No Power, No Color

If Power Glows, then what happens if something is out of power? A great way to indicate this is to have it fade to a monochrome color scheme, usually a gray one. Certain sections and parts might be the only ones to be affected by the loss of energy, but the entire body might fade too.

For example, highly-advanced technology with Tron Lines usually display vibrant colors to indicate that they're active and alive, but when they're shut off, the Tron Lines themselves disappear into nothing but pure black colors with the surrounding environment often turning gray as a result.

Commonly used in Video Games for both gameplay and storytelling, especially for menus indicating incapacitated members. In most examples of Subsystem Damage, the system that is lost, disabled, and/or destroyed is often grayed out on the diagram if red isn't used instead (or red is reserved for when a system is destroyed versus gray when it's merely disabled).

Robot characters fading to indicate death may overlap with Death Is Gray.

A Sub-Trope of Color-Coded for Your Convenience and Gray Is Useless.

Contrast Power Up Full Color Change. See Color Failure for when the change to a singular color scheme is the result of a state of shock.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Digimon Adventure: Lillymon, whose body is normally colored different shades of pink and green, is struck by Vamdemon's Dead Scream attack, which turns her grey and causes her to fall to the ground unconscious.
• Dragon Ball Z: After expending all of his power at once in an attempt to defeat Majin Buu, Vegeta's body is left a petrified husk, lifeless and colorless.
  • The same thing happens to the titular orbs for a year after being used (or permanently if the creator of the Dragon Balls dies or otherwise ceases to exist): turning to useless gray balls of rock until they're ready to be used again.
• Gundam: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny's Mobile Suits with Phase Shift Armor depend on the color of their activated armor to determine its strength and power consumption. If the armor is deactivated from the suit being on standby in a hangar or the battery running low on power, the only color the armor will have is gray and leave the machine vulnerable.
• In Transformers: ★Headmasters, Blaster turns completely white when he dies after his final battle against Soundwave.
• Transformers Victory:
  • God Ginrai's dead corpse fades to gray. The resemblance to Optimus Prime's death in the movie and Ginrai's similarity to him is probably unintentional as said movie had not been released in Japan yet (for further proof that it is probably a coincidence rather than intentional, Wheeljack, who dies in the movie, shows up alive and well in the same episode as Ginrai dies).
  • Liokaiser gets thrown into the charging cannon of the Planet-Destroying Fortress and is drained of his energy. His now gray body helplessly floats off into space with only a cry for help to indicate any remaining signs of life.

Comic Books

• Squadron Supreme: When Doctor Spectrum's Power Prism is destroyed, his body becomes a pure white outline, as though the colorist forgot about him.
• The Transformers (IDW): "Aggressive depigmentation" is an occurrence in Transformers who suffer intense damage or death wherein the natural colors of their bodies fade to shades of gray. This is a common phenomenon in Transformers (just look at the rest of this page), but IDW was the first to put a name to it.

Fan Works

• In the Gravity Falls fanfic All The World's a Toybox, Bill Cipher fades from his usual neon yellow colouration to a dull grey after being defeated by the heroes - more specifically when Grunkle Ford reveals that his plan to escape from the Nightmare Realm was All for Nothing: Weirdmageddon would have ended with Earth being rendered down into another part of the Nightmare Realm and Bill would have ended up Dying Alone anyway. In this case, it's not just that Bill's lost his power, but also his will to continue.

