Gold and White Are Divine

The light of the sun and the clouds of heaven make for an excellent fashion statement.

In many Western and European societies, the colors gold and white are associated with goodness and divinity. White and gold invoke images of Heaven and angels and embody purity and incorruptibility. White shines brighter than any other light, and in modern times we know it to be a pure combination of all other shades, while gold never tarnishes, rusts, or corrodes; is associated with the sun; and of course, is one of the most valuable minerals on Earth, especially in ancient times. The color white is also associated with the other big precious metal, silver.

Thus in works of media, you're likely to see divine beings clad in white and gold. As white and gold can represent the sky as part of their association with Heaven, blue may also be featured. The deities may be associated with the colors beyond clothing, and thus have silver/white or golden hair, with pale or bronze skin. Even with gods that are not good, the colors still reflect their divinity. The colors may also feature on their relics. Mortals who are connected to the gods, or wish to appear as divine figures, will also wear white and gold.

A Sub-Trope of Good Colors, Evil Colors and Color-Coded for Your Convenience.

Compare Color-Coded Patrician, Light Is Good, Light Is Not Good, Ethereal White Dress, Gold-Colored Superiority, Golden Super Mode, Heavenly Blue. Contrast White and Red and Eerie All Over, Red and Black and Evil All Over, Evil Wears Black, Villain in a White Suit.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: The signature colors of Belldandy's goddess "uniforms" are blue, white, and gold. As depicted in The Movie, the Heavens consist of futuristic white marble buildings with gold trim and lots of trees throughout.
• Blue Exorcist: Arthur Auguste Angel, the current Paladin of the True Cross Order, dresses in white and has blond hair... and is probably one of the jerkiest characters in the series.
• Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!: The Student Council, who wear white and gold Custom Uniforms, play with this. They not only view themselves as a rarefied elite, but seem to be viewed in the same way by most of the students. When they transform into their Magical Boy forms, they become Evil Wears Black.
• DEVILMAN crybaby: Rio was born into a tribe of dark-skinned South American natives but has pale skin and blonde hair due to being reincarnated from an angel. This might be kinda racist, but then again, that angel is Lucifer.
• Digimon: Numerous Angel Digimon are colored white, gold, and blue. Angemon and Angewomon are probably the most famous.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Made In Heaven is a Stand that resembles a two-legged, two-armed centaur with a white and gold aesthetic. It's also, fittingly enough, a priest's Stand, namely, that of Enrico Pucci (who is anything but a saint), and its existence is a vital piece in his plan to reach "Heaven" using its ludicrously powerful ability to speed up time until it resets the universe.
• Kamigami no Asobi: In this Crossover Cosmology "reverse" harem series, Apollon and Balder both have white and gold costumes in their god forms. It fits them, as the God of the Sun and God of Light, respectively, but it isn't true across the board. Dionysus, God of Wine, has a purple costume; Susano'o, God of the Sea, has a blue costume; Hades and Anubis, Gods of the Underworld, have black costumes; etc. However, their school uniforms are mostly white and gold — not that all of them wear the right uniform (Susano'o and Loki wear mostly-black athletic jackets).
• Lyrical Nanoha: Knight Carim Gracia, High Priestess of the Saint Church with a magic color of gold.
• Oh, Suddenly Egyptian God: The cast are all Egyptian gods, as the name implies, and their designs all share the same color palette of gold, white and black.
• One Piece: Enel dresses in mostly white while having a lot of gold around him (including his bo staff), in addition to being blond, and rules a Sky Island called Skypeia as its "God". While it's later revealed that "God" is merely a title for Skypeia's administrative head by the previous God (who doesn't wear the associated colors, out of modesty), Enel — having vast electrokinetic abilities, deluded himself into being a literal one. One of his regular duties is smiting outsiders or anyone that "blasphemes" against him. He's also technically immortal, which doesn't help matters.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Madoka's Magical Girl forms have always had a white motif, but becoming a goddess lands her a pair of Supernatural Gold Eyes on top of it.
• Sailor Moon:
  • As the daughter of Queen Serenity (who was known as Selene on Earth) and her own personal power, Usagi has definitely this in both of her "Serenity" forms. She wears a white dress with a gold collar, along with having blond hair.
  • Sailor Venus is the only one of the Sailor Senshi to be regularly called a goddess (specifically, she's been alternatively referred as the Goddess of Love and War), and is notable for wearing a mostly white outfit while being blonde and and carrying golden weapons.
• Saint Beast: The head god Zeus wears a white chiton with gold accessories while the angels dress in a variety of colours in comparison.
• Saiyuki: Genjyo Sanzo has golden hair and dresses in white, as did his mentor Koumyou Sanzo, and his previous incarnation Konzen Douji. None of them are exactly traditional in their divinity, but a Sanzo priest is the highest rank there is, and Konzen was a minor noble in Heaven.

