"Lightning and water, fuse us together!"
— Imhotep using an enchantment to fuse himself with a spider creature in "Trio", The Mummy: The Animated Series
Water and electricity have quite a notable relationship in real life. Water contains charged ions and impurities that allow it to conduct electricity, rain and lightning appear during storms, there are a number of sea-dwelling creatures that can deliver electric shocks and of course, we have hydroelectric power.
In fiction, the Hydro-Electro Combo manifests in the following ways:
- A character who has command over both water and electricity (and no other elements). This character may have some minor Weather Manipulation abilities. Expect them to use a great deal of Ability Mixing.
- Using water's status as a conductor to electrocute someone, usually to lethal results. This is a common way for a character to commit suicide in fiction; they climb into a tub filled with water then drop an electrical appliance inside.
- A sea-dweller with electric powers or weapons.
- A duo consisting of one Electrokinetic and one Hydrokinetic.
- Using water and electricity as a Logical Weakness against the other.
Super-Trope to Electrified Bathtub, Psycho Electric Eel and Electric Jellyfish.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Digimon:
- Digimon Adventure: Zudomon is a sea animal Digimon who wields a Thunder Hammer.
- Digimon Adventure 02: MegaSeadramon is a sea dragon Digimon whose special attack is "Lightning Javelin", a bolt of electricity fired from his horn.
- Digimon Ghost Game: Jellymon is an Electric Jellyfish Digimon. While this doesn't apply to her rookie and champion forms, it very much applies to her ultimate and mega forms.
- Thetismon uses electric attacks but doesn't have water powers. However, water is featured in her Transformation Sequence.
- Amphimon plays this absolutely straight, utilizing both water and electric attacks.
- Naruto:
- Darui is capable of using Water Release and Lightning Release techniques simultaneously, most notably when he generates a wall of water and channels lightning through it to electrocute his opponent. He also possess the Storm Release bloodline limit, a combination of Water Release and Lightning Release that allows him to manipulate beams of electricity that flow like water.
- Filler Villain Fūka possesses all five basic elemental jutsu, but makes effective use of Water Release and Lightning Release together by first blasting her foes and flooding the area with the former, then unleashing the latter almost immediately afterwards to shock everything the water is touching. She does it so often in fact that when she uses Earth Release after Water instead at one point, Naruto immediately notices.
- O-Parts Hunter: One of Cross's five rings has the power to create electrified water. It's one of his most powerful and dangerous abilities.
- Pokémon: The Series: In "Beach Blank-Out Blastoise", Pikachu and Squirtle combine their attacks into an electrified torrent of water.
- Tiger & Bunny: Season two has Dragon Kid partnering up with Magical Cat. The two utilize this combination in the first episode as well.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Yugi and Joey duel the Paradox Brothers in the special Labyrinth field. Usually monsters can only attack enemies in neighboring tiles, but Yugi is able to get around this by flooding the labyrinth and then summoning his Summoned Skull, who uses electricity attacks. The electricity travels through the water across the maze to the enemy and destroy it.
Asian Animation
- BoBoiBoy: BoBoiBoy unlocks his water elemental to defeat BoBoiBot, which seems effective until Adu Du inserts samples of the hero's water power into BoBoiBot, giving the robot water powers as well. To finish him off, BoBoiBoy Water aims attacks shaped like eels towards BoBoiBot before transforming into BoBoiBoy Thunderstorm, who electrifies the eels before they hit, overpowering BoBoiBot's counterattack and defeating him.
Comic Books
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Surge and Kit, Dr. Starline's creations, are an electrokinetic tenrec and a hydrokinetic fennec fox, respectively.
Films — Animation
- The Little Mermaid (1989): King Triton's trident can command lightning and water. Ursula uses it to create a storm in the climax.
- In the censored version of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, this is how The Joker bites the dust: when Tim Drake rebels from his electroshock-induced brainwashing, he pushes Joker into glass tanks of water, shattering them. As he tries to get up to chase him, Joker slips and accidentally pulls the lever and reactivates the electrode machine, leading to his horrifying death by electrocution.
