Power Glows

...and absolute power glows absolutely.

Dr. Blitzmeyer: Hello! I see that my Anomalous Energy Enhancer has caught your eye!
Blackheart: Well, I do like green glowing things... What does it do?
Dr. Blitzmeyer: Well right now it... glows green.
Blackheart: That's it?
Dr. Blitzmeyer: It's a new technology.

— NIMONA

Power glows. The more power, the more glow. So, anything that glows is automatically presumed to be superior to otherwise identical things that don't glow, and more glow is better. This is closely related to the Rule of Cool because glowing is cool, so things that glow automatically get more Willing Suspension of Disbelief, allowing them to be more unrealistically powerful. They're often Good Colors, Evil Colors, too. For example, evil glows bright red, good glows blue or gold, and radioactive materials glow green.

Glowing Eyes of Doom? Inherently superior to ordinary, everyday, garden-variety eyes of doom. Glowing Battle Aura? Opponents who don't glow won't stand a chance! Any physical object that glows will also be powerful somehow. Glowing sword vs. boring sword? Glowing sword wins, every time. Explodey things that emit a glow first are bigger, louder and/or do more damage, and if they were Sucking-In Lines first, they're even more so. The most powerful magical potions will also glow to signify their superiority over ordinary, non-glowing magical potions. And don't forget the inherent awesomeness of the Pillar of Light, which is Glow going to Heaven just to show how overwhelming it is.

Strangely enough, in real life glowing would usually indicate a wasting of energy, but it could still count as just the excess energy manifesting as light. A good example is in Mercedes Lackey's Velgarth series in which Gates and Portals only glow when energy is being used inefficiently.

Super-Trope to the following:

• Battle Aura
• Holy Halo
• Phosphor-Essence
• Volcanic Veins

See also: Power Crystal, Power Echoes, Power Floats, Power Makes Your Voice Deep, Pure Energy, Holy Backlight, Background Halo and Family-Friendly Firearms. Pre-Explosion Glow, Star-Spangled Spandex, Throat Light, and Sucking-In Lines are special cases of this trope. In media with audio, this is commonly a Whining Light. Very often overlaps with Power-Up Full Color Change.

If only certain people are aware of the glow you could be looking at Editorial Synaesthesia or even Aura Vision. May be used as a Fantastic Light Source as Mundane Utility.

As one final note, DO NOT rely on this trope to determine danger in Real Life. People have been killed from touching downed power lines that aren't glowing or sparking but still have enough charge to electrocute anyone who touches them, and permanently disabling to lethal levels of radiation can be present without any visual signs at all (which is why Geiger counters and dosimeters exist!)

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In AKIRA, at the moment of the greatest release of energy, everything is reduced to a bright white. Maximum glow for maximum power.
• As the trope image shows, the holy Gold Clothes (armors) from Saint Seiya sometimes glow...very much so.
• Gourry in Slayers has an extremely powerful Sword of Light, much better than any other regular swords. He can chop through trees with his sword, and we're not talkin' fist-width saplings, either. It also makes lightsaber noises.
• Everything that has some sort of spiritual nature in Earth Maiden Arjuna gives off an awesome glow. Including Juna's Magical Girl transformation, as well as her energy bow Gan Deeva.
• Fate/stay night:
  • Excalibur, the "ultimate weapon of humanity", able to convert the user's Mana into light energy and fire it as a destructive wave. Since it takes in the user's own power, it also changes color according to alignment.
  • Ea, Gilgamesh's EX rank Noble Phantasm turns the winds it sends out red.
• Some Initial D characters can tell roughly how good another driver is by the glowing aura around the driver and by extension, his car when the person is driving it.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! does this for several reasons. Spell and Trap cards glow whenever their effects come into play as well as various monster attacks. Millennium Items often glow in order to show they are being activated. Noteworthy glows come from whoever is summoning God cards.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters have power glows whenever monsters perform powerful attacks, as well as when Yami Yugi merges with his monsters.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds does this very frequently. Shooting Star Dragon is in constant glow mode and is only ever seen once without it. The final battle with ZONE has Yusei tune all 5 of his friends' dragons into Shooting Quasar Dragon, the most overly glowing transformation sequence in the series, as it involves Yusei and his D-wheel going fully gold. One might be able to guess it has a whole arsenal of effects ready to beat ZONE's Timelords like they were nothing.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Many attacks glow a certain color before making things explode and blast off (Iron Tail, Focus Punch, Bubble Beam, etc).
  • Psychic-type Pokémon often glow cyan while levitating.
  • In the movie Pokémon 2000, to save Lugia, the three legendary bird Pokémon, and resolve all conflict, Melody had to play a tune on what looked like some sort of ocarina. The stones she played it next to glowed depending on what note she used, and then glowing water came out from nowhere and entered into the sea.
• The 2003 series of Astro Boy explains this by giving the titular robot a kind of surge-protector that somehow converts excess electricity into photons.
• Used in the Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade-movie "The Adventures Of Mikuru Asahina", just like any other cliche-trope. When Koizumi's power is released, he glows blue-ish. Interestingly though, it does not appear to be the comically used Special Effect Failure, like with the Mikuru-Beam.
• If you notice yourself being bathed in a soft, pink light in Lyrical Nanoha, that is your signal to run fast, and run far, as that soft light won't stay soft for long for it comes from the massive pink glow that precedes Nanoha's Starlight Breaker.
  • If you find yourself in a similar situation in Dragon Ball Z, you're about to be blown up by Majin Buu. Generally speaking, soft, pink light is best avoided in Anime.
• Performing alchemy causes stuff to glow in Fullmetal Alchemist. This is actually used as a small plot point when Ed realizes that he and Al can't use alchemy to sneak into the fifth laboratory, as the guard would see the glow.
• Bleach will sometimes use this trope to display the power upgrade the release of a Shinigami's Zanpakutou or an Arrancar's Resurrection may cause.
• Getter Robo has this for Getter Rays use. Most designs of Getter-1 even include several clear panels on the face and some on the chest and limbs so they can light up when it's time to kick ass.
• Dragon Ball may not be the oldest example, but it might be the definitive one.
  • Actually inverted in the Android saga of Dragon Ball Z. The titular androids - cyborgs more powerful even than Frieza - are shown as extreme threats, despite their lack of any glow at all. In fact, Androids 17 and 18 are for a short time the two strongest beings in the DB universe, the latter totally trouncing the very glowy, newly Super-Saiyan Vegeta.
    • This is because the glowing Battle Aura is a product of ki energy, the source of nearly all DBZ fighters' superhuman powers. All, that is, except the Androids. The fact that their power is so different in nature was part of what made them so dangerous: all of the heroes can sense powerful ki from miles away, but one of the Androids could be standing right behind them and they wouldn't even know it. Which is exactly what happens to Yamcha. The results include a fist-shaped hole from his back to his chest.
  • Inverted again in the Buu saga. When Gohan achieved a new level of power beyond the glowy Super-Saiyan or even the glowier and sparky Super-Saiyan 2, his hair remained black and had almost no battle aura to speak of.
  • In Dragon Ball GT, both Goku and Baby as Great Apes have a golden, glowy aura and fur. Seeing as this is basically Super Saiyan Great Ape, it makes sense.
• The finale of the third arc of Robotech and during Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, where Ariel glows whenever she's using creepy Invid powers.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy's Gear Second gives his body a bright pinkish glow. Yeah, it's high-pressure blood in his body but it's still glowing. Partially justified, because the idea of the attack is that he's heating up his leg with friction (without tearing his skin or clothes to shred). The heat then glows, like a toaster coil.
  • Sanji's Diable Jambe (Devil's Leg) makes his foot glow a bright red.
  • It should be noted, one of the most powerful Marines, Admiral Kizaru, literally turns into light.
• The "Shining Finger!" attack from Mobile Fighter G Gundam.
  • Not to mention all Shuffle Alliance members' Hyper Modes, which turn their Humongous Mecha into glowing gold incarnations of ass-kicking.
• Gundam 00 has the Gundams glow red and pink when they activate their Trans-Am systems.
• Both Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ had effects from the pilots resonating with their titular Mobile Suits' main device, the Bio-Sensor, making them glow pink and allow them to do kick-ass stuff.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, The Nu Gundam's Psycoframe gives off a green glow when Amuro's Newtype powers start to overload it.
• The same happens in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: the full Psycoframe under the RX-0's armour glows whenever its NT-D is activated. Its colour depends on the strength of the Newtype's abilities. The Unicorn and Banshee have their own colors, but once the Newtype's power has awakened, they both turn green.
• After War Gundam X 's titular mobile suit and later upgrade both exhibits this when using their Satellite Cannon.
• Gundam Build Fighters has the Star Build Strike's RG System, which turns its inner frame and parts of its outer frame a glowing blue color and is basically an amalgamation of the various glowing super modes in the Gundam franchise such as increased performance and enhanced power.
  • Similarly, the Gundam X Maoh and Amazing Exia both retain their original glowing frames when using their special attacks, namely the Satellite Cannon and Trans-AM respectively.
  • Parts of Qubeley Papillion's frame glow whenever the Embody system is utilized.
• Once every 22 years in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, the World Tree in Mahora glows with a brilliant light. This is from the magical energy within accumulating to the point where it overflows. When it's like this, it could grant wishes of the heart, from something as simple as making someone fall in love with you to convincing the entire world that magic exists.
• The Rebuild of Evangelion movies introduce this in spades. The most obvious example is what happens to Unit-01 at the end of the second movie: it starts going berserk and gets the usual Glowing Eyes of Doom. But so does its pilot. And the mecha's fluorescent green parts start glowing sickly red. As well as the inside of its maw. Then it rebuilds its amputated arm as a glowy, proteiform appendage, grows a halo, shoots Eye Beams left and right and loses its armour only to reveal glowing white patches beneath it. By the time the credits flash, it has become a giant glowing figure of pure white. Unsurprisingly, its opponent is unable to resist such a brilliant display.
• Darker than Black is rather fond of this trope. Contractors using their powers glow blue (identified as Cherenkov radiation), and their eyes start shining red. Even more extreme when Hei gets a bit upset near an Amplifier Artifact, which makes the entire neighborhood glow.
• In Naruto, the titular character, as well as his fellow jinchuuriki, are engulfed in a glowing aura of chakra when in their Tailed Beast forms (except Gaara, he gets covered in sand). This takes the form of the jinchuuriki's Tailed Beast after the initial stage, at which point it is often time to run away. Of course, there IS a threshold past which the aura disappears in exchange for something far worse...
  • This is lampshaded when Naruto's controlled form of the Nine-Tails' chakra is used as a flashlight.
  • The Fourth Raikage (A)'s Raiton: Yoroi (Lightning Armor) covers his body in lightning.
• In YuYu Hakusho, B Class and higher beings like Toguro, Yusuke, Bui, and Sensui often display bright auras when either manifesting their full power or when using a powerful attack. Especially powerful auras can cause adverse things to the wielder's surroundings: Toguro's can disintegrate anything drastically weaker than him, and the combined power of Sensui's Sacred Energy and Yusuke's new-found demonic power created massive earthquakes and twisters strong enough to kill A-Class beings in an instant.
• Then there's the ultimate attacks of the titular Super Robot in GaoGaiGar: Hell and Heaven has one fist glowing red and the other glowing yellow, while using the Goldion Hammer results in the entire robot glowing gold. In the OVA FINAL, they introduce the world's biggest ban hammer that has a head several magnitudes larger than the handle and is made up of nothing but pure, glowing energy.
• The Spiral Energy of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. While the glowing energy powered by Fighting Spirit (aka. Pure Manliness), is present from the first episode, it reaches new extremes nearly every other episode, until by the end, the main characters are piloting a Humongous Mecha 100 times the size of THE MILKY WAY GALAXY, which is not even actually a machine but a materialization of Spiral Energy. Its energy-based nature is shown by the fact that the torso of the mecha is mostly comprised of a flaming, glowing mass Spiral Energy.
• Tiger & Bunny: NEXT glow blue when they use their powers. Except for the members of Ouroboros, who glow orange because they're totally evil.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Madoka, as a Magical Girl, glows brightly enough you could mistake her for the sun in a few scenes.
• Digimon Adventure: During key battles, digimon will sometimes start glowing with holy power.
• Parodied in Rising × Rydeen. When the huge "Golden Lion King" unleashes a roar and starts radiating blinding light from his body, Takara panics, thinking he's about to use a powerful attack... until Mission Control informs him that "glowing when he roars" is Golden Lion King's only power.
• Variable Geo: Just as Yuka prepares to unleash her Soryu Gekki, her body becomes enveloped in a pure white glow. Though she succeeds in saving Siritahi, she inadvertently kills Damian with it (seen at 4:28-4:59).
• In Castle Town Dandelion activating a Royalty Superpower will make the user glow.
• In My Hero Academia, Izuku's body glows gold with bright red Volcanic Veins in whatever limb he uses One For All in. While using One For All: Full Cowl, there is still a slight glow to his form and his deep green eyes glow neon green as he leaves Technicolor Lightning in his wake.
• Pretty Cure:
  • Doki Doki! PreCure: Makoto's hair begins to glow brightly while singing her powerful song to convince Regina to have a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure: When Laura first transforms into Cure La Mer, her ring starts to glow, then her shell pact, and then her entire body.
• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle parodies this when Princess Syalis steals the setting's Infinity +1 Sword from the Demon Castle's armory... so she can use it as a lamp.