Arts

• The Apotheosis of Washington: The palette of the heavenly sky here is divided into yellowish clouds in the center and the outer white clouds on which the states and the ladies sit.
• The Birth of Venus (Botticelli): Love Goddess Venus has long golden hair, and the only article of clothing she's wearing (a ribbon to tie is back) is white.
• Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: Downplayed. It's not very notorious but the region of the sky where the divine angels are flying is dominated by a pale background and sports yellowish clouds, which contrasts with the darker clouds that surround the fallen Lucifer. Furthermore, the angels themselves have white wings — The blackened parts of Lucifer's partially corrupted wings don't have any gold or yellow tinges, while the still-white parts do.
• David: Greco-Roman sculptures are white because the paint faded with time. Michelangelo Buonarroti's David, however, was never meant to be colored. Its all-white appearance, instead, is there to further highlight David's holiness as one of God's chosen ones.
• Seven Virtues: "Faith's" clothes are predominantly golden and white, and she just so happens to symbolize faith in God.
• Sistine Chapel:
  • While the rest of the field is shrouded in darkness, the victory of the small but just David over the towering villain Goliath is framed against a white and gold tent. This is in a tradition of associating David's victory with the divine victory of Christ over sin.
  • The two keys to the kingdom of Heaven, both in Perugino's Delivery of the Keys and Michelangelo's The Last Judgement, are respectively gold and silver to represent their power from Heaven and their authority on Earth.

Audio Drama

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio Paradise 5, Paradise 5 is a holiday resort space station with a heavenly theme (and, this being Doctor Who, a Dark Secret). The uniforms, fixtures and fittings are all done up in immaculate white with gold highlights, at least "front of house".

Comic Books

• The White Martians in Warlord of Mars consider themselves as divine beings, intermediaries between their goddess Issus and the other Martian people, and are associated with these colors, but in reality, neither of them are divine.
• Wonder Woman:
  • During her stint as the Goddess of Truth in Wonder Woman (1987), she trades in her signature red, white, and blue swimsuit for a white Grecian dress and her silver bracers for gold ones.
  • A Superman/Wonder Woman tie in to The New 52: Futures End sees her taking on a white and gold outfit after becoming the Goddess of Peace.
• Phoenix in X-Men. Normally green and yellow (same colors as Jean Grey's outfit immediately prior to becoming Phoenix in the comics), turning red when she becomes Dark Phoenix. However, the most perfect melding of Phoenix Force and host is the "White Phoenix of the Crown", in which the suit becomes white and gold. This form is only seen on extremely rare occasions, at least until after her permanent bonding with the Phoenix, when this becomes her default form. When Emma Frost gains a piece of the Phoenix in Avengers vs. X-Men, her costume consists of a golden Leotard of Power and white boots, gloves, and a cape.
• Some outfits in Xs Omnibus, especially Michael Dassion's, are intended to have a godly aesthetic due to their main palette of white and gold.
• After his Heel–Face Brainwashing, the Green Goblin became the Gold Goblin, decked out in white and gold armor.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm depicts future versions of Harry (who is the demigod son of The Mighty Thor) wearing these colours, and his dress robes for the Yule Ball are white (threaded with silver and mother-of-pearl) and embroidered around the edges and cuffs with gold, along with a gold crown of ivy set with a gem of white starlight. The effect startles him for a few moments, before he comes to terms with it — he is a demigod Prince, after all, and this is just another part of him (even if he is generally more comfortable in scruffy jeans and a t-shirt). The clothes are also worn by Lily Potter as the White Phoenix of the Crown.
• In the TRON fanfic series Endgame Scenario, Benevolent A.I. Ma3a is described as having gold and white robes and a gold mask covering her face. Fitting, as she's something of The High Queen of the Encom system and even more fitting, as she's technically Lora Baines-Bradley, a human trapped in the system, and technically a Physical God over the Programs.
• Harry Potter and the Boiling Isles has the clergy of Titan-worship on the Boiling Isles, from preachers to the five High Priests take after Emperor Belos, who is seen as the greatest of the Titan's prophets, and dress in robes of white and gold.
• When the group of heroes meets up with Zeus at the end of Hellsister Trilogy's first story arc, he is wearing white robes and sitting on a golden throne.
  On a golden throne with thunderbolt-carved armrests atop a tier of marble stairs sat Zeus, red-bearded and white-robed, the force of his presence daunting even at a distance.
• Latius from Kaleidoscope has blond hair and wears a white costume. His namesake is Zeus, the top god of Classical Mythology, and his costume is patterned after Yuri!!! on Ice's Agape costume.
  Victor: Agape... unconditional love. Like God's love.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Nana Shimura becomes Lady Inanna in A World of Smiles, wearing gold, white, and silver as the world's Symbol of Peace and answering to the name of an ancient goddess of war.
• The Night Unfurls: Celestine's blonde hair and modest white robe compliments her status as the Goddess Reborn.
• Queen of Shadows: For the ceremony to create new Shadowkhan, Jade is dressed up in white clothes and white body paint as per tradition, all designed to make the Queen look divine, in opposition to the decay of the Underworld that Kagehime (the first Queen) escaped from.
• In RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse, gold and to a lesser extent white are the colors associated with Corona, and are hence all but universally rejected.
• The Heralds of Dawn and their apprentice Coera in Re:Flection Scenario all wear white outfits trimmed with gold, including Souzi's 24-Hour Armor. "Holiness" is an important motif of their's, and it establishes them as visual foils to other villains like Organization XIII.
• In Through Darkness And Mirrors, Elena's "White Rabbit" attire in Act 5 has her in a white flowing dress with golden trim and two golden "rabbit ears" perched on her head.

Film — Animation

• In The Princess and the Frog, the voodoo priestess Mama Odie wears a white dress with gold jewelry, and her home and song sequence use a lot of golden light. Word of God says that the gold was chosen for her because it's one of the Mardi Gras colors (with the others, green and purple, being used for the main couple and Big Bad, respectively).

