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alt title(s): Green Rock 
An object or technology with powers so diverse and magical that it can cause almost any effect as needed by the plot. A form of Applied Phlebotinum that is easier to spell.
If an actual substance, a common variation is to have it come in different colors, each with a varying set of effects. This occasionally ties in with Elemental Rock Paper Scissors, with each color variation attuned to a different classical element.
The name refers to the Kryptonite meteor rocks used in almost every episode of Smallville. These Green Rocks, in addition to functioning as Clark Kent's Kryptonite Factor, have been known to: give people random superpowers, turning them into the Monster Of The Week; help people recall memories; make cars go faster; and send a phone call back in time, among many other things.
If the effects are controlled by a character instead of being random, that's a Green Lantern Ring. When Green Rock don't necessarily create the plot, but send the plot to the characters, it is a Magnetic Plot Device.
Related to Phlebotinum Du Jour. For less-exotic variants, see Lightning Can Do Anything, I Love Nuclear Power and Genetic Engineering Is The New Nuke.
Not to be confused with Mineral Macguffin.
Examples
Anime
- The Minovsky Particle in the classic anime Mobile Suit Gundam acts as a Green Rock; it not only disrupts radio, radar and infra-red radiation (necessitating close combat in space, and by extension Humongous Mecha), it also clusters into "mega particles" which enable the use of Energy Weapons, and can be arranged into a "lattice structure" to form Deflector Shields using electromagnetic fields. Some of the Alternate Universe Gundam series have employed similar do-everything technology for similar results:
- Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny had the Neutron Jammer (N-Jammer for short), which like the Minovsky Particle was highly effective at disrupting sensors and communications, thus [[Handwave handwaving]] a reason for Humongous Mecha to be effective war machines. But that was just a side effect; they were created to make nuclear reactions impossible. This not only provides a justification for the battery-powered mecha (which run out of energy as the plot demands, though in a real Wall Banger it's never explained how their motherships, which recharge said mecha, are powered), it makes the use of nuclear weapons (which the series backstory shows as being how the war started).
- Basically every superweapon in the SEED universe was also based on technology derived from the N-Jammer. First was the N-Jammer Canceller, which does exactly what it sounds like. It allowed for nuclear-powered mecha, and a revival of nuclear warheads as a viable weapon. The range of N-Jammer Cancellers was short enough that N-Jammers were still perfect sensor jammers, though. N-Jammer Cancellers were also critical in the design of GENESIS, a Wave Motion Gun capable of wiping out all life on Earth that basically combined all of the fictional technologies introduced previously. And early in SEED Destiny, there was the Neutron Stampeder, which forced nuclear warheads to detonate prematurely, thus causing an enemy fleet to nuke itself.
- Gundam 00 continues this trend with the mysterious GN Particles, which can jam communications, be used as a propellant, be used as protective shielding, and is even the basis for the Gundams' energy swords.
- Devil Fruit, from the anime One Piece. Eating one can give you just about any superpower imaginable, the type depending on the fruit you ate. Powers range from animal transformation to elemental control to coming back from the dead as a living skeleton. What really pushes it into Green Rocks territory is the ability for inanimate objects to "eat" the animal-type fruits, becoming Empathic Weapons in the process. But, unlike some Green Rocks, the devil's fruits have a strong stigma. The user is unable to swim, and loses all power upon significant contact with seawater. In addition, the result of eating the fruit is generally unknown. You could control lightning, or you could gain a completely (or seemingly) useless ability. There is no antidote, and eating a second fruit is thought to cause instant death.
- Yuusha-Oh GaoGaiGar has a literal green rock, the G-Stone, used as the power source for all of its main mecha, as its power output increases as a function of the pilot's or robot's raw courage. There's also a red counterpart, the J-Jewel, with even less well-defined powers, one of which is explosive output when combined with a G-Stone. Indeed, many of the fuzzy properties of the G-Stone and J-Jewel are related to their interactions with other substances and energies. Finally, there's Zonder Metal. Just... Zonder Metal.
- The Silver Crystal from Sailor Moon seems to gain whatever properties are necessary for a particular arc's plot. It can defeat evil beings, except for when it only seals them away or heals them! It can grant its user's dying wish, except when using it doesn't cause death! It's useful for saving cities of the future, initiating Transformation Sequences, and also apparently could serve as a great power battery for Big Bads! It even plays music!
Film
- Heavy Metal: The Loc Nar is a sentient green sphere that proclaims itself (correctly, given the havoc that constantly tends to surround it) the sum of all evil in Heavy Metal's universe, and is the MacGuffin for all the stories told in the movie.
Comic Books
- In the original Superman comics, Red Kryptonite had a totally random yet temporary effect.