Comic Books

• A common trope in comics, especially as regards Psychic Powers. One should apparently be able to spot a telepath with ease thanks to the glowing energy field that emanates from their heads and usually flows out from them around the heads of those that they are using their powers on. Telekinesis likewise tends to consist of a colored energy field surrounding the affected objects. This does however depend somewhat on the artistic preference of the creators.
• This has become more and more common over the years in Marvel Comics, to the point where virtually any use of a superpower will glow, even if the energy involved (magnetic, psionic, etc.) should not be visible to the naked eye. Justified due to Rule of Perception (i.e. the glow is the visual cue to the reader that something is happening.)
• Fantastic Four: Often Invisible Woman's force fields, which are supposed to be invisible, were drawn with dotted lines or shading so that the reader knew where they were, even while it was presumed that characters could not see them. This invisibility was used dramatically during John Byrne's run, where the identity of the super-villain Malice and her powers were a mystery as she systematically took down the members of the team using completely unseen forces. It is only when Daredevil, who "sees" via a radar sense, shows up and asks about the "amorphous blob" they are fighting that they realize that it is Sue and her invisible force fields, thus saving the team from another Reed Richards Is Useless incident. More recent depictions, however, sometimes show Sue's power as a crackling energy field, not unlike those of other psionic characters.
• X-Men: In the early years, the powers of characters like Magneto, Jean Grey and Professor-X were often depicted with wavy lines, implying that they were not visible to others characters. Now they cannot seem to use their powers without unleashing incredible amounts of glow. This has been especially true whenever Jean or her daughter Rachel Summers is channeling the Phoenix Force. In that case just performing a simple mindlink will result in actual flames flowing between them and the other person (often Cyclops or Cable).
• Inverted in some Valiant Comics prior to the takeover by Acclaim. Powerful psionics such as Toyo Harada and Peter Stanchek gave off no glow even when performing massive feats of power such as levitating large objects or ripping apart buildings. However, this trope was very much in force with Solar and Mothergod, whose power to manipulate all forms of energy was usually accompanied by geometric patterns of rainbow light.
• Superman:
  • Post-Flashpoint Supergirl's body often glows when she is super-charged with solar energy or is using her solar flare attack.
  • In Red Daughter of Krypton, her body gave off a golden glow after she took a literal sunbath.
  • Demon Spawn: Villainous sorceress Nightflame's sword glows when she uses her powers, blasts flames or casts spells.
  • The Supergirl from Krypton (2004): Superman and Supergirl's bodies—or at least their eyes—often glow red when they fight during this story.
  • In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, the chunk of Kryptonite which empowers Streaky gives off a white glow.
  • In Bizarrogirl, Dr. Kimiyo Hoshi -alias Dr. Light- glows when she creates constructs of solid white light.
  • In Escape from the Phantom Zone, the Tycho Eidolon machine creates a dimensional rift which gives off a blinding violet glow.
  • Death & the Family: The seven magical heirlooms of McDougal Clan give a silver-blue glow when they are close to each other.
  • Krypton No More, one-time villain Protector's body glows when he uses his powers and alters his molecules.
  • Kryptonite Nevermore:
    • A kryptonite engine gives off a frightening green glow.
    • After recovering his powers, Superman's spirit glows.
  • In The Great Phantom Peril, Clark Kent's alien figurine stolen by Mr. Porter gives off a bright pink glow, a hint of the powerful dimensional energies stored inside.
  • In Last Daughter of Krypton, Supergirl's body gives off a golden glow when she heats up and releases stored sunlight. When visiting the ruins of Argo City, she uses her radiance's energy to power up a Kryptonian recording device.
  • In The Killers of Krypton, Rogol Zaar's sentient ax gives a sinister, electrical red glow when it awakens.
  • Supergirl (1984): The matter-transmuting device Omegahedron gives off a blinding golden glow when someone taps into its power. When Kara is taking it back home, it lights up as a star.
    Faster than the fastest jet, Supergirl streaks into the inky void of space, carrying the power source she searched for, fought for, and won! The Omegahedron glows intensely, as if to light her path back to her city, back to her parents, back to her heritage.
• Doctor Strange typically has a glow around his hands when spellcasting.
• In the Doom comic: "Might makes light." BLAM! CLA-CLACK "And I feel mighty!" BLAM!
• Iron Fist: the titular character's fist glows when he summons his chi.
• The constructs of the Green Lanterns are all made of glow.
• In The Sandman: Endless Nights, an Oan precursor of the Guardians of the Universe manipulates a primitive form of Green Lantern energy which she calls "the Glow". Her name? Killalla of the Glow.
• In Power Pack, Katie's (Energizer) power causes her to glow when she absorbs... just about anything; she's also able to shoot energy balls. The brighter the glow, the more power she has stored up.
• Played for laugh in the French comic Dungeon Zenith vol. 2: The Barbarian Princess: the hero asks its speaking sword whether it has special powers. Yes: it glows in the dark. Enough to make him a target, not enough to be used as a light.
• In All Fall Down, Siphon exhibits this to a blinding degree shortly before she dies.
• The Sentry is not called 'The Golden Guardian of Good' for nothing.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth traditionally glows to an extent and when in use glows brighter, to the point that some artists draw it as though it is made of light when she's using it to force someone to confront the truth.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): In Judgment In Infinity, the Adjudicator is always seen holding a glowing, multifaceted crystal ball which every so often sends "rays of polychromatic light in all directions".
  • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) the items empowered by the gods all glow until Zeus strips them of their magical properties. The gods' champions' eyes glow when they're tapping into the power the gods granted them with their contracts.
  • In Wonder Woman and the Star Riders the Star Rider gal's Star Jewels all glow, as does the cap of Ice's Magic Staff and Nightshine's horn.
• Young Avengers: Wiccan's powers always come with a distinctive light blue glow, whether the spell is offensive, supportive, or completely unintended. The amount of glowing he's doing is usually a good indication of how much you've pissed him off and/or whether or not he's still in control of his powers.
• Zodiac Starforce: The Starforce girls' weapons glow to the point that they seem to be made of light.
• Amulet: All eponymous trinkets seem to glow with a different color.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Very prevalent in The Great Darkness Saga. Every mystical relic stolen by the Servants of Darkness gives off some kind of glowing radiance. Darkseid is constantly enshrouded in blazes or tendrils of crackling energy, and his eyes glow white every time he's about to fire his eye beams... or simply when he gets annoyed.
• Super Metroid: Samus' repowered suit glows white as she puts it on in the final chapter.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992): To help expedite things, Link doesn't need the Book of Mudora to translate the glyphs himself. When Link reaches the Desert of Mystery, the book flies out of his hands and hovers over the Hylian script, casting a swath of light from its pages. This automatically unlocks the Pendant of Power.
• In Batgirl story The Attack of the Annihilator, the alien rock found by the titular villain gives off an eerie red glow. When he is exposed and mutated by the rock's hidden energies, his body also becomes surrounded by a red aura.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Monster X's lightning powers can produce a Volcanic Veins effect merely by either of its two heads (San or Vivienne) feeling strong emotions, and there's how their powers are, well, Shock and Awe powers. It also turns out the "shed skin" version of Ni/Elder Brother that's utilizing the Many can produce this effect as part of an intimidation display, similar to Ghidorah and other Titans.
• The fact that the protagonist of Dragon Age fanfiction Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns gets his magic from a fairly unstable tear in the Veil, which he has in his body, means, among other things, that he starts glowing white whenever he does something unusual, either just from the eyes or his whole body, up to looking like a Stargate ascended ancient.
• In Keepers of the Elements, magical beings often glow when casting spells. In the case of Keepers, these glows are typically colour coded according to the Keeper's Element.
• In Child of the Storm, this trope is enforced as Harry's powers start to come through, and is later reflected by the various psychics (though usually only when they're warming up to do something big).
• Advice and Trust: When Kaworu makes Rei angry, she taps her power subconsciously, and she starts glowing red.
• In Children of an Elder God, Asuka gives off an orange glow when she uses her pyrokinesis. Yui also glowed white when she used her powers during the Final Battle.
• In the final chapters of Thousand Shinji, Shinji's body gives off a radiant, electrical blue glow when he uses his Psychic Powers.
• Quicken: When Emma kills Cricket, she gets struck by a thunderbolt. Her body gave off a blue electric haze and lightning bolts surrounded her as Cricket’s power, knowledge and memories were transferred to her.
• Mostly avoided in With Strings Attached and The Keys Stand Alone, but played straight when the four come across a white key—a 6-foot staff glowing with power. This turns out to be annoying, because the thing is incredibly noticeable, everyone wants it and will cheerfully kill for it, and George is unable to put it in his closet. They end up trying to mask the glow by covering the staff with cloth, but it still glows through the cloth.
• Anima Ex Machina: Most Ixodida gain an aura of one color or another when using one of their elemental powers.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Hisako's Psychic Powers are often manifested as a sort-of green energy, and when she's truly angry, her eyes glow bright green. When April's powers unlock, her glow is yellow.
• In Hellsister Trilogy, Darkseid's whole body glows black when he uses his Omega power on Supergirl.
• The Legend of Zelda fanfiction The Legacy of Hyrule has Azurewrath, though its glow disappeared when in contact with Lieutenant Aleph's arm.
• Pokémon Master: All pokemon masters gain differently-colored auras when they use their powers, even Shadow Master Ash.
• In The Dresden Fillies, Harry's aura as a unicorn is red-orange. Makes sense considering how much he likes fire.
• In Amazing Fantasy, the Prowler's anti-gravity Quirk makes whatever it's used on glow purple. Her Wolverine Claws gloves also glow green when activated.
• Guys Being Dudes: After Spark does something that might be activating Shock and Awe powers to save Arlo, his hair glows.

Films — Animation

• Barbie: Princess Charm School: Gardania's magical crown will glow when it is placed on the head of its rightful owner. It glows when placed on Blair's head because she's the lost princess Sophia and the only survivor of the royal family; if it were placed on Delancy's head, it would've not glowed, because Delancy is not the true heir to the throne due to the fact Princess Sophia is still around.
• Coco:
  • While the skeletons are visiting the living world, they are glowing and semitransparent.
  • When Imelda is preparing her blessing to send Miguel home, the marigold petal in her hand glows brightly, with the glow becoming brighter when conditions are added. Ernesto's does not however, either because he isn't related to Miguel in the first place or because he didn't finish saying the word "blessing" before being interrupted.
  • Skeletons flash red and yellow and feel pain when they're in danger of being forgotten.
• This happens to Cartman in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut once he harnesses the power of his malfunctioning V-chip.
• In Tangled, Rapunzel's golden hair glows whenever she uses its powers of healing and immortality. She manages to take advantage of this when she and Flynn get trapped in a flooding cave and need to find a way out.
  Flower, gleam and glow
  Let your power shine.
• In WALL•E, not only does EVE glow very faintly (the better to invoke a Gaussian Girl), her presence and touch cause electrical lights to glow as well.
• The Gods (save for Hades) in Hercules glow. Hercules did glow as a baby but lost that when he was turned mortal, he regains his godly glow at the end.
• In Turning Red, the chalk circle used in the red moon ritual glows when it is powered up.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: The Super Star glows like a lantern when Bowser approaches it. The star's light is bright enough to completely engulf him in light moments later. Later in the film, Mario and Luigi prove its power by using it to obliterate Bowser's entire army, and Bowser himself.