Film — Live Action

• Blade Runner: In his final scene and the film's climax, Roy Batty gives an enlightened monologue and is established as a divine, pure being — despite being a replicant — because of his understanding of the world. Whilst he gives it, he is bathed in very bright, white light.
• Clash of the Titans (2010): Used as a costume aesthetic for the gods, especially Zeus's sparkly getup.
• Constantine (2005): Inverted. Lucifer (generally defined by specifically not being God) wears an all-white suit, making him a Villain in a White Suit.
• Dogma: Alanis Morissette as God wears a white and silver outfit.
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age: Clad only in a white chemise (dress-shaped undergarment traditionally made from linen), Queen Elizabeth I walks out on a windy cliffside and views the burning wreckage of the Spanish Armada with a thankful/rapturous look on her face, while heavenly music plays in the background. The following scene is filmed as a looping 360 degree tracking shot, with the queen clad in a highly elaborate white and gold gown, bathed in heavenly light with the music still playing.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Mothra, the only monster besides Godzilla who doesn't submit to [[The Usurper King]] Ghidorah, emits brilliant, golden-white light when she appears in the sky over the Bermuda sea.
• Jurassic Park: John Hammond wears white and has a white beard and hair, and is playing god by bringing to life, and trying to control, an extinct species.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The Sovereign are a race of gold-colored people who consider themselves superior to everyone else. In one scene they make a grand entrance on a winter planet, wearing gold capes with white fur. However, it turns into a Failed Attempt at Drama.
  • Thor: Love and Thunder: Zeus and his attendants are dressed in this color palette.
• The Miracle Woman: Florence Fallon wears white to invoke this trope, and make others believe that she's a saintly person. She's anything but.

Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm: The robes of the High Bishop, the highest religious authority in any given duchy, are white with gold trimmings and decorations.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Upon their meeting at the Stone Table, the golden face of Aslan and the stark white face of Jadis are contrasted by the narrator. Although not strictly "divine" (in-universe she is descended from Lilith), Jadis serves as an allegorical stand-in for Satan — in contrast to Aslan being an incarnation of Jesus Christ — thus the trope's meaning is split between two contrasting figures.
  • The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: As the protagonists reach the end of the known world, they encounter a white lamb, who is later revealed to be Aslan in all his golden, leonine glory.
• The Divine Comedy: A griffin is identified with Jesus by its gold and white coloring. The eagle's skyward-facing wings are gold to represent Christ's kingship as God, while his white body touching the Earth represents Jesus of Nazareth's Incorruptible Pure Pureness as a sinless man.
• The Empirium Trilogy: The colors for Rielle's Sun Guard are gold and white, and those that support her tend to use those colors. Though Rielle isn't a goddess, she is the most powerful elemental around; there doesn't seem to be any limit to her power, seeing as she was able to bring back the Queen of Celdaria from death.
• Concord, a Anthropomorphic Personification from The Faerie Queene, is said to wear a golden dress and crown of white pearls as a sign of the authority the Almighty granted on her to keep harmony between Heaven and Earth.
• Played with in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate. Fallen Angels that since their fall have chosen Throne have wings tinged with silver while the ones that have sided with Lucifer have wings tinged with gold, and only the ones that remained without allegiance have wings that are purely white.
• In "Iron Shadows in the Moon", the demi-god and god Olivia dreams of are blond and pale-skinned:
  They were pressing about one bound to a pillar: a slender white-skinned youth, with a cluster of golden curls about his alabaster brow. His beauty was not altogether human—like the dream of a god, chiseled out of living marble.
• The standard outfit for angels in Der Münchner im Himmel consists of a white gown and a pair of white wings, and if an angel is given a harp like Aloisius, it's golden. Being a recently deceased citizen of Munich, especially seeing as there is no beer in Heaven, Aloisius ends up not quite divine, though.
  • God himself wears blue in the animated adaptation, by the way.
• The Riftwar Cycle: In Tsurani culture, the Emperor (known as the Light of Heaven) has White and Gold as his house colours. Expanded on in the Empire trilogy co-written with Janny Wurts.
• The Satanic Verses: After Ayesha of Titlipur receives a revelation from the Archangel Gibreel (Gabriel), her hair changes colour to white flecked with gold, and she is surrounded at all times by golden butterflies. Ultimately though, she serves as an example of Light Is Not Good, as she increasingly veers towards ruthless and insane fundamentalism.
• The Silmarillion: Telperion ("Silver Tree") and Laurelin ("Golden Tree"), the Two Trees of Valinor, provided light before the Sun and Moon were created and are treated in-universe as lost symbols of extreme beauty and of a more innocent age, given that they were destroyed by the setting's Big Bad.
• Star Wars: The High Republic: The Jedi of this era wear ivory and gold robes, partly to show that this is an era of the greatest peace and prosperity for the Republic, where the Jedi are diplomats and helpers, not the Republic government enforcers of the Clone Wars era or the Sith killing KnightTemplars of the Old Republic era.
• The Stormlight Archive: Played with. One of the three Shards that serve as Roshar's gods, the one who uses these colors as his motif is... Odium, the Big Bad, resulting in a serious case of Light Is Not Good (though Odium's appearance and demeanor seem calculated to invoke classic Grandpa God imagery to put the people he's manipulating more at ease). Of the other two Shards on Roshar, Honor favors blue and Cultivation prefers green in their motifs.
• The Supervillainy Saga: This is the uniform of Supergirl Expy Ultragoddess. Given that she replaces her father (Ultragod) as the Big Good of the setting, this is appropriate.
• The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin: The colors of the Eternal Flame, tended by Vestal Virgins and harming only the wicked.
• Darken Rahl, the Big Bad from Wizard's First Rule, wears white with a narrow band of gold, and a knife in a golden scabbard. He's worshiped like a god, tries to obtain godlike powers through an ancient artifact, and serves the devil.
• Worm: Scion, the first superhero, is a golden figure wearing a white jumpsuit. We later learn that "he" is actually an extraterrestrial interdimensional alien who took that form to invoke the trope.

