Technicolor Toxin

"Watch out! A pOIsonous barrel!"

Nami: The smoke's almost to us!!
Usopp: Look at the creepy color! It must be incredibly toxic!!

— One Piece

In Real Life, poison is usually detected and identified thanks to its bitter taste and/or smell. But how can we identify a poison as such in visual mediums, where taste and smell aren't an option?

Of course, the color itself!

Eastern media tend to portray poisonous substances in a dark purple color, usually bubbling. In Western media, Sickly Green is more common because of the former popularity of arsenates, which really are fluorescent green. There are also other works from both sides of the Atlantic showing poisons and venoms of various other colors. When the toxin is known to act as an aphrodisiac, it's more likely to be pink than purple or green.

It may be shown melting stone and steaming foul vapors.

Thanks to these distinctive colors, the audience can instantly perceive whether a substance is toxic. There are instances of this being Truth in Television, as shown below — especially when dealing with organic poisons, where signaling to predators that a particular plant or animal is poisonous is necessary for the poison to provide protection.

Seen often paired with Poisoned Weapons, Poisonous Person, Perfect Poison, and Deadly Gas for poisonous fumes. See also Sickly Green Glow for that iconic pop culture depiction of radiation, Purple Is Powerful for strong things connected to the colour purple in general, and Purple Is the New Black.

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Examples:

Purple Poison

Anime & Manga

• Bleach features Mayuri's Ashisogi Jizo, which releases a purple poison cloud. The affected victims also turns purple. Gin Ichimaru's true power releases a deadly poison with a purple aura.
• Cobra from Oracion Seis in Fairy Tail owns a violet giant snake named Cuberios which is poisonous and its victims turn slowly purple when bitten (seen in the anime with Erza). Also his Poison Dragon Slayer's scales are violet.
• In Inuyasha, Naraku's Shouki is dark purple, and is most certainly poisonous.
• The flesh-melting poison used by Fugo's Stand Purple Haze in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind shows it as being entirely purple.
• In Jōjū Senjin!! Mushibugyō, the Insect Magistrate's hair, eyes and clothes turn purple when she unleashes her Poison Bug Powers. She thus rounds up the trope trifecta by being a Poisonous Person wielding purple Corrosive Poison.
• Naruto features purple-colored poisons, seen with Shizune's Breath Weapon and Sasori's weapons.
• One Piece has several instances of purple poison, including Crocodile's Hookhand, Wanze's Big Fancy Sword, Marigold's spit, Musshuru's spores and, of course, Magellan himself. It also has Poison Is Corrosive effect and noxious steams. Later, during the Punk Hazard arc, Smiley's poison gas is clearly described as "purple", even if the comic is in black and white. Smiley's anime appearance shows he's a red-violet color rather than pure purple. The noxious gasses he releases are actually purple though. Smiley's master, Caesar Clown, utilizes light blue poison gasses with a purple hue, which turn completely dark purple when he goes One-Winged Angel.
• Pokémon: The Series: As in the games, both Poison-type moves and Mons are often depicted as purple. Examples include Grimer, Koffing, Ekans and their evolutions.
• Ronin Warriors has Sekhmet, Warlord of Venom, whose corrosive poison is usually portrayed as pink or purple. Interestingly enough, his armor is mostly green.
• In Sengoku Basara, Matsunaga uses purple poison gas in order to take down Kojuro. In contrast the gas Sasuke uses as an antidote is green.
• Coco from Toriko can secrete purple colored poisons from his body. In the anime at least.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 7's "God of War Legend" Story Arc, Caesar's soldiers wield Poisoned Weapons that have a purple tint and leave visibly purple wounds on the characters.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Intriguing Alien Guests, Mushroom can release poisonous gas that is colored purple, much like her.

Comic Books

• Wonder Woman (1942): L-3 is technically benificial, given its Fountain of Youth applications, however drinking enough of the odd magenta water diffused "vitamin" will kill by reversing one's age until they're a zygote.

Films — Live-Action

• The purple flower in Jumanji is the one that shoots poison darts at players as part of the game's scheme to keep you from being able to finish it. To wit, the game puts the flower right underneath itself so the plant springs up through the floorboards as Judy picks up the game to bring it to Sarah, who would get it and take her turn but is stuck in the floor across the room with Alan.

