Gold-Colored Superiority

aka: Gold Coloured Superiority

The fact that gold exists makes every other color equally inferior.

"I know gold's a bit gauche, but I wanted to ensure you grasp my new position atop the pecking order. And for the sake of your feeble mind, let's keep the name simple as well. We'll call this Golden Frieza."

— Frieza on his new Golden Super Mode, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'

Sometimes, the Red Ones Go Faster. Other times, the golden ones do.

This is Law of Chromatic Superiority applied to the color gold. This has to do with the assumption that gold, as a metal, is rare, and thus something golden stands for wealth and power.

This could be by a gold Sixth Ranger being equal to or better than the Red Ranger, an already Red character turning gold as an upgrade, a gold tier above other tiers, or something else. Whatever the case, Gold is simply the best.

Chrome Champion, Bling-Bling-BANG! and Bling of War are related, but are not part of the same Metallic Motifs purpose of "just better" as the Law of Chromatic Superiority. ^note In terms of value rate, though, it may be beaten with Platinum or Diamond... but then it's no longer about color.

Compare Power Glows, Gold Makes Everything Shiny, Made O' Gold, Gold and White Are Divine and Golden Super Mode. Contrast Worthless Yellow Rocks. Purple Is Powerful is the more mundane counterpart, but (especially in a Yellow/Purple Contrast) can be just as deadly.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Astro Boy (1980): Atlas has golden skin to reflect his strength over Astro.
• In Bleach, Don Kanouji seizes gold for his Sentai color after half the rest of the team (i.e. Jinta and Karin) spends an entire episode arguing over who gets to be red. Both eventually settled on being two reds in addition to his gold.
• In Digimon Tamers, Takato's red digivice is destroyed, but his replacement is gold. His and his partner's Super Mode, Gallantmon Crimson Mode, does stick with traditional red, though.
• Digimon: The Movie: Using the Golden Digi Eggs of Miracles and Destiny, Veemon and Terriermon were able to digivolve into the golden-armored Digimon, Magnamon and Rapidmon. Unlike other Armor Digimon whose power is comparable to an Ultimate, Magnamon and Rapidmon are as powerful as a Mega level Digimon and they are able to defeat Cherubimon and free him from the virus that corrupted him.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Galaxy Super-express have the titular train being attacked by the Yadori aliens, who pilots white mini-UFOs. Save for their leader, the Yadori Emperor, whose UFO is gold.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Goku's original power multiplier was the Kaioken which had him Turn Red and maxed out at 20x base power. When that wasn't enough to beat Frieza he transformed into a golden-haired Super Saiyan, 50x base power.
  • Averted with Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan (aka Super Saiyan Blue) and Legendary Super Saiyan which are red, blue and green respectively.
  • In Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' and Dragon Ball Super, Frieza himself develops a new Super Mode that turns his skin gold. He mentions that he chose to make it gold with this very trope in mind, as stated in the page quote. Worth noting is that he mixes this with purple, another color of high prestige.
• Lyrical Nanoha: Fate's base magical color is golden, which is said to be rare among mages. She's also one of the strongest TSAB mages and considered by many to be the fastest, hence her other title "Golden Flash."
• Gundam:
  • Char Aznable changes his usual color from red in the original Mobile Suit Gundam to gold in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam where he fights for the AEUG, piloting the Hyaku Shiki under the alias of Quattro Bajeena The idea being that the gold paint job is an anti-beam coating. He goes back to using red for Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, however. Even more iconic about this change is that Char caused an entire trope in part about his normal color scheme.
  • Mobile Fighter G Gundam has an odd example. The Shining Gundam has a golden Super Mode early on, but when it gets upgraded to the God Gundam, it instead gets a STRONGER golden Super Mode. It is much more powerful because it's powered by Inner Peace, while the original super-mode was powered by Unstoppable Rage.
  • The Zeta example is referenced in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny with the Akatsuki, a gold-colored mobile suit based on the first Strike models and originally piloted by Cagalli. It is heads and shoulders above her standard Strike Rouge, being faster, better armed, and most importantly beam-coated, which lends it its color. At one point it No Sells the Destiny Gundam's beam weapons—something that no other suit could do up to that point. Once the un-brainwashed Mu La Flaga gets his hands on it, its combination of speed and defensive ability becomes critical in saving the Archangel by Taking the Bullet again just like in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, this time without getting blown up.
• The gold cloths of Saint Seiya, seeing how all the gold saints are extremely powerful. The full breakdown in Saint Seiya is Bronze < Silver < Gold < God. This last one is used only by Gods, though there is an important exception late in the Hades Saga. It's also worth noting that five Bronze saints, basically Mooks / Red Shirts for the good guys, manage to fight their way up that chain all the way up to god and beat their opponents throughout the course of the series.
• The Aquarion Logos Genesis from Aquarion Logos.
• Happens with two characters in Sailor Moon:
  • Minako Aino/Sailor Venus has golden hair, golden Battle Aura, her attacks are golden, and her planet's name in Japanese is "Kinsei", that is "gold star". At her debut she's the strongest of the Sailor Soldiers, and while Sailor Moon surpasses her she remains by far the strongest of the Inner Senshi.
  • Sailor Galaxia wears gold armor, and her hair is (mostly) golden. In the manga she's the mightiest of all Sailor Soldiers in history up until Sailor Moon managed to match her, and in the anime she's the strongest bar none.
• In Red Baron, Kaiser's organization builds the Gold Baron to be the technical superior to the titular Red Baron. It was for a while, as it was evenly matched in power while also having an additional system that allowed it to predict the opponents moves.