Films — Live-Action
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2: In what is likely a Shout-Out to The Spectacular Spider-Man, this version of Electro was mutated after falling into a water tank filled with genetically-engineered electric eels.
- The Astronaut's Wife: Jillian disposes of her alien-possessed husband this way. First she spills large amount of water on the ground, then sits on a wooden chair, grabbing an electrified cable and tricking her husband into thinking she's attempting suicide (she was pregnant with his kids so he didn't want her dead). As soon as he steps into the puddle she drops the cable in it and the discharge kills him.
- In Justice League, Superman's dead body is plunged in the liquid of the genesis chamber of the Kryptonian ship and an electric impulsion stemming from Flash's Super-Speed is needed to supercharge a Mother Box to revive him in said liquid.
- Tiger Cage 2: In the storm drain sequence, one of the heroes kills a bad guy by breaking power cables off the wall and sticking them into the puddle in which the mook is standing.
Literature
- Animorphs: One of Visser Three's many horrible morphs is a Luminar, a humanoid alien that emits electricity. It works decently enough against the Nartec, but as the Animorphs are about to escape in a submarine with the Visser onboard, they open the hatch, and suddenly the Luminar morph isn't doing so well.
Jake: <Interesting morph, Visser. Does it work underwater?>
- Dungeon Engineer: From Chapter 5, the first attack seen from a magic user:
He then casts a bolt of lightning which arcs between his wand and the water’s surface causing the olm to instantly begin thrashing!
Live Action TV
- In the Doctor Who episode, Dalek, the titular Dalek uses the combination of water and electricity to efficiently kill an entire room of people in 3 shots - The first hit the sprinkler system wetting the room, the second hit the floor, using the now sodden room to electrocute most of the people in the room and the third hit the balcony exterminating the rest of them.
- The Power (2023):
- Roxy mildly electrocutes a man while he's in the pool, which makes the guy lose control of his bowels.
- Later, Eve gives the young women she met at the convent a sensation by electrocuting them while they're all in the ocean together.
- Declan is electrocuted when he's crossing a river in Carpathia by the female rebels there after he insults them. Later it's seen that many Carpathian soldiers were as well, their bodies floating in the water.
- Roxy meets Eve when she's using her electrical discharges to create water spouts in the ocean.
Tabletop Games
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: The game has a few monsters who are both Thunder-Type and WATER attribute, such as Bolt Penguin, Bolt Escargot, and Lightning Conger.
Video Games
- Bioshock: Water significantly amplifies electric attacks. On its own, "Electrobolt!" stun-locks enemies for a few seconds but when transmitted through water puddles will instantly kill any enemy short of a Big Daddy.
- Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back: The waters in the sewer levels are infested with eels, who electrify the water every few seconds.
- Dark Souls:
- In all 3 games in the series (and carrying over into Elden Ring), lightning spells that hit water or a creature in water will create a ring of lightning damage around where they hit.
- The Looking Glass Knight boss in Dark Souls II uses electrical attacks. This would already be dangerous, given that it's hard to get any decent amount of lightning resistance, but the battle is also a Battle in the Rain - and because you're soaked, what lightning resistance you do have is seriously reduced.
- Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin II: Air-based damage and Status Infliction Attacks synergize strongly with Water-based spells: they electrify water or steam, inflicting Damage Over Time and the "Shocked" status effect to anyone in the water; and the "Wet" and "Shocked" statuses combine into the much more extreme "Stunned" effect. Oddly, this also applies to blood, and if enough people are bleeding in one battle, a bolt of electricity can stun all of them at once.
- Genshin Impact:
- Hydro and Electro together cause a reaction named Electro-Charged, which zaps nearby wet characters.
- Childe wields a Hydro Vision and an Electro Delusion during his boss fight. The first two phases of the fight have him using either Hydro or Electro exclusively per phase, while in the final phase he uses both interchangeably whilst activating Foul Legacy Transformation. As a playable character however, he only uses Hydro.
