If a water tap has blue on it, it's pretty much guaranteed to produce cold water unless there is a flaw in it somehow. Anybody who feels cold (provided they're not having fever-chills) will immediately become blue in the face (and in wackier cartoons, blue in the everything, which may or may not include hair). Thermometers, especially in cartoons, might show temperatures below a certain point (e.g. ten, zero, etc) with a blue line (not usually true in real life — with real thermometers that have a line, it's usually red no matter what the temperature). Ice and occasionally snow might be shown with a bluish tint, and anything representing ice will be light blue. Even if the ice itself is not blue, if something or somebody is contained within it, they will have a blue tint. Characters whose jobs/powers/etc have to do with ice, cold, or winter (for example, An Ice Person, the ice part of a Fire/Ice Duo, etc) will tend to be blue or have blue clothes. Often, if a flame is blue, it will be cold, even though in real life, blue flames are hotter than normal ones, and blue stars are hot while red ones are cold.
Some Truth in Television to this: ice may look slightly blue depending on the lighting, and due to the altered blood flow that being cold often brings on, people might look a bit blue (especially in the face and/or extremities), though not to the extent that's found in cartoons. While thermometers might not work the way they do in fiction, water taps will often actually be painted blue if they produce cold water. In color theory, blue is a cool color, which inherently tilts it towards this type of symbolism.
Please note that saying, "Played straight for X, averted for Y" is probably not necessary because blue is such a common colour that it's common for one blue thing to represent cold and another to not. However, "played straight for X, downplayed/zigzagged/etc for Y" may be useful. Use your best judgment. Interesting fact: blue is sometimes classified as a "cold colour" by artists. Due to the trope Ice Magic Is Water, this is related to the Water Is Blue trope. Do note, however, that water will generally be shown as blue in illustrations and cartoons even if it's not cold. Frequently overlaps with Blue Is Calm as blue ice can have connotations of quiet, calmness, and isolation. May overlap with Icy Blue Eyes.
Contrast other tropes that associate warm colors with heat, like Fire Is Red and Warm Place, Warm Lighting.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Pet Shop's Horus generates blue-colored ice to be tossed at close distances.
- Golden Wind: Ghiacco, whose name means "Ice" in Italian, has blue hair and his alter-ego, White Album, can freeze things and control ice.
- Pretty Cure:
- In Doki Doki! PreCure, Cure Diamond/Glitter Diamond, who has blue hair and wears a blue and white dress, is designated ice powers.
- In KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode, Cure Gelato, who is decked out head-to-head in blue, has powers based on ice and ice cream.
Asian Animation
- In Happy Heroes, Planet Gray has two suns that are both controlled using a temperature control room. One of these suns is red and produces heat, while the other is blue and cold enough to freeze the Supermen's Car Knights within seconds.
- Mechamato: Because he is on the forefront of Sejuku's ice attacks, MechaBot's metal skin and tongue turn blue from the cold.
Comic Books
- Batman: Mr. Freeze wears a refrigerated suit of armor and has pale skin. It varies depending on the depiction, but usually his suit is blue and occasionally his skin will have a blue tint.
- The Flash:
- Captain Cold is a villain with a blue and white outfit.
- One iteration of Killer Frost has blue skin and clothes, as does Icemaiden.
- Tora "Ice" Olafsdotter wears blue.
- One Superman comic features Cythonna the Kryptonian goddess of ice. She can create monsters from frost and generate ice, and has blue skin and clothes.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Princess Snowina and Minister Blizzard live in the cold and are implied to be at least partially made of ice, given they can melt in high temperatures, and have light blue skin and wear blue clothes.
Fan Works
- Danganronpa: Memento Mori: Ultimate Snowboarder Yukiharu Fuyumura is associated with light blue; his jacket, pants, gloves, boots and goggles are all light blue in color.
- Danganronpa: Paradise Lost: Miyuki Nagasu is the Ultimate Ice Skater, and is never seen without her light blue ice skating costume.
- Destiny Intertwined: The most common color variant of Ice by a good margin is blue, followed by white and aqua. The most common of the rare variants is deep blue, a slushy kind created by Fire or Water impurities. Ice of other colors, such as purple or black, is very rare.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami is a Sailor Senshi with blue hair whose second spell can create ice.
- The Portal: Thomas Smith gets transformed into a dragon with blue scales and the ability to breathe ice.
Films — Animation
- Frozen (2013): Elsa has ice powers and generally wears blue. Though in Frozen II she switches to a white dress and her ice looks brighter, probably to distinguish from water, which inexplicably a seperate element.
