Mysterious Purple

Have a tome of untold and forbidden knowledge you want to make stand out? Want to mark a location as ominous and filled with yet uncovered secrets? Need to get across that a character raises more questions than they answer? Just add purple.

The association between purple and mystery can be explained by purple's own elusive nature: purple does not show up frequently in nature, making it an exceedingly rare (and sought after) color. Purple (technically violet) also represents a part of the color spectrum the human eye is the least sensitive to. Magic and things related to the Occult are frequently shaded purple and violet to emphasize their unknowable (to regular folks) nature, mixing this trope and Purple Is Powerful (this does not mean, however, that every purple-colored/associated magic or otherwordly thing by default falls under this trope; see Technicolor Magic for that). Shading a night sky filled with Ominous Clouds and Ominous Fog purple to indicate the presence or coming of something mysterious (and often dangerous) for atmosphere is quite common in animation.

This air of mystery can carry over into characterization as well. Characters who have unclearly defined morals, shifting allegiances, or undisclosed motivations and goals, like the Enigmatic Minion, Mysterious Backer, Hidden Agenda Villain, or someone who's Ambiguously Evil, may have a distinct purple motif. In these cases, the purple coloring functions like a combination of Blue Is Heroic and Red and Black and Evil All Over to indicate the ambiguity surrounding the character and their plans and motives. Consequently, in terms of Good Colors, Evil Colors, purple, when not lumped together with black and other dark colors, will fall in neither camp.

An Amnesiac Hero, someone suffering Identity Amnesia, or a character with a Mysterious Past may also have a purple color motif, their unknown pasts and identity being the source of ambiguity and mystery.

Compare and contrast Purple Is the New Black, both Dark Is Evil and Dark Is Not Evil, and Evil Wears Black. See also Emerald Power, for the association between the color green and mystical/mysterious powers.

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Examples:

Animation

• BoBoiBoy: Fang is initially identified only as "Mystery Boy" in the first season finale before becoming a major character as the series progresses. His outfit is mainly magenta, he has raven-colored spiky hair and his shadow powers have purple auras. How he obtained this power is unknown until the middle of season 2 as he was initially cold and antagonistic towards the main heroes before warming up to them. Then season 3 reveals something else he had been hiding, he is a Human Alien on a mission to obtain BoBoiBoy and his friends' power watches for his boss.