Films — Live-Action

• Godzilla:
  • Godzilla's dorsal fins flash or glow (depending on the film) when he's preparing to unleash his atomic ray. In the rare event where he goes Burning Godzilla, his body is covered in a bright, orange-red molten glow.
  • Mothra when using her God Rays.
  • Some incarnations of King Ghidorah have this. The Heisei and Showa incarnations have light-up horns in Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee and Godzilla: Save the Earth. With the MonsterVerse incarnation, his three necks glow with light while charging up their Gravity Beams (think Smaug but with lightning instead of fire), and it fits with how Godzilla and Mothra also light up in various ways when charging their built-in energy weapons.
  • There's also Mokele-Mbembe in the novelization of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), whose horn pulses with a very faint green light.
• The Hobbit: Smaug. In addition to the Glowing Eyes of Doom, he has Volcanic Veins in his chest whenever he's charging up his Fire Breath.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: When Galadriel enters her wraith-like form, she emits a powerful white glow.
• The lightsabers in Star Wars are the logical conclusion of this phenomenon. No other weapon can beat a sword that's actually made out of glow!
• Buddha's Palm: Martial artists imbued with the titular skill will have their chi emanating from their bodies, in the form of a powerful red aura enveloping them.
• In the 1985 film The Last Dragon, there is The Glow: when a fighter's hands glow, he is among the best in the world - when his entire body glows, he IS the best. Sho'Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, demonstrates the former towards the end of the movie, but Leroy "Bruce Leroy" Green demonstrates the latter after a beatdown.
• Five Fingers of Death has an example that doesn't involve weapons. Whenever the protagonist, Hao, uses the titular Dangerous Forbidden Technique, his palms glow visibly with an intense red aura; in this state his kung fu skills are multipled, at one point chopping a katana in half with his bare hands!
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Tony Stark's arc reactor in the Iron Man movies glows very blue. Very vaguely justified in that it is producing electrical energy, and that whatever reaction happens in it might give off Cherenkov radiation. As for the repulsors... the workings of a palm-sized rocket/energy weapon are anyone's guess.
  • The Tesseract from Captain America: The First Avenger. At the start of the film, Johann Schmidt comes across the artifact buried in the tomb of a Norwegian warrior, but we know it's fake because it doesn't glow. The real one, on the other hand, is like a small star. The glow extends to Arnim Zola's Tesseract-powered weapons as well, all of which carry luminous blue power packs.
• In Pulp Fiction, the contents of the briefcase is never shown, but whatever it is glows.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Played straight in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with the stones of power that glow when they are together. (And get very hot, by the way)
  • Inverted in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the actual Holy Grail is the most mundane-looking wooden cup yet the gold-colored lining of the True Grail makes it appear to glow from the inside.
• The reagent in Re-Animator is not only a fine example of Technicolor Science, but also glows.
• In the film of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a glow surrounds Harry when his wand chooses him. (A slightly different thing happened in the book.)
• In Stardust, Yvanne defeats Lamia when she glows blinding whilst hugging Tristan
• In Contact, the Machine glows when it's turned on to demonstrate that Crazy Alien Technology Stuff Is Happening. The glow increases as the machine picks up speed.
• In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, everything Gambit charges glows pink.
• God Told Me To: Powerful Half-Human Hybrid Phillips glows so brightly that Pete has trouble looking at him. His alien parent is shown only as a bright light that blinds the women it impregnates.

Literature

• In The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant magical glowing, Color-Coded Elements.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: orc-hating elvish swords and the entire tower of Minas Morgul. Though in the case of the elvish swords, the glow seems to have been a deliberate design feature (it indicates the presence of orcs) rather than a side effect of the magic.
  • Gandalf invokes this trope when he adds lighting to explain the disappearance of Bilbo in his Birthday party. After Gandalf's resurrection, his increased power makes him emit illusory sunlight.
• Mocked in A Song of Ice and Fire when Stannis gets Lightbringer, a literal glowing sword, but despises it because it doesn't do anything else better than most swords.
  • It is speculated that this is because it isn't the true Lightbringer, which would probably glow, but would actually be hot as well. So Power Glows, but so does a cheap glamour. Although it's worth noting that so far none of the actually superior swords have glowed.
  • Played straight with Melisandre's ruby. Whenever she causes weird magical stuff to happen, her ruby choker is said to glow intensely. Probably because she's the priestess of a fire god.
• The Brightest Shadow: Subverted, as visible power is generally a sign of wasted energy.
• In The Dresden Files Harry more than once makes his staff/blasting rod glow, usually when he is about to smash something into the water table.
  • Also his much-abused amulet, which glows whenever he uses it as a light/silver bullet against superpowered werewolves.
  • Then we have the Swords of the Cross, all of which glow with varying intensities depending on the wielder and situation. For instance Amoracchius once shines so brightly that it chargrills much light-hating hobs from 20 feet away. Similarly, when Murphy draws Fidelacchius it glows brightly enough to scare off Deirdre.
  • Any time Harry uses Soulfire or Hellfire.
  • When Harry starts training Molly to use her magic she had a tendency to glow when excited. This was fixed after the first few weeks of training
• Subverted several times in the Discworld series. Because of the world's narrative causality, mundane items wielded with true conviction are often stronger than fancy magic weapons.
  • Justified in the case of Death's scythe and sword, since these are so sharp, they cut up the air molecules that happen to bump against them. This, of course, causes lightning-like ionization.
• In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Deus Encarmine, the Spear of Telesto. And Isskvan the Hated glows with anger.
  • And then the tomb of Sanguinius in Red Fury.
• In The Cosmere, "Live Investiture" that is being unused tends to glow a bright white, to wit:
  • All magic produces bright glows in Elantris, because it is the sign of the power of the Dor breaking in to the physical world. The most powerful practitioners of magic, the Elantrians actually glow non-stop, but other magic-users produce light with their powers as well.
  • Interestingly the glowing caused extra problems when the magic went away because the glow attracted a fungus which fed on and enhanced the light. When the magic failed and the glow disappeared the fungus died and rotted, coating all of the surfaces of Elantris in slime. This slime is partially responsible for why the city looks so much more decrepit than it should be.
  • Stormlight, the primary magic power of The Stormlight Archive, glows, as one might expect from the name. A slight subversion in that most people use the glow more than the power itself, though it can be used to run Magitek. Also, living Shardblades have slightly glowing Tron Lines on them in the colour associated with the Radiant's order.
  • In The Bands of Mourning, any user of the titular bands starts glowing and shedding mist when active.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Beyond the Black River", the forest demon glows.
• Katherine Kurtz's Deryni can produce spheres of cool light (called Hand Fire), and they can manifest glowing auras around their bodies. Ritual circles (and dueling circles) appear as glowing light. Colours tend to be hereditary (Haldane red, Corwyn green), and certain colours (green, silver, gold) are associated with Healing ability.
• Deconstructed and Played for Drama in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's The Golden Naginata: Unless it has been used to wound the kirin who guards it within the past month, the titular weapon's glow is so bright that it blinds anyone who sees it.
• More powerful Wizards like Septimus and Marcia in Septimus Heap get enveloped in a purple aura when they are spellcasting.
• Invoked in Dream Park, as holographic auras of appropriate intensity are overlaid on Gamers' bodies when they activate their characters' magic.
• Wild Cards has the Golden Boy Jack Braun, whose body is surrounded by a golden aura whenever he uses his abilities or is under attack. Surprisingly, the field activates whenever there is a threat to Jack, even if he doesn't know about it, or in mundane situations like if his razor were to slip while shaving.
• In The Trials of Apollo, this is revealed to be an ability Will Solace has as a son of Apollo. To the point where the Troglodytes make him wear a lampshade as a hat.
• Many of the spells in Harry Potter take the form of beams of light, and many more glow.
• Played straight in The Elenium and its sequel The Tamuli. Several spells that the Knights and Sephrenia use create a light, but none are on par with Xanetia, whose entire body glows when she unleashes her power. Toyed on the spiritual level, as Xanetia's power comes from a curse that renders her dark and undetectable, while the magic the others are blessed with shines and rings out for others to notice.
• Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind book Armageddon gives off a burnt-orange glow while he and most of his Global Community cabinet are stuck in New Babylon during the Fifth Bowl Judgment that causes complete darkness throughout the whole city.
  • Jesus Himself, as He is "the Light of the world".
• The Magic Cottage:
  • In a room designed to harness cosmic energy, doing so gives Synergist leader Eldritch P. Mycroft an uncanny lucidity, and then a "spectrum aura," which grows to fill the room.
  • Protagonist Mike's eventually attuning to the "ethereal vitality" channelled by the titular cottage gives every object in the room a "blue-violet sheen."
• The seraph blades, the angels and Magnus' hands all glow in The Mortal Instruments.
• The starstuff in the Peter and the Starcatchers series is practically nothing but glow.
• In The Girl from the Miracles District, the runes Nikita's using to keep her berserk in check glow when they're engaged.
• In Princesses of the Pizza Parlor, the carvings on Selvi's dragonbone talisman glow when its effects are engaged.
• In Warlocks of the Sigil, warlocks are all given special tattoos that glow in this way.
• One of the "species" of "unnaturals" in Market of Monsters is aurs — people whose only power is glowing in the dark. Far from being targets of unnatural traffickers like other species, they're relatively popular and unfeared, with one even being a pop star who incorporates her ability into her shows.
• In The Thebaid, Amphiaraus's helmet shines like the sun just as Phoebus gifts him with divine power. Its a good sign of the gods' gift and it also helps blind the enemies Amphiaraus is trying to slaughter.
• In Nnedi Okorafor's Remote Control, an alien artifact grants Sankofa the power to project an aura that kills or outright incinerates every living being near her, which makes her skin glow deep green while it's active.
• In The Brotherhood of the Conch, most people see the conch as an ordinary shell, but Anand sees it as breathtakingly beautiful and as glowing white.
• The Hands of the Emperor: Whenever the emperor does magic, his eyes glow golden, and sometimes he is also accompanied by a golden glow. The eyes of other wizards, such as the Mother of the Mountain, may glow in different colors, e.g. silver. Also, in the days of the empire, all the magic of the lands connected to the emperor and made him or her quite literally blinding to look at.
• Tempest (2011): Merpeople and selkies have natural tattoos on their backs and shoulders that give off a phosphorescent glow deep underwater, but also sometimes glow when a person uses magic.