Comic Books

• Metal Men: Gold is the leader, not counting Dr. Magnus (Da Chief).
• Iron Man: Iron Man is often called "The Golden Avenger" even though he's mostly red nowadays (although he once had a fully golden armor).
• The Smurfs: To make himself stand out as the Smurf above all others, King Smurf from the comic book story of the same name (and its Animated Adaptation) wore a Smurf suit colored gold, which the other Smurfs see as yellow.
• Teen Titans: For a brief period, Cyborg was bonded to a morphing war-suit called the Omegadrome. This granted him a gold-colored form and a number of other new abilities such as being able to take human form.
• Wonder Woman: When Diana, Donna, and Cassie put on full armor Diana, the strongest, most experienced and eldest of their number, wears gold.
• U.S.Avengers: One villain the U.S. Avengers first faced was the Gold Skull, a money-obsessed villain. He happened to wear a suit of gold armor... which Toni Ho learned was real gold and not gold-plated as she happily tore it apart — real gold might be shiny, but it's highly malleable.

Fairy Tales

• In many variants of tale type ATU 530, "The Princess on the Glass Hill", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, the hero either watches his father's grave at night or their harvest/ fields, and discovers three magical horses: the first of a copper colour, the second of a silver colour, and the last of a golden colour. The horses also lend him an armour in their respective colour. When the hero defeats the Glass Mountain challenge, it is almost always with the golden-coloured horse.

Fan Works

• High-ranking Thep Khufans in Egypt on Anur Khufos have gold-colored ornaments and crowns, ranging from the royalty, to the Golden Guard military resistance group.
• In Chapter 30 of The Night Unfurls, original version, Kyril has to fight two familiars of Mandeville, depicted as two massive warriors in gold-coloured armour. Unlike a majority of the enemies he slayed, he uses more time and effort against the two.
• Jane from Project Delta has golden-colored biotics with enough power to kill an army.
• Inverted in RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse, where due to its association with Corona gold is taboo. Jewelry made with gold won't sell, minting gold coins is considered blasphemous (and possibly treasonous), and even using the word in a poem is enough to raise eyebrows.
• The Five Nights at Freddy's fanfic, Something Always Remains has two examples:
  • Spring Bonnie, a gold-colored animatronic, isn't bound by the 12am - 6am rule, is shown to possess enough strength to bash in metal walls, and depending on who's currently haunting the suit, is quicker and more deadly than the other animatronics. Bonnie Wickes, one of the ghosts haunting the suit, had gold thread on her polo, and was the only staff member who did. She knows all the inner workings of the suit, including how to change the codes to deny access to Jeremy.
  • Downplayed with Fredbear/Freddy Wickes. He's missing his golden suit and is just an endoskeleton. That said, he's the only one who can keep Bonnie Wickes from her murderous rampage.
• Temporal Anomaly puts the future counterpart of Sougo Tokiwa in the world of Drakengard 3. As one might expect from the power he showed in the series, Sougo is able to easily overpower the Invokers in battle.