Anime & Manga

• Captain Harlock: Miime has long, purple Rapunzel-like hair and can use telekinesis. She doesn't speak much, except to Harlock, and prefers playing the harp rather than socializing. It's later revealed that she's the Last of Her Kind as her planet faced a genocide by the Mazones.
• Played for Comedy in the Animated Adaptation of Komi Can't Communicate, when Komi Shouko's younger cousin Komi Akira visits. Akira regards Shouko as "spooky" because she says almost nothing. Peeking at the family, Akira notices that Shouko is missing, and wonders where she is. Shouko happens to be right behind Akira, gazing at her intently, surrounded by a violet mist of ominous intrigue. When Akira discovers Shouko there, she collapses onto the floor in shock.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Despite there being small hints littered throughout the series, the Gainax Ending of Stocking dicing Panty to bits and revealing that she's actually a demon makes it unclear whether or not she was Evil All Along, did a Face–Heel Turn, or is just Brainwashed and Crazy given her unusual eyes at the time, planting her firmly in Ambiguous Evil territory. Her Elegant Gothic Lolita aesthetic features black and purple striped tights and her hair is dark purple. This not only contrasts her against actual angel Panty's lighter and brighter coloring, but it also differentiates her from all other demons in the work, who are all unambiguously evil and have red skin, pale hair, and wear beige mini skirt suits.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • The mysterious Homura Akemi has a purple Soul Gem, purple-colored magical abilities, and a color scheme that's predominantly purple, grey, and black. Her coldhearted nature and cryptic warnings to the main characters, coupled with her suddenly transferring to Madoka's school after Madoka has a dream about her and showing up whenever Madoka is in danger only add to her mystique. She's revealed to be a Groundhog Day Peggy Sue continuously going back in time to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl or fighting the powerful witch Walpurgisnacht, since doing so will seemingly always lead to Madoka becoming a world-ending witch herself.
  • Come Rebellion, Homura becomes the most morally dubious of the "Holy Quintet" as well. Her ascension to "Devil Homura" comes after her Soul Gem shatters into something far more frightful, causing the love-tainted contents of her soul to blanket the entire universe in a curtain of purple magic.
• RG Veda: Kujaku is a mysterious man who calls himself a traveler, but drops hints that he knows more about the two leads, Yasha and Ashura, than he should. Often acts as a Mysterious Informant, popping in out of nowhere to give Yasha's group warnings or advice that he really shouldn't know if he were just a mere traveler. His Dark and Troubled Past is revealed later in the story and includes him being a mazouku and is the Heroic Bastard of the former Tentei or emperor. He has purple eyes, hair, and wears both a purple Gem-Encrusted necklace as well as a long flowing purple scarf.
• Sailor Moon: Whether Sailor Saturn is a good guy or not is a major plot point in the Death Busters arc. She is first viewed as The Dreaded and a Token Evil Teammate by the outer warriors, given that the last time she woke up, she used her Person of Mass Destruction power to destroy the Moon Kingdom. They even go as far as trying to kill Hotaru (Saturn's reincarnated form) before she can manifest her abilities. The truth is she is a Necessarily Evil heroic teammate: her role is to Restart the World should she deem it beyond saving and the only way to do so is to destroy it first. It also doesn't help that prior to awakening to her powers, she gets possessed by one of the Big Bad's minions, Mistress 9. Hotaru has black hair with purple highlights, purple colored eyes, and her Sailor Saturn uniform has dark purple accents.
• Tokyo Mew Mew: Zakuro Fujiwara, whose hair and Mew outfit are purple, has a Mysterious Past that is never fully revealed and is the most solitary and mysterious of the Mew Mews, largely acting as an Aloof Ally even after joining the team.
• ×××HOLiC:
  • Yuko is the aloof and mysterious, Femme Fatale, Dimensional Witch, who has the power to grant wishes to those that enter her shop for a price. Where she comes from, how she got to be the Dimensional Witch, how her powers and abilities work, and even her intentions for helping out Watanuki and his friends are all left rather ambiguous for most of the story, until the Mind Screw ending. While she changes up her style frequently, she is often seen wearing the color purple. She's also given a butterfly motif that too is often shown to be purple or emitting a soft purple glow.
  • Much of the official artwork for this manga about the mysteries of the supernatural feature purple prominently to set the tone for the ominous world the characters inhabit, like this two page spread◊ for the first chapter that shows Yuko and Watanuki in front of a purple backdrop.
• Zombie Land Saga has the Legendary Tae Yamada, a zombie that none of the other main girls know anything about save for her name. She can't talk or exposit in any way, so her past and personality are a total blank, making her a total wild card of a teammate who helps as much as she hinders. Black and purple are her signature colors; her default outfit is black and alternative outfits she wears tend to feature purple prominently.

Fan Works

• Danganronpa: Memento Mori: Mugen and Madoka, the two most enigmatic and morally ambiguous participants in the Killing Game, both not only have purple hair, but also wear purple clothing.
• Danganronpa: Komm Susser Tod: Deuteragonist Asuka has lilac hair and wears a lilac sweater over a purple Sailor Fuku. Her true allegiances are kept in question right up to the very end, to the extent that Reiji once refers to her as "a girl of many mysteries".
• In the A Song of Ice and Fire fanfic Purple Days, "the Purple" as Joffrey calls it is an Eldritch Abomination of mysterious origin and semi-vague nature that is responsible for perpetuating his and later Sansa's Groundhog Peggy Sue state. It manifests in between deaths and loop resets as a long, stretched-out moment of agony during which only purple light can be discerned.

Films — Animation

• Alice in Wonderland: The Cheshire Cat is a mischievous and mysterious magical cat. He appears quite literally out of thin air to either Troll or occassionally help Alice. Whether or not he has good intentions towards Alice is unclear: he intentionally lets Alice take the blame for his pranks, which puts her at risk of being beheaded, only to show up later to confess and provide a distraction for Alice to escape. Naturally, he is pink and purple striped all over, combining this trope with Psycho Pink.

Films — Live-Action

• Unbreakable: Elijah Price is an enigmatic art gallery owner who wears an elegant purple overcoat and gloves and frequently offers cryptic advice and warnings to David, a man he believes is a real-world superhero. This culminates in The Reveal that he has been orchestrating mass tragedies to specifically search for a person like David to be the superhero to the purple-wearing Hidden Agenda Villain he's fashioned himself into.