Films — Animation

• Fantasia: When Mickey destroys the original broom with his axe, the whole scene becomes black and white as a symbol of the magic being held back for the time being. When the splinters shake trying to go back to life, color returns briefly, until each splinter transforms into a whole new broom and color returns permanently.
• Fantasia 2000: As an embodiment of life and nature, the Spring Sprite is a vibrant green. However, after the Firebird burns down her forest, she turns grey, representing both the predominant colour in the now devastated landscape and her own despair.
• Inside Out:
  • The faded memories in the memory dump are all dull grey, while living memories are colored. There are also a few non-colorful memories on shelves; Word of God states that these are recollections of non-emotional things, like pure facts.
  • When Anger, Fear and Disgust's ideas drive Riley to depression resulting in her running away, the control console in her brain becomes unresponsive, preventing the emotions from removing the running away idea. Then a dark sheen creeps across the console, blotting out the brightly-coloured buttons and leaving the emotions totally helpless as Riley's Greyhound bus heads for the freeway. Only the return of Joy and Sadness, and Sadness's finally being allowed near the console, restores life and colour to the buttons and gets Riley off the bus.
    Fear: Guys... we can't make Riley feel anything.
• The Transformers: The Movie: Optimus Prime turns gray upon death. Interestingly, almost none of the other many characters who die in the first twenty minutes of the film alone change color upon death, indicating that Optimus is a special case. The exception is Starscream, who also takes on a gray color scheme when he is (finally) executed by the rebuilt Galvatron, crumbling to pieces when the blast finishes destroying him.
• In Yellow Submarine, victims of the Blue Meanies, either through bonking, shooting, or smashing by the Dreaded Flying Glove, freeze up and lose all color. They're Not Quite Dead, however, as one such victim is seen shedding a tear
• In the Trolls franchise, a Troll who has crossed the Despair Event Horizon will turn from their normally vivid colors to gray. This happens on numerous occasions in the films:
  • In the first film:
    • This happened to Branch as a child when his grandma was captured by Chef to be eaten in front of him, and he blamed himself for it. Unlike most cases, Branch didn't necessarily turn completely gray, which showed that he still had a sense of hope, as explained in the example below.
    • At the film's climax, this happens to all of the Pop Trolls before Branch manages to rally Poppy to regain her hope and colors, inspiring everyone else in turn as well as himself.
  • In Trolls World Tour, when Poppy destroys the Strings, every Troll and everything around them is rendered gray in a near-literal Darkest Hour, as they believe that all music is gone with them. However, thanks to Cooper and Prince D, they then realize that music was inside them all along and restore their colors. The Tribes doing music together also produces some rainbow results in the Rock Arena.

Films — Live-Action

• Avengers: Infinity War: When the Vision has the Mind Stone torn out of his head by Thanos, he fades from his usual red and green into a lifeless gray. Justified because he's made of Vibranium metal, which is naturally gray in its unaltered state.
• In Fat Albert, Albert and his friends' clothes gradually fade the longer they stay in the real world as they turn into real people.
• In Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, the magical and monstrous residents of the titular town lose all of their powers when corrupted by "the Grey Spell" and take on boring, grayscale, human forms instead. At the end of the movie, the heroes use a reversed incantation to restore Halloweentown to its cheerfully wicked former state.
• In Wee Sing in Sillyville, Genki Girl Sillywhim's outfit has brightly-colored stripes, and a large flower, in all the colors of the rainbow. When the residents of Sillyville, who each wear a different hue, decide to stop interacting with anyone who doesn't wear the same color, Sillywhim's outfit fades to a black-and-white monochrome to reflect their lack of unity. Eventually, the different groups come together to help her and learn An Aesop about unity and not judging others because of appearances; once they've reconciled, Sillywhim's colors are restored to their natural state.

Live-Action TV

• In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Coulson LMD robot is hit with an EMP that disables him and causes his irises to turn grey. Even after he is reactivated, nearly the entire episode is Deliberately Monochrome to show that his color vision has not yet returned (as well as being a Genre Throwback to Film Noir).
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Megaforce:
    • The Rangers' morphers take on a dirty rusted appearance when one of the villains drains their morphers in "End Game". (Unfortunately, it still looks more like paint than burnout.)
    • The Ranger Keys turn into gray stone when Vrak disables their Super Mega Mode.
  • Power Rangers Dino Charge: The Dino Morph Blasters don't take on their usual colorful and technological appearance until the to-be-Rangers insert their respective Energems into them. Before that, they look just like rocky fossils.
• Red Dwarf: As shown in "The Promised Land", holograms are capable of going into "Low-Power Mode" to conserve energy, which leads to them turning greyscale. This ends up being a fate which befalls Rimmer when the crew need to conserve energy.
• In the final episode of Through the Dragon's Eye, the Keepers lose their color and turn pale, indicating Pelemar does not have long left. As soon as the final piece of the Veetacore has been put in place and the activation spell has been chanted, their color is immediately restored.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Ioun stones with limited uses turn dull grey when their magic is exhausted.

Toys

• BIONICLE: When the Bohrok-Kal steal the Nuva Symbols, depriving the Toa Nuva of their elemental powers, their masks turn gray.