Films — Live-Action

• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Wonder Woman and Justice League, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, has plenty of golden parts on her outfits, and she's a formidable warrior.
  • Aquaman: When Arthur is brought before him in chains, Orm is the powerful ruling king who wears a golden costume. In the third act, it is Arthur who wears gold while Orm's armor has silvery elements, visually imparting that he is about to lose to Arthur before their second duel even starts.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Two of the most powerful kaiju of all, Ghidorah and Mothra respectively, produce golden light with their powers during the movie. Ghidorah has gold scales and he produces golden-yellow lightning, while Mothra produces gold light when she clears Ghidorah's stormclouds.
• The Lawnmower Man: Jobe is able to project himself as a Huge Holographic Head at a certain point. A yellow-tinted head, no less.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The Sovereign, including Ayesha, have golden skin and wear golden clothes, and are extremely smug. They ultimately become antagonistic to the heroes.
    • Inverted in one scene. Since the Sovereign are gold anyway, their high priestess Ayesha stands out when they all wear winter capes, and hers is covered with white fur, while her subordinated wear gold capes lined with fur. The rest of her clothes and her headgear are still golden.
  • Loki's costumes in Thor, The Avengers and Thor: The Dark World, especially his full battle gear, have a lot of golden elements, he wears a golden helmet and wields golden weapons (Odin's Gungnir, Chitauri scepter) to demonstrate his perceived superiority. In Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War his costumes have hardly any gold on them, and even the helmet becomes light and ornamental to signify his Heel–Face Turn. In Loki, his Alternate Self is forcefully stripped of his golden-clad costume and made to wear ordinary clothes without any decorations, and after Heel and Jerkass Realizations becomes a better person.
  • Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok rules over Sakaar and is the only Sakaaran shown to dress in gold.
  • Black Panther:
    • Killmonger chooses the gold-themed Black Panther suit that T'Challa considered too showy. He wants to demonstrate more of the Wakandan power to the world with force than what T'Challa had intended, so he wants to be seen. It also has gold teeth.
    • The Dora Milaje all have silver embellishments on their uniforms with the exception of Okoye who wears gold to indicate that she's their leader.
  • Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War believes that he is the one responsible for balance in the universe, and his full battle gear has a fair amount of gold on it. The Gauntlet that allows him to wield the Infinity Stones is golden as well.
  • In her Binary Mode, Carol Denvers from Captain Marvel (2019) is surrounded by golden glow and her eyes turn golden as well. She is very powerful Smug Super.
• Phantasm: The Tall Man's gold sentinels are more durable, hold more weapons, and can crash into people or things harder.
• Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: Palpatine is in fact a powerful Sith master. His lightsaber has a gold plated hilt, and he kills no less than three out of the four Jedi masters who came to arrest him in a short amount of time.
• TRON: Legacy: An evil example. Clu, the administrator program gone full Zeroth Law Rebellion, is the only one with gold Tron Lines.
• The Wiz: The Emerald City starts green, but then an announcement from the Wizard changes everything red. "I thought it over and green is dead / 'Till I change my mind, the color is red" The residents turn red and sing its praises, and then there's another announcement: "How quickly fashion goes down the sink. / Last week when you all was wearin' pink / Already for me red was old. / The ultimate brick is gold." It remains gold for the rest of the film.

Literature

• In Last Legionary, Altern, aka The One, is The Dragon to The Warlord. He comes decked out in a massive golden exoskeleton, which allows the otherwise crippled Altern to not only walk, but defeat nearly any adversary in combat.
• Golden dragons are considered a myth in The Witcher universe, but they actually exist and are the most powerful (and rarest) kind of dragon, preferring to disguise themselves as humans, as the Limit of Possibility short story demonstrates.
• Gold dragons in Dragonriders of Pern are always female and are also known as queens; they are larger than all other colours, including the bronzes, and the other dragons defer to them. The Weyrwoman of a weyr is (almost) always a gold rider.
• Hive Mind (2016): The ten zones of the Hive are color-coded; above all of them, Melisande is Gold Commander, the leader of Hive Defense. Atticus's Gold Assignment outranks anything from Amber's telepath unit.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • House Lannister, the richest and de facto ruling house of the Seven Kingdoms, milk this for all its worth, as they prospered because of the abundance of gold mines in the Westerlands. Their sigil is a golden lion. Pretty much all of their clothing, armory, accessories, and weapons are gilded. The road connecting Lannisport and Casterly Rock with King's Landing is called the Goldroad. Every single member of the family has blond hair.
  • The sigil of House Baratheon, the ruling house of the Seven Kingdoms at the start of the series, is a black stag on a field of gold. Goes hand-in-hand with the Lannisters' golden lion.
  • Inverted with the gold (or rather cream, with hints of gold)-colored Viserion, who is physically the smallest of Daenerys Targaryen's dragons, compared to the green-colored Rhaegal and especially the black-colored Drogon.
• In Vaughn Heppner's Lost Starship series, the so-called New Men are gold-skinned humans with enhanced strength, speed, and intelligence (and highly advanced tech that allows three of their ships to completely curb-stomp a double-strength battle group). They also have a Master Race mentality and believe themselves to be the true humanity, with the rest of the humans being little more than talking beasts. They believe that the "talking beasts" must give way to the "true humans", usually by dying. They bristle at other humans calling themselves "human" to the point of religious fervor, even though they are staunch atheists.
• Harry Potter: According to supplementary material, students at Mahoutokoro School of Magic in Japan wear robes that change color according to their grades. If a student achieves top grades in every subject, their robes will turn gold.
• The Sunbearer Trials: Of the three types of gods in this setting, the Golds, the Jades and Obsidians, the Golds are the most powerful and important of them, with their gods being the gods of such things as all animals or fire.