Live-Action TV

• In tokusatsu, a basic rule is "if you make your sword or foot glow, it will gain the power to explode rubber monsters."
  • Kamen Rider 555 had an interesting spin on it: the five Riders' costumes are covered with "veins" through which pumps a glowing substance that powers them. In nighttime scenes, the "veins" and visors glow, and use of a Finishing Move causes a bead of energy to run from the belt (the main power source) to the Rider's foot or sword or whatever they're going to use. The same series started a trend of a Rider's eyes glowing for a bit after they're done transforming, in order to signify that the process is done.

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• In Babylon 5, when Delenn and the White Stars take on the Drakh, the Drakh weapons systems glow brighter and brighter to build up the tension as they prepare to fire.
• When a magical Chekhov's Gun is found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer the following conversation is held:
  Giles: It appears to be paranormal in origin.
  Willow: How can you tell?
  Giles: Well, it's so shiny.
• When someone glows on Doctor Who, something badass is about to happen. Cases in point, the Bad Wolf and psychic supercharged Doctor.
• In Madan Senki Ryukendo, the Ultimate form of the title hero is ridiculously shiny, and his final attack even moreso.
• In Smallville, the usage of some meteor powers cause glowing, but Chloe's healing powers is most notable. "Fracture" shows that pure white light is literally shone on everything in the mind world of whoever she is healing, while most meteor powers glow green.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The glowiness of a power source is directly proportional to how powerful it is. The most powerful, Project Arcturus, creates a giant glowy ball of pure energy.
  • Lampshaded in a later episode where determining whether a super powerful artifact is safe to handle amounts to "Well, it's not glowing anymore, so..."
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Warp Core of the Enterprise has a band of glow running down it. The faster the Warpspeed, the faster-moving the glow. Star Trek does this a lot to show that things have power behind them.
• Supernatural
  • The djinn's hands or eyes glow blue when they use their powers.
  • Angels' eyes often glow blue when they use their powers, and their smite is bright white. If an angel is injured, sometimes we get a glimpse of their Grace, which is also bright white.
  • Human souls glow pure white, and are used as a source of energy by angels and demons alike. One episode also involved a human using his soul to power a spell, surprising Sam and Dean, and another involved a pagan deity draining human souls to fuel his time-traveling powers.
• In the pilot for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the crude Energy Weapon Cameron assembles in the safe of the bank only has enough power to kill Cromartie when the "isotope" powering it begins to glow.
• The Wonder Woman (1975) TV series: There is always one of those just when Diana Prince spins to change clothes into Wonder Woman. (Notice that there wasn't any Audible Gleam nor Power Glows in "The Feminum Mystique Part 1", the only episode in the series where Wonder Woman changes back into Diana Prince.
• Played for Laughs in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in the episode where Will gives up his skirt-chasing ways to enter a relationship with Lisa. To demonstrate that he's a one-woman man now, he gives his "Chicktionary" (the little black book with girls' phone numbers) to Carlton; as soon as the book drops into his hands it starts glowing, then the glow slowly spreads to Carlton's entire body.
  Carlton: I can feel it...I can feel the power! Yes! YES!!

Magazine

• Analog: The June 1942 cover has two characters glowing with a blue aura, and a reddish-yellow aura around glass.

Music Videos

• Radiohead's "There There" video has Thom Yorke obtain a pair of Sprint Shoes, which glow as brightly as gold when their powers of either attraction or Super-Speed kick in.

Myths & Religion

• After returning from Mt. Sinai after his first meeting with God, Moses was said to be glowing with beams of light emiting from his head. A mistranslation from Greek to Latin caused Donatello to sculpt him with horns.
• In Celtic Mythology, Cú Chulainn's ríastrad (lit. "Distortion" or "Torque"; more popularly translated as "Warp Spasm") is Body Horror incarnate, complete with one eye popping out of its socket and the other shrinking to the size of a needle eye, his muscles swelling like bladders until he looks more like a Fomorian giant than a man, horrific body contortions, his organs being partially vomited up, fire and blood spurting everywhere, his face ripping open into a Glasgow Grin with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, and Anime Hair (seriously!). However, the real clincher was his "hero light"—which refers to both the nuclear-hot fire that engulfs his body and a fist-sized horn made of Hard Light that jutted from his forehead, signaling that he was about to go on a rampage.

Pinball

• During the buildup to the "Final Adventure" in Indiana Jones (Stern), The Ark of the Covenant starts to glow red.
• In Dungeons & Dragons (1987), the Wizard's hands and the party's weapons are shown glowing with power.
• The mercurial sphere in Silverball Mania glows as newly-formed people rise from its surface.
• The cryogenic machine of Centigrade 37 is covered with glowing auras of energy.
• The golem in Magic Girl has glowing green power marks on its body.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In third edition, magic weapons have a 30% chance of glowing with light equivalent to that of a torch.
  • In fourth edition, if you don't want to have a bunch of (potentially handy) secondary effects, you can get a Fire, Ice, Poison, etc. enchantment. Activating the enchantment changes your next attack into the specific element type, nothing more. Except the Sunblade enchantment, which gives radiant damage and illuminates a large area around the sword itself. Great for slaying undead and certain types of abominations; NOT so great for doing so stealthily. Oddly enough, there's only a total of about five or six weapon enchantments that will mechanically give off light, although flavor text varies wildly.
  • White slaadi, the second most powerful variety of their kind, are marked by a soft white glow that emanates from every part of their bodies.
• Exalted puts this principle to good use: the more Essence you draw into your Charms over a scene (i.e. the more powerful you make your superpowered attacks), the more glow, or Anima (in the parlance of the game), you produce. It begins with your Caste mark faintly appearing on your forehead, progresses into a glowing field or effect which physically envelopes you in various ways^note (brilliant golden glows for Solars, sickly green lights for Infernals, silver tattoos lighting up across Lunars' skin, elemental environmental effects for Dragon-Blooded, spiritual auras and halos for Sidereals, bleeding necrotic Essence for Abyssals, and industrial or technoscientific effects such as electric discharges and arcs, billowing steam, and even chemical or molten metal secretions from Alchemicals' skins), and culminates in your Anima Banner unfurling in some spectacular fashion. Once those Charms get about 16+ Essence pumped through them during a fight, a couple of battling Exalted can be seen unmistakably for miles around, and can even approximate daylight visibility conditions during the night.
  • Which might seem like a horrible disadvantage to the cause of stealth, except that an Exalted with 16+ Essence running through their Charms is more or less a Person of Mass Destruction at any rate, and not to be fucked with.
• Pokémon: Holographic cards are generally considered to be powerful, or at least rarer than their non-holographic counterparts.
• Warhammer 40,000
  • Necron technology has a Sickly Green Glow and accounts for some of the most powerful weapons in the universe. Even their basic foot soldiers have guns that can destroy tanks and punch through heavy armor.
  • The God-Emperor of Mankind has bright golden plate armor, a flowing mane of hair, and a Flaming Sword. Oh, and he's the most powerful psychic the galaxy has to offer. His entire body visibly glows from his immense power.
  • The Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines have all been sealed inside their armor and now exist as magical golem style soldiers. Any gaps that appear in the armor (typically from incoming fire that damages the armor) reveals that the interior of their suits now glow. Some people have even brought this to the table◊.
  • The ancient Adeptus Mechanicus power axe Petre Cog-Tooth^note introduced during 8th Edition of the game, is said to be the first and most powerful Omnissian power axes ever created and its blade glows with an aura of power. Some less devout minds claim this glow could actually be due to extreme radiation saturation.
• In the 3^rd-party Pathfinder sourcebook Spheres of Power, this is a possible manifestation of the Magical Signs drawback.

Theatre

• In Parsifal, the unveiled Grail glows with a brilliant light. (This was one of the earliest applications of electric lighting in theatrical history.)