Literature

• Harriet the Spy: There's a boy in Harriet's class that she and everyone else refers to as "The Boy With the Purple Socks". She complains that he is so boring that she never bothered to remember his name and thinks that the only thing noteworthy about him are his socks. It's later revealed that no one in their class actually knows his real name.
• The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School: In the series exists a strange, mysterious alternate dimension called "The Purple," which seems to be the source of all of the strange happenings and magical abilities that the characters have developed in the main dimension.

Video Game

• AI: The Somnium Files: Special Agent Kaname Date, a detective for a top-secret branch of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, is the main protagonist and POV character for the game. Purple is his primary color, reflected in his outfit (all agents wear primarily black with an accent color; his is purple details and purple gloves) and UI assets. This plays into his Mysterious Past as an Amnesiac Hero. You know almost nothing about Date's past at the beginning of the game, only that he lost his memory six years ago.
• Apex Legends: Wraith's Color Motif is purple; her mostly black outfit has purple accents and the background color on her character select screen is also purple. Her backstory is that she's an Amnesiac Hero who woke up one day in a mentally ill detention facility with her dimensional jumping abilities and zero memories of how she got them, what her name is, or anything related to her past life, leaving her with a Mysterious Past that has yet to be uncovered.
• Chantelise: Elma's purple witch hat and robe, along with the purple tiled roof of her house. The mysterious color fits with her occupation as a mysterious fortune teller, and after the protagonists leave her house after being given a fortune, the player sees Elma monologue to herself, justifying her manipulation of the protagonists, but leaving her goals unmentioned.
• Drawn to Life: Zsasha is a purple-wearing thief who sneaks into the village at night, steals from the raposa, and constantly evades being arrested by Officer Cricket. His actual morality is more ambiguous than it seems, though, as he gives up the items after you chase him around the village and is later revealed to be caring for a young, orphaned child he met in the forest. He's also incredibly laconic and is the only rapo you can't find or talk to after rescuing him, even in the sequel, where he winds up standing on a platform you can't reach.
• In The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, the dreams and strange visions that haunt Thomasina as she uncovers the mystery of what happened in the village of Bewlay 25 years ago and encounters the local supernatural forces in the process of doing so are usually bathed in an eerie purple light. It is also the ambient colour of the ruins beneath the titular barrow, and the signature colour of the Big Bad, the Eldrich Abomination known as Abraxas Rex.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • The Ascians are a group of Evil Sorcerers whose goal is to revive their god, Zodiark, whom they declare the "one true god". All of them are dangerous, powerful mages whose coming is heralded by a purple portal briefly opening at their pointy of entry and many of them are cloaked in purple energy while using their magic. Aside from their goal of resurrecting Zodiark, their origins are shrouded in mystery for much of the game's story. Deciphering the Ascians's motives to thwart their plots is a major goal of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
  • The World of Darkness, better known as the Void, is a realm consumed by darkness-aligned energies. The plane is inhabited entirely by voidsent, a form of twisted Eldritch Abomination starved of aether and seeking to cross over to other planes to feast on the aether of others. Owing to how difficult it is breach the walls of reality that separate it from the world of Hydaelyn, the place is largely cloaked in shadow and mystery. Holes in reality that allow voidsent through are typically wreathed in purple to emphasize the bottomless darkness on the other side. When the Warrior of Light and their friends venture inside to confront the Cloud of Darkness, the path is lit with sickly purple and green lights to emphasize how alien the place is.
  • On the other side of the spectrum, we have the First, a world drowned in light. The player's first arrival is greeted with the sight of a blindingly bright sky spanning a field of violet plants and trees, underlined with a beautifully haunting song echoing in the background. All of it drives home the idea that you're very, very far from home.
• Fire Emblem Engage: Ivy is introduced as a mysterious, Aloof Dark-Haired Girl with dark magenta hair who wears purple eyeshadow and purple lipstick. A Lady of Black Magic, much of her promotional materials positioned her to be a haughty antagonist to the main characters as the princess of Elusia. This was an intentional Bait-and-Switch: in the story proper, Ivy is at most an Anti-Villain and later an example of Dark Is Not Evil, as she goes on to fully oppose her father once his actions go too far and even defects to the side of good later on, becoming a Benevolent Mage Ruler and The Atoner once her father has been defeated.
• Flight Rising: The Shadowbinder is the flight associated with illusion and trickery along with darkness due to their elemental control over it and their primary motif and dragon eye color is purple.