Live-Action TV

• In the original Battlestar Galactica (1978), ordinary Cylons are silver/chrome but special commander Cylons are gold.
• Doctor Who:
  • The rank structure of the Daleks places Golden Daleks high in the heirarchy.
  • In "The Deadly Assassin," the Doctor sneaks into the President's retirement ceremony by stealing a Gold Usher's robe, which allowed him to get past security checks. "You wouldn't stop Gold Usher, would you?"
• Super Sentai / Power Rangers:
  • The Dragon Shield is a golden mantle worn by various Rangers that greatly increases their power. It is most commonly associated with Sixth Ranger Tommy Oliver, who with it was more than a match for the other five Rangers combined.
  • Gold Rangers serve as a Sixth Ranger in various seasons. Power Rangers Zeo actually beat Sentai to the punch by renaming King Ranger (black suit with lots of gold armor) the Gold Ranger (considering that most of his gear and energy aura were more gold than they were black anyway). They even brought back the original team leader to fill the suit.
  • Power-ups frequently feature gold, whether they're team upgrades or Red Ranger-exclusive battlizers.
• In Star Trek: The Original Series the captains wore gold uniforms. Anyone wearing a Red Shirt was not so lucky. This all changed starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation, however. The command uniforms were originally a greenish shade close to chartreuse. But the color came out on many people's TV sets as yellowish, so eventually the producers threw in the towel and changed them to gold.
  • Star Trek: Discovery changes up the color theme yet again. This time, gold stripes indicate command division, science / medical has silver stripes, and finally operations / security (a.k.a. the redshirts and the people who are elbows-deep in machinery) have bronze.
• Kamen Rider also follows the same rule as Super Sentai.
  • Played subtly negatively in regards to Kamen Rider Zi-O. As Sougo progresses through his increasingly powerful forms, the silver on his costume is steadily overtaken by gold until it becomes the suit's primary color outright. One glance at his future self's attire and it should become clear why this is a worrisome direction for his color palette to be taking.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One: The suit of the arrogant and powerful Kamen Rider Thouser incorporates both Gold-Colored Superiority and an exaggerated version of three-horned superiority, as emphasised in his transformation jingle.
    "PERFECT RISE! When the five horns cross, the golden soldier Thouser is born!"
• And likewise, Madan Senki Ryukendo (they would add more gold armor parts to their already golden bits) and Tomica Hero Rescue Force.

Music

• Gold, the leader in the MC Frontalot song "I'll Form The Head", discusses both this and the Leader Forms the Head trope.

Tabletop Games

• The golden dragons in Dungeons & Dragons are the most powerful among the metallic (i.e. good-aligned) dragons and, Depending on the Writer, the most powerful dragons overall. "Basic" D&D in particular had golden dragons as the only "metallic" example — the usual chromatic spread of black, blue, green, red, and white (interestingly not all evil — whites and blues were neutral in this edition), plus gold... and that was that. Golden dragons were still the most powerful here, having the best stats and being the only type to get two distinct breath weapons and have guaranteed spellcasting abilities (an explicit 100% chance on what would otherwise be a random roll) on top of that.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Blood Angels chapter use a predominantly red color scheme. The Sanguinor,◊ an angelic psychic manifestation called "the Exemplar of the Host", is almost entirely gold.
  • The Adeptus Custodes, the Space Marines who guard Terra and are said to be to Space Marines what Space Marines are to humans, are gold-armored. So for that matter is the God-Emperor of Mankind himself, at least in those portrayals from before his mortal wounding.
• Gold is a trademark color (and material) of Exalted's Solars, who occupy the pinnacle position of power (by most measures) of the game's namesake characters. Their trademark magical material, orichalcum, looks like gold, and can even be refined from actual gold with considerable effort.
• Zig-zagged throughout Magic: The Gathering's history^note (Except for the legends in...well, Legends being considered utter garbage), as "gold" cards (cards with gold templates) tend to provide more bang for the buck, usually with added effects or being ahead of the power curve—the drawback being they're more difficult to cast; gold cards have more than one color of mana in their casting cost.

Toys

• BIONICLE:
  • The Golden Kanohi allows the Toa Mata to call upon all their mask powers they have obtained without the need to switch between them.
  • Zig-zagged with Takanuva, who as a Toa of Light has naturally golden armor, but despite being an honorary Toa Nuva doesn't have the same raw power as the rest of the team (since he was still a Matoran when those Toa got their Next Tier Power-Up into the Nuva). He does, however, have the unique ability to wield Light, an Achilles' Heel of the Makuta.
  • Toa Lhikan has a golden mask and pauldrons, and while he isn't stronger than the Toa Metru he is far more experienced than the novice team.
  • Two of the three Legendary Masks, the Vahi and Ignika, are golden in their normal forms. The Vahi turned orange from rusting under the sea, while the Ignika turns silver and then progressively black if its universe-destroying failsafe is ever triggered.
  • Tahu's 11th-Hour Superpower takes the form of the aptly-named Golden Armor, which is designed to destroy the Makuta's essence over a very wide area (mainly in the form of their Rahkshi). While this function only works once, afterwards it grants Tahu all the abilities of Rahkshi destroyed this way, effectively handing him the same Superpower Lottery ticket that the Makuta won.
• SuperThings: The Super Leaders (leaders of a series' entire group of heroes or villains) are all colored golden.
• In Tamagotchi, Tamagotchi Planet is ruled by the Gotchi King, who resembles a giant limbless egg. What's the color of his egg shell? Gold, of course.