Video Games

• In Asura's Wrath, all deities glow with power, and their glowing is Color-Coded for Your Convenience.
• Inklings and Octolings in Splatoon have a unique effect to show that their special weapon is fully charged. The tentacles on their head glow brightly and give off sparks while being coated in ink bubbles, making them appear to be "boiling" with power.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • From Brawl onwards, characters will obtain a glowing aura, along with yellow eyes when they break a Smash Ball, an item that gives them the ability to perform a powerful Final Smash.
  • Lucario has a constant blue glow around his hands, representing his Aura powers. And he glows more as he takes damage, representing increased power.
  • Shulk, after activating one of his Monado Arts, has a part of him glow with the art's respective color. For example, "Jump" makes his feet glow green, "Shield" makes his body glow yellow, and "Smash" makes his hands and the Monado glow red.
• In Ultima VI and VII, every single magical item glows brightly, using palette cycling. This is spoofed in various fanfics.
• In Neverwinter Nights magical weapons are also good light sources.
  • In the sequel, magic weapons have various glows depending on the enchantment. Holy glows, fire is flame-wreathed, and thundering has little puffs of ... something.
  • Ammon Jerro's Power Tattoo glows.
  • In Storm of Zehir, +1, +2 and so forth weapons glow in a way that looks like the devs wanted to simulate light glinting off a shiny surface, but couldn't make the graphics engine do the job.
• The player of Deus Ex gets a glowing nano-sword. It is otherwise perfect for sneaky silent kills, but the bright glow tends to draw attention.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Enchanters can put a glow on any weapon. Typically, the more powerful enchants glow brighter, and the type of enchantment determines the color of the glow.
  • Burning Crusade expansion basically had "glowing stuff is awesome" as a secondary theme. Glowing locations? A lot, often places of power of various sorts. Gear glowing even when not enchanted? Starting with just high-level quests, constant in heroics and raids. Two new races? Glowing eyes for both! Blizzard one-upped themselves by enabling enchanters to apply a glow to weapons that's actually a complex graphical animation rather than a simple glow. The Mongoose enchant causes your entire weapon to crackle with lighting, while the Savagery enchant makes your weapon drip blood.
  • Further expansions continued the trends of glowing gear in raids, glowing eyes for every race with the new Death Knight class and elaborate pattern enchantments thorough. Notable stand-outs include Shaman set pauldrons that summon ghostly mammoth heads, Rogue pauldrons that lash out with scythes of bloody shadows, Warlock helmet that makes the user sprout demonic wings and the Power Torrent enchant, which shifts through the colors of the rainbow periodically and was the best-in-slot enchant for all raiding casters through the Cataclysm.
• In Dragon Quest VIII, Once a character reaches maximum tension, that character will glow until they attack or use magic that has a quantifiable effect, be it damage, healing or a stat buff. They'll also stop glowing if a boss nullifies their tension with a wave of ice.
• In Final Fantasy, any place with a constant glow to it (such as the Mako Reactors in Final Fantasy VII and Bahamut's hideout in Final Fantasy VIII) is very important place with lots of either magical or technological power hidden from mortals. Party members tend to glow when using special abilities, and Limit Breaks always glow brightly.
  • An interesting example is in Final Fantasy VI, where Kefka is surrounded by a pyramid of magic before the final fight. In addition to showing his immense magical powers, it reflects his emotions: when he's taunting the party and laughing, it's blue, then turns purple as he laments the futility of life, green when the party members declare he's wrong, then red when he gets angry. Emotion Glows too.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy, pretty much every character gets an aura of some sort when they enter EX Mode.
• City of Heroes (And Villains) doesn't shy from this, either. By hitting Level 30, characters gain the ability to attach an Aura of his choice to every costume. Most of these simply Glow (although some get creative and crumble instead), and none of them does anything other than being awesome.
  • Even without the lvl 30 auras, most melee characters have a set of glowy auras from a variety of defensive powers (and even being able to run fast causes your feet to glow)
• In Fable, your tattoos and hands glow with high enough magic levels.
• The Tales Series:
  • In Tales of Symphonia, when characters go into Over Limit, they get a black aura around them.
  • Likewise in Tales of Vesperia, characters gain an aura when entering Over Limit.
• The Mega Man Battle Network series:
  • In Mega Man Battle Network 1 game, Mega Man glows when his program is being rewritten after Hub.bat is installed.
  • The MegaMan NT Warrior anime also does this with Program Advances. Especially the first few times they're used.
  • Later games in the series, such as Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon, implement Full Synchro as an effect you can get in battle if you're skilled. It's depicted by Rock glowing (his color becomes light) and a pink halo spinning about his body. Very powerful NPCs and enemies in cutscenes also flash with light, notably Gospel in Mega Man Battle Network 2, Proto (Alpha) in the Mega Man Battle Network 3: White and Blue and the Cyber Beasts in Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar.
  • Every version of Mega Man who can charge up usually glows while doing so. Mega Man X was the first to glow different colors depending on how much he's charged. With the double-shot and Zero's Z-Saber in X3, he glows blue, yellow, pink, and finally green to indicate he can fire two fully-charged shots and the Z-Saber. Zero glows these same colors when he charges up his Z-Buster, but X3 is the last game where Zero can use his Buster the same way, and X one-ups him for once by launching an energy wave when he swings the Z-Saber, assuming he has the double-shot.
• Early Mega Man (Classic) games had Mega Man get Power Glows when charging the Mega Buster. Because of the way NES graphics worked, the powerups scattered around levels would exhibit the same pattern in time with his. Later games added Sucking-In Lines.
  • Omega Zero has a white aura around him, so you know he's not to be taken lightly.
  • This was carried over from Virus Infected Zero in X5, who was surrounded by a ominous purple aura.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind Downplays it. Enchanted items have a magical luminous sheen, but it's not bright enough to provide useful illumination.
  • Oblivion also Downplays it, though in a different fashion. Enchanted items having a more subtle glow.
  • Skyrim:
    • Skyrim mixes the Downplayed versions from the previous installments in the series, where enchanted weapons have faintly glowing swirls and whorls like Morrowind while armor and jewelry uses the Oblivion glowy outline.
    • The Dragonborn expansion introduces the Dragon Aspect Shout, which surrounds the user with a set of glowing, draconic armor, playing the trope straight.
• Entering Ripper Mode in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance causes Raiden to glow blood-red.
• The old Magic Knight game Spellbound for the ZX Spectrum featured the spell Armouris Photonicus, which if cast in the right place would make your armour glow sufficiently to traverse two darkened rooms safely, making this Older Than the NES.
• Zork: "Your sword is blowing glue! Wait, let me try that again."
• Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2: low-ranking characters might glow faintly when summoning ki; high-ranking characters glow with intense brightness at all times, and even the simplest moves look like a fireworks display crashing into a laser light show.