Literature

• In A Song of Ice and Fire, when Joffrey is poisoned at his wedding feast, it's strongly implied that this was the work of Olenna Tyrell, who had the opportunity to remove a poisonous solid disguised as an amethyst from Sansa's jeweled hair net and drop it in his cup of wine. One indication of this is the wine itself: an early goblet is poured over Tyrion's head and described as red, while the dregs remaining in the later, poisoned goblet are described as purple.
• In The Sword of Shannara Trilogy the poison from the Creeper-like monster is described as purplish in color.
• In "Rappaccini's Daughter", Beatrice leaves purple fingerprints where she touches Giovanni.
• In The Farthest-Away Mountain, the Colored Snow Witch has covered the snow of the mountain in various colors, each with a different cursed effect. Dakin never finds out exactly what the purple snow does, but notes that it is a very poisonous looking shade of purple and gives off a toxic smell. When she steps through it with magical protection, it fizzles like Hollywood Acid.

Live-Action TV

• The poison featured in the pilot of Forever is a purple-blue color. Justified as it's aconite, which is derived from monkshood, a similarly colored flower.
• Cobra-themed Kamen Rider Ohja of Kamen Rider Ryuki is conveniently purple. As is scorpion-themed Sasword in Kamen Rider Kabuto. Purple poison actually drips from his weaponry as he attacks.