Video Games

• In Beecarbonize, your goal is to find the golden winning card by upgrading your cards with stars on them, all while reducing the amount of carbon emissions to mitigate natural disasters.
• In Bokosuka Wars, when one of your units manages to win enough battles, they will evolve into a gold version of that unit and receive a major power boost.
• In the Call of Duty games with selectable camouflages for weapons, golden camouflage is one of the harder unlocks to get, typically requiring you to earn all the other camos for the weapon first. Starting with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, however, gold is supplanted by the diamond camouflage, earned by unlocking gold camouflage for all weapons in a category. While there's still a bit of gold on the diamond camouflage, Call of Duty: Black Ops III makes diamond a tier below "dark matter", earned for getting diamond in every category.
• In Chrono Trigger, the Knight Commander wears gold armour. If you agree to help him (read: defeat all the monsters yourself) at Zenan bridge, he'll give you his helmet of the same make.
• Coromon: There are variants of every wild Coromon that have golden palettes, which show that they have increased potential compared to the regular form. Averted with "Perfect" forms, which are mainly Palette Swaps instead of being notably golden.
• Fairune has the Gold Knight, a rare version of the common Blue, Red and Black Knight enemies stated to be their captain, wear golden armor with a winged helmet.
• The Chocobos in the Final Fantasy series. Regular chocobos are yellow-orange, but there are other chocobo types characterized by different colors. Stronger breeds can swim and fly, but the gold chocobo is always the strongest.
• Galaxy Champions TV uses this several times. The final stage has golden flooring, and is also full of golden recolors of all the enemies, who are faster and more aggressive than their non chrome counterparts, when you fully upgrade a weapon future pickups of that weapon will be golden, and the Galactic Champion is decked out in golden Armour
• In GoldenEye (1997), the Golden Gun and Gold PP7 in the multiplayer mode can both kill any enemy player in one single shot.
• Guilty Gear has the secret gold palettes for characters to unlock. They are notoriously overpowered.
• Kingdom Hearts: King Mickey wields the same Keyblade as Sora, except its blade is colored gold instead of silver. Apparently, it's called Kingdom Key D (short for "Darkness")
• In Mass Effect, Cerberus has a white-black color scheme with gold accents. In-universe excerpts mention how Cerberus tech is often superior than standard fare of the same type.
• Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time has the Gold Koopeleon, a golden version of the Koopeleon that appears later in the game. Although this one has lower health than the original, it compensates by having a higher defense and attack power.
• Golden Beanies in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga have higher stats than the standard Beanie, but also drop more coins.
• In the Mario Kart series, regular red mushrooms gives one Nitro Boost. The rare Gold Mushroom gives infinite Nitro Boosts for about 10 seconds, and usually only shows up when you're falling way behind, (or playing as Toad/Toadette in Double Dash).
• Averted in MechWarrior Online, where you can buy golden Clan Mechs as vanity items for about 400 USD (!), although they have no better stats than the normal models.
  • In fact, the golden 'Mechs tend to die first, both because of higher visibility and the general disdain most players have for the people who were wasteful enough to actually buy them.
• Heavily averted in Minecraft, where not only is making gold gear excessively difficult due to the rarity of gold underground, but since gold is actually one of the softest metals on Earth, gold gear is lacking in all stats except for enchantability. As a matter of fact, a golden sword is worse than a wood one, dealing an equal amount of damage and having much less durability.
• Nuclear Throne
  • Golden scorpions are the Elite Mook versions of the already fearsome scorpion enemies found in the desert. They're a rare sight pre-loop, but become more abundant the more you loop.
  • Golden weapons allow you to start with a stronger weapon than your default revolver as well as having slightly better firepower than their less shiny counterparts.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Ratchet & Clank (2002) allows you to upgrade 10 weapons into Gold Weapons through the use of hidden Gold Bolts and several regular bolts.
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction has the Gold Groovitron, an upgrade of the Groovitron that grants infinite uses of it.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus throws back to the original game by making the Challenge Mode-exclusive Omega weapons gold, while retaining the leveling system put in place by later games.
• In Rayman 2: The Great Escape, the Power Fist, which looks like a shiny golden fist, grants Rayman much more powerful shots.
• In Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2, if the player collects all seven Holy Swords, Sparkster will become Gold Sparkster, and the true ending will be shown after the Big Bad, King Gedol is defeated. Gold Sparkster charges his jet pack faster and his attacks do more damage, but unlike Super Sonic, he can still take damage.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The vast majority of Super Forms in the series (including the most recurring one, Super Sonic) are golden in color. Super Sonic even provides the page image for Golden Super Mode.
  • Sonic Heroes:
    • The gilded Egg Knight has more health than the standard Egg Pawn.
    • The Gold Cameron has a more durable shell than the Green Cameron. It can only be destroyed if it is flipped on its side and its undercarriage is hit, or if Team Blast is used.
• Street Fighter V introduces G, the "President of the Earth". His powers include being able to harness gold to perform all sorts of elemental attacks like firing liquid gold projectiles, creating barriers, and enhancing his strength to perform devastating punches. Also what appears to be some kind of golden tattoo on his skin is actually the world map imprinted on his body, and it lights up whenever he activates his V-Trigger.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: The first upgrade of the Master Sword, the Tempered Sword, is red. Near the end of the game, it can be further upgraded into the Golden Sword. At least according to this chart◊, the Golden Sword may be the most powerful sword in the entire franchise (at least until The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild threw a wrench in the scaling).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • Enemies tier in order of Basic all the way up to Silver as the most powerful (of which, Silver Lynels are considered to be on the same level as a Superboss, having more health than even the final boss of the game). Thanks to Downloadable Content there is an optional difficulty setting for the game, Master Mode, which also introduces a new and stronger enemy tier, Golden enemies (among which there is, of course, a Golden Lynel).
    • Two of the three kinds of beetles found in the game, the bladed and rugged rhino beetles, come in fairly realistic colors. Energetic rhino beetles, the rarest variant and the one worth the most when sold, are colored solid gold.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom:
    • Mark IV Soldier and Captain Constructs are distinguished from their lower-grade green counterparts by their full-body golden finish.
    • You can rarely find Golden Apples growing on trees alongside regular apples. Using them in cooking results in meals that recover more hearts and/or have longer lasting buffs.
• In Trials of Mana, the highest-rank of Valsenian guards are the Golden Knights and Duran's father was one of them. Part of Duran's dream is to become strong enough to join the Golden Knights, in honor of his father.