Live-Action TV

• In Angel, the local direct agents of The Powers That Be are at one point represented by gold-fleshed humanoids in white togas.
• Aziraphale in Good Omens (2019) dresses in pale blues and tans, but when he's discorporated and involuntarily returned to Heaven, he ends up wearing a pure white replica of his usual suit. Complete with bow tie. The angelic robe we see him wearing in Eden is also white with gold trim.
• In House of the Dragon, the dominant color of Rhaenyra Targaryen's female dragon Syrax is gold, and her name is based off a goddess of Old Valyria.
• In Kamen Rider Wizard, the White Wizard's color scheme is gold and... well... white. While the White Wizard isn't by any means a God, his power compared to the other Wizards and Phantoms is incomparable. Goodness on the other hand...
• Kamen Rider Revice: Daiji Igarashi's Rider outfit as Kamen Rider Live is gold and white, and he is one of the three sibling heroes. Also serves as Good Colors, Evil Colors, as his Inner Demon, Kagerou, had a black and green suit as Kamen Rider Evil.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Elves of Lindon are mostly dressed in Ethereal White Dresses with golden applications. Lindon itself is surrounded by a forest of birch trees with leaves that are golden all the time.
• Chuck from Supernatural, who is confirmed to be the God by... well, Word of God, wears a pristine white suit in his most important appearance.

Music Videos

• "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler: The angelic backup singers dance around wearing white dresses with a bit of gold around the collars and the edges in the music video.

Mythology and Religion

• The Bible:
  • The original expression, "a land flowing with milk and honey", is a reference in the Hebrew Bible to the agricultural abundance of the Land of Israel. The phrase is used by God in the Book of Exodus during Moses's vision of the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–22). Another name for Israel is the Promised Land or Holy Land, and since milk is white and honey is gold...
  • The figure named "Lord of Lord and King of Kings" (Revelation 19:15-16) along with the angels in the Book of Revelation are also dressed in white. Most interpret the figure as Jesus himself after his Second Coming.

Tabletop Games

• in Dungeons & Dragons, yellow, gold, and white are the favored colors of Pelor, the most generically good of the various good-aligned gods.
• The Unconquered Sun and his chosen Solar heroes in Exalted tend to radiate a lot of Glorious Golden Power. That said, this game subverts almost all of the preconceptions of a standard fantasy world, so expect plenty of Light Is Not Good, Good is Not Nice, Good Is Not Soft, and other such tropes in play. Also, there's much more variation in the coloring; Solar auras include not just gold and white, but also the reds and violets of sunrise and sunset.
• In Halt Evil Doer!, the local Superman-expy is Divinos, who has a gold-and-white costume and a bit of an angelic theme.
• In Magic: The Gathering, Angels, humanoid manifestations of (normally white) mana, tend to favor gold and white clothing. Angels with different mana alignment tend to have more varied outfits.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the man known only as The Emperor of Mankind plays with this trope and its implications in many ways.
  • Back in his days among the living, the Emperor wore an ornate suit of golden power armor, and many parts of the Imperium of Man took the same aesthetic. He was so powerful that he even glowed gold, artwork often depicting it as a halo; though when he needed to make an impression, he was known to turn it up bright enough to permanently blind certain populations.
  • As for how this trope was Zig-Zagged, he certainly used his look and aura to invoke an air of majesty and power. However, it warped into a holy motif much against his wishes. Also, the Emperor was a coldly pragmatic and ruthless man, utterly dedicated to preserving humanity at any cost; and for all of his knowledge, power, and experience, he was still fallible, at times tragically so. With humanity's ultimate fate at stake, he couldn't be concerned with ethics and morals or his own sense of humanity, and he firmly straddled the line between Messianic Archetype and Dark Messiah.
  • Eventually, the Emperor was struck down during a civil war and interred on the Golden Throne, a mysterious device retrofitted into a life support machine. Among other very important things, the throne artificially keeps him alive, and should it fail, the Imperium would effectively end in multiple, simultaneous ways. Though the good news is that his soul is exercising its power to support the Imperium wherever and however it can, effectively becoming the deity of the Imperium. Having become the God-Emperor of Mankind, he's now the silent, nominal leader of a bloody empire that's still humanity's best hope in a galaxy trying to snuff them out.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Monster card "Guardian Angel Joan" (a play on the saintly Joan of Arc) wears a white dress with gold accents. The dress also has two strips of fabric coming out of it that are a lighter gold shade.

