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"Oh God, NATURAL LIGHT!"
Super Kami Guru, Dragon Ball Z Abridged

Light is a powerful thing. Some enemies, especially living shadows and vampires, are weakened by it, if not outright destroyed. The reason is simple: Light Is Good + Good Hurts Evil + Dark Is Evil = Light Hurts Evil.

Sunlight seems to be particularly potent, which gives Cue the Sun a whole new meaning for such nocturnal nasties. Works fond of Doing In the Wizard often explain this as an aversion to ultraviolet light.

The psychology behind this trope is that humans are very reliant on sight, so we feel extremely vulnerable in the dark. See Dark Is Evil for the general association of evil things with darkness.

If the author is not careful, this can overlap with Weaksauce Weakness, or at least Kryptonite Is Everywhere. May be counteracted with a Kryptonite-Proof Suit. This might be one of the reasons why it's Grim Up North — the longer nights give sunlight-averse creatures more time to hunt.

Sub-Trope of Supernatural Repellent. See also Holy Burns Evil and Suicide by Sunlight. Contrast Cross-Melting Aura. Often mixed with Light 'em Up. Not to be confused with Blinded by the Light (a much less severe and more mundane form of weaponizing light), Prone to Sunburn (a more mundane negative reaction to sunlight with no moral connotations), and Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes (a natural reaction to daylight that likewise carries no moral connotations).


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    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach: Espada #9 Aaroniero Arruruerie cannot stand sunlight and can't maintain or perform his shape-shifting in the light.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The demons cannot withstand sunlight and will be destroyed if exposed to it. This is also why Nichirin Blades are the only weapons capable of slaying them: demons possess a powerful Healing Factor, but because the ore of Nichirin Blades have absorbed large amounts of sunlight, decapitation with a Nichirin Blade will, with only a few exceptions, instantly kill a demon without fail. This ends up being an important plot point, as Muzan Kibutsuji is just as vulnerable to sunlight as the other demons and his goal is to overcome that weakness. When Nezuko becomes the first demon to conquer the sun, Muzan seeks to assimilate her and gain this immunity for himself.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: A variation with Pride, the shadow homunculus, who isn't generally hurt by light; in fact, he is unable to use his powers without a light source. However, if the light becomes too bright (for example, the light from a flash bomb) his shadows will disintegrate. Ironically enough, he is also incapable of using his powers in total darkness and is thus completely helpless without a light source. This weakness is exploited on two occasions, though neither incident is successful for very long.
  • Used in Gintama against Housen, The Night King. The Yato in general are weakened by light — it's why they all carry umbrellas — but Housen spent years out of the sunlight. When exposed to it for the first time in ages, it kills him fairly quickly.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Phantom Blood: Despite being extremely powerful and lacking other vampire weaknesses, these vampires are some of the most sunlight-vulnerable vampires in all of fiction. No sizzling, no writhing in pain, not even any catching fire, they just explode the second sunlight (and Hamon, which emulates sunlight) touches them. The inference seems to be that vampirism fills one to the brim with vital energy, to the point that excess energy is like inflating an overinflated balloon.
    • Battle Tendency: The Pillar Men, progenitors of the vampires also suffered this, but only to the degree of being petrified while bathed in sunlight (or UV lamps) and reverting afterwards. Hamon can kill them, but it requires that you transfer the Ripple energy into them, be it with rope or oiled up weapons, which is much easier said than done. When Kars uses the Stone Mask to turn into the Ultimate Being, he becomes not only invincible to the sun but also able to use the Ripple with absurd power.
    • Golden Wind: Polpo's Black Sabbath is also like this, on account of actually being a shadow. Lots of light ceases inability for shadows to exist, so taking full sunlight causes it to evaporate.
  • Is This A Zombie?: Ayumu, being a zombie, can't go out in the sunlight or his body will desiccate. This weakness is negated while he's wearing Haruna's Magical Girl outfit.
  • Interviews with Monster Girls: Downplayed. Vampires in that universe do have a low tolerance to light and heat, but that's at worst uncomfortable.
  • Monster Rancher: When Moo used the Final Gate to remerge with his original body, because the process wasn't done properly (i.e. not using a magic stone), his body was vulnerable to any form of light. During a fight with the Searchers, the sun rose and burned him, forcing him to retreat. He was then confined to life support until the process was completed properly.
  • Tokoyami’s Quirk in My Hero Academia is Dark Shadow, a Living Shadow that is stronger in darkness and weaker in light. Quirks that create light, either directly or as a side effect, can weaken Dark Shadow, which is why Tokoyami loses to Bakugo in the Sports Festival.
  • My Monster Secret: Downplayed almost to aversion with Youko. She is a vampire, and thus the sun burns her...but that only means that she gets sunburned very easily. Sunscreen is all it takes to fix that.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Pointedly averted with Evangeline, who is not harmed by sunlight. It does, however, make her somewhat sleepy, so she's often seen with a parasol anyway. One of her many nicknames is "The High Daylight Walker", emphasizing this trait.
  • One Piece: The Shadow-Shadow Fruit allows its user to steal and manipulate people's shadows; any victim of this will disintegrate in sunlight.
  • Ouran High School Host Club had several episodes of this with Nekozawa.
  • Pokémon: The Original Series: In "Ghost of Maiden's Peak", Gastly seems unstoppable, but when the sun rises, he says he can't stand the sunlight and retreats.
  • Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas: Hades is severely damaged by sunlight as long as it's enough to overpower his defenses.
  • Shiki: Vampires who meet the sunlight directly catch on fire and burn to death. However, there's also Tatsumi (and later Natsuno too) who subvert this, due to belonging to a rare species of vampires who can survive under the sunlight. However, in everything else, they're exactly like the others.
  • Time Stop Hero: All creatures of the Forces of Darkness are nigh-invulnerable in the dark and can only be harmed by holy magic or holy weapons or by healing spells. When in the light, they can be harmed by anything.
  • Ushio and Tora: The (fan-suggested) Youkai Mountain Fish (Yamagyou) is an unstoppable underground-dwelling behemoth with a taste for human flesh, but has a crippling weakness: exposure to sunlight, even minimal, will cause a strange chain reaction in his body that makes him explode. Oddly enough, the Mountain Fish itself seemingly doesn't fear nor tries to avoid sunlight.
  • Vampire Hunter D: In the 1985 film Count Magnus Lee sends Rei Ginsei a candle. Its light paralyzes any being with vampire blood in its veins. Greco Roman steals it and uses it against the Count's daughter Lamika. Rei Ginsei gets it back and uses it against D (successfully) and Count Magnus Lee (not so successfully).
    • In addition, dhampyrs (half-vampires) suffer from a condition called Sunlight Syndrome approximately every 6 months. During this time, they suffer from sudden exhaustion, fever, and weariness and are forced to retire for several days in order to recover. In D's case, thanks to his extraordinary physiology, he experiences Sunlight Syndrome less often, every 5 years instead. The treatment for Sunlight Syndrome is for the dhampyr to rest buried beneath the ground with just their head sticking out.
  • Van Von Hunter parodies this twice in the same arc. First, a vampire proclaims its invincibility since the moon is up—and doesn't burn until after it's reminded that moonlight is reflected sunlight. Then, the title character tries to distract another vampire until sunrise, and takes so long doing so that the sun sets again.
  • Yaiba: The Batman Hakki is scorched by the sunlight and screams in pain when exposed to it. Oddly, he's fine while wearing sunglasses.

