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Gravity Is Purple

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Gravity, when depicted as an element, tends to be quite tough to visually represent in media, what with it being an invisible force and all. Wind has a similar problem with being colorless, and people from Asia often to depict it as green. What color would they use to represent gravity?

As far as East Asian media is concerned, it's often purple. Is it because gravity is powerful? Or maybe mysterious? After all, purple is viewed as a "space" color, despite outer space being mostly black (but then again, Purple Is the New Black). In Western media, gravity tends to have more diverse coloring (assuming it even has color in the first place), with purple occasionally showing up as well.

Like gravity, darkness also tends to be associated with purple color schemes, and is not uncommon for both elements to overlap with each other. In this case, some black or dark blue may be mixed with the purple. Black Holes are a popular result of this elemental blending, and they're also often depicted with purplish tints despite their name (again, because Purple Is the New Black). Expect Gravity Masters to have purplish motifs too.

A Sub-Trope of Color-Coded Elements.

Compare Fire Is Red, Water Is Blue, Wind Is Green, and Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Black Cat: The Brute Maro can both control the gravity around him and project super-dense gravity bombs, which are purple-colored.
  • D.Gray-Man: Eshi, one of the Akuma, is able to create "Gravity Chains", which are purple and made of dark matter.
  • Digimon Fusion: Gravimon's gravity techniques have purple energy effects on them.
  • Fairy Tail: Bluenote Stinger, one of the antagonists of the Tenrou Island Arc, uses Gravity Magic, which mixes black with two or three different shades of purple.
  • Future Card Buddyfight: Most of Gaito Kurouzu's items and spells are gravity-related, and he himself wears a ton of purple, hair included.
  • In Metal Fight Beyblade, Julian Konzern owns a beyblade named Black Excalibur which is a Gravity Master. The bey itself has a black-purple color scheme and its bey spirit is portrayed with a light purple color palette.
  • My Hero Academia: It's very subtle, but a flash of purple light sometimes appears around Uraraka's fingers when she activates her antigravity powers.
  • One Piece: Issho, a.k.a. Admiral Fujitora, is able to manipulate gravity, which usually manifests as purple energy waves. He follows the tradition of Marine Admirals being Color Characters, as both his Code Name (which means "Wisteria Tiger") and clothes match his Elemental Powers.
  • Zatch Bell!: Brago's gravity is portrayed as both black or purple (or even both) depending on the spell he uses.

    Asian Animation 
  • BoBoiBoy: The character Yaya Yah's gravity manipulation is depicted as purplish pink, and she appropriately wears lots of pink and purple.

    Comic Books 
  • Roxy "Freefall" Spalding from Gen¹³ has her gravity represented through purple energy or sparkles several times. She also has a preference for purple clothing.
  • Starman: Thom Kallor/Star Boy sometimes has purple effects show up when he uses his gravity manipulation powers. His original costume was also primarily purple.

    Film — Animated 
  • Treasure Planet: The main ship is equipped with an artificial gravity generator. When switched on, it releases purple air waves.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Amethyst dragons, the most powerful of all the gem dragons, have purple gem-like scales and have a Breath Weapon that releases a wave of gravitational force, causing those hit in its area to be unable to move. Also, unlike other dragons who must use their wings to fly, amethyst dragons can simply hover mid-air.

    Toys 
  • LEGO:
    • In BIONICLE, purple is the primary color of Matoran, Toa, and Turaga of Gravity. However, the two most notable gravity-manipulators in the franchise (that is to say, the only ones to appear outside of supplementary materials and the only ones to appear as actual toys) do not fit this pattern; Nuhvok-Kal is black and silver, and Hewkii (Toa Mahri form, via his Mask of Power) is yellow and black.
    • The "Tournament of Elements" set in the Ninjago Legacy line has purple disks representing Gravis's gravity powers. The TV show averts this, though.
  • Transformers: Generation One: Drag Strip's gravity-manipulating gun is colored purple.