Video Games

• BattleRoyale.io: The poisonous essence that regularly expands and shrinks the playable area is purple-colored.
• Brave Frontier: In most games, the Poison status is purple in color, but its symbol shows green bubbles on a purple background.
• Bug Fables: Purple is used to represent poison, both in the form of poison attacks often appearing as large globs of purple liquid, to characters inflicted with the Poisoned status turning purple all over.
• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: The poison status effect causes Nathan to take on a purple tint. Poisonous snakes, Poison Armors and other poison enemies are purple, fitting the games focus on different elemental traits. The Manticore card applies the Poison element to your spells, which results in predominantly purple graphical effects. Interestingly enough, antidotes are also represented by a bottle filled with purple liquid.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Monokuma's special poison, the murder weapon of Chapter 5, is purple in color, even as a gas.
• In Dark Cloud and the sequel Dark Chronicle, the poisoned status icon is purple, with the poisoned character being shaded purple. Most attacks that can cause poison are purple, as well.
• Dark Souls: In the first and third games, Poison and Toxic are associated with the color purple and require purple moss to be purged. Both Undead Dragons encountered can vomit streams of poisonous purple liquid as a form of attack, and some of the Pyromancer's venomous tricks are purple-colored. There are also exceptions, such as the poisonous swamps at the bottom of Blighttown, which are brownish in color, but still build up the poison gauge, or the Basilisks (bright purple reptiles which however inflict Curse, not poison).
• Disgaea: Poisoned characters are signaled with purple bubbles.
• Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!: "Poisonous Pipeline" features as its gimmick purple liquid that inverts the D-pad commands. A first for the series, since poisoned water in previous games is depicted as green (see below).
• Dragon Quest: Poison swamps are always colored violet.
• Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: While the standard poison ailment is portrayed with color green in-battle, as has been the case in the rest of the series, the toxic puddles found in Fetid Necropolis are colored intense purple. During day, these puddles have to be avoided due to their harmful effects, but during night they dry up and their areas are safe to walk on. Similar puddles are found much later in Empyreal Bridge, but those remain active 24/7.
• Final Fantasy: Almost all the games in the saga features purple swamps where you take damage as you walk.
  • Final Fantasy VI: When Kefka dumps poison into the river surrounding Doma Castle, the water takes on a purplish hue.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: The Miasma spell is purple.
• Gemfire: Skulryk's poison clouds are deep purple.
• Genji: Dawn of the Samurai: The Poison element is purple.
• Highborn: Poisonous swamps are always bright purple.
• Hive Jump: Giant mushrooms spit clouds of purple gas.
• Jesus Christ RPG Trilogy: Poisonous swamps are purple.
• Kirby: Planet Robobot: Kirby's Poison Copy Ability lets him emit violet liquids and gases and gives him a hat that spews the liquid out of the top.
• Thelast.io: The poison from both the Poison Staff and the blowpipes is represented as purple.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night: The poisonous Grimy Water of the Ancient Grove is a vivid, shocking purple.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: You can tell Woodfall Swamp is poisoned due to the water having a distinct reddish-purple hue. Even the plants take on bright, unnatural colors.
• Mabinogi: Poison bottles (used for coating weapons) are bright purple, and poisoned characters or monsters acquire a purple tint and emit purplish fumes. Sulfur poisoning from Zardine fumarole areas tints the player yellow with a purple tinge.
• In Monster Hunter, poison is typically represented by purple mist that accompanies attacks that can inflict poison status, and bubbles of the same color on a poisoned target. In an inversion of Purple Is Powerful, the more potent variants (which drain health faster) are less purple and more red: magenta mist and bubbles for Noxious Poison and red for Deadly Poison.
• Odin Sphere: Poisoned characters turn purple.
• Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams features purple poison for the first time in the saga. Poisoned characters turns purple too.
• The Other: Airi's Adventure: Poisonous Tomatoes, the Palette Swap version of red ordinary Tomato enemies, are purple.
• Overwatch: Widowmaker's Venom Mine, Zenyatta's Discord Orb and Ana's biotic grenade all cause the affected target to glow purple. The former chips away at health while the latter two increase damage and decrease healing.
• Pikmin:
  • Pikmin 2: Poisonous gas is purple, as are the spores from the Puffstool. The color coding is also used for (the more pinkish) Munge Dweevils, which are part of a family of enemies with Elemental Powers as well as the Titan Dweevil, when he's about to use his poison weapon. Oddly, White Pikmin are the type immune to the latter, while Purple Pikmin don't have a hazardous element they're immune to, though they can't be blown by wind, making Whites the only Pikmin whose color does not match that of their element.
  • Hey! Pikmin: The poison that serves as the game's Grimy Water and more rarely appears as geysers is a bright, vivid purple. Olimar confuses a purple Inkling's^note (more accurately, the statue of one.) ink for poison just because of this trope, suggesting that he should play with water instead. He's somewhat right about the ink (it is toxic... to everyone except that Inkling and his teammates, and other colors of ink would be just as toxic to him), but replacing it with water would be much worse.
• Pokémon: The Poison elemental type has a purple icon, "Poisoned" status is also purple, and many Poison-type attacks (such as Toxic and Gunk Shot) are represented with a bubbly purple goop. Furthermore, many Poison-related Pokémon like Koffing/Weezing, Ekans/Arbok, Gastly/Haunter/Gengar, Nidoran/Nidorina/Nidorino/Nidoqueen/Nidoking, Zubat/Golbat/Crobat, Stunky/Skuntank, Skorupi/Drapion are violet in color.
• Primal Carnage: The Dilophosaurus has the ability to spit a bright purple venom which drains stamina on contact.
• SaGa Frontier 2 has poisoned characters turning purple (then back to their normal colouration) at the end of each combat round, and the symbol indicating a poisoning is a pair of purple droplets.
• Samurai Shodown: A mismatched case: Gen'an's poison cloud is orange, but the poisoned victim becomes purple.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Poison turns characters purple with violet bubbles coming off them.
• Sipho: Poison is depicted as a cloud of purple fluids.
• South Park: Phone Destroyer: The card art for Toxic Pylon depicts the substance as purple.
• Street Fighter V: F.A.N.G.'s poison attacks emit gobs of purple goo and pillars of purple smoke. When his opponent is hit byone of his abilities, their life meter changes to a purplish hue when the Damage Over Time effect takes over.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • The purple shroom inflicts poison or disables the playable characters, depending on the game.
  • Mario & Luigi: The stronger version of the poison status turns the brothers bright violet.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel there are swamps with purple gunk that instantly cause you to drown.
  • Starting with New Super Mario Bros., forest stages in the series are often flooded with a poisonous, bright purple gunk that acts like lava when touched (i.e. One-Hit Kill).
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In the Cave level of the Subspace Emissary story, the poison gas you encounter is purple colored.
• Terraria: Deep purple is used for the Acid Venom debuff, a more severe version of the green-colored Poison debuff.
• Tonic Trouble: The Grimy Water in the final level is shaded purple.
• Where's My Water?: If the poison so much as touches water, the entire body of water will turn purple as well.
• Zombs Royale.io: The poisonous gas that regularly advances and shrinks the playable area is purple-colored.

Web Animation

• RWBY: When Ruby shoots off the end of Tyrian's scorpian tail, the poison that spills from it is purple. Later, the blood that come out of Qrow's wound and mouth is the same color.

Western Animation

• Scaredy Squirrel: Dave's spray clouds are depicted as a large, purple cloud.

