Eye color means many different things in fiction. Sometimes, they mean someone is special, or has powers, or perhaps just innocent. One of the common uses of eye color is to indicate a person's elemental affinity. The actual colour correspondence to elements varies depending on the work, as different colours align with the elements depending on the work. It's more important that the colour lines up In-Universe than to any out of universe list.
This trope is frequently paired with its Sister Trope, Elemental Hair Colors.
Also, compare Color-Coded for Your Convenience, Color-Coded Elements, Color-Coded Eyes, Technicolor Eyes, and Elemental Powers.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Zelman Clock from Black Blood Brothers has red eyes and is a pyrokinetic.
- In Bleach, Hitsugaya has blue eyes of the "piercing, icy" variety, which fit well with his ice powers.
- November 11 from Darker than Black has very light blue eyes that can most definitely be described as "icy". This is appropriate, since he's a sociopath with ice powers.
- Day Break Illusion, another magical girl series, has the red-eyed Akari use fire, the blue-eyed Seira use ice, and the green-eyed Luna use plants.
- Reinforce Zwei of Lyrical Nanoha has the bluest eyes of the series, emphasizing the childlike innocence of the character, as well as her magical nature (the first Unison Device created since the days of Ancient Belka) and her affinity to ice.
- Magic Knight Rayearth colors our heroines' eyes (and hair) after their elements. Hikaru's are red, Umi's are blue, and Fuu's are green. Fuu's hair may be yellow, but yellow has represented wind in other media, so no complaints there.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
- Elma has deep blue eyes. While she's never been seen using water magic, she is an aquatic dragon, and used her powers to ensure bountiful harvests for humans in the past.
- Tohru is a fire-breathing dragon and her eyes are bright red with yellow highlights, giving them the illusion of flames.
- Prince Chagum from Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit carries the egg of a benevolent water spirit. He also has a noble, innocent personality typical of blue eyes.
- Inverted in My Hero Academia with Shoto Todoroki. He has both ice and fire powers and one of his eyes is grey while the other is blue. However, his blue eye is on his fire-side and is inherited from his father who is a fire elemental - whereas his ice side and his ice elemental mother have grey eyes.
- Several characters in Negima! Magister Negi Magi have this:
- Evangeline uses ice magic, and has very cold blue eyes; however, the OVAs change it to s sky blue color.
- Chao uses fire magic and has red eyes in the OVA and reddish brown in the manga.
- Anya is a fire user and gets red eyes in the manga (however, she is a greeneyed redhead in the OVAs).
- Kotaro floats between black and purple eyes, but both colors correspond to his shadow magic.
- Pretty Cure:
- Four of six girls in Yes! Pretty Cure 5 have them. Cure Rouge has red, Cure Lemonade has yellow, Cure Mint has green, and Cure Aqua has blue.
- Fresh Pretty Cure!: Cure Peach has pink (Heart Beat-Down) and Cure Pine has yellow (Light 'em Up).
- HeartCatch Pretty Cure!: Cure Blossom has pink (Cherry Blossom Petals), Cure Marine has blue (Making a Splash), Cure Sunshine has yellow (Power of the Sun). Cure Moonlight could count, too, if you associate her dark blue eyes with Lunacy.
- Smile PreCure!: Cure Happy has pink (Heart Beat-Down/Light 'em Up), Cure Sunny has red/orange (Playing with Fire), Cure Peace has yellow (Shock and Awe), Cure March has green (Blow You Away), and Cure Beauty has blue (An Ice Person).
- Doki Doki! PreCure: Cure Diamond has blue (An Ice Person), and Cure Ace has red (Rose Petals).
- Go! Princess Pretty Cure: Cure Mermaid has blue (Making a Splash/An Ice Person), Cure Scarlet has red (Playing with Fire).
- KiraKira★Pretty Cure ŕ la Mode: Cure Gelato has blue (An Ice Person).
- Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure: Cure Grace had pink (Petal Power) and Cure Fontaine has blue (Making a Splash).
- Mizore, the Ice Woman of Rosario + Vampire, has ice powers and blue eyes. Interestingly, she can also control other people's water magic.
- At very least the Inner Senshi in the manga of Sailor Moon, the Materials Collection makes note that when they transform their eyes (among other things) change. Mercury goes from deep blue to a light blue, Mars from purple to a bright red, Jupiter from (what seems to be) a hazel to green and lastly, Venus who changes from a blue that matches her uniform as Sailor V, to bright gold.
- Saint Seiya gives Hyoga, An Ice Person, Icy Blue Eyes. Strangely averted in the Manga with Aquarius Camus who, despite being An Ice Person as well, had red eyes.
- Saint Seiya Omega has Ryuhou with blue-green eyes and Haruto with brown eyes.