- In The Incredible Hulk comic books, gamma radiation often has a completely random effect on the individual exposed, usually something to do with their psychological makeup, although this effect is often completely arbitrary.
- This is the way they explained gamma radiation turning Hulk into a id-like monster, She-Hulk into a fun loving Amazon, Doc Samson into a musclebound superhero type, and the Abomination into pretty much what you'd expect.
- It's also been revealed that most people would just die horribly when exposed to such large amounts of gamma radiation (which is a rather more plausible result), and the people who got superpowers from it did so because the radiation interacted in some pseudoscientific way with random genetic anomalies they already had.
- It was explained once that everyone who got a positive mutation from gamma exposure had a single common genetic ancestor somewhere back in the mists of history. No one else has that funny genetic quirk.
- The Terrigen Mists, the source of superpowers for Marvel Comics' Inhumans, bestow random superpowers and physical mutations upon anyone exposed to them.
- In the Just Imagine... line of comics where Stan Lee re-imagines several classic DC characters, almost every character with powers gains them through some form of green energy, mist, or chemical. The green manifestations turn out to be linked back to an ancient magical tree that may be Yggdrasil or the Tree of Knowledge.
- The Top Ten universe has S.T.O.R.M.S. (Sexually Transmitted Organic Rapid Mutation Syndrome), a sexually transmitted disease that can mutate you into a monster, a god or (most often) a monstrous corpse.
- Marvel's mutant gene is probably the most extreme example of this, letting writers forgo the need for any sort of origin story what so ever by saying the character's a mutant. Mutants can have literally any power imaginable, ranging from the ability to regenerate any and all wounds received, to duplication. Whether this was a bad thing is debatable, since non-mutants' origin stories are often cheesy or downright wallbangingly stupid.
- Scarlet Witch's mutant power over probability is another example, basically letting her do anything the writers need, like making all the bullets in a gun defective. Some Willing Suspension Of Disbelief is needed, since she's been known to use her powers to do things physically impossible no matter how much luck you have, like make gravity stop affecting her. Later retconning revealed that her powers were combined with actual magic to far exceed what should have been possible.
- The exact same burst of radiation gave four people each a completely different power in Fantastic Four. Some iterations have explained it as the powers coming from what each felt was their greatest weakness.
Literature
- One of the finest examples is in the Dune series of books. Melange, AKA "the Spice", was a combination of Mac Guffin and Applied Phlebotinum. It was a flavoring, a drug, a source of magical visions, and it gave you cool-looking blue-on-blue eyes. It also made Faster Than Light Travel possible, and acted as a mutagen on consecutive generations of users. It also quadrupled the lifespan of anyone who took it. Too bad that The Spice was also insanely addictive, had only one source, and being cut off from supply resulted in an agonizing death.
- The Wild Cards virus can produce agonizing death, severe deformities and mutations, or superpowers ranging from useless to nearly Godlike. It also sometimes taps the infectee's subconsious and turns them into their fantasies or fears.
- The gelstei crystals in the Ea Cycle come in all the colours of the rainbow and then some. Each type has different powers, but the more powerful ones are versatile. For example, green gelstei can be used to both heal and create mutated monsters.
Live Action TV
- At times, the "Orbs of the Prophets" in Star Trek Deep Space Nine acted as green rocks. For example, enabling Time Travel in the famous "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode.
- Naquada from Stargate SG-1 is practically indestructible, is a room-temperature superconductor, enables forming stable wormholes, is a source of power second only to Zero Point Energy, explodes with super-nuclear force on contact with potassium, has an easily detectable energy pattern, etc...
- Naquadria is basically exactly the same, except more powerful and has a tendency to explode more often. Whether the people using the stuff want it to or not.
- Promicin, the luminous green neurotransmitter from The 4400, has extremely unpredictable effects. Anybody injected with it will develop some kind of superpower, but there is apparently no way to predict what power that will be. It also has a good chance of killing you but that's the price of power, even if it does suck.
Video Games
- Tiberium from the Command And Conquer series is the most valuable substance in the world (leading to the GDI and Nod fighting over it) and will either kill or mutate anybody who steps in it. It also corrupts the land so much in the sequels that in the third game a large part of the world is entirely uninhabitable from Tiberium poisoning. To top it off, it's part of an alien invasion plan. It's green, of course. There's also a blue variety, which is much more valuable, but tends to... react, when people start slinging explosives around.
- Phazon from the Metroid Prime series was a poison, a weapon, and fuel, and interestingly, was the only thing that could hurt the Metroid Prime despite it also causing the metroid's transformation in the first place.