• Warriors Orochi 3: Guan Yu's 4th level weapon is "Gold Dragon".
• Halo:
  • While command rank Elites tend to wear gold, the only game where this trope is played straight in is Halo: Combat Evolved. Otherwise, gold-armored Elites are usually only the second strongest Elite variant in any given game.
  • Arbiter Thel 'Vadam is one Elite who currently plays it straight; he wears gold armor by Halo 5: Guardians, and is perhaps the greatest warrior of his race.
  • The highest-ranked Skirmishers, the Champions, wear gold armor.
  • Halo 3: The gold-armored War Chieftains are the most powerful type of Brute. Subverted in Halo: Reach, where the gold-armored Captains are weaker than the darker-armored Chieftains.
  • Halo 3: ODST: The gold-colored Drone Leaders are the strongest of their kind, as they're equipped with energy shields and Brute plasma rifles.
  • Halo 5: Guardians:
  • The gold-colored "Temple" line of Covenant vehicles has strong armor, better handling, and can either shoot faster or shoot while speed-boosting.
    • A downplayed example is present with the Liang Dortmund line of UNSC vehicles, which have slightly stronger armor and are painted goldenrod.
• Warframe has the Prime Warframes and weapons. The original Lost Technology of the Orokin, as opposed to the inferior replications that are the regular versions, they are colored in the Orokin's characteristic gold and white (sometimes not so much the white, but always the gold) and are typically much, much better than their mundane counterparts.
• The two oldest, most important, and powerful animatronic characters in the Five Nights at Freddy's series are gold/yellow colored.
  • The first and second games in the series have Golden Freddy, a gold version of main mascot and Big Bad, Freddy Fazbear. In each game he appears, Golden Freddy exhibits behaviors completely unlike any of the other animatronics out to murder you, such as teleporting into and vanishing out of your office. In the first game in particular, failing to avoid his jumpscare will not just kill you, but crash your game entirely.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 3 introduces Springtrap, initially known as "Golden Bonnie" prior to the reveal of his proper name. Springtrap is a gold version of Bonnie the Bunny, though the colors have faded to a sickly greenish yellow after more than 30 years. What makes Springtrap superior to the other animatronics is that he is possessed by the spirit of the Purple Man, the child murderer whose killings caused the other animatronics to become murderous, thus causing the events of the prior game.
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's 4, Golden Freddy, known here as Fredbear, is so dangerous that he completely replaces the other four animatronics when he becomes active. He performs all the other animatronics' same behaviors, but you need much quicker reaction time to survive. The reason Golden Freddy and Springtrap are both colored the same way is revealed to be because they are the two original animatronics from the first Freddy's restaurant, Fredbear's Family Diner.
• Super Metroid: Samus has to face two living Chozo statues named "Torizo". The second one, aptly named Golden Torizo is the most powerful of the duo, given that it is faster, jumps higher, possesses great strength and can even throw Samus' missiles back at her. Its attacks are also rather devastating. The more damage you deal to it will cause its golden color to fade.
• In the James Bond game Agent Under Fire, player upgrades take the form of "Golden P2K," "Golden Missiles" (read: unlimited missiles), "Golden Armor," "Golden Accuracy," etc. NightFire toned it down so that only the Wolfram P2K received gold upgrades.
• In Mega Man Star Force 2, the secret, ludicrously powerful DX bosses all have a shiny golden Palette Swap.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has the Mechon, which are primarily black. Then comes Yaldabaoth, "the most powerful Mechon ever built". Keeping in turn with the "precious metals" theme, Silver Face (or Face Nemesis if you're European or American) is also very powerful, and serves as the Leader of Mechonis' second in command, until the pilot, Fiora, returns to her senses and rejoins Shulk and co.
• Amorphous+: The Queen is the boss of the Glooples, and its color scheme is red and gold.
• Far Cry 2 has 8 golden AK-47s, 4 hidden across the two maps. There's no real point in getting them because all the only advantage is slightly more durability than the standard and can't be bought.
• In Dungeon Fighter Online, the much-coveted Epic items are indicated by gold-colored icon frames and heralded by bright golden flash effects whenever they drop in a dungeon. Legendary items, which are slightly lower on the item tiers, are heralded with copper-colored flashes.
• In Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom, there are three pairs of golden underwear hidden throughout Bikini Bottom. Picking one up will permanently allow Spongebob/Patrick/Sandy to take an extra hit.
• Ensemble Stars!: Fine, the most powerful, wealthy, and influential unit, is typically coloured in white and gold, reflecting this trope as well as Gold and White Are Divine.
• Averted in Team Fortress 2: The Golden Wrench, Saxxy and Golden Frying Pan all works just the same as the base weapon of their respective classes, except that it turns their victims into golden statues, unlike the Australium weapons who not only works exactly the same as their ordinary counterparts, but also doesn't turn anyone into a statue.
• The original Saints Row had unique golden (and platinum) weapons awarded for completing the (notoriously frustrating) hitman assignments. These not only came with free ammo refills (this in a game where you couldn't buy even ammo in gun stores), but also did two-to-three times more damage per shot than their regular counterparts. In particular, the golden-plated Desert Eagle dropped pretty much every regular enemy in a single shot, turning it into a Disc-One Nuke if you managed to complete the Los Carnales hitman list early on.
• In Grow RPG, the best armor the hero can find in the tower is a golden one and the best weapon of the game is a golden sword.
• The Wolf and the Waves: The golden mushroom is the most powerful healing item in the game, and only one will spawn on the entire island.
• Monster Hunter has the Gold Rathian (circa Monster Hunter G), an elite version of the Rathian with golden scales that possesses a deadlier venom and more potent fire breath.
• Paper Mario has Amayzee Dayzees, versions of the Crayzee Dayzee enemies with golden petals and clothes. Their attack-power is jaw-droppingly high for a field enemy, and their defense is as well, and they have a high chance of fleeing, but taking them on is worth it, since they drop tons of Star Points. In Super, they drop the Gold Leaf, which you can cook to make a Gold Bar that sells for a pretty penny.
• In Pronty, the Chattertooth enemies has two versions, the Silver Chattertooth who's the first boss (and relatively easy, of course) and by the time you reach the end, the Golden Chattertooth who's obviously stronger and far more durable than the Silver and regular ones.
• Bug Fables has the Golden Seedling, a golden version of the Seedling enemy and the second-most powerful of all the Seedling variants, only behind the Seedling King. Their defense divides damage instead of subtracting like most enemies, and they have a high chance to flee, but it's worth the effort, as they drop loads of Exploration Points and Berries upon defeat. They're also guaranteed to drop the rare Tangy Berry, which becomes part of the best healing item in the game when cooked via Kut.
• In every Animal Crossing game, there are multiple versions of certain tools, with the different versions varying in quality. The highest quality tools are always gold.