• The opponent of the Friday Night Funkin' mod Mind Games is Psychic, a, well, psychic with purple skin and a fiery head. He waits for Boyfriend knowing he's been possessed and has an unknown association with the Dearests, along with a connection to Spirit, to the point Spirit holds just as much of a grudge on him as he does Daddy Dearest.
• Hades: Chaos is the Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous, Anthropomorphic Personification of chaos, a primordial being that is older than the gods themself. Zagreus has no idea who they are when he first receives their call and their intentions for aiding Zagreus in his journey out of the Underworld are obscure; it may be just out of spite against the gods that forgot them, it could be out of a parental desire to reconnect with their child Nyx, or it could be out of sheer curiousity. Their god icon glows a deep indigo and the shield aspect that bears their name features a large purple eye.
• The King of Fighters: Luong's default outfit has purple accents and she has purple eyes and long black-dark purple hair. She toes the line between Femme Fatale and Heroic Seductress, as her penchant for sadism seems to conflict with her being on the more heroic Team Kim. Her "mystique" is even mentioned in her Battle Intro for The King of Fighters XV, where she is also revealed to be a Double Agent, having been hired by Hein to take down Geese. By the end of that game, it's unclear just who her allegiance is to: Kim, Hein, or simply herself.
• League of Legends: A lot of details about Jax are deliberately kept vague and mysterious as a draw for his character. While his Mysterious Past was retconned, he's still never shown his face or even confirmed what kind of species he's meant to be. His purple robes and skin are thus emblematic of that.
• Overwatch: Though she formally works for the Nebulous Evil Organization Talon, Sombra (whose signature color is bright violet) is, and has been from her character introduction, Ambiguously Evil. She secretly sabotages Talon's mission to assassinate Katya Volskaya in favor of blackmailing Katya to feed her information for her own gains, whatever they may be. She helped Baptiste leave Talon and is lauded in her hometown of Dorado as a hero. She even gets treated by her Talon colleagues as The Friend Nobody Likes because of her fairly obvious duplicit nature.
• Paper Mario: Color Splash: The setting is divided in to six sectors associated with a different color. Most levels in the purple sector are themed around the Parallel World, a surreal and unexplained setting filled with the undead where actions in one world affect the other. The Parallel World even uses a stronger purple palette than its "Regular" World counterpart areas.
• Pokémon: The Ghost type is assigned purple in the franchise's Color-Coded Elements, several Ghost-type Pokemon incorporate purple in their designs, and Ghost-type specialists tend to wear a lot of purple. Ghost-types are otherworldly and unknown, and feature frequently in hauntings, mysteries, and legends throughout the various games.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens: The Seer Dance icon, the magic for seeing the unseen, is purple.
• Touhou Project:
  • Patchouli Knowledge has lavender hair with matching robes, hat and shoes. She is also a witch, the Magic Librarian of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and her official "job" at the Mansion is to "solve and create problems"... And in case you're wondering: No, we don't know what that entails either.
  • Yukari Yakumo. Aside from the fact that her name literally means "violet", she also often wears purple clothes. She is Reimu's Mysterious Backer, has an Omniscient Morality Licence that operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality, most conversations with her tend towards the cryptic, she's The Arch Mage in the setting and a youkai with the innate ability to make reality come undone at the seams. Purple Is Powerful is obviously also in full effect.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa: Kyoko Kirigiri is an enigmatic student, who has a cool, detached demeanor and evasively dodges questions about who she is and her past. Her ultimate as a Great Detective is not even known for most of the first game. This is later explained as she's had her memories wiped by The Mastermind before joining the game. Downplayed as her eye and hair color varies from pale purple and purple-tinted white to purplish-grey and silver, respectively, depending on how she is drawn in-universe.
• Doki Doki Literature Club!: Yuri is a shy, enigmatic woman nicknamed a "Maiden of Mystery" and has long purple hair along with purple eyes.
• Umineko: When They Cry: The series makes use of Languages Of Truth: for example, speech in red is always true; no falsities can be spoken using red text. Purple text is similar with a caveat: it is always true unless if spoken by someone who committed a murder. Not only does this make whether or not the speaker is a murderer ambiguous, it also makes it a mystery for the player as to whether or not the statements were 1) true statements said by an ordinary person, 2) lies said by a murderer, or 3) true statements said by a murderer, which makes parsing out fact from fiction really difficult from these statements alone.

Web Original

• The Neverglades:
  • The Inspector is a mysterious Occult Detective in a Conspicuous Trenchcoat and Mystery Magnet who was drawn to Pacific Glade to help solve the paranormal mysteries that seem to abound. Naturally, he has purple eyes and unusual pale skin, both of which mark him as being more than what he appears.
  • In "Purple Moon" a mysterious purple moon rises in the town without explanation, creating a new mystery to solve. It ends up being one of The Inspector's eyes.