Theatre

• Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto:
  • Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VII appears in a scene depicted the way Dante Alighieri saw him, as the perfect divinely-appointed savior of Italy, in pearlescent robes and a shining golden crown. Dante sings the scene from Paradiso where he describes the seat in heaven reserved for Heinrich, which appears on stage in pure white. However, as Dante goes on to describe what Heinrich would have done had he lived longer — namely, brutally crushing all opposition — the inaccuracy of Dante's version becomes clear.
  • Giovanni de'Medici wears a white robe when he graduates from school and becomes a cardinal. In order to do so, he has to defend his purity from sin (namely, the sins of his family's bank).
• Cirque du Soleil has used this a few times.
  • Nouvelle Experience and Alegría both have sets of characters known as "Angels"; each set wears gold-and-white outfits.
  • Another character in Alegria, the friendly, clownish Tamir, also wears gold and white; his sinister Foil Fleur is Red and Black and Evil All Over.
  • In Dralion, the Ame-Force singers (representations of harmony) dress in white for Act One and gold for Act Two. The Little Buddha, who will eventually become an Ame-Force, is always dressed in gold.

Toys

• BIONICLE:
  • Physical God Mata Nui provides the most literal version of this trope in the series: he has entirely gold and white armor in The Legend Reborn's novelization. In all other depictions, though, he has gold and black armor.
  • Takanuva is basically the Matoran Universe's Jesus (Heroic Sacrifice, Back from the Dead, and all) and is clad in white and gold armor. It helps that he not only wields the power of light but was also a member of the Av-Matoran, who were the prototypes for all other kinds and had more powers than the usual Matoran.
  • Irnakk, a figure from Skakdi folklore, is an evil example of this trope. His golden head and spine are his most recognizable features, and he's essentially the Devil of their mythology, to the point that the Piraka Hakann goes into a panic attack when he realizes that the monster that's coming towards him has the same colors as a being from myth.