Video Games

• In Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombies map Ascension is entirely monochrome until the power switch is flipped.
• In some Command & Conquer games, unpowered structures turn very dark gray, sometimes with a lightning symbol above them. Starting with Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, exceeding the power supply to your base slows production and disables base defenses and superweapons, which turn almost pitch-black. The same thing happens if any building is voluntarily powered down, along with an icon to denote it. Vehicles under the effect of an EMP also darken.
  • The Scrin suffer this once GDI destroys the Relay Node that controls their Keystone Army on Earth. The following cutscene shows units and structures losing the purple lights and darkening as they collapse and crash to the ground.
  • The Global Conquest mode in the PC version of Kane's Wrath uses this for cities to denote that the population is outright decimated by the Scrin rather than the cold-to-hot colors indicating the level of panic and unrest.
• In Densetsu no Stafy, one level has you go inside a whale. Within her body are the Antibuddies, which are pale gray due to being weak and out of energy. Feeding them a cake will restore their energy and turn them back to their brightly colored selves.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition: In The Stinger, Solas is revealed to be Fen'Harel, the ancient elven trickster god. He approaches Flemeth and absorbs her powers, killing her in the process. Her lifeless body immediately turns ash-gray and colorless.
• In Metal Warriors, undamaged mech suits are brightly colored, but when they get more and more damaged, their color fades. Empty mech suits are gray, and change color depending on which player enters one (players are either red or blue in multiplayer, and AI enemies in single-player mode are purple).
• In Mindustry, all buildings have a unique colorful animation as long as they are working correctly. Buildings not working for any reason^note Nothing to process, no power, the output is clogged, or some specific requirements are not met have the non-animated and much less colorful idle sprite.
• Ōkami: If the player counters certain attacks with specific Brush Techniques, the enemy will be stunned momentarily, which is represented by them turning grey and gaining a pair of Circling Birdies above their head.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, an unmanned AIS is gray in color until someone boards it, upon which it takes on the color of whatever clothes they are wearing. Can be subverted if the pilot's clothes are grey.
• Pokémon X and Y: Marvelous Deer Pokemon Xerneas, the legendary mascot of Pokemon X, has bright glowing antlers with what looks like gems of all different colors adorning their tips. When not in battle, however, its antlers dull and the "gems" all become a muted shade of blue. Even its body's hue switches between an intense blue when in battle and a softer blue palette when not.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog, Chaos Emeralds and other related artifacts that have been sapped of their power lose their color and turn to stone. As seen in Sonic Adventure however, they can still sometimes hold onto latent power and be used to turn thoughts and emotions into power.
• Super Paper Mario: The 8 Pure Hearts are all powerful, colorful artifacts, and when the violet one loses its power, it gets turned into a gray stone. When the violet Pure Heart's power gets restored, it regains its color as well.
• TinkerQuarry: While the toys cannot die, they can be "Impaired", which traps them in a death-like state. When a toy is either Impaired or close to being Impaired, they lose all their color and go grayscale.

Western Animation

• Big Hero 6: The Series: in the episode "Cobra and Mongoose", supervillain Cobra is using remotely controlled robotic cobras with bright green patterns. When Hiro removes the neural interface that is used to control them, the cobras power down and the patterns turn a dull grey.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): One-off villain Mr. Mime had the ability to drain the colours out of other beings, leaving them in a coma afterwards.
• Tangled: The Series: After Zhan Tiri takes away Cassandra's Moonstone, her outfit takes on a dull grey color, compared to the imposing jet black it was before.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers:
  • Tornedron sucking out the energy from characters and objects turns them gray.
  • Victims of the eponymous Dweller in the Depths turn grey after their energy is drained.
  • Transformers: Animated: In reference to Optimus Prime's death in The Transformers: The Movie, all Transformers fade to gray upon death. This is justified by the concept of Transformers having "electronic paint jobs" that let them change color at will, with the implication that their normal color schemes are active projections that deactivate to reveal their real gray colors underneath when they die. After Blurr is crushed by the disguised Shockwave into a cube and handed off to be disposed of, it's noteworthy that the cube is still Blurr's powder blue coloring, hinting that he's still alive but immobile.
  • Transformers: Prime: The movie death is alluded to in an episode wherein Bumblebee enters Megatron's comatose mind to find a cure for a disease afflicting Optimus. Megatron is quick to sense his advantage and pressures the scout to agree to a little quid pro quo or else "Optimus fades to gunmetal gray."
• In the season two premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the chaos god Discord is freed and sets out to protect himself from the Elements of Harmony by corrupting each member of the Mane Six into the opposite of the quality they embody (making the honest Applejack a liar or the kindly Fluttershy cruel, etc.) so they cannot use their Elements any longer. As he brainwashes each of the ponies, they go from their usually vibrant-selves to dull, muted gray. Tellingly, when the Mane Six are restored thanks to The Power of Friendship, their magic takes the form of a giant rainbow.

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