Real Life

• Iodine is purple in its gaseous form, black as a liquid and bluish black as a solid. Also toxic (it is an essential microelement, as well, but that's biology for you). The alcohol solution of iodine used to disinfect wounds is dark brown.

Green Poison

Anime & Manga

• Sesshomaru's poison in Inuyasha tends to be yellow or greenish.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion, the A. Phex Brothers' Schott Key No. 2 takes the form of the green cloud that's constantly generating poisonous gas.
• The aptly named Daft Green trees in the tenth One Piece movie, One Piece Film: Strong World, produce green venomous spores. When Nami is forcibly exposed to the spores by Shiki she starts turning green◊ herself.
• The Four Beast from Toriko can breathe out a venomous yellowish-green cloud which releases a poisonous "Green Rain" which will poison a whole metropolis worth of people to death. To counterbalance the poison, Yuda prepares an antidote Mochi made from purple rice, because, on a wheel of colors, purple stands at the opposite end of yellow-green.

Arts

• Circe Invidiosa: In contrast to the pure blue of Scylla's home, the poison Circe pours into it is a bright green. It's got a double meaning since she's poisoning Scylla out of envy.

Comic Books

• The Joker's Smylex toxin is usually shown as a green liquid or gas. This was common enough that it's included in Batman films, games, and animated series that he appears in.
• Wonder Woman: A couple of Dr. Poison's toxins were yellow-green, though one of these was actually meant to drive the victims mad rather than kill them outright.

Fan Works

• Ice and Fire (Minecraft): The hydra's poison spit attack takes the form of jets of almost neon-green liquid.
• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Discussed when Tom gives Knuckles guacamole to try. Kncukles remarks that in his experience, lumpy bright green substances are best avoided. Tom admits he has a point.

Film

• In Kong: Skull Island and The Birth of Kong, the boneyard where the Skullcrawlers live has a sickly yellowish-green hue in the air. The files in the Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure sourcebook confirm that this is because geothermal vents in the boneyard emit poison gases.

Literature

• Feet of Clay: Subverted — Vimes expects arsenic to be green and is surprised to learn otherwise.
• Warrior Cats: In Twilight, the source of RiverClan's poisoning is a silvery-green liquid leaking from a Twoleg object. Leafpool comments that the stuff even looks evil.

Live-Action TV

• A promotional picture for the second season of The Borgias depicts Lucrezia Borgia holding a small vial filled with green liquid, presumably poison, as the real-life Lucrezia Borgia was supposedly a notorious poisoner. In the series itself, poison is usually depicted as colorless, though.
• The poison the adversary uses in the Doctor Who episode "The Deadly Assassin" is green. Likewise the poison in "The Curse of Fenric".