- The Last of Us: In the "Left Behind" DLC, Ellie is attacked by a group of Stalkers in a partially submerged section of the shopping mall. After she defeats the first wave of enemies, a cable will detach from the ceiling and transmit an electric current into the water, killing all remaining Stalkers (and Ellie, if she touches it).
- LEGO Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin: After Ronin acquires the Elemental Forge of Earth, Dareth tries to stop Ronin by using the combined energies of the Elemental Forges he has. Unfortunately, the Elemental Forges he uses are of Ice and Fire, which creates a pool of water around him. Ronin uses the Elemental Forge of Lightning to electrify the water around Dareth, allowing him to take Dareth's Elemental Forges from him.
- In Magicka, wet enemies (and friendlies) take double damage from lightning and being soaked in water causes any invoked Lightning to immediately electrocute mages trying to use them. Water and lightning are opposite elements, so they can't both be channeled in one spell - without a handy river, you have to spray enemies with water first. But water and fire make steam, which can be mixed with lightning, leading to a maximum DPS AOE beam so powerful that you forget about Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. The QFAS ray (named for its key combo) was nerfed in the sequel.
- Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar: The Bubble Star chip allows Mega Man to shoot a starfish that deals aqua-type damage and causes enemies hit to be immobilized in a bubble for a few seconds or until they're attacked. If a bubbled enemy is hit by an elec-type attack, they take double damage.
- In Mindustry, wet units take extra damage from electrical attacks such as the Arc turret or anything loaded with Surge Alloy. You can weaponize this by loading Wave or Tsunami turrets with water, or just positioning your electrical turrets near a pond or lake so that enemies have to wade through it to get to you. For obvious reasons, naval units are immune to the Wet status effect to keep this from becoming a Weaksauce Weakness for them.
- Monster Hunter:
- Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) has its flagship monster Lagiacrus, a crocodile-like serpent who lives in water and has a variety of electric attacks. It has a stronger rare species in 3 Ultimate called the Abyssal Lagiacrus that can also attack with whirlpools (in comparison, the trope is much less frequent with the subspecies Ivory Lagiacrus, as it spends more time on land than underwater).
- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne has Namielle, an Elder Dragon resembling a sea creature who attacks with water and electricity, leaving puddles of water around the area that it can electrify.
- Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak portrays Amatsu in this fashion, as it now harbors a power over both water and electricity due to the storms it's capable of creating (in previous games, Amatsu's water attacks were devoid of electricity).
- Mortal Kombat: While Rain mostly uses water attacks, he can also call down lightning from the sky.
- Path of Exile: Hydrosphere is a skill that creates a ball of water that on its own just deals cold damage on contact, but if you hit it with lightning damage to shock it, it rapidly releases pulses that deal lightning damage (also does the same thing with cold damage if you freeze it).
- Pokémon:
- Electric attacks are often very effective against Water-types.
- A powerful Electric-type move Thunder never misses when used in rain.
- The Chinchou and Lanturn line are dual Water/Electric types, based on deep sea underwater creatures like the Anglerfish.
- Beginning with the release of Pokémon Black and White, Rotom Wash-Form is now a Water/Electric type, being an electric-type ghost who is inhabiting a washing machine.
- Ragnarok Online: The Freeze status imbues its target with the Water property, rendering them vulnerable to Wind-type attacks which frequently manifest as lightning attacks.
- Red Alert 3: The Stingray is a Soviet amphibious boat equipped with Tesla coilguns. Its special ability releases a wave of electricity, damaging all enemies nearby but briefly leaves the Stingray immobilized.
- Quake:
- Firing the Thunderbolt while underwater will end with all of the affected players and enemies (including the person who fired) being reduced to bits. The firer can be safe in the Scourge of Armagon Expansion Pack if they're wearing the Wetsuit, though.
- The Expansion Pack Dissolution Of Eternity features the Electric Eel as an enemy. While it uses electric attacks underwater, unlike the Thunderbolt, it can't instantly turn anybody into bits, and it can also be affected by the Thunderbolt.