Video Games

• Chakravartin from Asura's Wrath usually takes on a form clad in golden robes, fitting his status the divine ruler of Gaea and creator of the universe. Midway through the Final Boss fight against him, however, he sheds this appearance and takes on his "Creator" form, a form with a heavy red and black coloring, befitting his true nature.
• Angels and Lumen Sages in Bayonetta generally use predominantly white and gold color schemes. Doesn't stop them from being evil at times, though.
• Sirius, your one ally for most of Bomberman 64, wears white and gold armor, and he completes the angelic look by housing his rockets in a set of mechanical wings. It turns out that he wants the Omni Cube for himself to gain godlike powers for real.
• Breath of Fire:
  • In Breath of Fire III and IV, Ryu ends up with blonde hair and white-clothing whenever he transforms into his "final" form (Kaiser in III and God-Ryu in IV, respectively).
  • Infinity in Breath of Fire IV, Fou-Lu's transformation if he absorbs Ryu, is a palette-swap of Tyrant Dragon, with white and gold skin, and blue divine wings.
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: The animation for using the Erinys's soul's Holy Ray is a blonde, extremely long-haired, Winged Humanoid in a gold-trimmed white dress spreading her wings and emitting Speed Stripes.
• Cyberpunk 2077: Hanako Arasaka, the daughter of the most powerful man on the planet, who has unlocked the secret to immortality, sports a white dress and has gold trimmings on her hands and arms.
• In Darksiders, this is the color scheme of most of the angels and their angelic gryphon mount that the protagonist steals from them.
• Dark Souls:
  • Gwynevere, Princess of Sunlight, appears as giant, beautiful woman with bronze skin, clad in elegant (if revealing) white clothing trimmed in gold. Whether this is what she actually looks like or if it's an idealized version her shaped through Gwyndolin's illusion is subject to debate.
  • Knight Lautrec of Carim wears the Armor of the Embraced, a set of golden armor that represents Fina, the goddess said to possess "fateful beauty". Lautrec is anything but noble, and Fina herself is implied to be a few shades darker than her title suggests.
• DC Universe Online has the Celestial powerset, which comes in different colors depending on your faction. For heroes, the powers are colored gold and white, very much invoking Light Is Good and other angelic and celestial imagery.
• The High Heavens of the Diablo universe primarily have a gold-and-white motif, and many angels have a gold-and-white motif to their armor or weapons.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: The spiritual bodies of the Seven Gods and the Phosphor-Essence of the Divine are both pure gold, unlike the teal of ordinary ghosts and Soul Power.
• The Omniknight from Dota 2 is a pious paladin in service to an all-seeing God. Not only is he dressed primarily in white with golden hair, all his spells are also colored either white or gold.
• In Elden Ring Gold, and white by association, is heavily associated with the holy: the Erdtree has a golden bark and gold-yellow leaves, the 'grace of gold' associated with the blessing of the Erdtree took the form of shining golden eyes, almost all Holy spells have a golden color, the primary religious group/order of scholars/world order is called the Golden Order, and so on and so forth. Unusually, God Empress Marika actually wore a black outfit with golden linings.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Zig-Zagged by the White-Gold Tower on the Imperial City Isle in central Cyrodiil. How it plays this trope depends on the time period in question and the in-universe point of view. One of eight metaphysical "Towers" constructed by the ancient races of Mer (Elves) in emulation of the Adamantine Tower (itself constructed by the surviving Aedra to hold "convention" after creating the mortal world), the White-Gold tower was constructed by the Ayleids ("Wild Elves") of Cyrodiil using the "Chim-el-Adabal" (said to have been created from the crystallized blood of Lorkhan, collected as it traveled across Tamriel to its resting place in Morrowind) as their "Stone". Following the Alessian Revolt (a revolt of their human slaves), the tower would be taken by the Nedes (ancestors to most of the modern races of Men in Tamriel). After capturing the Tower, Alessia, leader of the Nedes, would forge a pact with Akatosh, the Top God of the Aedra and Dragon God of Time. Akatosh gave to Alessia and her descendants the Amulet of Kings (whose centerpiece was the Chim-el Adabal), as well as the Dragonfires of the Imperial City. So long as the Empire maintained its worship of Akatosh and his kin, and so long as Alessia's heirs bore the Amulet of Kings, Akatosh and his divine kin would maintain a strong barrier protecting Mundus. The White-Gold Tower itself would serve as the Imperial Palace of all the various Cyrodiilic Empires in Tamriellic history. Though not without its flaws, the Cyrodiilic Empires have generally been rather liberal and well-meaning (though don't get most of the races of Mer talking about them). This came to an end during the Oblivion Crisis, when Martin Septim, last in Alessia's metaphysical line, shattered the Amulet of Kings and sacrificed himself to end the Crisis. The White-Gold Tower itself still serves as the palace of the Mede Dynasty, which holds together the last vestiges of Septim Empire before it.
  • In Skyrim, the driving force behind the Civil War between the Imperial-supporters and the secessionist Stormcloaks is the White-Gold Concordat, the name given to the peace treaty that was forged between the Imperials and the Thalmor, which, as part of the agreement, stipulates that the Imperials needed to outlaw the worship of Talos. The Thalmor do consider themselves to be a superior, divine race, charged with the extinction of every other race, be they human, elf or beast.
• fine of Ensemble Stars! usually wear white outfits with gold accents and have a heavenly, angelic theme, reflecting both their image as a good and pure idol unit (despite the reality being very different), as well as their enormous level of power.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The "Light Emperor"◊ of Final Fantasy II represents the "good half" of Big Bad Emperor Palamecia, rules over Heaven, and wears light yellow and gold robes with lavender and white details, a gold crest, and white wings. Turns out he's no more good than his other half.
  • Cecil of Final Fantasy IV has, Depending on the Artist, gold, white, and blue armor as a Paladin.
  • Crisis Core has Minerva, the game's Superboss, who appears as an angelic woman clad in gold, blue, and white armor. Her exact nature is unclear, but she has some connection to The Lifestream, and Genesis at the very least believes her to be a goddess.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Galenth Dysley wears a white robe with gold and blue colorings. His title in the Japanese version of the game is even "Great Pope", and so he looks the part. Zigzagged by his true form Barthandelus, which at first appears almost entirely black with sparse white and gold details, but lightens to silver and white with more prominent gold colorings in subsequent battles.
  • The sin eaters in Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers are overwhelmingly white, and the more powerful among them also have golden highlights to further emphasize their "holy" appearance.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy:
    • Page picture provided by Cosmos, the game's Big Good and Goddess of Harmony.
    • Cosmos's protector and leader of the heroes and all-around shining paragon of light, the Warrior of Light, wears primarily blue armor with khaki and white.
• In Fire Emblem:
  • Manaketes of the Divine Dragon tribe are either white or gold in their dragon forms. Some of them are: Gotoh, Tiki, Xane, Naga, Mila, Duma, Fae, Idoun, a Female!Morgan mothered by Tiki, etc. It's not confirmed whether Nowi and Nah belong here too, but the fandom assumes they do.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance:
    • The royal family of the herons have long gold hair, white wings, and dress exclusively in white and gold. They are compared to and framed as angels more than once. The tribe has been said to be closer to the goddess than others.
    • In a more subtle example, Micaiah's combination of silver hair and gold eyes are a sign of her ability to wake the goddesses and act as the vessel for one of them.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • Queen Mikoto has a special customized Priestess sprite with a gold and white color scheme (and if Sakura promotes into Priestess, she'll have a similar one).
    • Duke Izana has white-blond hair and a golden hair clip, and has the ability to directly talk to the Gods.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Rhea, Archbishop of the Church of Seiros, wears entirely white, gold, and dark blue. In actuality, she is Seiros herself, the saint who founded the church, and the daughter of mother goddess Sothis.