Video Games

• In Age of Mythology, the Scorpion Man Myth Unit, granted to followers of Nephthys, has a special attack that poisons nearby units, draining their health for a small while. Poisoned units are represented with green clouds surrounding them.
• In Altered Beast (1988), a Giant Spider boss attacks by spitting body parts coated in green stuff, implied to be venom.
• ANNO: Mutationem: The Acid Attacks performed by enemies that inflict Damage Over Time via poison aliment are green. The Fungus Humongous at Freeway 42 emits green fumes of deadly poison in it's surrounding area.
• Aven Colony has Sickly green gas from geothermal vents. Dangerous to colonists health if it gets in air intakes.
• IT doesn't matter whether the poison in the Avernum games is applied through magic, gas, spider bites or worms' spit — it'll always look green, and work in the same way.
• Poisoned enemies in The Binding of Isaac turn green, and poison-related items and effects are often color-coded green.
• Black & White: Grain piles turn uniform green when poisoned with a mushroom or other contaminant. This appears to be limited to your divine senses, since humans don't notice the difference and eagerly poison themselves.
• In Block N Load, Eliza Doolally's poison gas is bright green.
• In Bloons Tower Defense, Bloon Dissolver and Bloon Liquefier glue are green in colour.
• In Bravium, the poison from both the enemies and the playable characters' attacks is always green.
• In Castle Crashers the poison is green, and the Green Knight can use poisonous attacks.
• Castlevania: Curse of Darkness features green colored poison status, and uses purple for the "cursed" status alteration. However, at least one enemy (White Gravial) spews a purple liquid.
• In Crash: Mind Over Mutant the "Sludge" Titan is toxic and green. Poisoned enemies turn green as well.
• In Dark Souls II, Poison is colored green unlike the games before and after it. Harvest Valley and Earthen Peak contain pools of green poisonous sludge that can stick to your character and continue building up the poison status even after getting out.
• The Dead Mines: The abandoned mine is filled with toxic green gas.
• Demon Skin: Poisoned projectiles, like those fired from stingers of giant scorpions, are bright green., Getting hit by these attacks coats you in a green aura that drains your health until you recover or consume an antidote.
• In Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp, the poison used to make Remington ill was a green powder.
• Subverted by Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the pale green gas released by shooting the canisters is not poison and just knocks out anyone caught in it.
• Divinity: Original Sin II:
  • Spells, clouds, pools, and weapons that inflict Poison damage are coloured acid green. Cursed poison looks darker and murkier, while Blessed poison has healing powers and glows cleanly.
  • This trope can be Exploited in the Item Crafting system by adding red dye to poison bottles to disguise them as healing potions.
• Donkey Kong Country:
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: In the "Toxic Tower" level, the player must climb platforms to avoid contact with the rising green water.
  • Also, "Poison Pond" in the first Donkey Kong Country has the Kongs swimming through a greenish water/sludge pond. The water is completely harmless, though, and most likely green just to go with the Eternal Engine theme of Kremcroc Industries, Inc. as a Polluted Wasteland.
  • While not of the deadly kind, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! features a level called "Low-G Labyrinth", which happens in a pipeline filled with greenish gas that decreases gravitational pull.
• In Dungeon Crawl poisonous corpses are shown in green text.
• In Dungeons, Plague Demons are green and can spit poison. The poisonous traps of the Mindless Army are greenish in color.
• In Elden Ring, the standard poison effect and various attacks that cause it are green. There's also the Scarlet Rot, which is presented as The Plague in the story but functions as a stronger poison effect in gameplay, and is colored with various shades of red.
• In several The Elder Scrolls titles, poisons (being any alchemical potions with harmful effects, which allow them to be applied to weapons) and beneficial potions are found in identical bottles, with only the dark green fluid inside allowing you to tell the immediate difference.
• Elona has green poison despite being a Japanese game, because purple is already used for elemental darkness.
• Emergency!: Later games in the series are notable because anything that poses a contamination risk—including chemical, biological, and radiological contaminants—can be visible as a green cloud.
• In Evolve, the Gorgon's poisonous attacks glow a pale green.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The"Poison" and "Toxin" status itself is usually shown in the form of green bubbles/green oozing stuff.
  • Final Fantasy II: Venom magic is bright green at low levels and dark green at high levels.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Not only are poison spells green, characters also glow green when poisoned.