Asian Animation
- In BoBoiBoy, each of the eponymous character's second-tier elemental forms has eyes colored to match their respective element, such as BoBoiBoy Quake having golden-ish eyes to fit his outfit's yellow accents. In the first series, he also has a couple first-tier forms, Fire and Water, that have crimson and cyan eyes respectively.
Fan Fiction
- Like The Legend of Korra example below, similar colors crop up frequently in the fanfic Book 5: Legends, but particular mention needs to go to the albino Temuji, whose red eyes play this straighter than any previously seen firebender in either series.
Films — Animated
- Takanuva, Toa of Light has yellow eyes in BIONICLE: Mask of Light, representing his light-based powers. His first toy also came with yellow eyes, though later incarnations changed them to lime green.
- Mavka: The Forest Song: Mavka has green eyes since she is the soul of the forest, Ondina has blue eyes matching her elements (bodies of water), etc.
- Nicholas St. North and Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians have icy blue eyes with frost patterns in them to symbolize their associations with winter. Bunny has grass-green eyes with grass patterns in them to match his association with spring.
Literature
- Percy Jackson of The Camp Half-Blood Series is described several times as having sea-green eyes, which he inherited from his father Poseidon. He has Making a Splash powers to match.
- In The Children of Man, a person's eye color indicates which of the six colors of magic he can access. Blue mages have blue eyes, green mages green eyes, etc. Those who can access multiple colors of magic have brown eyes, while Grays have reflective silver eyes as a Red Right Hand to mark the fact that they are magically colorless.
- In The Irregular at Magic High School, the cryokinetic Miyuki has very pale blue eyes (Depending on the Artist). No one else in her family has eyes that shade, just as they don't have her ice magic.
- Longsummer Nights: River from "Seeds of Solace" is a Plant Person with green eyes.
- The Reynard Cycle: Most of the inhabitants of the frigid North (including Isengrim and Hirsent) are depicted as having icy blue eyes.
- Shana from Shakugan no Shana has flaming red eyes when in full Flame Haze mode.
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- Melisandre has red eyes, befitting her status as a Red Priest of (the fire-associated) R'hllor. And befitting her status as creepily wrong in subtle ways, since the shade of red is the same as that of her hair, which is not a natural colour for either hair or eyes.
- Some characters have noted that Cersei has "wildfire eyes", bright green and beautiful, yet dangerous and possibly unstable. She develops a liking for using wildfire after the Battle of the Blackwater and she has a knack for destruction, but can rarely control the damage.
- The Tales of the Branion Realm series by Fiona Patton combines this with a variant of Fireball Eyeballs. It focuses on a royal family who channels a fire god, the Living Flame, and has fiery eyes. When an opposing religion based loosely on Catholicism takes religious champions, they have white light in their eyes. Characters in one book are heretics to the Flame trying to give the other three Elemental Powers their own avatars, and their eyes swim with light as well — gray for Wind, blue for Sea and green for Oaks.
Live-Action TV
- Ice Fantasy: The Ice Tribe have blue eyes, the Fire Tribe have copper red, and the Ice Flame Tribe have greenish amber.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel as a character is heavily associated with the concept of water (her Ring of Power is Nenya, the ring of water and she has a strong pull to the sea and water in general being half Teler) and her eyes are a clear, bright blue.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Justified as a Mark of the Supernatural caused by long exposure to a specific Wind of Magic. Some senior Wizards' eyes change colour to match their Wind — fiery red for Bright Wizards, occult blue for Celestial Wizards, solid white or gold for Light Wizards, or murky grey for Shadow Wizards.
Toys
- Early on, BIONICLE associated eye colours with specific elements (usually complentary to the colour of the elemental heroes themselves), but switched it around in 2004 and 2005 (where the colours became more contrasting on the whole) with only Earth remaining the same, and dropped it altogether in 2006-2007 when all characters were given green or orange (or later blue), eyes, usually depending on if they were a hero or villain. From 2001-2005, these were the elements and their associated eye colours:
- Air was Lime Green, then Red.
- Ice was Pale Blue, then Cyan (the most subtle change)
- Fire was Pink, then Lime Green.
- Water was Yellow, then Orange. In the movies, it is Blue.
- Earth is Green, which also represents the Innate Night Vision of Earth characters, needed to see underground.
- Stone was Orange, then Blue.
Video Games
- Galuf and Krile in Final Fantasy V, albeit Depending on the Artist. Galuf does consistently have brown eyes to match his representation of the Earth element. Krile's ingame appearance gives her Innocent Blue Eyes, but her Amano outfit (and some spinoff games that use her ingame design) keep her eyes brown like her grandfather's.
- Dragon eye color in Flight Rising is determined by the element of the lair they were born in. Because of this, "nest lending" is fairly common on the site in order for players to own a dragon with a desired eye color.
- Most Adepts in Golden Sun follow this, but there are a few aversions.