    • Sothis, a mysterious figure with no memory of herself, wears mainly dark blue, but her outfit also includes gold and white, with pink ribbons in her hair. This being almost the same as Rhea hints at a connection between them.
    • Main character Byleth gains access to the Enlightened One class over the course of the game as Sothis grants them her power as a goddess. Their outfit in this class shares the white, gold, and dark blue color scheme associated with the Church.
  • Fire Emblem Engage:
    • Queen Lumera, main character Alear's mother and the ruler of the Divine Dragons, wears primarily white and gold, with blue and pink accents. She is the Big Good of the game and responsible for sealing away the Big Bad a thousand years prior to the events of the game.
    • Her child Alear also wears white, gold and blue (though a darker shade than Lumera), but with red instead of pink, and with the inclusion of black as an accent color. While their mother's primary outfit colors are white and gold, Alear's primary colors are red and blue. The difference between them is foreshadowing that unlike Lumera, Alear was not born a Divine Dragon, but a Fell Dragon. They switched sides during the war between the Divine and Fell dragons, falling into a coma when the war was won. Lumera, having adopted them as her child during this, chose to transfer her power to Alear while they slept, slowly turning their red hair into mixed red-and-blue in the process.
• God of War:
  • Zeus wears a white robe with gold armor.
  • Helios is an interesting case in that he normally wears a golden armour complimented by a white toga, but he has a crimson cape as well.
• In Hades, Top God Zeus, War God Ares, and Goddess of Knowledge Athena wear gold-and-white clothing. Nyx, Anthropomorphic Personification of Night, wears gold-and-purple to fit her role, but her pale skin means that she still has plenty of gold-and-white highlights.
• The Downloadable content from Injustice 2 contains the God and Demon shading for all characters. The God Shading changes the characters' outfits to be a combination of white and gold, as well as shining white eyes. On the flipside, the Demon Shading gives them black and red outfits, as well as Black Eyes of Evil.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising:
  • Pit is an angel who defends the heavens with a magic bow, dressed in a white tunic with gold bracelets and a golden wreath crown in his hair.
  • Palutena, the Goddess of Light. While her hair is a deep green, she wears a white robe adorned with gold trimmings, and has on lots of gold jewelry, including a huge gold necklace.
• Lord Hyness, the Big Bad of Kirby Star Allies, wears a white hooded cloak with gold trim along the hood and sleeves. Coupled with the bright red insides of those sleeves, it's a very fitting color scheme for the once-benevolent Sinister Minister in charge of the Jambandra Base and the Apocalypse Cult that worships and seeks to revive the ancient Destroyer Deity known as Void Termina.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Tower of the Gods from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is mostly white stone with gold accents, and it marks the start of that color scheme for similar future dungeons and outfits.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the Temple of Time has a nearly identical color scheme to the one for the Tower of the Gods. The City in the Sky has this color scheme as well; both it and the Temple of Time were created by the Oocca.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Zelda dresses like this after falling to the surface, indicating that she's an incarnation of the goddess Hylia.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Zelda has a similar dress that she wears when praying at sacred springs. Her formal dress and Adventurer Archaeologist outfits also have some white and gold trimmings, though they're still predominantly blue.
• Lorwolf: The Goldsea pack has gold and white as their colors. Their lore uses heavy angel symbolism and their focus is on maintaining order against an undescribed force of chaos.
• In the Monster Rancher series, the Gali is an invisible creature represented by a gold mask and white cape, with high intelligence and mild temperament, and the flavor text suggests it to be an actual divine being. All monsters with the Gali subtype gain its coloring and personality traits, making the Gali a good mix for monsters that are normally stubborn and harder to train.
• Mortal Kombat 11:
  • Kronika is a being far more older and powerful than even the Elder Gods. She and her army has this metallic color scheme to show for it. Considering that she is the Greater-Scope Villain for the whole franchise, however, this is a case of Light Is Not Good.
  • In most of the game's ladder endings where characters take control of the Hourglass and become a Physical God, they will don white and gold clothing/armor that symbolizes their newfound divinity.
• The Big Bad of the Onimusha series is the God of Light, Fortinbras. As such he always appears in gold, silver, or white colors. His divinity is unquestioned, but his goodness is certainly non-existent.
• While Mercy from Overwatch is not technically a deity, she does have an angelic theme and serves as a healer. She wears a white bodysuit with gold accents, and a golden halo and wings to match.
• Pokémon:
  • Arceus, a Pokémon that serves as the setting's equivalent of God, being said to have shaped the Sinnoh region and possibly the rest of the world. It is mostly white with what appears to be a gold wheel around its mid-section and gold hooves. However, depending on the plate it is holding, the gold parts change color to match the color of the plate and the typing.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon: Ultra Necrozma, which appears as a golden angelic dragon. Before it became the light-eating prism monster that it is now, Necrozma was a benevolent deity-like being.
• Kaileena of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy. By the beginning of The Two Thrones, she has ditched her Lady in Red look from Warrior Within and gone for a more Stripperific gold-and-white attire◊, giving away the hint that she is the Empress of Time, whose body is turned into the Sands of Time upon getting killed.
• Angel Wendy from South Park: Phone Destroyer is, as the name implies, an angel, and her card art depicts her dressed in a white robe with a gold collar and halo, wielding a ball of golden light in one hand.
• The Clockwork Sun, London's artificial sun god from Sunless Skies, casts white and gold light around it.
• The Prester Zuul in Sword of the Stars II, who made a Heel–Faith Turn to Catholicism, favour this colour scheme.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Yggdrasill has long, golden hair and dresses in a white bodysuit with gold decorations. He's the leader of Cruxis, the game's organization of angels. He's also the Big Bad.
• Ultima: The Avatar, a near-Physical God by the end of the series, is commonly shown in white and silver armor with a gold ankh on the chest and blonde hair.
• Warframe: Invoked by the long-fallen Orokin Empire, who loved to use white and gold in combination with artistic designs for just about everything, creating an angelic image. At the height of their power they controlled the entire solar system and created technological marvels. Many of the prime versions of warframes are artifacts (or reproductions thereof) that date back to the Orokin, and have the same white and gold color scheme as the default. The white is not as common in the primes that were released later, but all have the gold trim. One of the present day factions in the game even sees their technology as divine and worships it. However, after we learn more about the Orokin, this is a good indicator of their vanity rather than good nature, since they were hideously abusive towards the rest of humanity.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The Holy Light is associated with this, and its paladins and priests (e.g. Tirion Fordring and the Prophet Velen) are often seen in said colors (Heavenly Blue is a common tertiary color, but purple (especially among draenei) and red (especially among blood elves and the Scarlet Crusade) also occur somewhat frequently).
  • The Kyrian Covenant in the Shadowlands expansion has shades of this in their architecture, weapons, and clothing. Their skin, however, is a different trope.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the god of the Bionis, Zanza, who wears a predominantly white-and-gold outfit for a good extent of their appearance within the game as befitting their status. That said, he may be divine enough for the color scheme, but he's not benevolent at all; in fact, he's the Big Bad.