• Any Sonic the Hedgehog character with a super form when in said form.
• Kingdom Hearts. And Kingdom Hearts II is even worse. Everything sparkles, lights, shines, flares, and so on... MY EYES!!
• Custom Robo: Soulboost causes this, although the best the graphics engine could do with it is turn the robo's model gold.
• Mass Effect's biotics have glowing energy about them when they use their biotic powers, especially when using a powerful biotic move. Samara is a really good example, especially when she fights her daughter Morinth to the death.
  • Element Zero, though rarely seen directly, apparently has quite an energetic glow about it. This makes perfect sense when you consider that it actually constitutes exotic matter under certain conditions.
• The Soar Star in Super Mario Galaxy gives Mario a white glow around his hands, along with a pair of red trails as he flies along.
• Chrono Trigger: Marle can heal people with her glow.
• In Richard Bartle's original MUD, swords inherently glow. If you use your wizardly powers to create a wooden sword that falls apart after one hit, it'll still glow purely by virtue of being a sword.
• The eponymous race of Valkyria Chronicles are said to and do glow with an otherworldly blue flame, as well as Red Eyes, Take Warning, when using their powers.
• Many MMORPGs have weapons that glow when they're enhanced. So what does a newbie typically ask of the wielder of such a weapon?
  • "What kind of weapon is that?" Nope.
  • "Where did you get that?" Not even close.
  • "How do you make your weapon glow?" Bingo!
  • In Fly FF, every piece of equipment could be upgraded... and L10 Enhancements created awesome blue glows. If you had Level 120 Equipment with L10 Enhancements in every slot, you got glowing blue wings as well as a pulsing blue Battle Aura. That said, you had to be very rich to obtain that gear.
  • Inverted in Phantasy Star Online. The common, weak weapons are all photon based, as opposed to some rare, high-end weapons, which are non-glowing real guns and swords. Presumably, photon-based weapons are cheaper to make than a properly tempered steel katana or a finely machined kinetic firearm.
• BlazBlue:
  • Ragna, Hakumen and Bang glow when their Super Modes are active. For the first two, having the Super Mode permanently switched on is part of their Unlimited package.
  • Rachel is surrounded by an ominous purple glow when in her Unlimited mode.
• Metroid:
  • Super Metroid: The Charge Beam, Speed Booster, Screw Attack, and Hyper Beam all make Samus glow to varying degrees and are easily some of her most powerful abilities. Especially the Hyper Beam, where Samus starts glowing for several seconds after acquiring it to let you know that shit just got real.
  • In Metroid Prime, anything even vaguely related to phazon is always glowing. In the rest of the series, all powerups glow.
• In Team Fortress 2, critical projectiles glow your team's color, as do weapons when under an effect that will give them crits. In addition, an Ubercharge makes you glow your team's color while giving you invincibility for ten seconds.
  • While not exactly a glow, the "unusual" hats give off a special aura when worn.
• In the Fallout series there is a type of ghoul called Glowing Ones. As their name suggests, they are brightly glowing ghouls. They are a stronger type of the regular ghoul with special powers directly related to their heavy irradiation, including a burst attack where the entire area around them briefly becomes irradiated, too.
• Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce. All characters glow when they enter their Super Mode.
• A rule of thumb in Rift. Any monsters nearby when one of the titular rifts opens will become "touched" by that rift's element. Shadetouched monsters glow purple, faetouched monsters glow pale green, windtouched ones glow deep blue, stonetouched ones glow tan, tidetouched ones glow teal, and flametouched ones glow red. And they all get a buff to their damage and a weakness to their opposite element.
• Irenicus in Baldur's Gate II is an obscenely powerful mage, and glows faintly at all times. Also, a lot of enhancing spells cause their recipients to light up like Christmas trees.
• In Minecraft, enchanted tools and armor glow purple. While not necessarily more powerful, enchanted items all have some sort of beneficial affect.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Most of the games in the series from Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem onward are strong proponents of this - whenever a unit attacks with an Infinity +1 Sword, the weapon will give off a bright split-second Audible Gleam which covers the entire screen. The exception is the Tellius duology, which, for whatever reason, doesn't do this.
  • The mobile spin-off game Fire Emblem Heroes covers the most powerful summoned units, five-star units, in a soft golden glow. While it's visible around the units in question in combat, it's much more evident on the unit status screen, behind a full image of the character. Four-star units are also surrounded in battle and on the status screen by more subdued silver sparkles.
• All enchanted weapons in Dark Messiah glow in their enchantment's respective color. Escpecially lightning-enchanted weapons glow so bright that in dim lighting conditions it becomes hard for the player to see anything else (such as enemies, for example...).
• In the online game Bearbarians, warriors who begin to rack up a combo damage bonus begin to glow, unless you've turned off particles.
• Playstation All Stars Battle Royale uses this effect to distinguish "All-Star Power" (AP) both in-game and in-story, where the winner in each character ending can be seen glowing with Blue (having defeated Polygon Man, the apparent source of AP). Characters will glow slightly when able to use a Level 1 Super, become brighter at Level 2 and be almost completely illuminated when using their Level 3.
• Joe Dever's Lone Wolf: Lone Wolf's eyes glow when he uses a Kai power or the Summerswerd. The Summerswerd itself glows when in use. As do regular weapons empowered by Lone Wolf's Weapon Mastery discipline.
• In Ragnarok Online players that have reached the level cap gain a glowing aura under their feet. Some communities refer to proud owners of those as "lightbulbs". Additionally, a few buffs add their own glows, such as a Mage class Energy Coat (blue glow) and High Priest's ''Assumptio' (white radiance) defensive boosts.
• In Kritika, a weapon that has been enhanced to level 5 would start to emit light. Every additional 5 levels of upgrade would increase the intensity of the light.
• The Monsters of Evolve. The higher their armor the brighter they glow, with the color of the glow depending on the monster. This serves the dual purpose of warning hunter players if the monster has high armor and letting low armor monster players hide better.
• In Dragon's Dogma, various spells and buffs glow brighter the stronger they are, and the Seneschal, who is essentially God, is incredibly glowy.
• Invoked in Saints Row IV. You have to board and sabotage an enemy ship but because the resident tech guys are out of action, the characters don't know where to place their bomb. So they decide to just find the "biggest and glowingest" thing inside. Naturally, it works.
• Persona 5: Personas, Guardian Entities that allow you to use Functional Magic, are covered in a glowing blue aura of flames when summoned.
• In Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Zelda's Bow of Light moveset has her wielding sacred light magic, and its unique action allows her to enter a Super Mode wherein she can spam her strong attacks with impunity. Not only does she glow and hover while it's active, the actual name of the form is "Luminescent".
• Jurassic World Alive has Apex creatures, the most powerful in the game, which often have glowing markings or body parts.
• The Heart Pumps Clay: Certain items, such as some rings:
  • Enchanted Ring:
    Sometimes the magical energy circling through this ring causes the ruby to flash.
  • Gold Ring:
    A long-forgotten runic inscription glows when you wear this.

