Power Gives You Wings

Of course Magical Girls would have matching wings.

"Where the hell do Safer Sephiroth's wings come from in Final Fantasy VII's final battle? Jenova? Lifestream? JRPG villain garage sale?"

— The Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy

If an android, Humongous Mecha, Powered Armor, Mon, Magic Knight, Magical Girl, or basically any super powered individual gets a power up, or starts out really powerful and wants it to show, they will have wings.

Specifically, feathery white angelic wings, even for villains! (Though they might only have the one.) Wings made of Hard Light or Pure Energy are also popular; expect them to be Color-Coded for Your Convenience. These wings will of course allow the character to fly, float, and glow, all without needing to flap them! If the cast already has a character with a pair and he's been surpassed, the surpasser will have two pairs of wings. To differentiate what sort of wings your newly-powered-up character has gained, see Good Wings, Evil Wings.

Often paired with a Holy Halo, just for the imagery, which you can enjoy here!

The title is a play on the Red Bull slogan "Red Bull Gives you Wings!" A Sub-Trope of Growing Wings.

This item is available in the Trope Co. catalog.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Video Games

Other examples:

Advertising

• The Trope Namer is the famous ad campaign for Red Bull; "Red Bull gives you wiiiiiings!" Notably, in 2014, Red Bull lost a lawsuit for false advertising because the drink didn't give you wings, literally or figuratively. Now they advertise that it gives you "wiiings", with three I's, because you can prove it gives you wings, but not that it gives you "wiiings".

Comic Books

• In Empowered, Emp's Die or Fly-instigated uber-power-boost is accompanied by the appearance of temporary Energy Wings.
• Supergirl:
  • Peter David's series had the heroine become an "Earth Born Angel" with Flaming Wings. However, she already had the ability to fly.
  • Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade: During the Grand Finale, the titular heroine grows flaming wings after absorbing huge quantities of cosmic energy.
• In W.I.T.C.H. the wings of the Guardians are originally this, as (differently from the animated series) they can't actually fly (and admit they have no idea why they have them when Orube asks them why they have wings). Later the New Power Mid-Season Upgrade gives them working wings.