- Hercules: Hades has blue fire instead of hair that is usually blue and cold unless he's mad, at which point it turns into normal fire. note
- In The Incredibles and its sequel, Frozone has ice powers and wears a light blue and white super suit.
- In Moshi Monsters the Movie, Poppet's pet, Mr. Snoodle, turns blue when he's travelling with Poppet, Katsuma, and another pet named Blinki on a snowy mountain.
- In Rise of the Guardians, Jack Frost wears a navy blue hoodie.
Films — Live-Action
- 101 Dalmatians (1996): Horace's skin turns blue after he falls into a frozen pond, and he spends a good portion of his screen time afterward shivering.
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Antarctica is portrayed onscreen with a distinct dark-blue hue, barring Ghidorah's lightning when he awakens.
- Invoked by Friedrich in The Sound of Music when the Von Trapp children are trying to cover up their attempt to visit Maria at the abbey. Their initial claim that they were blueberry picking is refuted by their amused father, who points out that it is too early in the year for blueberries. They quickly change their story to strawberry picking, and a panicked Friedrich claims that it was so cold the berries had turned blue. You can see the older children rolling their eyes, and Captain Von Trapp isn't fooled for a second, though he plays along for his own enjoyment.
- White Chamber: When the titular box's controlled environment is set to freezing temperatures, the white lightning turns blue.
Literature
- The title of Blue Is The Warmest Color inverts this trope while referencing it. Using the contrast between the perception of blue as cold and the idea of it being a warm colour to summarise the baby lesbian protagonist's confused feelings to her blue haired Love Interest.
- In the Conan the Barbarian story "Gods of the North", a girl's body suddenly is wrapped in a "cold blue flame".
- In The Dark is Rising, Hawkin summons nine magical flames that burn blue and are cold instead of hot. They represent the power of the Dark and the spells of the Deep Cold.
- Dream Park, features a pit that has normal fire on one side and cold, blue fire (known as "anti-fire") on the other which turns the ashes into fuel for the normal fire.
- In Good Omens, the Metatron is sort of God's second-in-command and is seen wrapped in blue flames that are said to be cold.
- The "Cool" in One Cool Friend is colored light blue. The same light blue tone is used for the bags of ice that Elliot buys.
- Ilke from Phenomena has icy blue skin (and in some artwork) light blue hair because the frost spirit Hish blew some of his powers into her, making her become a frost child with power over everything cold.
- Crystal the Snow Fairy of Rainbow Magic is heavily associated with the colour blue, even more than white. She wears primarily blue, and the cover of her book is blue.
- In Sword Art Online, Eugeo has a blue Color Motif, favoring blue outfits and wielding the Blue Rose Sword. He's also An Ice Person thanks to his sword's ability.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: "Amy's Choice" features a cold, blue-green star.
- Just like in the comic books, both versions of Captain Cold from The Flash uses blue as his main outfit (straightly dark blue, since the comic book version varies between blue and light blue mixed with white), mostly normal clothes instead a costume:
- The 1990 series he uses a dark blue suit and longcoat with a light-blue shirt and tie.
- The 2014 series only have a dark blue coat with a hood as the only blue part (apart of the blue lights of his weapon), being the rest of his clothes black.
- Kamen Rider Saber has Rintaro, wielder of the Suiseiken Nagare, who usually controls water as Kamen Rider Blades, whose main color scheme is blue. But when he gains access to Tategami Hyoujuu Senki, Blades becomes white and blue and he now has control over ice.
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: The tips of the tendrils around the Frost Vark's mouth glow with blue bioluminescence, plus its armored body appear to have a bluish-gray tinge to it, and it (A) lives in a subarctic mountain range in Alaska, and (B) has the ability to utterly rapid-freeze people and objects by drawing in the heat through its mouth.
- In Yo Gabba Gabba!, Toodee is blue and lives in an icy environment.
Tabletop Games
- In Call of Cthulhu, "The Madman" features a bluish-white flame that generates cold air during a ceremony.
- In Magic: The Gathering, most of the spells associated with ice and frost (Ice Cage, Frozen Aether, Flashfreeze, Icefall Regent) are blue.
- In Talislanta, the Mirin have naturally blue skin, and are immune to the freezing cold in their homeland of L'Haan.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- Downplayed. While blue is primarily associated with water, the original series frequently uses blue as a secondary color for characters associated with the ice element. This is seen with Matoro, Kopeke (in his original design), Thok, Kazi, Strakk, Metus, and Gelu. Additionally, most ice-themed characters on Mata Nui and Metru Nui have Icy Blue Eyes, such as Kopaka, Nuju, Kohrak, Ehrye, and Keerakh.