Web Animation

• Power Star: Devil Mario acquires a red aura once he gains the titular power-up. After gaining several of them, said aura turns into a crimson flame that is at least a head taller than Mario himself is.

Webcomics

• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has mocked this trope a few times. The alien Fructose Riboflavin once remarked that when you want to impress someone from a primitive planet, you just land your spaceship and switch on the highbeams on on your headlights. Much later, when the Cosmic Entities Gosh and Coney leave at the end of their story arc, they do so abruptly and anticlimactically; Molly complains that, as per every movie ever made with such a scene, there should be a fancy lightshow to accompany it. The spacecops accompanying her decide to indulge her, and fire off every weapon on their ship at once, making a fancy lightshow that makes her very happy.
• In Sequential Art, Art asks, "Why is it that big, ominous tomes always glow so bright?!" Good question.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: One of Eglamore's BFSes glows; presumably this makes it more effective against Shadow men. Also, antigravity glows purple.
• As demonstrated here in Nip and Tuck, particularly sexy lingerie glows, too. (Obviously a reference to the Pulp Fiction example mentioned above.)
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Gwynn tends to glow and float when she starts really channeling her witchy powers.
  • Also happens to Horribus when he's getting ready for his grudge match with Torg. And, of course, Torg's sword glowing is the sign that it's awakened its sentient, kill-anything-in-one-strike mode.
• The Order of the Stick takes this to its logical conclusion; if one high-level spellcaster's power glows, then the combined effects of four of them glow even more.
• In El Goonish Shive, magic and Ki users can glow to indicate that they are using their powers. For Nanase's Fairy doll spell, this has practical uses. For martial arts, it's Rule of Cool.
• Girl Genius: The river Dyne glows blue — though of course, this might be because it's radioactive.
• Magical things in The Way of the Metagamer. Particularly the Rob of Za-Boom.
• Magic items glow in Goblins when being used. Some of them also "smoke" light. They actually channel the users' aura, which changes color and effect (i.e., "smoking" light) depending on the individual. This is why when someone loots a magic weapon, it glows differently than whoever was just using it.
• In Harkovast, magic is generally represented as glowing. This is most evident on the Darsai energy weapons.
• A few of the more powerful player characters in Homestuck do this. Aradia and Sollux both glow when using their telekinetic abilities (white and red/blue, respectively). Rose, on the other hand, glows black when tapping into The Dark Arts.
  • Rainbow Drinkers have glowing skin.
  • John glows bright blue when using his Heir of Breath awesomeness, known in-universe as The Windy Thing.
• In The Rifters, Tobi's gained some kind of ability that activates when he clenches. He glows when he clenches!
• Graham's 'mark' in Wizard School is an ordinary tattoo placed while our 'hero' was in a drunken haze - which glows because the Big Bad infused it with magic.
• Parodied in xkcd, where a sword glows because it's radioactive, and will give you cancer.
• Shinsu, the Applied Phlebotinum in Tower of God, glows when it is used in its most basic form. That means, the more advanced and dangerous a technique is, the less it glows.
• In Godslave, Anpu starts to glow red whenever he's angry or about to use his powers.
• To the surprise of no-one, the Stone Clock, a powerful artifact possibly left behind by Time Lords found in the pyramid by Howard and Daisy in Doctor Who Regenerated glows bright, electric blue.
• Spells in Castoff are generally rather glowy, but when Vector taps into his magical potential, it looks almost like a nuclear test. Besides a lot of light, it also gives off heat that burns people and scorches a wall.
• The rabbit spirit from Blue Moon Blossom is constantly glowing even when dormant, and it has several magical abilities that are seen nowhere else.
• In Your Throne whenever Psyche uses her power of divinity to heal, there is a golden glow or red, when she uses it to harm someone.
• Subverted in Two Guys and Guy when Wayne is glowing all over and talks about the power he has gained. Turns out the "power" Frank gave him was bioluminescence, so it's more just a case of "glow glows."