Fan Works

• Alternate Tail Series: With Holy Scriopture Magic, Levy Mcgarden can create blue wings made from runes.
• The Bridge has an example with Monster X that is straight up Body Horror. When changing into Kaizer Ghidorah, he grows a set of wings. Unlike the norm for the trope, the wings are entirely physical and have to burst out of his back first. A tamer example, ironically appearing alongside Monster X, would be Ultrawoman Corona's fully charged state having jets of light shoot out of her back resembling angelic wings.
• Chained Wings: The premise of the story is that when Akira awakens to Arsène, Arsène also gives him wings like his. They're fully functional but are Invisible to Normals.
• Children of an Elder God: As the main characters fight and kill Eldritch Abominations, their bodies evolve and gain new powers. One of those powers is the ability to grow or form wings. Asuka's long flaming wings.
• CUTTING THE STRINGS: When using the Ladybug Miraculous, Max Kanté as Bug-A-Boy can use wings since he needed them to fight Lila. After he and Kim defeated Lila and gave the Miraculouses back to their respective Kwami, Ladybug figures out how to add the same power.
• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: True to its source materials, wings are pretty common sign of power:
  • Rainbow Dash is the absolute Queen of this trope. With every power-up gaining on power, speed and number of wings. First, she had her regular blue wings. After that, they evolved into a pair of white, razor-sharp wings with rainbow colors along the fringes and crackling electric energy. In her evolved Fullbring, he'd six wings; two still made out of metal but bigger and four seemingly forged from solidified electricity. Finally, her Completed Fullbring gained a full meter of wingspan and transmuted into jets of solid light, while the electric wings turned, long, elegant and solid blades of metal, not unlike her mother's. Firefly could only stare in awe upon seeing them.
  • Played with Fluttershy. She still has her pegasus wings but, unlike Rainbow, they don't change and simply drown in the number of extra limbs.
  • Firefly has her powered armor with a series of blade-like energy wings and boots with smaller fin-like wings.
  • Sunset's bankai gives her twin wings of phoenix flame, flowing with power and heat which can be used as jets to increase speed. Sunset compares the level of power to the two previous moments in her life when she had wings.
  • Guto's Ressurection takes a form that brings to mind an Aztec warrior with clothes decorated with feathers and the head of an eagle yet instead of wings he has jet turbines made out of bones.
  • Every Quincy gets wings in the Vollständig state but, they are all shaped in different kinds. To describe a few, there is a Sterrniter with five wings looking like heater shields floating around his back, one with a pair of glowing butterfly wings, one with circles made of fire that (the narration even mentions ancient texts describing angelic beings), one with two large, thin tendrils that were spawning even more tendrils, and one with wings made of clockwork. There are no set standards. There are as many types, as there are Sterrniters.
• Everything Turns to Gold: At the end of Chapter 26, after taking up the mantle of Aeor's Champion, Jimmy gains a pair of fiery golden wings "of pure energy".
• Off the Line: In Terra Online high-leveled players can equip wings as that will allow them Flight. Even winged races like Gria, can only glide compared to the true flight of equipped wings. They also serve as decorative status symbols.
• Thousand Shinji: When Asuka fights the MP-Evas, she and her giant robot go berserker, and [[spoiler:Unit-02 grows huge, black bat wings.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
  • In the first film, Twilight Sparkle, along with the human versions of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy gain wings when "ponied up" using the Element of Magic. The same goes for Sunset Shimmer, who gets evil-looking bat wings as part of the full One-Winged Angel package.
  • Rainbow Rocks: Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy get their wings — and once they get enough power, the villainous Dazzlings get wings that look like fins, evoking their true siren forms. The novelization for the movie also gives the redeemed Sunset Shimmer wings, but this doesn't happen in the film proper. And in the Encore Shorts, Sunset Shimmer gets a pair of symbolic Hot Wings as she finishes singing My Past Is Not Today. Word of God is that it's a metaphor, not an actual power; her "regular" powered form later in the series does not feature wings.
  • Also features in the third film, Friendship Games. Once Human Twilight Sparkle unleashes the magic and goes One-Winged Angel, she gets very large, black feather wings that look like those of a bird of prey. Sunset Shimmer gets a set of wings made of light as part of her Golden Super Mode.
  • Later installments in the series show human Twilight also acquires wings in her powered forms, despite the fact that her pony form seen in Spring Breakdown is a wingless unicorn, rather than an alicorn like her Equestrian counterpart.

Films — Live-Action

• In Five Children and It, the children find a sand fairy (the title character) who grants them wishes. One of them is for wings. The wish is granted, the wings appear on their backs, much to the amazement of the children. They try the wings out and they work, much to the delight of the kids.
• It's probably redundant, given who the titular hero is, but in the climax of Ultraman X The Movie: Here Comes! Our Ultraman!, Ultraman X — upon absorbing Ultraman's and Ultraman Tiga's powers, grows elegant, gold-coloured dragonfly-like wings, which multiplies his power to a whole new level. His wings can even sprout from Tokyo to five other cities currently being attacked by kaiju — Shanghai, Geneva, Cairo, Bueno Aries and Dallas — and empower the Ultramen over there, giving them enough power boost to destroy the monsters.