• Fury Unleashed: Poison weapons and potions are vibrantly green, and cause the afflicted enemies to have a Sickly Green Glow.
• In GemCraft, green gems are the poisonous ones.
• In Gems of War, poisoned units have their hearts counter turn green, while Diseased units have a greenish-purple cloud veiling their portrait.
• Hades: The poison that Zagreus can be afflicted with in the Temple of Styx either comes from bright green darts, bright green goo, or bright green gas. Lampshaded by Hypnos if the poison kills you.
  Hypnos: Next time you'll know it's seriously deadly stuff, because it killed you! And because it's green!
• The acid in Impressive Title: Badlands always glows green.
• In Into the Breach, the A.C.I.D. is technically made of nanomachines, but it takes the form of green puddles or pools. Any entity walking into it (or shot by it) is covered in green liquid, and takes double damage from weapons, and negates any armor they might have. Interestingly, covering an enemy in A.C.I.D. alone doesn't make it take damage; they're just extra vulnerable to any other damage.
• Kingdom of Loathing parodies the trope with the green BRICKO brick:
  This is a BRICKO brick shot through with deadly poison which has tainted it green. Because everybody knows that all poison is green. If you're ever wondering if something is poisoned, your first question should be "Is it green?" If it's not green, eat it, because you're totally safe. In fact, the whole reason Kings had food tasters in ancient days is because they were all colorblind.
• In Kingdom Rush, poison from either towers or enemies tends to be green. In Frontiers, the Necromancers' tower attacks with green poisonous miasma and the hero Boneheart has green, gaseous venom to use in various forms.
• Feyrbrand the Green-Tusked Dragon from The Legend of Dragoon is green and can spit a poisonous green goo from its belly. Furthermore, toxic stuff tends to be green-colored.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Cynder's Poison element is a vivid lime green in color.
• In Minecraft, being poisoned turns your health bar a sickly green, and contracting food poisoning makes your hunger bar green. During both kinds of poisoning you also have green swirls appear around you.
• Neopets: The Darkest Faerie: The poison is bright green.
• Operencia: The Stolen Sun: Poisonous attacks are always very bright (almost whitish) green in color.
• Perfect Dark: The nerve gas in Area 51 is greenish in color.
• Pikmin series:
  • Pikmin (2001): The Smoky Progg leaves a trail of green sludge that instantly kills any Pikmin that touches it. In Pikmin 4, it is recolored red (although the Progg itself remains green) and is referred to as "gloom," a special type of hazard that no Pikmin is immune to.
  • Pikmin 4: Poison has been redesigned from the purple it was in the last game to a deep green/teal color, and most enemies that spawn poison are given this color. This is likely to avoid any confusion with the pink Winged Pikmin co-existing in story mode, and the Purple Pikmin having been given a lighter design than what they had in the game poison hazards debuted.
• Risk of Rain and its sequel have Acrid, whose poison is always a bright green, as are the numbers that come out of enemies damaged by the poison. The Toxic Worm item from the first game also causes a green visual effect to whichever enemy it is damaging.
• RuneScape: Poison is bright green. Poison damage is represented by bright green splats, poisoned weapons turn bright green at their tips, and your Life Meter changes to a bright green color when you're poisoned.
• Stinkoman 20X6: The poison dripping from "Tortan" (a bottle of poison) is bright lime-green in color.
• Sunset Overdrive: In the Old Factory District, a water storage place that also holds the start of Bomb Delivery 2 has "Don't drink glowing water! Toxic Wastes" painted in it.
• The Suffering: Invoked by Hermes Haight, the ghost of a prison warden who was so obsessed with executions that he killed himself in the Gas Chamber. In death, the Deadly Gas he generates is a distinct green so his victims can see their death coming.
• Terraria: Weaker poisons are associated with green, and anything given the Poisoned debuff has a green tint. Even the Bezoar, which prevents being Poisoned, is green. Hardmode introduces a more deadly form of poison called Acid Venom that instead uses a stronger purple for its color.
• Titan Quest consistently represents poison by a vibrant green color.
• Ultima: Throughout the series, the various color-coded potions do a variety of things, but the green potion is always poison, and a poisoned character's health bar turns green. Furthermore, some of the games had green swamps that would poison your character if you walked through them without special swamp boots (also green).
• Warcraft Expanded Universe:
  • Warcraft III: The plague cloud released by some Scourge units is green and intoxicates anyone nearby. The Venom Globe is bright green and Dryads can use green poisonous spears.
  • World of Warcraft: Most toxins are green.
• X-Men Legends: In one of the games, if you level up Cyclops enough, he gets an upgrade that makes his beams radioactive, doing slow continual damage for some time after it lands. Naturally, this means the beam turns green.

