Clockwise from top left: Killer Frost (ice), Oread (earth), Water Nymph (water), The Candlemaker (clouds)
When you have one of the Elemental Powers, what's a cool way to show it off? Why not make it your hair?
This usually overlaps with the general elemental-related tropes of Elemental Embodiment, and Elemental Shapeshifter, because if you're made of an element, and you have hair, then your hair must be made of your element. But not all elementals have hair, and the shapeshifters might not shift their hair.
Very closely tied to Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance. Sub-Trope of Elemental Hair Colors, for all cases where hair color matches Elemental Powers, and Magic Hair, for all situations where someone's hair is unusual or supernatural.
Subtropes:
- Flaming Hair: For fire as hair
- Plant Hair: For plants as hair.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Lu Over the Wall: Lu has hair made of seawater, to match her water control powers.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Technically, Negi's hair turns into lightning because all of him turns into lightning, when he gets the ability to become an Elemental Shapeshifter of lightning with He Astrape Huper Ouranou Mega Dunamene.
- Yaiba: Rain has water as hair, to match his Water elemental powers.
Comic Books
- Firestorm (DC Comics): Firestorm's arch-nemesis, Killer Frost, has icicles for hair in her New 52 design.
- Ms. Marvel (2014): When the electrogenic villain Kaboom uses her powers, her hair becomes a stream of electricity trailing above and behind her head. When she powers down, it becomes normal — albeit white — hair.
Fan Works
- Codex Equus: Kaldr, the deer god of winter, has a mane and tail made out of blue ice.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami's Ice Golems are made of ice, but they look like Ami, a human, so they have hair. And when empowered with her Sailor Mercury transformation, they gain Ice Magic Is Water attacks.
Literature
- Inheritance Trilogy:
- Bright Itempas, God of Light and Order, manifests as a young black man with hair made of white light. In his human form, he has Mystical White Hair instead.
- Nahadoth, God of Darkness and Chaos, manifests as an unearthly beautiful humanoid with pale skin and long, shadowy hair that merges with the darkness cloaking him.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder: Multiple species:
- The oreads, Uneven Hybrids of humanoids and earth elementals, inherit crystalline hair and limited Dishing Out Dirt abilities.
- Giants:
- Zigzagged with regular fire giants. In theory and written descriptions, they just have regular hair in various shades of copper, red and black, making them more a case of Elemental Hair Colors than anything. Official art, however, tends to forget this detail and depict them with full-on Flaming Hair instead. Mythic fire giants, however, have hair made out of lava in-universe as well as in art.
- Storm giants mostly have normal hair colors with some sky blues and light purples mixed in, but their image in 2nd Edition's Bestiary shows a storm giant with a beard and hair made out of lightning.
- Frosty chiselers, a type of icy fey, have beards made from moving icicles.
- Ponyfinder: The manes and tails of ghost ponies are swirling clouds of ethereal mist.
Video Games
- Dragon Quest V: The Winter Queen's hair is made of the same freezing blue flames that she wields.
- Hades:
- Zeus's long white hair and beard trail into clouds, giving a more fantastic spin on the traditional Grandpa God appearance and fitting his status as God of Thunder and the skies.
- Lord of the Ocean Poseidon has sea-green hair that appears to literally be water as it separates into droplets.
- Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass: Some of the cloud enemies look sufficiently human to have cloud hair, like Wendies, who are cloud girls with long, curly blown-cloud / gust-like hair.
- Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls: A pizza-based slime-type Cute Monster Girl. She's made of pizza, including her hair, and can attack with pizza-based attacks, like throwing pizzas, and pizza sauce Breath Weapon.
- The King of Fighters: Kula Diamond is a transhuman created by NESTS to counter K' as the "Anti-K'", having ice powers to contrast K''s fire powers. Kula has natural light brown hair, which turns light blue when her Elemental Powers are activated, but also in one attack she can spike and harden her hair as ice
◊ to hurt her opponent.
- The Legend of Zelda: The twin witches Koume and Kotake have, respectively, a blazing fire and a giant block of ice for hair, representing their respective Elemental Powers.
- Mortal Kombat: Frost, whose hair looks like icicles and emits cold air, in most versions, such as in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, where it's light blue, with white tips, and emits clouds of white air, presumably cold, along with sticking up sort of like Ice Crystals. But in Mortal Kombat 11, it's just combed over her hair, with a more turquoise color, instead of an icy one, making it just Elemental Hair Colors of Blue Means Cold.
- Splatoon: When the special meter fills up, your Inkling or Octoling's Tentacle Hair starts to bubble and waver with viscous ink.
- Terraria's Stylist sells various hair dyes, with the mana hair dye playing this the straightest to an associated character's element; being blue when at full mana, and turning pale white when running out.
Webcomics
- Aurora (2019): Gods of natural places and processes often have hair formed from their associated elements — the lake goddess Ilia has hair seemingly made out of water, while the storm god Tynan's "hair" is actually a tendril of cloud that crackles with lightning.
- Earthsong: K'thonya's hair is made of metal that she can manipulate with her Extra-ore-dinary powers. This is usually a slow process for her species, but the planet Earthsong amplifies her abilities enough to wield it as Prehensile Hair.
- In A-gnosis' comics on Greek myth, Old Mother Nyx, the primordial goddess of the night, usually appears with her hair in a star-patterned scarf. Her Game Face causes them both to expand into a night sky.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: The water nymphs have hair that is made of flowing water. Not much is known about them other than that they can typically be found hanging about in different bodies of water, always wearing bikinis.
- Invoked in Johnny Test by Brain Freezer, who shot himself in the face with his freeze cannon to turn his skin blue and freeze his hair into white icicles.
- The Owl House: Darius is the head of the Abomination Coven, a coven of witches specializing in magic to summon and control homunculi made of sludge-like material. Following this, his hair appears to be made of a mini abomination as well, complete with a glowing green eye on the bun topping his head.
- Villainous has Penumbra, whose hair is a translucent wisp of shadow.