Literature

• In Accel World, Haruyuki's Avatar Silver Crow is the first Flying Avatar in the Accel World. His "basic" moves — punch and kick — are actually special moves — flying punch and flying kick.
• A Certain Magical Index provides a clear example of people who has started to reach the capability to understand the path of Heaven and God's will.
  • Accelerator does it during the climax of his fight against Kihara Amata grows Black Wings coupled with Unstoppable Rage, later being called The One Who Wields the Power of God. They eventually become white wings where he also maintains his sanity after coming to a personal realization. This is due to the fact that as the #1 Esper, he has the greatest potential of reaching the theoretical Level 6, where an esper ascends to the level of an angel.
  • Kakine Teitoku, the second strongest esper, has not two but three sets of wings making him to look as a seraph being called: The One Who Has Touched the Territory of God. He's the only other Esper aside from Accelerator who can reach Level 6 naturally.
  • Aiwass also has Golden Wings hidden by his/her/its very long hair. In the New Testament, Accelerator is implied to achieve wings of this level during his ascension.
  • Index also grows Red Wings when she activates John Penn Mode, which is probably due to she is technically a God of Magic.
  • Mikoto Misaka, the third strongest esper, can form these out of electricity and water vapor to fly in the air if she has enough. Unlike Accelerator and Kakine, however, her Level 6 form doesn't have wings, though this might be due to the fact it was both incomplete and artificially-induced unlike theirs.
• In Dora Wilk Series, Joshua and Miron gain ability to manifest wings as a result of their Triumvirate bond forming, increasing their power threefold.
• Somewhat spoofed in this◊ Dragonlance doujinshi comic.
• In Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens when Crowley and Aziraphale take the side of the Antichrist in preventing The Apocalypse, they decide it's pointless hiding their wings anymore. In a subversion of the devil wings trope, Crowley also has feathered wings; after all, he may be Fallen, but he's still an Angel.
• In Shakugan no Shana, Shana sprouts Hot Wings during her second fight against Margery Daw.
• In the Magic: The Gathering War of the Spark: Ravnica novels, Feather gets an interesting inversion. As punishment for an unmentioned crime, she had her wings bound and was demoted. When Kos removes the bindings, not only does she become able to fly, she also dramatically increases in power and her personality becomes more aggressive.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • In the novel ''Deus Encarmine'' and ''Deus Sanguinius'', Arkio grows wings — although in this case, it also makes him look like their primarch reborn, as Sanguinius had wings. Later, after the Chaos taint that had made Arkio like that was revealed, Rafen fights the demon behind it. For a moment, while wielding the power of the Spear of Telesto, he takes on the appearance of Sanguinius, complete with wings.
  • In Sabbat Martyr, the eponymous Saint's reincarnation is shown charging into battle with giant, glowing, ethereal green wings. They don't appear to be functional, but they form the shape of the Imperial Aquila, serving as a sort of battle standard. They get even bigger when she kills Enok Innokenti, too.
  • In Ahriman: Unchanged, the Chaos Sorcerer Sar’iq grows a pair of functional feathery wings using Biomanipulation at one point.
• Kerry Ellison, in the Whateley Universe. Well, her codename is Seraphim, so it's not exactly a big surprise. Slightly subverted in that the first time she manifests her angelic wings she flaps around and can't fly straight until she gets used to them.

Live-Action TV

• The final episode of GARO has the titular character growing wings on his armour to fight Messiah. (In a slight subversion, he then engages in a fight with an even more powerful foe after being Brought Down to Normal and holds his own perfectly well.)
• Kamen Riders with multiple forms tend to get wings as part of their Mid-Season Upgrade or later Super Mode:
  • Kamen Rider Blade gives wings to both The Hero Blade and The Lancer Garren in their Jack Forms.
  • Kamen Rider Kabuto gains energy wings in his Hyper Form, but only when he activates Hyper Clock Up.
  • Kamen Rider Den-O's Wing form. While the wings are only on display for a second during the transformation, the form is indeed more powerful than Ryotaro's four default forms. This trope really comes into play when Sieg attaches to Climax Form, granting Ryotaro an actual pair of wings based on his mask. It is immediately lampshaded:
    Momotaros: (reaching around behind him and feeling the wings} What's this fluttery thing? Gah! Chicken-Wing Bastard, is that you?!