Web Comics

• In The Order of the Stick, the poison used by Daimyo Kubota to kill Therkla is green and features green bubbles from the victim. Later, the Strength-draining poison used on Vaarsuvius features green bubbles as well.

Western Animation

• The Batman: Lampshaded:
  Batgirl: Why is it deadly chemicals are always green? Why can't they ever be pink?
• The Origins Episode of Samurai Jack has Jack's father using a green poison on a stationary blob of darkness that had been engulfing the land. He ends up making it sentient, forming Aku, thus implicitly being the source of Aku's green face.
• Wakfu: Psychopathic Sram assassin Toxine from Season 3 is usually invisible or translucid, but she has bright green spots on her body, most notably on her wrist blades and heels. As she's quick to mention in her first appearance, her blades are highly poisonous.

Other

• A campaign called "Mr. Yuck" (or "Officer Ugg"), intended to teach young children about staying away from poisonous substances, had green stickers with a Mr. Yuck face for parents to put on containers to warn small children to not touch them.

Real Life

• Chlorine gas is a particularly noxious respiratory irritant that just so happens to be yellowish green in colour. It was the first substance used in chemical warfare in World War I, though both deadlier and less easily detectable gases were used later on. It has often been accidentally released when household bleach gets mixed with acid. Including uric acid, which is why you should NEVER clean a toilet with bleach.
• Scheele's Green, along with the chemically related Paris Green, gained notoriety for its toxicity - it was so beloved in the 1800's for its rich, lightfast tone that it was used to colour wallpaper, clothing, and even as food colouring. Unfortunately, when Scheele's Green comes in contact with moisture - like sweat, saliva, or water - it emits toxic arsenic gasses, resulting in people being poisoned to death by their own homes and clothing. Once the link was established, its use was quickly banned, but some very old houses from the 1800's still have arsenic residue in their walls from wallpaper dyed this colour, and occasionally the odd dress from the era dyed with this compound is recovered. The substance was also said to be one of the factors that contributed to Napoléon Bonaparte's death, by way of the wallpaper used in the St. Helena house where he was exiled. Paris Green would eventually find use as a rodenticide through the mid 20th century, until it was rendered obsolete by other pesticides.
• Automotive antifreeze containing the toxic substance ethylene glycol was often dyed green (similarly, many modern long-life antifreezes may be colored yellow, orange, purple or pink to keep people from drinking them.)
• Averted, though, by kiwi-flavoured syrup which is poison green (mainly dyed with chlorophyll) and perfectly drinkable, at least when mixed with water.

Other Colors

Anime & Manga

• In Arachnid, the villainous nurse Sasori enjoys taking some time to tell people who are at her mercy that a scorpion has three friends: a yellow toxin for paralyzation, a blue toxin to put them to sleep and a red toxin that quickly causes death. Unsurprisingly, the one she uses the most is the yellow one.
• In Fairy Tail, Cobra's actual Dragon Slayer venom is dark red in color and more steaming than bubbling. Cuberios' poison too is showed to have this color, and yet its victims become purple instead as seen above. Invoked and subverted in the anime when Happy attacks some Edolas soldiers with a bag of white "Poisonous Mist", which is actually harmless flour.
• In Inuyasha during the fight against Juromaru and Kageromaru, Sango uses a poison that turns the ground red in order to force Kageromaru to come out.
• One Piece has the dreaded MH5 poison gas, which releases a white cloud of deadly poison. However, it is usually changed to the usual purple mist in the video games featuring Don Krieg as a playable character. Furthermore, Magellan's Venom Demon: Hell's Judgement is crimson-colored and releases foul smokes, giving the impression of being hot somehow.
• In Saint Seiya, Black Pegasus's attacks are, in truth, poisonous, and will slowly kill the victim, covering his skin in growing black spots.
• In Toriko, Coco's skin turns red in the manga when he uses his poison, and early on, in the manga, he seemingly turns pitch-black with his best venom when confronted by Starjun's G.T. Robot.

Films — Live-Action

• In Kill Bill, Daryl Hannah attempts to kill a comatose Uma Thurman with a syringe full of cherry-red poison.
• Pacific Rim: Kaiju Blue is a toxic chemical compound found in kaiju blood and tissue and released when their bodies decompose. Like it’s name suggests, it’s colored a vibrant Cherenkov blue, the color usually associated with Godzilla’s atomic breath.

Live-Action TV

• Better Off Ted, in the episode Bioshuffle: The plot is set in motion by a brownish liquid toxin leaking from a biocomputer that can also dissolve a desk as well as instantly ignite a tissue that touches it. This leads to the office being evacuated while the "contamination guys" deal with the problem in full hazmat suits.
• MacGyver (1985) episode "The Spoilers" starts with a tanker full of toxic waste which is hot pink.
• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: In "Death Do Us Part", the Victim of the Week is poisoned by having his eyedrops dosed with polonium. Phryne and Jack find the dropped eyedrop bottle at night because it is glowing blue.
• Star Trek: Picard: The Deadly Gas Narek has chosen to kill Soji with is red.

Tabletop Games

• Kindred of the East, Kuei Jin users of the Bone Shintai can obtain a Breath Weapon taking the form of an incredibly corrosive cloud of black poison which rapidly erodes flesh and metal alike.

Theatre

• In the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan, the pirates poison Pan's milk, turning it bright red. You'd think he'd notice something was up, but then it wouldn't set up Tinkerbell's heroic death.

