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Before and After.
When your technology isn't just bleeding-edge, but laser-edged, disruption-fielded-with-motorized-teeth high-tech. Power Glows, and now so does your tech. A common design scheme used for this glow is a series of lines along the edges or between panels of the machine. Others will have flat surfaces crossed by circuit-like lines that glow when activated, or have occasional pulses of light race down their length in tandem. Others have glowing components such as engines, weapon barrels, forcefield projectors and the like.
Naturally, this is all pretty inefficient. A big waste of power to maintain the glow (assuming this was electricity and not some power source that glowed on its own), and impossible to conceal, but damn, it looks cool. When your tech uses this, Hard Light systems and Holographic Terminals are pretty much prerequisites. It's implied that Tron Lines indicate some non-electrical (or "differently electrical") form of technology; and those lines are the visible "power" veins.
Of course, Tron Lines are Colour Coded For Your Convenience, usually blue is "good" or at least standard and if it turns red or purple; then the AI Is A Crapshoot or else has been taken over by some virus or hacker.
The ultimate expression of Shiny Looking Spaceships. See also Instant Runes, essentially the Magic version. Equipping your car or computer with neons and strobes counts as Truth In Television to some degree, though it's well known these things need their own power supply to get them running.
Examples:
- Named of course, after the computer world of Tron, which, being a representation of technology itself, had pretty much everything and every character covered in them. Pictured above is protagonist Jet Bradley of the video game sequel Tron 2.0.
- Naturally, "Space Paranoids", the Tron themed world of Kingdom Hearts II has them as well.
- The ultra-tech STRAINs in Soukou No Strain, compared to the GAMBEEs piloted by the Redshirt Army.
- Orbital Frames in Zone Of The Enders.
- Several ships, especially Lost Technology, in the Galaxy Angel Game Verse.
- Added to most of the Balmarian/Aerogater mecha in Super Robot Wars Original Generation: Divine Wars.
- Most of the Majeran technology (especially anything upgraded by the Paksis) in Vandread.
- Running Lights under the car can be seen as a way of imitating this in Real Life, as would gratuitous use of neon.
- There are several entire websites devoted to selling products of this nature.
- As a result, every single car in the Fast and the Furious series has neon lights all over the body. Of course, they need extra batteries to keep them glowing.
- This has even bled into the world of computing, there is no modder unfamiliar with blue CCFLs.
- Alice's more advanced forms in the webcomic Comedity have these around her face, and her 'upgraded body' displays them when her holographic clothing generation system isn't covering them. Presumably, as a computer with conscious awareness of her own power consumption, she deactivates them when they aren't needed.
- The Stonehenge base in Earth Bound.
- The Tower of The Gods boss in The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, as well as the controllable statues from the same dungeon.
- And in Twilight Princess, everything remotely associated with Twilight has a sort of Lovecraft+Tron thing going on. The Dominion Rod imparts Tron Lines to statues, similar to the ones from Wind Waker, when you take control of them.
- A common puzzle design in many games, such as Final Fantasy X and Simon Tatham's port of Net, involves rearranging blocks and switches to connect glowing Tron Lines from point A to point B, where point B is often the exit door.
- El Vibrato Island in Kingdom Of Loathing is often accrediting to being inspired by the above two examples.
- In The Spoils CCG, the Gearsmith artifacts such as the Runic Cannon or the Runic Whale often have curly glowing runes of power running around their surface.
- Automan in 'hero mode', his car and his helicopter. (The similitude with Tron is not unexpected, as the Auto Copter seems lifted directly from the corporate helicopter from Tron and Cursor is suspiciously similar to the Bit sidekicks of the tank pilots in said movie.)
- Ben10's "Upgrade" form does this to whatever he touches.
- The 'Dark Prince' in Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones has a magical version of this going down.
- As does the protagonist of Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter, whenever he uses his Deadly Upgrade.
- Cortana from Halo is practically made of these.
- Another Halo exaple: Forerunner artifacts (and the Covenant technology styled after them) often have tiny geometric patterns carved on most flat surfaces. These lines often glow, or have tiny lights flickering behind them
- The Atlantian technology in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
- Skies Of Arcadia's final dungeon is an entire continent covered in these.
- Since Scrapped Princess's magic comes from technology, Tron Lines are traced along the air every time a spell is cast.
- The future Batsuit from Batman Beyond shows them when interfacing with the Batmobile, or under its surface when damaged.
- The ruins found in Mega Man Legends have this design aesthetic, and its re-appearance in the Mega Man Zero series more explicitly spells out a continuity connection between the two.
- Much of the tech in the Metroid Prime subseries glows, usually so you can tell what happened when you hit a switch; in the case of Samus's cannon, the color of the glow tells you the weapon you're currently using.
- Not to mention the green glowing lines between the panels in Samus' armor.
- This Troper thought that Samus' final suit in Metroid Prime 1 was exceedingly cool-looking: jet black with red tron lines.
- Let's not forget the third game. When Samus's Phazon corruption reaches the highest levels near the end of the game, her suit really starts to show those blue lines.
- Every single character and object in Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. What went wrong, Nomura?!
- Mega Man + Tron = This music video
 .