  • Kamen Rider Double's 11th-Hour Superpower, CycloneJoker Gold Extreme, has a trio of dragonfly wings, referencing the underlying insect theme common to all Riders.
  • Kamen Rider OOO has animal-themed forms, and surprise surprise, the most powerful of the basic forms is the bird-themed one. He also gets wings as part of the actual Super Mode, a dinosaur form (courtesy of the pterodactyl part of that form).
• A number of Super Sentai and Power Rangers series add a flying mecha midseason, which combines with the main mecha to give it wings as a Mid-Season Upgrade. Examples of these flight combinations include TimeRobo Shadow/Shadow Force Megazord, Killer AbarenOh/Valkasaurus Megazord, Ultimate DaiBouken/DriveMax Ultrazord, Engine-Oh G9/SkyRev Megazord, Tenkuu ShinkenOh/Battlewing Megazord, and Raiden Kyoryuzin.
  • Played with in Ninja Sentai Kakuranger and the third season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, where Tsubasamaru/the Falconzord can add wings to Kakure Daishogun/the Ninja Megazord, but not Muteki Shogun/the Shogun Megazord, where it forms laser cannons instead.
  • The Mega Winger attaches only its large wing weapon to the Mega Voyager in Power Rangers in Space and Denji Sentai Megaranger. Usually, the two full mechs would combine, but this is not the case here.
  • Several exclusive-to-Power Rangers Battlizer upgrades give wings to (Red) Rangers themselves.
  • Tensou Sentai Goseiger have the Goseigers show wings whenever they transform, Alata's show his wings when he uses Red Break and in the final episode where they use sprout wings to stop the destruction of Earth and use them to fly away at the ending.
• Super Rescue Max in Tomica Hero Rescue Force. It's basically the same as Rescue Max, except now it has wings built into it. It's surprisingly fast and agile.
• the Fairies in Series/Zapped have tiny insectoid wings and certainly fly, although this appears to be more magical than aerodynamic.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Favored Souls grow a pair of wings at higher levels, as do Dragon Disciples.
  • Bizarrely, natural half-dragons do not get wings unless they are size category large or bigger. But in 4th Edition, dragonborn can at level 11.
  • The "Greater Visage of the Deity" spell in 3rd Edition allowed you to take the half-celestial/fiend template, which would give wingless characters wings.
  • Fifth Edition allows 20th level paladins of the Oath of Vengeance to take on a (temporary) angelic avenger form, complete with wings.
• The Legend System has this as a feat starting at level 9 and an ability for several tracks.
• Many Daemon Princes and Living Saints in Warhammer 40,000 have wings. These include Saint Celestine, Mortarion, Magnus the Red, and Fulgrim. Sanguinius, surprisingly, didn't get his wings from some power.
• Each member of the Sephira archetype in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has wings and according to the lore, they received power from the Naturia Sacred Tree in order to fight the Infernoids.

Web Animation

• In Dead Fantasy, Rinoa has a pair of white angel wings, to go along with her new-found levels of badass, presumably. In the second instalment of the series, when she turns up, she performs a huge Big Damn Heroes moment, then uses her new weapons and magic powers to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to Team Dead or Alive, which had been dominating until then.
• DSBT InsaniT: Andy's Monster form is a orange humanoid creature with large wings.

Webcomics

• In Alien Dice, Lexx gains wings after leveling up. One of them is immediately bitten off by a giant alien monster. Disappointing, but this did save him from being eaten completely (and it grows back later).
• Apricot Cookie(s)!: Jammy Smasher's magical girl outfit has wings in the back.
• Angel Moxie: Alex's magical girl form.
• Beeserker: When Snuhbee becomes Cosmic Scootsie X, it gains three pairs of bee wings.
• X in Bob and George.
• In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures Cubi, who already have four wings, can gain a third pair if they accumulate enough power. At that point they are practically immortal and can found a Clan.
• in Dangerously Chloe, young Abby has transformed herself into some sort of human/succubus hybrid Makes As Much Sense In Context. this has given her horns and wings, which don’t appear to allow her to fly.
• In DevilBear, the Daivas have wings made entirely out of (infrared?) light.
• In El Goonish Shive, the most powerful spell Nanase got is Flying Brick "angel form" giving pearly coating and two pairs of wings. In flight they at best add maneuverability, but apparently are near-unbreakable and at least the tail pair is prehensile.
• In Goblins, Maglubiyet the Goblin deity marks his chosen ones with wings at birth, and each is destined to become a great leader amongst the Goblins; Duv the White Terror, leader of the Viper clan, currently holds that honor.
• In Hi to Tsuki to Hoshi no Tama, the magical girls borrow wings from their beads — accidentally, at first.
• Homestuck: In the kids' session, anyone who uses the Rings Of Power of Prospit and Derse - that is to say, currently only Jack Noir and PM - gains enormous crow wings; justified in that it gives him the traits of any objects that have been "prototyped" into the players' Sprites, one of which was a deceased crow. The same was the case in the trolls' session, as they prototyped at least two creatures with wings - Terezi's dragon and Kanaya's mother grub.
  • The trolls themselves (with the exception of Blood players) grow butterfly wings when they ascend to the God Tiers, as a result of their cultural ideals of physical perfection as a vaguely insectoid race. Humans have no such cultural equivalent, and so don't gain wings (but can still fly).
• In Problem Sleuth, using Sepulchritude at the start of chapter 22 grants the titular character huge white wings.
• In UC, Iku gains a pair of fairy wings, when she uses her powers in the other plane they are exploring. It’s not clear if this is her tapping into her true form, or if it is an effect of the plane.