Visual Novels

• Discussed in Daughter for Dessert with the diner’s toaster, which has a gold-quartz heating element. Mortelli says he can never eat any other toast now that he knows he’s been eating toast cooked with gold.
• In Fate/stay night, the most powerful Servant one can summon is Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes. As the The Nasuverse runs on Older Is Better, Gil is more powerful than all other heroes that came after him and naturally has gold-colored hair, frequently wears gold earrings and other jewelry, and has his infamous Nigh-Invulnerable gold armor. It is unknown if the armor is actually made of gold but it can take a direct hit from Excalibur like it was nothing. For bonus points, his Noble Phantasm - Gate of Babylon - creates gold-colored rifts in the the sky to fire his many fantastically powerful treasures upon his enemies from.
  • Saber, Arturia Pendragon, aka King Arthur, also gets this as she is said to be the strongest of the Saber class Servants, which is considered to be the strongest class, and also has golden hair. While she can be pragmatic and is utterly duty-bound, she's actually very sweet when she opens up and counts for both this and Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold unlike Gilgamesh. While her sword is normally invisible as it is sheathed in wind magic, when she does reveal it the blade shines with a golden light and seems to be trimmed in gold - fitting as it is Excalibur, the strongest holy sword. Even her old sword from her legend, Caliburn, was shown to be gold and incredibly powerful.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, in addition to the red text, which speaks an absolute truth (from the point of view of the speaker at least), the Game Master - the witch who "writes" the scenario of the current game - can use golden text, which indicates that they fully understands the rules of the game, and can be superior to the red. After reaching the truth of Beatrice's game, Battler uses the golden truth to confirm that Kinzo is definitely Deader than Dead, when his position prevents him from saying it in red without proof.
• In Dies Irae, the Big Bad Reinhard has a pretty substantial gold theme going on with everything from his castle to his weapons and army being gold colored. He is also by far the strongest member of the Longinus Dreizehn Orden and carries the epitaph of the Golden Beast.