- The anime Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
- Kiddy Grade's Lumiere emits these when she invokes her machine-controlling powers.
- The Black Omen and some of the Zeal kingdom in Chrono Trigger.
- Post-Time Skip Nia from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gets these when she becomes an Anti-Spiral.
- The Mugen mech/attack craft as well.
- Eve from Applegeeks.
- In the game City Of Heroes, certain of the conduits found in Council installations display the "racing pulse" variation.
- Videogame Project Snowblind's protagonist has Tron Lines for veins.
- As do the nano-augments in the Deus Ex series which it's descended from.
- In Infinite Ryvius, the Ryvius lights up with Tron Lines when first activated.
- Happens a lot in .hack//GU. Then again, it is in a MMORPG setting, so impracticality doesn't need to count.
- Teen Titans animated incarnation had Cyborg covered with these, outside and (as we saw in a Fantastic Voyage episode) inside.
- Justified in Phantasy Star Universe, as the “Tron Lines” woven into all clothing are part of a protection system called a “line shield” — they perform the same effect of looking cool as most Tron Lines, but also perform the function of being the means by which energy barriers are projected, the game's form of armour.
- People with the Boson Jump-enabling Nanomachines in Martian Successor Nadesico get glowing Tron Lines over their body when they activate them.
- Lisa Basil from Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations has a futuristic suit with flashing lights running up and down the sides and front of it. It's implied that she may or may not be a robot (yes, the game is that vague).
- In Power Rangers In Space, Ecliptor's body is covered with green Tron lines. The Dark Fortress is also half solid and half Tron lines in many scenes. Interestingly, most establishment shots make it appear to be in another dimension, and when it's in real space, before any of the rare instances of it interacting with the outside world onscreen (such as sending out ships or putting the Rangers' ship in that web thing) the Tron line half becomes solid.
- In Star Trek Voyager, one mid-series episode had some of Seven's nanoprobes infect the Doctor's 29th century mobile emitter, eventually resulting in a highly-advanced Borg drone, featuring extrapolations of the Borg in that century. More sleek and organic looking than the usual drone, it also had embedded Tron Lines which pulsed at regular intervals.
- In Gundam 00, whenever the 4 main Gundams go into the super powered Trans-Am mode, they gain Tron Lines and a healthy red glow.
- The agents' suits in Crackdown display this, as do vehicles in the process of upgrading.
- In Fable, powerful magic-users' tattoos glow blue.
- In the earlier seasons of Yu-Gi-Oh! (and possibly some of the later ones; this troper stopped watching near the end of the Battle City arc), whenever a card was played onto one of the many hologram-generator playfields present in the series, Tron Lines would flash briefly around it.
- In 5D's, whenever a character performs a Synchro or Dark Synchro Summon, the outline of the non-Tuner monsters glow (usually golden, but a white outline appeared when a monster had a Negative Level).
- Appears on Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's Boost Devices, such as those used by Caro and Lutecia, when they're in use.
- Just about every mecha in Zegapain
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Chao displays these as a Marked Change during the Battle of Mahora.
- Real life example: the Connection Machine, a supercomputer which was never as amazing as its price would indicate, but which looked damn cool.
- The Connection Machine is one of the most beautiful computers ever made, but pretty much every supercomputer made after the '70s looks pretty awesome. After all, if a machine's going to cost over a million dollars, why not throw a few thousand into the case?
- Truth in Television: Try looking at your feet next time you ride an escalator.
- They are actually there to warn you not to put your feet there as you may fall, but still pretty cool.
- Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza all have these as natural markings. They only glow on the title screens, though.
- Mass Effect tech has this as well.
- Specifically: VI holograms have brighter lines going through them. Additionally, the Geth Armory Medium and Heavy suits for the Krogan Wrex has glowing cables and lines.
- Beowulf from Devil May Cry has these, but Light Is Not Good.
- Baldur in Too Human.
- The Corpus Clock, which ironically uses no computers whatsoever. (Everything is controlled by bleeding edge clockwork, including the evil blinking grasshopper on top.)
- The tutorial and final levels of System Shock 2.
- Digital Circuit and Mad Matrix in Shadow The Hedgehog, both cyberspace levels which aesthetics are pretty much ripped off from Tron.
- In Eve Online, turning on an armor repair unit causes this.
- Non-Technological example: the runes on Hellboy's Red Right Hand glow when he plugs it in to a demonic power source.
- The main character in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne gets as version that looks like ordinary full-body tattoos, but then they start glowing in the dark! Apparently becoming mostly-demon does that to ya.
- Battle Tech has the Enhanced Imaging system, a cybernetic interface between the pilot and his Mech. One side effect of the system is that the user's body is covered in what looks like full-body tattoos, but are in fact cybernetic circutry. In the cartoon, they glowed when activated, and EI visuals outlined mechs color-coded by IFF.
- Valerie Grey gets loads of these, color-coded red, when Technus upgrades her battle suit.
- In Gao Gai Gar FINAL Evoludar Guy gets them glowing through his skin sometimes due to his body being composed of G-Stone based Nano Machines or something like that.
- Coga Suro: Blue on Persephone, red on Styx, and either red or purple on Hades.
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