Web Original

• Arcana Magi Universe:
  • In Arcana Magi, Alysia Morales sprouted misty wings when she accepted her role as a Sentinel.
  • In Arcana Magi Zero, after their Transformation Sequence, Alysia Perez and Megumi Miyazaki sprout wings from their Transformation Trinkets.
• In the first campaign of Critical Role, cleric Pike astral-projects from another continent to aid her friends in a nasty battle, appearing as a glowing, slightly-less-than-tangible image of herself. When she leaps from a wall to attack a zombie army, her fortuitous roll of a natural 20 leads to the Game Master describing glowing, ethereal wings bursting from her back as she hovers in the air before landing (and the players react in utter glee at the prospect of awesome fanart of the moment).

Western Animation

• The Dragon Prince: A “rare few” of the most powerful Sky mages can turn their arms into wings. As a testament to his growing power, Callum conjures so-called “mage wings” in the season climax to save Rayla.
• Hazbin Hotel: Most angels have a single pair of wings while the majority of demons have no wings and get slaughtered en masse during the annual Exterminations that Heaven uses to control Hell's population. While the Seraphim, Heaven's rulers, have six wings each. Lucifer is a Fallen Seraph who kept his wings (though he usually hides them) after his Fall along with enough power to curbstomp the leader of the Exterminations.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Twilight Sparkle gets a pair in episode "Magical Mystery Cure", both by completing Star Swirl the Bearded's most secret, unfinished spell, but also —and more importantly— fulfilling her journey as Celestia's student and realizing all the most important lessons of friendship, thus becoming an alicorn princess. Notably, her flight ability with them has been shown to be no better than a regular pegasus, and even learning to do that much takes considerable time and effort. However, her power level has increased to the point that she is unironically called the "goddess of friendship" by the fandom.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, populated by regular (if otherwise pastel-colored) humans instead of ponies, does not give its main cast wings... until they come across their world's version of the Elements of Harmony and transform into Magical Girl-like forms that give wings of various shapes and sizes to the characters whose pony counterparts would originally have them. Otherwise, it would take a massive influx of magical power (such as wearing an actual Element of Harmony, or absorbing the magic of all the major cast members) to magically transform a single person into a winged form.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: During Lieutenant O'Connor's transformation into an Energy Being, he's surrounded by light that forms an image of a bird, which includes two large wings.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The members of the Butterfly family's butterfly form, of course.
• Steven Universe: Once Lapis's cracked gem is healed, she sprouts a pair of liquid wings that issue from her back-mounted gem. As a measure of how cool they are, she can fly through space.
• Transformers:
  • Optimus Prime frequently gets wings later in a series, though more mechanical than feathery. It's sometimes accomplished by combining with another Autobot, though.
  • Optimus Primal also got wings after carrying Optimus Prime's spark for a few hours. The new modifications remained even after he gave the spark back to Prime.
  • Cheetor in his Transmetal body could count. His flight mode wings had jets on the ends of them.
  • On one occasion, Megatron got wings as part of a power up. They were somewhat overshadowed by him getting the ability to turn into a dragon at the time, though.
• Winx Club: The characters are fairies, who by nature have wings as opposed to other types of magical girls, but every time they get a new form, their wings get bigger and prettier. So more of a 'More Power Gives You More Wings'.
• In the comic version of W.I.T.C.H. everyone's wings were useless except for Hay Lin. In the cartoon, everyone can fly.

Real Life

• Truth in Television for spacecraft: Large, winglike heat radiator structures would largely be necessary to dissipate the waste heat produced by high-powered space-based nuclear reactors, and most hypothetical designs for future nuclear-powered spacecraft incorporate them.

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