- The Striation trio in Pokémon Black and White. Cilan, the Grass-type user, has green eyes; Chili, the Fire-type user, has red eyes; and Cress, the Water-type user, has blue eyes.
- Sonic the Hedgehog's eponymous hero has green eyes, and many of his abilities involve wind manipulation, including (among others) Sonic Wind, Blue Tornado, and Whirlwind. He's also often associated with the wind element, being described as being "free like the wind" in several character profiles, gaining the title "Knight of the Wind" in Sonic and the Black Knight, and so on.
- Them's Fightin' Herds: Velvet the reindeer has light blue eyes and mainly uses ice-themed powers to fight. Tianhuo also had orange eyes that matched the fire making up her hair and wings. They changed to red later on, but that color works for this trope just as well, since the character is a fire-breathing longma.
Web Animation
- RWBY:
- Ruby has silver eyes, an extremely rare trait that are possessed by so few people that there are very ancient myths about what people with silver eyes can do. Silver-eyed warriors possess the ability to produce a blinding white light from their eyes that can destroy the Creatures of Grimm by turning them to stone or blasting them to dust, depending on how strong the Grimm opponent is. Ruby's mentor, Maria, who was born with silver eyes but lost them in battle with an assassin that was hunting down silver-eyed warriors, figures out that the power has a mysterious connection to the God of Light, who possessed silver eyes and the ability to vaporise the Grimm.
- The sisters Weiss and Winter are both aloof, cool and connected with ice and snow powers. They have the Icy Blue Eyes to go with both their personality and their powers. While they can use other elements, they default to ice as their preferred ability. Both of them have independently been given the nickname "Ice Queen" by their peers. When Winter becomes the Winter Maiden, she heavily favours ice magic, and the ice-tornado she uses for flight is exactly the same colour as her eyes.
- Cinder has golden eyes and a strong affinity for fire. Her eyes can glow like fire whenever she wants, especially when she's using her fire magic. While Cinder can use other elements, she almost always uses fire because she has an affinity for it.
- Vernal, the Spring Maiden, has light blue eyes the exact shade as a perfect spring sky. She tends to use lightning attacks, too, which are often associated with blue. Subverted when it turns out she was never the Spring Maiden, just a decoy. The real Spring Maiden has eyes that don't match her preferred powers at all, being bright red.
Webcomics
- Drowtales:
- Sil'lice Val'Sharen
is a blue-eyed Ice Sorceress and one of the few remaining untainted Nether Summoners.
You know, blood contains water. And water freezes so well. - Nishi'kanta, her sister, was also an example before she was tainted, since she had orange eyes and a fire affinity.
- The Val'Nal'sarkoth Clan also has this, since they tend to have green eyes and are some of the only people in the Underworld who have an affinity with wood.
- Sil'lice Val'Sharen
- Homestuck 's four main kids have their eye colors match their associate element. John's eyes are light blue, Rose's eyes are purple note , Dave's eyes are red, and Jade's eyes are light green.
- Sleepless Domain: When a magical girl awakens her powers, both her hair and eye colors change to match the theme of her powers. While a girl's eyes may not always match her Elemental Hair Colors exactly, they do at least complement her powers and color scheme as a rule. If a magical girl's eye color instead forms a contrast against the rest of her theme, it's a sign that she has in some way inherited her power from a girl with that eye color.
Web Original
- We Are All Pokémon Trainers: Tagg has brown eyes, which makes sense because his Pokeform is a partial ground type.
- Whateley Universe: The hydrokinetic Riptide has blue eyes.
Western Animation
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender, people from the elemental nations (and thus what element they can bend), for the most part, have their eye colors Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Blue for the Water Tribe, green or brown for the Earth Kingdom (Toph has Prophet Eyes), gold/amber or gray for the Fire Nation, and gray for the Air Nomads.
- The Legend of Korra breaks from its predecessor's elemental eye color coding with the residents of Republic City, a mecca of multiculturalism and mixed marriages. The firebender on the pro-bending team the Rabbiroos has green eyes, for instance; and a metalbending cop from the first episode has amber eyes. Asami looks like she's from the Fire Nation and her dad looks like Theodore Roosevelt and Hayao Miyazaki had a baby and her names are Japanese (what the Fire Nation is based on) but her eyes are green. Most of the main characters still play this trope straight, though.
- Played with but mostly averted in Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Linka, who possesses the power of wind, had blue eyes in seasons 1-3 (though they later got changed to green), and Kwame, who wields the power of earth, has dark (presumably brown) eyes. However, Gi (water) and Ma-Ti (heart) also have dark eyes, and Wheeler (fire) has blue eyes.
- Stella, Flora, and Aisha from Winx Club have eye colors pertaining to their elements: Sun, Plants (or Earth, to some extent), and Water/Fluids, respectively. And also Icy, with control over ice.