- Skylanders:
- Spyro's Adventure introduces Zap, a Water element dragon Skylander who attacks with electricity. He was raised by electric eels and later built himself a harness which stores and discharges electricity. He can slide on sea slime and zap it with electricity to shock opponents that walk on it. On one upgrade path, he can also electrify the wave he rides on so it does more damage.
- Swap Force introduces Punk Shock, a Water element electric eel Skylander who uses a crossbow that shoots electrified bolts, and also has the ability to release blobs of water that form puddles she can electrify with the aforementioned bolts. She is a princess who used said crossbow to stop an invasion of her kingdom by snow trolls.
- Temtem: Nessla is an eel-like Water/Electric type. According to the Tempedia, its electric discharges are most effective in open waters.
Web Animation
- Minilife TV: In "Happiness Is A Sparked Lake", when Archie the robot runs into a member of the X-Team who killed his love interest Zoey in the park, an Imagine Spot shows that he plans to get revenge on him by knocking him into the lake and using his taser to electrify the water. But when Archie sees how much the guy regrets joining the X-Team, he decides not to go through with it.
- RWBY: The Vytal Festival Tournament emphasises that Neptune has a crippling phobia of water when Sun forces him to use his electricity-generating weapon on the pool of water their opponents are standing in. He normally tries to avert the trope because he almost drowned himself and his brother when they were children with his uncontrollable water-manipulation Semblance. He therefore refuses to use his Semblance and avoids all water to minimise further loss of control, fighting exclusively with his electrokinetic weapon.
Webcomics
- Sleepless Domain: This is discussed and ultimately defied when Alchemical Water is searching for a new team to join, and runs into Team Blitz. Pop Blitz, who can control electricity, is initially excited to team up with her, but the team's manager points out why they can't take her in — since water conducts electricity, and Pop Blitz is still getting the hang of controlling her powers, the two of them together would only be a danger to themselves and their teammates.
Western Animation
- Castlevania (2017): In "Abandon All Hope", Sypha kills a demon by soaking it with water and then hitting it with a lightning blast.
- The Legend of Korra:
- During the attack on the Pro-bending Arena, the Lieutenant zaps the pool with his Shock Sticks while the Fire Ferrets are still in it, knocking them out.
- A water bender (Ming Hua) was killed when the water in the cavern they were fighting in was electrified.
- In The Legend of Vox Machina: During season two, Percy uses a combination of his electrified prosthetic glove and a pool of water to zap an acidic slime-beast to ash.
- The Mummy: The Animated Series: In "Trio", Imhotep uses the power of water and lightning to fuse with a spider monster called the Nihansan. Alex, Yanit and Fadil undo the fusion using a hydroelectric dam transformer.
- Ninjago: Jay, the Elemental Master of Lightning and Nya, the Elemental Master of Water often combo their powers in battle. Season 6 even has both of them combining their powers to create one Elemental Dragon to ride on.
- Skull Island (2023): The Kraken is a Giant Squid that can shock and poison enemies with its tentacles.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: This show's version of Electro gained his electricity powers after falling into a water tank filled with genetically altered electric rays and eels.
- Static Shock: In her first appearance, Aquamaria is able to defeat Static by using her water powers to short out his electricity. In a later episode, Static uses her liquid state against her by running a current through her body.
- W.I.T.C.H.: In "Z is for Zenith", Irma soaks Cedric with water and asks Will to fire a lightning bolt at him. The attempted electrocution fails, since the villain can also control electricity and redirects the blast back at them through his eyes.
- Young Justice (2010):
- Aqualad can use water and lightning magic, often using whips or tendrils of water to channel electric currents.
- Aqualad's fellow Atlanteans Garth, Tula and Mera also control water and lightning but to far greater degree than the Incompletely Trained Aqualad.
Real Life
- Hydroelectricity is a form of energy which uses the power of water in motion to generate electricity.
- There are a number of fish and sea creatures that can generate electricity such as electric eels, electric rays and electric catfish.
