Green Rocks - Television Tropes & Idioms

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.

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 early 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 it is exotic, difficult to find and you must have it to power the Applied Phlebotinum, it is Un Obtainium. When the Green Rocks are crystals that double as a Gotta Catch Them All, it is a Mineral Macguffin.

When it is a standing device to attract weirdness 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.

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 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) impossible.
  - 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. GN Particles have the added bonus of coming in two distinct "flavours"; the "Pure", blue coloured particles used by the protagonists, and "Impure", red particles used by the villains in their mass-manufactured drives. Incidently, the red particles seem to impede cell functions and healing in humans, while the blue version improves it.
  - And apparently cause brief moments of telepathy in some cases, although this hasn't been given much explanation, as of yet.
  - GN Particles are insane. Exposure to massive amounts of GN Particles can cause evolution. Setsuna eventually became a natural Innovator after piloting a Gundam with 2 GN Drives. Hallelujah comes back briefly due to GN Particle spam. Oh, and TRANS-AM Burst, which activates super GN Particle spam, actually helped turn the tide of the last battle and healed Lasse and Louise. These particles somehow allowed the quantization of a huge robot of course with its pilots.
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!
Code Geass has a couple of examples. One is Sakuradite, a natural resource with high conductivity that's used in basically everything in the series; the Lancelot's Super Prototype-ness is explained by saying that it uses more Sakuradite than normal Knightmare Frames, giving it incredible energy efficiency. A better example is the Gefjun Disturber, a device that blocks Sakuradite's conductivity, making it work something like an EMP weapon. It also somehow has the properties to block radar and aids in the blooming of energy weapons, which allows the Gawain's hadron cannons to go from awful to amazing.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Spiral Energy solves everything. It is Hot Blooded power incarnate. And is usually green. It's also specifically stated to defy the laws of physics.

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.
Star Trek: A droplet of Red Matter from the 2009 Star Trek film has the completely unexplained and indeed never-discussed ability to spontaneously form a black hole, destroying everything around it.

Comic Books

In the original Superman comics, Red Kryptonite had a totally random yet temporary effect.
- And guess what Pink Kryptonite causes?
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.
- Which just happened to correspond with the classic Alchemical "Elements": Air (Invisible Girl), Earth (The Thing), Fire (The Human Torch) and Water (Mr. Fantastic).
In Milestone Comics' Dakota Universe, most super powers are the result of exposure to Quantum Juice, a.k.a. Q-Juice.
Multiple powered characters in DC Comics are a result not from the accidents they had, but mutating to -survive- the accidents. As seen in the Hitman series (and in other comics), it's fairly common for people to crawl out of a vat of toxic goo and go on a rampage. The titular character is often called in to provide a very discreet bullet.
Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Tony Stark (Iron Man), and Stephen Strange (Dr. Strange) are Marvel's walking green rocks. It just depends on whether you need something involving physics or biology, technology and computers, or magic!, respectively.

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.
- As elaborated in some of the later books (including later books by the author's estate) the Spice allows fast space travel because it confers a certain degree of prescience/psychic-knowledge to the navigators of the ships, which would otherwise be impossible to safely navigate, at least not without proscribed AI intelligences. The actual FTL physics are separate from the drug's effects.
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.
Keys to the Kingdom had the Keys, the description of which pretty much IS 'magical items that can do almost anything.'
- Although they might have specialities, seeing as the Third Key is almost always shown manipulating water, while the Fifth Key can transport its user anywhere they've already been, so long as there's a reflective surface there.