Webcomics

• Exterminatus Now:
  • An angel in a demon-infested site is white and yellow.
  • Ahriman, God of Knowledge, speaks in yellow and white speech bubbles.
• Girl Genius:
  • Zig-Zagged by House Valois and the Knights of Jove in general. They depict themselves as Knights In Shining Armor with their gold and white outfits, clanks, and symbols - however Light Is Not Good and many of them are in league with the Other.
  • Agatha, Martellus and Zola exploit this trope with their costumes for the masquerade in Paris, by dressing in gold and white to make a show in front of the people.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Elan's Good Angel is blue faced, white bodied, and golden winged. So, apparently is Belkar's, though we can't see the white body.
  • The celestial tree sloth is white (with blue accents) and has a gold halo.
• In Our Little Adventure, Angelo, a cleric and the leader of a pseudo-religion called "Angelo's Kids", poses as this, down to glowing yellow eyes, when angered.
• In Overcompensating, God wears a white robe with golden letters spelling out "YHWH". Jesus wears a similar attire that says "INRI", though often the color of his robe is more beige or light brown.
• In Rusty and Co., Madeline's "power of the gods to heal" — a white beam inside a golden glow.

Web Original

• In Minilife TV, Legondo's resident god, Goshua, wears a white robe and a white and gold headdress.

Western Animation

• Angel Wars: Angelic armor is typically either silver or, in the case of Archangel Michael, gold.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: The Storm Goddess from the episode Stormy Weather is garbed like this.
• The Legend of Korra: Amon wears a mask that is primarily white and gold (with a red dot in the forehead). He presents himself as a Messianic Archetype, though the colors of his mask should generally be read with a healthy sense of irony.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Big Good Physical God Princess Celestia's coat^note Not a coat in the sense of a piece of clothing. We're talking about ponies, remember. is white, and her crown, breastplate, and shoes are gold. She represents the day to her sister Princess Luna's blue and black night.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Daughter is the embodiment of the Light side of the Force, and she wears a white dress, with golden shoulder and neck.
• Teen Titans (2003): In both battles against her demon father, Trigon, Raven’s cloak turns white in the final stages (the second even sees the energy projections of her powers do the same). This contrasts her with the dark red tones that symbolize Trigon’s malevolence.

Real Life

• This trope can be traced back to the ancient statues of gods which were covered with ivory and gold, such as the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This was so common that there is a term, "chryselephantine", used solely to refer to such statuary.
• Apollo's weapons are referred as silver or gold interchangeably.
• Most swans have mainly white bodies with golden head and nape feathers (best seen in mute and trumpeter swans). That added to their divine reputation, and connected them further to sun gods.
• The clothing of many gods from Egyptian Mythology is white with gold trim, particularly the ones that wear kilts like Anubis. Gold itself was also considered the skin of the gods in ancient Egypt. Pharaoh death masks were made of the stuff to symbolize the formerly mortal king joining the ranks of godhood.
• In Roman Catholicism, white and gold are used as Color Motifs for the Pope, the highest-ranking member of the Church. Ceremonial papal regalia consists of white robes with prominent gold trimming, and white remains the dominant color for the Pope's day-to-day outfits. Likewise, the flag of the Papal States consisted of a bright yellow stripe and a white stripe, with its successor, the Vatican City State, further modifying it to include the Emblem of the Papacy. Said emblem further embraces this trope, depicting both the white and gold papal tiara and the Keys of Heaven, a gold key and a silver key which overlap to create a stylized X (representing the Greek word for Christ, "Χριστος").
• In the Eastern Orthodox Church, gold and white are the liturgical colors (the colors of the priests' vestments and the church's hangings) on the main feasts of the year (except for Easter, which has red, though some traditions have white for it as well), symbolizing God's glory and God's light respectively. There are some variations, but usually gold is for Sundays and feast days of prophets, apostles and holy hierarchs, and white is for the Easter matins, Christmas, the Baptism of Jesus, the Ascension, the Transfiguration, the Circumcision, Lazarus Saturday, Holy Saturday, and feast days of Angels, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.
• The flags and arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem^note No longer a thing, but someone out there is keeping the title alive and Vatican City^note Where The Pope lives. Contrary to what many say, the Papal States did not use the gold-and-white design for most of its history; rather, they used a red-and-gold square vertical bicolor, a traditional symbol of the city of Rome. The gold-white flag was adopted in 1808. are (with a few exceptions) the only ones allowed to use gold and white/silver together; normally the rules of heraldry forbid putting two metal colours together, precisely because it is seen as exceptional and holy. Furthermore, Catholic churches in general like to fly white and yellow flags, and in Germany road signs noting the hours of worship in a nearby Catholic church show a stylized yellow church on white.
• LaVeyan Satanism has adopted black and silver as its colors precisely because it's more or less the inversion of this trope. However, people specialising in Solrath and/or Moloch tend to use black and gold. And some use white anyway.

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