Websites

• Neopets:
  • While "Dark Faeries" come in a range of dark colors from midnight blue to black, the one most associated with purple is Jhudora, who lives on top of a purple cloud, wears a purple and green dress, and has vibrant purple eyes, among other things. Her actual villainous acts are never specified, and the only faerie who might know about them hasn't spilled. It's believed that many unfortunate events in Neopia are her doing, but this has never been confirmed.
  • In the initial art for Darigan Citadel, the city is made up of purples and blues, and most of the Darigan painted pets are also primarily dark purple. The Citadel was initially introduced as being Dark Is Evil and attacking the innocent Meridell out of spite, but it was then revealed that the true conflict is really much more ambiguous, as they were merely trying to get the life-giving orb Meridell stole from them in the first place. The original leader of the Citadel, Lord Darigan, was presented as a morally gray Anti-Villain just trying to do what was right for his people, and who later became a mysterious "monster" living in someone's barn after he lost the war. In the second war, the ones who compelled Lord Kass to turn evil were a group of mysterious, malevolent, and manipulative spirits who took no actual sides in the war.

Web Videos

• Critical Role: Aberrant Mind Sorcerer Imogen Temult has naturally purple hair and glowing purple veins that have been crawling slowly up her arms since her abilities manifested. The origin of those abilities is shrouded in mystery, and big part of what drives Imogen in her journey.
• Every Man HYBRID: HABIT is an Axe-Crazy Body Snatcher with unknown motives for following and torturing the boys throughout all of their reincarnations. He seems to want something, but it's never made clear exactly what his ultimate goal is, even when he starts treating Vinny like his ally and helping Noah learn about severance. His ultimate morality is made more ambiguous at the end when he rants about his own immortality and roll in the loops in a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability, but then goes on to goad Vinny and Evan into killing each other. Fittingly, his associated color is purple, from the messages he leaves the boys to the Haunter sticker he put on Noah's envelope. If anything in the series is colored purple, then it's a sure sign of being from or belonging to HABIT.

Western Animation

• Hot Wheels: AcceleRacers: The Silencerz are a mysterious group of racers who venture into the realms independent of both Dr. Tezla's group and the Racing Drones, to win Accelechargers for their own unspecified goals. Their most notable trait is their heavy use of silver and purple in their uniforms and vehicles, which doubles as Purple Is Powerful due to the very advanced weapons and technology that they use, ranging from an Invisibility Cloak, to the ability to disguise as other teams' cars and drivers, and even EMP weapons to disable other vehicles and machinery.
• Martin Mystery: The show uses this trope (combined with Green Is Gross and Sickly Green Glow) a lot to build atmosphere as the show itself focuses on paranormal investigations of mysterious and unexplainable happenings around the world.
  • The title of the show is always written in purple with a green outline.
  • Martin's watch that connects him to The Center of paranormal investigations is colored deep purple and teal, as is most of the gadgets he uses to collect clues.
  • M.O.M.'s office, where the team meets with the director of The Center to get their missions and seemingly exists in its own dimension, is almost entirely violet.
  • When supernatural things are occurring, the sky will often be 1) a night sky, 2) filled with Ominous Clouds, and 3) purple and violet-hued. This Color Motif is established in the first episode of the series when the crew investigates the Bogeyman and continues throughout the series.
• ScoobyDoo: While the logo colors for this series about a group of teens solving mysteries that seem supernatural at first (and sometimes are actually supernatural) do change, purple is almost always included, either as the main fill-in for the text or as the backdrop shading for the text.
• South Park: The kid superhero Mysterion associates himself with illusion, solitude, and mystery, especially in his debut episode when everybody wants to figure out his secret identity (later episodes reveal it to be Kenny). His outfit plays with this trope: his undershirt is a very pale purple, while his cape and mask are either light black with purple undertones or is a deepened purple that is being used in lieu of black.
• Teen Titans (2003): Raven is the brooding Dark Magical Girl on the team with a Dark Secret that she works to keep from everyone, i.e. that she's a Human-Demon Hybrid and an Apocalypse Maiden who is destined to usher her demon father Trigon into the human world to take it over. She has short, dark purple hair in this adaptation, which is notable as in the original comic where her origins are conveyed more directly to the audience, she has long jet black hair.

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