- The 2015 reboot once again uses blue as a secondary color for ice-themed characters, such as Kopaka, Izotor, and Melum. These characters also have Icy Blue Eyes.
Video Games
- In one of The Addams Family games, Wednesday is frozen and turns blue.
- ANNO: Mutationem: Chip equipment that provide an freezing effect onto weapons are colored blue when seen at shops. On another note, Melissa is able conjure up blue ice from the air particles to form an assortment of objects of her choosing, either a javelin and wings.
- Bug Fables has Leif, an ice magic-wielding moth, who is primarily blue in color. It's not just a dumb coincidence; Leif's body was recolored blue due to prolonged exposure to ice magic crystal fragments in his body, coming from the cordyceps inside him; before that, he used to be red.
- The blue mechas you can jump in to attack enemies in Captain Commando have iceballs that can freeze other characters. In a similar way, there're also red mechas that can burn enemies.
- Chantelise: Freezing spells (along with water spells) are cast by blue elemental crystals.
- In Destiny 2, the "Stasis" ice-based subclasses are associated with the color blue. The old Arc element was originally blue, but was changed to cyan with Stasis's introduction.
- In Don't Starve a faint bluish tint is applied to the scenery during winter.
- In Epic Battle Fantasy, ice monsters, weapons and skills all have some blue related to them.
- Fortune Summoners: Played with. Sana usually wears blue and is the one to cast ice magic, but she wears blue because she's a water mage.
- Hades: Demeter's boons are all centered around giving Zagreus ice-based powers and abilities and she's appropriately colored and styled in all white and pale blue.
- Heroes of Might and Magic:
- Ice and otherwise cold magic, in addition to having blue icons, are often grouped under blue-hued Water Magic schools.
- The Sanctuary faction in Heroes VI, the generally blue faction overall, features an icy blue Frost Shrine structure from which icy blue Snow Maidens.
- Killer Instinct has Glacius, an alien with ice-based powers. His main color scheme (skin) is a mixture of white and blue.
- In Kingdom Hearts, Hades from Hercules appears, although there is no reference this time to his default blue flames being cold.
- Kula Diamond from The King of Fighters has long brown hair, which changes to light blue when she uses her icy powers in fights.
- Kirby Star Allies has a Blizzard element, which is blue.
- The Legend of Spyro: Spyro's ice breaths are white-blue in color. Cyril, the Ice Guardian, is primarily light blue with purple wing membranes and belly plates, while ice elemental enemies are the same bright blue as Spyro's attacks.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- In Ocarina of Time, there are magical, bottled, blue flames which are said to provide "refreshing coolness".
- The blue flames return, with the ability to freeze things, in Spirit Tracks.
- In Breath of the Wild, Naydra is an ice spirit who takes the form of a dragon with blue icicle-like spikes.
- The uncharted planet Solcrum in Mass Effect is an inversion. It orbits a highly energetic blue star, meaning the planet is covered in a deep blue haze and is scorching hot, with temperatures of 351 °C, enough to qualify for a heat hazard and kill you if you're exposed for too long even with your spacesuit on.
- Subverted in the Mega Man series. Though there're icy bosses that use blue or light blue as part of their outfits (like Ice Man, Blizzard Man, Freeze Man and Frost Man in the Classic series), not all bosses that use ice have this colors (sometimes use white and light green), as well there're many bosses that use blue that don't use ice and some bosses have ice-themed stages but don't use ice (like Crystal Man, Flash Man and Gemini Man).
- In Metroid Fusion, the light blue X parasites freeze Samus solid for a few seconds.
- Mortal Kombat: Sub-Zero, who has inherited ice powers, usually dresses in light blue. His pupil Frost also has blue clothes and ice powers.
- Moshi Monsters:
- The Wistful Snowtots are living snow men who wear blue hats and scarves.
- Abominable Snowlings are Yetis who live in the snow have blue skin (but white fur).
- Dainty Deer are blue deer who live in the snow.
- The aesthetic for the Snowies and Frosties sets have lots of light blue in them.
- One of the Original Generation characters from M.U.G.E.N is Blizzard, An Ice Person martial artist based on Reiji Oyama who has light blue skin and blue-ish black hair thanks to his ice powers as well dressing with blue pants.
- Pokémon: The Ice Type's theme colour is a very light blue as is ice in general.
- Prayer of the Faithless: Ice elemental damage's Shows Damage numbers are in cyan.