Video Games

• In Command & Conquer: Generals and the Expansion Pack, GLA anthrax is green, Anthrax beta is blue and Anthrax gamma is purple. Radiation meanwhile is orange.
  — Dr Thrax: "Do you enjoy seeing your men glow in the dark? Heh, heh, build more then!"
• While most The Elder Scrolls games use classic green (as mentioned above), Skyrim is unique in that it utilizes color-coded poisons: pink for health poison, blue for magicka poison, and green for stamina poison. Poisons of any other type, such as weaknesses or ability drains, default to the bubblegum pink "health" bottle, as do similarly deviant potions, meaning the only way to tell them apart now is the shape of their bottles.
• Bottles of Poison in Faxanadu are yellowish, as opposed to the more pink-colored Red Potions.
• In The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, during the chapter "The Clouded Kokoro", Olive Green has a large blue bottle that spills out a bright pink liquid when she accidentally knocks it over. It's strychnine, and the cause of Shamspeare's poisoning. It was a test to see if he had been tampering with the coal gas pipes, since her fiancé died of gas poisoning. He had been, and still was with the new tenant, Soseki Natsume, but he only intended to frighten them into abandoning the room so he could find the treasure hidden there.
• The Legend of Dragoon: Feyrbrand can also produce and shot blue poison (causes Fear) and grey poison (causes Stun).
• In Killing Floor 2, green gas and Bloat bile are poison to you, blue gas is poison to zeds.
• In the first three Onimusha games, there are some cases of yellow poisonous gases, especially in the second game.
• Pikmin 3 uses either an inky black (for aquatic enemies) or a neon pink (for the Vehemoth Phosbat) to represent poison.
• The Creepy Centipedes from Altered Beast (2005) will attack by spitting globs of blue poison at you.
• The "sludge" in Snipperclips tends to be bright pink or green. It's harmless to the player's shapes but other creatures don't like it very much...
• In World of Warcraft, the Rogue can put poison on his weapons. There are many kinds of venom, including green as well as red and black.

Web Comics

• In Champions of Far'aus, Serpentus's venom is a cloudy, yellow colour.

Western Animation

• The many types of gases used by the vile borg, Noxious in Skysurfer Strike Force also come in many bright colors.
• From Wakfu, the Demon Roses created by the Shushu Djaul are encountered in Season 1 and one of them bites Amalia, poisoning her. According to Eva there are three types: purple, orange and red. The red ones have the strongest poison.

Real Life

• Aposematism refers to the phenomenon of animals sporting bright colors as a means of deterring would-be predators by suggesting that they carry deadly poisons (see many species of poisonous amphibians, such as poison dart frogs). Bright blue, in particular, is an appetite suppressor, as no foods humans consume are naturally that shade (blueberries are coloured indigo) — and things that are blue are usually toxic. Dietitians will advise people wishing to lose weight to eat on blue plates, for example. Purple, being close to blue in the spectrum, shares some of blue's appetite-averting effects.
• Many venomous reptiles, unlike the frogs, zig-zag this. Some are brightly-colored, such as the red-yellow-black coral snake ("red touches yellow, kills a fellow") and the eyelash viper (just yellow, also kills a fellow). There are many snakes that are brightly colored and not venomous however (like those that mimic coral snakes) or dull-colored and venomous, like the brownish King Cobra and the dead-leaf-colored Gaboon viper.
• In addition to the previously-mentioned purple iodine and green chlorine, the rest of the halogen elements are all instantly recognisable for their colour. Bromine is either a red-brown liquid or a bright orange gas, and fluorine, the most reactive of the lot that isn’t astatine (read on) is a very pale yellow gas. Iodine is bright purple, as noted above. Astatine would be black, but it's so radioactive that a sample large enough for us to see would promptly explode in a nuclear fireball. Be careful with halogens, everyone.
• Elemental sulfur is bright yellow when solid, bright red when melted, and blue as a high-temperature gas. It's also a very effective pesticide and quite flammable. Burning it with oxygen gives sulfur dioxide, however, which is highly toxic but colorless.
• While red fuming nitric acid is definitely dangerous, its other prominent aspect is its extreme reactivity, which is why its name is basically Exactly What It Says on the Tin; it’s bright red, emits clouds of nitrogen dioxide, and may bubble intensely while it’s boiling off the nitrogen dioxide gas. As rocket engineers in Germany and the Soviet Union found out, this compound is also quite useful as a component in rocket fuel, though much more efficient compounds have been discovered since.
• Many chromium compounds are bright coloured (that's why this element is called so - 'chroma' means 'colour' in Greek). Hexavalent chromium compounds are bright red, orange, or yellow, and are very, very toxic and carcinogenic.
• There are however many, many aversions, such as the snowy white highly lethal destroying angel mushroom, or lye crystals, the latter of which will cause severe burns on contact.
• Trifluoronitrosomethane is a toxic gas with a characteristic deep blue color.