- Skies Of Arcadia features a system of six Green Rocks of which only one is green; the others are red, yellow, blue, purple, and silver. These rocks are energized meteorites that fall from the moons and are used as a Magitek-ish power source for practically every vaguely mechanical item in the game, including prototype airship cannons, vehicle engines, torches, stoves, and even liquor (silver makes the good stuff). Said rocks also allow their owners to cast magic spells, or physically attack with elemental power by slotting a rock into their weapon.
- The Chaos Emeralds from Sonic The Hedgehog seem to be the Deus Ex Machina of the series, including everything from heroic transformation to manipulating time to powering doomsday machines. The fact that they weren't all green as the name implies has been attributed to a mistranslation from the original Japanese, and justified in various ways in different Spin Off media.
- The Jak And Daxter series has Eco, a gooey substance that comes in Green (Healing), Red (Strength), Blue (Speed), Yellow (Power), Dark (Toxic, and turned the hero's best friend into a Weasel Mascot), and Light.
- Mass Effect has element zero, or "eezo", formed as a byproduct of supernovae explosions. In utero eezo exposure can result in the child developing the ability to create this "mass effect" selectively and at distances. Of course it usually just resulted in the child and mother's death, and those that did gain powers usually got migraines and/or went insane.
- The Dig featured glowing Life Crystals created by an advanced alien civilization, which are capable of bringing the dead back to life (albeit with resulting insanity and crystal-addiction). You can probably guess what colour they were.
- Psyenergy Stones in Golden Sun, which were spread over the world by the erupting Mt. Aleph, were told hit animals and turned them into monsters. They also had different effects on more sentinent beings (humans, talking trees...). To Adepts, they restored their Psyenergy. They were purple, though.
Webcomics
- The Dewitchery Diamond from the webcomic El Goonish Shive is a literal green rock. It does not quite fit this trope, however, in that — as yet — it has only shown a single ability.
- Tedd's Transformation Ray, however, can transform anything into anything else, in any way, shape, or form imaginable. The dial must turn in infinitesimal fractions of degrees. He has a computer to program the "dial".
- The Blinker Stones from Gunnerkrigg Court have so far been used to generate fire and giant glowing sky signals. Their full uses have not yet been elucidated. It's very likely that they follow some kind of rules (the rest of the magic in the Court does) but there's no indication yet of what those rules are.
- Erfworld has the Arkentools, superpower magical artifacts created by the Titans that, when fully unlocked, grant their wielders tremendous power. There are four known Arkentools on the face of the Erf at this time, and only three have been revealed in the comic.
- The Arkenhammer grants its user the ability to tame Dwagons as well as produce powerful lightning attacks. Its current wielder Stanley also found out that it also has the ability to turn walnuts into pigeons instead of cracking them open at a probability of about one in five.
- More recently it's also been shown to turn birds into walnuts.
- The Arkendish grants the wielder unmatched powers of thinkamancy (telepathy, mindcontrol, mind reading, ect.). It also grants its current wielder Charlie control of his Archeons. Those who know latin and watched TV in the 70s are now groaning.
- The Arkenpliers' powers are currently unknown, as their current wielder, Prince Ansom, is incapable of unlocking their full power. They do serve as a powerful weapon though, and are especially strong against re-animated foes, suggesting healing or holy power, as Revive Kills Zombies.
- The forth known tool has yet to be revealed. Fans temporarily refer to the unknown item as the 'Arkensaw' when making predictions about what role they think it will play.
- Speaking of fan theory, a popular theory is that there are more Arkentools, nine total, one for each class of magic on the Erf axis. This is supported by Destructomancy, Thinkamancy and Healomancy being on that axis. Another theory puts the total at 27, one for each school of magic.
Western Animation
- The Chemical X in Powerpuff Girls also did weird and arbitrary things sometimes.
- The Loc-Nar in Heavy Metal is literally a Green Rock; a floating, sentient, utterly evil, sadistic Green Rock.
- Futurama: Bender's Big Score has "Torgo's Executive Powder" which is used for everything, from food to gunpowder substitute and plaster. This is made more bizarre by the fact that this power is made from ground up network executives.
Other
- In Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 lore Warpstone is a magic rock, a form of solid Chaos, that absorbs all light from the surrounding area while emitting its own green light. It can be used to power magical machines or for Faster Than Light Travel or as a magic lookingglass or to create mutations etc.
- And in 40k, you get all sorts of magic rocks-Necrodermis, Standard Template Constructs, wraithbone, and the Warp itself all function as magic rocks at various points.
Real Life
- Petroleum. Not only is it a source of fuel, but it's also the feedstock for pretty much the entire chemical industry, including pretty much the entire pharmaceutical industry. Other major products produce from petroleum feedstocks include just about all plastics, most rubber, and most commercial fertilizer. Plus it's the source of just about every major industrial lubricant, including synthetic lubricants.
- Ah, but is it green?
- You can make plastic out of it, that's futuristic enough.
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