- Puyo Puyo Chronicle has the cast visit five towns that are coded after the five Puyo colors - green, blue, red, yellow, and purple. The blue town, Bleuo, is located in a cold enviroment with lots of snow on the ground.
- In Ristar, Itamor, the boss of Planet Freon, is dark blue. One of Itamor's attacks is freezing Ristar with his ice breath, and then trying to suck him up with his Vacuum Mouth. In the North American version of the game, Itamor even resembles a giant snowman (he resembles a giant cat in the Japanese version).
- In most games of the Shin Megami Tensei when an ally or enemy is under the Frozen dtatus effect, they turn blue. In addition, all ice spells have blue motifs. Series Maskot Jack Frost is also dressed in blue.
- Undertale has an ice town called Snowdin, which has a somewhat blue theme.
- In A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky, the tundra features blue dogs called Frostbites.
- In Warframe, Frost has the power to create avalanches and freeze people. His armor is blue and white.
- In World of Warcraft, the torches and braziers in Ice Crown City burn with blue flames. In the fight with the first boss Lord Marrowgar, he throws these flames and calls them Coldflame; they deal frost damage to anyone who stands in them.
Web Comics
- In Yokoka's Quest, Yin, has blue horns and wields ice magic. Her voice is also described as sounding cold by Yokoka when she first hears it.
Web Original
- In How to Kill a Mockingbird, the mockingbirds are "on cold fire" which is represented as blue flames.
- Neopets:
- Ice is generally drawn as white or clear with a sky blue tint.
- Taelia is a faerie who lives on the top of the icy Terror Mountain, sometimes referred to as the Snow Faerie, and she has blue feathers at the tips of her wings and wears a blue parka and blue lipstick.
- Adee hangs out in the snow, eats a lot of ice cream, and wears a blue snowsuit and hat.
- Three species of petpet are blue and live in the snow. These are Onas, Feepits, and Wherfies.
- Chill from Scrub Club wears a blue hat, anorak, leggings, and boots, and her entire persona is based on the cold: she turns into a cold faucet and her favourite day of the year is the coldest.
Western Animation
- Zigzagged for Avatar: The Last Airbender: Waterbenders wear blue clothes and while that could just be the water association, they also tend to live in the cold.
- Ben 10: Played straight most of the time, with most of Ben's ice themed aliens being blue in color like Big Chill, Arctiguana, or even Heatblast when he catches a cold which causes his flames to turn blue. However it's averted with Ultimate Big Chill, who's fiery red in color and is described to breathe "ice flames" that's "fire so cold it burns".
- In Engie Benjy, the titular mechanic owns a thermometer which has different colors representing the different levels of temperature. Blue is the coldest.
- In the Martha Speaks episode "Verb Dog, When Action Calls", Martha dreams that her friends have superpowers. Alice has ice powers and she wears a blue jumpsuit.
- MeteoHeroes: Su Pa Sin/Nix controls snow storms and ice and has a cyan color scheme.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Bird in the Hoof", Philomena (the titular bird) turns blue on purpose to communicate that she's too cold.
- Ninjago: Some of ice ninja Zane's uniforms have blue accents and he has had blue eyes since the fourth season.
- In R.O.B. the Robot, planets associated with the cold (ex. the Ice Planet and the snowy side of the Weather Planet) are primarily blue. There's also an odd variation; there's a Blue Space Virus which functions the same as a cold.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Frosta uses ice magic and has a primarily blue wardrobe.
- In Steven Universe, Sapphire is a Gem with a blue color scheme who can freeze things, but only when she's very emotional.
- In the ThunderCats (1985) movie Thundercats Ho!, Lion-O falls into a snowy mountainside. Later when Snowman pulls Lion-O from the snow, his body is entirely blue. Snowman even comments on it.
- In the Tom and Jerry episode "Snowbody Loves Me", the snow has a blue tint and when Jerry is frozen, the ice that surrounds him is completely blue.
- In the Total Drama episode "If You Can't Take the Heat", Heather gets locked in the camp's walk-in freezer for her power trip. When Lindsay lets her out, Heather is blue from head to toe.
- In Voltron: Legendary Defender, the Blue Lion has the ability to generate ice breath.
- In The Year Without a Santa Claus, the Snow Miser is blue-skinned.
Real Life
- Inverted with stars and flames, where the color blue is hotter than the color red.
- Played straight with the Solar System's outermost two planets, the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, which are freezing-cold worlds that are colored blue due to the presence of methane ice crystals in their atmospheres.