Web Original

• Critical Role: In a world of magic like D&D, many active magical effects are naturally accompanied by "flickers of arcane energy", or "glowing radiant energy".
• Empires SMP Season 2: Magical items and beings emit differently-coloured glows, but the glow is only visible to a certain few with supernatural Aura Vision abilities.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, all gods glow when they manifest in their corporeal form.
• In Phaeton this happens when Trayen energises, Teliha levitates and when Sam shapeshifts, there are probably other powers that do this too but it just hasn't been mentioned yet.
• In Spectral Shadows we have Christine with her healing powers and her fur glows yellow when in use.
• Unlikely Eden: Heather's axe starts of as just strangely blurry, but later, as her Preferred Weapon Effect kicks in it attains full glow. Additionally, the eyes of all Coalition soldiers and Ourkind bioluminesce when their abilities are activated.
• Whateley Universe: Tennyo's sword glows a brilliant blue, and can cut through pretty much anything since it's made of some sort of anti-matter. Tennyo herself does the glowy bit when she gets really amped up, complete with Red Eyes, Take Warning. Several Energizers like Golden Girl also do the full-body glow when they kick in their powers.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The episode "Time Sandwich" did this with a sandwich that Jake makes, which is so delicious it starts floating and glowing the moment he puts the bread over top.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang's eyes, mouth and tattoos do this when he activates the Avatar State, as do that of all his past lives.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Ms Marvel glows yellow when she is using her energy absorption powers. Combined with Power Floats, this is also the first indication that she has gained superpowers.
• In Beast Wars, Sparks glow, which makes sense because they are powerful. So do many of the things belonging to the aliens.
• In some of the BIONICLE movies, the characters' masks glow while being used.
• In the earlier episodes of Kim Possible, Shego had clawed gloves that glowed with a green light when she fought; the glow was implied to amplify the force of her attacks. In the second season, she began displaying the ability to use the glow as a projectile attack, throwing blasts of energy, and it was retconned into a superpower called the "Go Team Glow", which she and her brothers obtained as children when they were exposed to an alien meteorite. Basically, her hands are surrounded by green energy with Kirby Dots.
  • A fair amount of the Doomsday Devices and McGuffins in the show glow too.
  • Ron's Monkey Power
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The show applies this to, well, magic, which arguably qualifies as this trope. In the premieres of both the first and second seasons, for example, Twilight's eyes (and the second time, those of her friends too) glow when she and her friends unleash their Care-Bear Stare.
  • Also happens in her exam flashback in "The Cutiemark Chronicles" when the Sonic Rainboom triggers her innate magic and makes it go out of control. Complete with Power Floats and a few (thankfully temporary) cases of Forced Transformation of bystanders.
  • During Twilight's transformation into an alicorn she gets surrounded by a bright purple light in the shape of her cutie-mark. Earlier in the episode, that very same power glows makes it look as if it burned Twilight into a pile of ash, much to her friends' terror.
  • Twilight's Kingdom Part 2:
    • Twilight sparks with electricity occasionally as a result of being supercharged by the other Princesses.
    • When Twilight first receives the combined power, as well as when she tries to lower the moon and raise the sun, her body glows and her hair turns more ethereal, with a glow about her. Basically, she comes to look more like Celestia and Luna, and is visibly reining in the transformation with force of will (she was given the power to hide it from a magic-eating villain, so turning into a double-size pony with hair made of energy like her godlike mentor wasn't the plan.)
    • The Rainbow Power is very glowy indeed, which wears off once it's done its job.
• Sealab 2021: "You see this, you see how my body's glowing like that? Yeah, a lot of people can't do that."
• In The Secret Saturdays, the human members of the titular Saturday family each have a weapon with some sort of glow, and then Zak's eyes glow when he uses his powers.
• In Steven Universe: Future, whenever Steven uses his super mode, his entire body glows bright pink.
• In Transformers: Animated, the AllSpark glows. So do all its pieces, and Sari's key when it's near them.
• In Transformers: Cybertron, when using great amounts of power a character will glow. Used most dramatically in the Final Battle of Optimus Prime and Galvatron.
• Wakfu
  • Nox constantly glows with a teal-colored wakfu light, which depends on the armor he's currently wearing. The more Wakfu he employs, the bigger the aura.
  • Oropo. After removing his robes and absorbing Yugo, his body glows of a green Wakfu light.
• The titular sword of Xcalibur does this.
• Apocalypse in his X-Men: Evolution incarnation does this. It makes him seem invincible.
• In Young Justice (2010), Aqualad has eel tattoos on his arms that glow light blue when he's using his hydrokinesis powers.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: When channeling especially powerful magic (such as to overpower Toffee's Anti-Magic prison in "Storm the Castle" and to cast magic without her wand in "My New Wand!"), Star Butterfly's eyes and heart-shaped cheek marks glow bright blue, and her entire body is surrounded by a glowing blue aura. In the latter example, she also floats about 20 feet in the air.
• The Trollhunter's armor and Sword of Daylight from Trollhunters, as well as the Amulet of Daylight, glow and shimmer with an ethereal blue aura. When all of the Triumbric Stones are added to the Amulet, it glows an ominous dark red aura instead, before a new incantation dons Jim with a dark gold and black version of his normal armor, complete with red highlights. His new sword also emanates that same eerie blood-red color.
• PJ Masks: Whenever the hero's use their special powers, parts of their costumes light up.
• Ready Jet Go!: Due to the sun's effects on him, Sunspot's tummy glows throughout the episode, “Sunspot’s Sunspot".
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The She-Ra form glows like an eight-foot humanoid sun, making it useless for stealth. Other princesses glow occasionally while using their powers, particularly Glimmer and eventually, Scorpia, but since Adora's power is turning into She-Ra, she glows constantly in that form. During the season 1 finale, the episode "The Frozen Forest", and the season 4 finale, when the princesses are properly aligned, they all light up in appropriate shades; oddly, Bow's heart insignia also lights up during the same sequence of the season 1 finale, even though he's The Team Normal, but nothing has ever really been done with this.

Real Life

• Light is a form of energy, and the flow of energy is power. Light cannot be created from nothing, so power is required to make anything glow, even a tiny LED.
• Incandescence is what causes really hot things to glow, and hotter things to glow more. It is the underpinning of this trope, and its cultural ubiquity comes from the two most primal sources of glowing power: the sun and fire. Both glow with incandescence. Light bulbs, lava and molten metal get an honorable mention.
  • Lightning glows by a slightly different way, wherein the electricity ionizes the air. But like incandescence, the light is emitted by an electron dropping back to a stable position.
  • Averted when electricity travels through a wire. Invoked by this USB cable, which "visibly shows the electrical current" (if you're in a dark room that is).
• Unlike the ones in TV, real nuclear reactors glow blue. Pretty, but for the record, if you see Cherenkov radiation in air, you have basically several minutes left to live.
  • If what's separating you from the core is not air but water, you're probably fine at only a few meters away. Pool-type research reactors (used for irradiating stuff for various reasons, not for generating power) are basically deep swimming pools with the core at the bottom, and it's often possible to look directly at the core (through ten meters or so of water) and actually see the Cerenkov radiation.
  • The second "demon core" accident produced such a blue flash.
• The popular idea of green radioactivity dates back to radium paint, which was used for clock dials and glow-in-the-dark signs in 1920s. Later when the hazardous effects of radiation were discovered, the green glow got a new meaning. Oxidising white phosphorus, also quite nasty material, glows green too.
  • It's worth making a distinction here: radium does not normally glow. Mix it with a phosphorescent or fluorescent material, though ... the particular one used for watch dials etc. glowed green, and so in the popular imagination, all radioactive materials glow green.
  • Tritium, a hydrogen isotope, has replaced radium in all applications of Real Life Power Glow. It is still radioactive, but emits relatively harmless beta particles, turning into helium-3.
    • The tritium isn't glowing in itself - so you put it into a glass vial covered with phosphorus, and it's the phosphorus that's glowing because it's reacting to the beta radiation. Depending on the chemical composition of the phosphor (not the element, but a term meaning substance that glows when energetically excited), you can get different colors. It's a self-powered fluorescent light.
  • Another is that the presence of uranium or uranium compounds during the production process can turn glass and diamonds yellow-green or green (with higher uranium concentrations making the color more brilliant green), which then glow under a black light.
  • MSNW, a company building a fusion rocket engine, has some photos on their webpage of some things that are ostensibly fusion or plasma related glowing nicely.

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