Live Action TV

The Trope Namer is Smallville's kryptonite. It has been used to kill people, heal people, give people powers (the powers can be anything with no common theme), erase memories, give back memories, make chewing gum, make Clark Kent crawl on the floor in pain, make Clark Kent act like a dick, make Clark Kent lose all his power, make Bizarro Kent explode with too much power, split Clark Kent into a Literal Split Personality, make a phone call to twenty-four hours ago, cause two people who were nearby when they exploded to psychically bond, etc., etc.
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.
Star Trek Voyager. Seven of Nine's Borg implants and nanoprobes were used to resolve a number of problems.
- Like Voyager's low ratings.
We can't mention Star Trek without mentioning the almighty Deflector Array. Any time anything in the universe that's even remotely energy-based needs to be absorbed, converted, transmitted, created, destroyed, or, well, deflected, you can count on the ship's engineer thinking up a solution that uses the deflector array. No ship should be built without it!
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.
- This one has been much more thoroughly defined and detailed, as of the third game, thanks to the game producers actually soliciting, and getting, a journal-worthy scientific white paper on it from fans attending MIT.
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 distillers (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.
- Emeralds are a kind of beryl. Beryl comes in a wide variety of colors. I have always thought that they called them emeralds because your average ten-year-old gamer wouldn't know what a beryl is. Or is that attributing too much knowledge on the part of the writers?
- The Master Emerald is green. The Chaos Emeralds are "controlled" by the Master Emerald. Good enough for me.
The psychic summer camp in Psychonauts is built over a large deposit of Psytanium, which enhances psychic powers. Carrying a large block of this allows Kruller to come to the rescue without splitting into his multiple personalities.
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, though supposedly more due to the cybernetic implants which are necessary to actually manipulate their powers.
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.
- For some reason, the crystals were also used to power the various alien machines found throughout the city.
Psyenergy Stones in Golden Sun, which were spread over the world by the erupting Mt. Aleph, hit animals and turned them into monsters. They had different effects on more sentient beings (humans, talking trees...). To Adepts, they restored their Psyenergy. They were purple, though.
In Half Life, green rocks and the mishandling of said green rocks caused the resonance cascade, which allowed the creatures from Xen to come a-swarming in and nearly end humanity as we know it.
Magicite in Final Fantasy VI are the green gems left behind by deceased espers.
Mako energy, from Final Fantasy VII. It's even green. And, by extension, materia.
Aer in Tales Of Vesperia. Sometimes comes in rock form.

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. Its single dial must turn in infinitesimal fractions of degrees.
  - He has a computer to program the "dial".
The Blinker Stones from Gunnerkrigg Court were initially presented as Pink Rocks: creating fires and giant glowing sky signals alike, with nary an explanation of how for 20 chapters. Then it was revealed that they are lenses for latent psychic powers.
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 mostly currently unknown, as they have only recently been attuned to their weilder. The single "major" power they have depicted is perfectly raising a very high level warlord for no upkeep, no decay, and perfect obedience. In the world setting, it's a very powerful power.
- 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.
- Like turning a bowl of toys and sugar and a monkey into three Magical Girls and an evil genius?
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.
- Granted, the cast of the show are fully willing to eat -stupid- sentient beings...
Quantum Juice (a.k.a. Q-Juice) serves this function in Static Shock, the animated version of Milestone Comics' Dakota Universe.

Other

In Warhammer 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 looking glass or to create mutations, etc. Generally, though, it's The Corruption. Oh, and did we mention that one of the two moons is made out of this stuff?
- And in Warhammer 40000, 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.
- You can make plastic out of it, that's futuristic enough.
Before petroleum, there was coal tar. Cooking coal produced gas for gas lighting before the advent of cheap electricity. And the resulting tar derived from the above process became the feedstock for early rubber products, early plastics, and artificial dye. Used up through the industrial revolution and WWI, until scientists and industrialists figured out that it was cheaper and more energy efficient to use petroleum instead.
Carbon. It can form the shape of nearly any life form on earth. And of course, it's a major part of the aforementioned petroleum and coal tar. Coincidence?
- Pushing this real-life trope a little further, Carbon Nanotubes are a subject in bleeding edge research. Carbon Nanotubes can theoretically be formed into efficient semi-conductors to build computers, can be formed to have tensile strength thousands of times greater than steel, can conduct heat more efficiently than copper, and is one of the best insulators from heat. Yes, it is both an insulator and a conductor, literally doing everything. They're expecting electrical, medical, mechanical applications, from batteries, to bike frames, to drug capsules. Perhaps this is a case of fact is stranger than fiction? And guess what Carbon Nanotubes are made out of? Pure Carbon.

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