Web Animation

• When the Law of Chromatic Superiority is brought up (due to the topic of racism) in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Emperor dismisses the concept since, in his words, the very existence of gold makes all other colors equally inferior.

Web Comics

• Daughter of the Lilies: This is an indicator that Wizards are superior magic-users.
  • Master Wu is a golden dragon, and his human form wears golden robes.
  • Meanwhile Thistle's eye glow gold when she's casting powerful magics, the arrow she enchants for Lyra glows gold, and her coat is edged with gold trim.
• Slightly Damned: The wyverns come in several varieties but gold wyverns are the rarest and have the strongest wind magic. Their scales are also indistinguishable from real gold.

Western Animation

• Ninjago: The First Spinjitzu Master possessed golden power, which is essentally a stronger version of creation combined with Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, and Pure Energy. At the end of the second season, Lloyd Garmadon becomes the golden ninja and gains access to golden power.
• Star Wars Resistance averts this by introducing Commander Pyre, who is the gold second-in-command to the silver Captain Phasma from the films. Not enough of Pyre's combat skills are shown to us for anyone to accurately measure their abilities against each other, though, although Expanded Universe material weighs it in Phasma's favor.
• A Thousand and One... Americas: In the twenty-first episode, Chris and Lon witness the crowning of a new cique who will govern the Quimbaya tribe. The chosen one is dyed in gold (specifically, gold dust adhered to his body thanks to mud), and is bound to receive numerous golden objects by the inhabitants as offerings (though, as Chris learns later, since the cique is already wealthy and doesn't need any gifts, he will offer the golden objects to the gods instead by throwing them to the lake).
• The Transformers: In "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 2", a damaged Bumblebee is upgraded into a new, powerful golden body and rechristened "Goldbug".

Real Life

• Author Sir Terry Pratchett remarked that he had a unique Death's Head signet ring made in silver. Then fans started copying it and the licensed merchandising company marketed a replica. So it wasn't unique any more. So he had a version made in gold. This was unique until the first gold versions appeared for fans with more disposable income. Terry has since considered upping the ante to platinum. He speculates that when platinum Discworld rings start to appear, he should move to something which is so unique it'll be practically unwearable, perhaps one cast in solid mercury that has to be kept in a physics lab freezer at minus 39°C, or perhaps one in plutonium that nobody, including the author himself, would dare wear...
• The UK emergency services operate a Gold-Silver-Bronze command structure, with the most senior officer in charge of an incident response designated as the "gold" commander.
• Gold Medals, which are awarded for first place finishes in the Olympics and other sporting events.
• Gold Records used to be this, awarded for 1,000,000 record sales, but then came Platinum (1,000,000 while Gold was reduced to 500,000) and Diamond (10,000,000).
• Gold credit cards had been originally (before the 1980s) the elite of credit and debit cards, aimed mostly at millionaires. As the pool of potential customers enlarged itself over decades, more and more people could afford them. After the unpleasantness of the late 2000s, Gold cards are perfunctory for many wage earners of the First World. Therefore, to keep the status quo, banks and companies introduced more and more classes of credit/debit cards. Platinum, palladium, and so on, plated in said metals if needed. Hopefully for their clients, they will think twice before introducing a Plutonium card.
• Averted with the officers' insignia of the US Armed Forces — an O-2^note  (Lieutenant JG in the Navy, First Lieutenant in the other services) (one silver bar) outranks an O-1^note  (Ensign in the Navy, Second Lieutenant in the other services) (one gold bar), and an O-5^note (Commander in the Navy, Lieutenant Colonel in the other services) (silver oak leaf) outranks an O-4^note  (Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, Major in the other services) (gold oak leaf). Various folk explanations for this have been proposed (such as gold, like junior officers, being more malleable than silver), but the decision was actually made back in 1851 for the simple reason that silver was less expensive than gold.
• Similarly with decorations. The second award of a given decoration is a gold star. If one were to actually earn enough of a given decoration to merit five gold stars, a single silver star is worn instead.
• Scientists have come up with a special way to make an alloy of titanium and gold that's 4 times stronger than titanium alone.
• Low purity gold alloy is often used as the coating on high quality magnets. The gold coating is not only far less corrosive, but is surprisingly far more durable than the standard nickel-alloy plating.

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