation difficulties, most commonly in trying to determine if Guan Yu's iconic BladeOnAStick is the Green Dragon Saber or Blue Dragon Blade. Since ''Three Kingdoms'' uses color prominently in its descriptions, this has led to something of a lack of consistency in translations as well as in [[VideoGame/DynastyWarriors derivative]] [[VideoGame/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms works]].

[[caption-width-right:350:[[DrivesLikeCrazy Yellow still means floor it.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[[DrivesLikeCrazy Yellow still means]] [[WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants floor it.]]]]

-->-- Edwin [=McCain=], "I'll Be"