    Video Games 
  • The Gravity Bomb from Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! causes a dark purple "explosion" that sucks everything found within its radius into a black hole, located at its center.
  • The Gadroon from Champions Online use purple-colored gravitic attacks.
  • Dota 2: The hero Enigma is said to be the Anthropomorphic Personification of gravity itself. He is always surrounded by a light purple aura.
  • Elden Ring introduces Gravity sorceries, which have a purple glow to them. One of the best staffs to manipulate gravity, the Meteor Staff, even has a purple stone at the tip to distiguish it from "normal" (blue) glintstone magic.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Big Bad Dark Force is able to increase the gravity around him, and his all-black colour scheme is punctuated with purple.
  • The Final Fantasy has the spell Gravity/Gravira/Graviga (occasionally known as Demi), a Percent Damage Attack that is often colored purple with black, reflecting on how the gravity element is sometimes lumped with the darkness element.
  • The Falchion β from Gradius Gaiden has the "Gravity Bullet" as a possible weapon which is basically a purple bullet that explodes into a purple Sphere of Destruction.
  • The gravity lifts from Halo employ gratuitous purple gravity effects.
  • The tractor beam tool in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is purple, as are objects that can be manipulated with it.
  • Katamari Damacy: Downplayed with Velvet, one of the Dashing Prince of All Cosmos' many cousins. One of her most notable traits is her tendency to hover around everywhere, with her bell-shaped skirt making her resemble a UFO. She also wears light violet as her signature shade.
  • Kingdom Hearts has Gravity spells in the first game and Chain of Memories. In the former game, they're purple mixed with black (as a nod to Final Fantasy's own Gravity spell), while in the latter, they're just purple.
  • In The Legend of Dark Witch 2, Mari utilizes gravity-based attacks in her battle and are coloured purple. Ditto the Dark Matter skill you get from defeating her.
  • Magneto's attacks in the Marvel vs. Capcom series heavily employ his lesser known Gravity Master skills and are all colored purple.
  • Mega Man 5: Gravity Man's... well, gravity, is shown colored purple and dark blue in at least one official artwork. Likewise, the weapon you get from him - Gravity Hold - gives Mega Man a purple and white scheme. Galaxy Man's Black Hole Bomb also turns Mega Man and Proto Man purple, but Galaxy Man himself is constantly changing into all the colors of the rainbow.
  • Mega Man X:
    • Mega Man X3: The Gravity Well weapon, used by Gravity Beetle (and X), has pale purple tones in official artwork. X also gets a primarily pinkish purple armor when equipped with it.
    • Mega Man X8: Gravity Antonion's weapon, the Squeeze Bomb (which X can copy after defeating him), is colored black and purple.
  • Metroid: The Gravity Suit, a recurring upgrade for Samus, is purple-colored in most games (The Prime games make it more bluish gray). However, a more literal example of this trope is in Other M, where the Gravity Suit is just a feature of the Varia Suit instead of its own thing. Activating it causes Samus to be surrounded by a purple aura, turning her immune to all gravitational effects. In addition, in Other M, passages with strong gravity have dark purple walls.
  • Ninja Gaiden: The Art of The Piercing Void, one of Ryu's most powerful ninja techniques, allows him to control gravity in order to create a black hole surrounded by purple energy.
  • In Overwatch, Zarya's ultimate, Graviton Surge, is a swirling vortex of energy with streaks of dark blues and purples.
  • The Pokémon move Gravity, which grounds all Pokemon currently in the battlefield (leaving them open to Ground-type moves while also preventing airborne techniques from being used), is most often depicted as a dark purplish wave dragging everything downward.
  • Purple Pikmin introduced in Pikmin 2 are far heavier and stronger than other pikmin, landing with a thud that deals a bit of extra damage to enemies they're thrown at. They're the only pikmin that can render the normally intangible Water Wraith vulnerable, as apparently their impact carries a gravitational component that knocks it out of being dimensionally phased.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus: All of the gravity manipulation-themed puzzles are depicted with a very saturated purple including the grav streams that you generate with the Grav-Tether and use to get to new areas.
  • The G-Lifter from Rochard is a sort of gravity gun that fires purple gravitational energy that moves objects around.
  • In The Sims 4: Kids Room Stuff, Vulpes is a mostly-purple Voidcritter that can manipulate gravity according to its Flavor Text. Its element is Void, which is associated with purple.
  • The Violet Void power up from Sonic Colors turns Sonic into a violet-colored, living black hole.
  • The Gravitron boss from Strider (2014) is a machine that emanates a violet gravity field around itself.
  • In Super Robot Wars, every gravity- and gravitation-based attack is black with purple highlights. This is also true concerning their black hole attacks, strange enough.

    Web Animation 
  • RWBY: Dust is a naturally occurring form of energy that is mined as a crystal. Different energy types produce crystals of different colours. Gravity Dust can look almost black in colour, or a very dark near-black purple depending on lighting. However, when Gravity Dust is actually activated, the energy colour it gives off is always purple. Whenever Huntsmen produce purple energy when using Dust, it's always Gravity effects that result, such as Jaune's shield glowing purple whenever he uses Dust energy to repel attacks and repel himself away from the ground when falling, or the Grimm Reaper's dual kurisagami glowing purple whenever she uses them to repel herself away from the ground or attract one weapon back to the other.

    Western Animation 
  • The Galaxy Trio: Gravity Girl is a costume example. Her outfit is almost entirely purple and violet, but her gravity rays are white (most of the time, at least).
  • Jackie Chan Adventures: Tso Lan, the Demon Sorcerer of Moon, is able to alter gravity through dark purple beams. His outfit is a red and purple Chinese robe.

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