    Asian Animation 
  • Happy Heroes inverts the trope. In Season 4 episode 45, while fighting the shadows that have been brought to life by Big M., Sweet S. accidentally discovers that they dissolve once they're exposed to total darkness. She then gives Smart S. instructions to destroy a nearby electricity source to darken the city and defeat the remaining shadows.

    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • According to the cover of Detective Comics #284, Batman was once changed into a "Negative Man" who was weakened and destroyed by light.
    • Batman himself employed this tactic to defeat Azrael and reclaim the mantle at the end of the Knightfall trilogy.
  • The Darkness is Made of Evil with all kinds of darkness-based powers, and it can't stand to be in bright light, making it a Logical Weakness for the beast. The setting also features the Angelus, a creature of pure light, the Arch-Enemy of the Darkness.
  • In the New 52, Superman's Crime Syndicate counterpart Ultraman is weakened by sunlight; as shown in Forever Evil (2013). To counter this, he creates a solar eclipse so he can go about during the day.
  • Infinity, Inc.: When the character Obsidian is in shadow form, light can cause him great pain and even unconsciousness.
  • Night Girl was a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, and, in some continuities, later a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Her gimmick was that she had Super-Strength, but only in the dark. Turn on a lamp, and she's normal.
  • MonsterVerse: In the Kingdom Kong graphic novel, it's stated that Camazotz can't stand sunlight, so he needs to create The Night That Never Ends on Skull Island before he can emerge to claim his new kingdom. He was likewise only out at night when he was under Ghidorah's command during the global Titan-rampage.
  • Downplayed with Morbius the Living Vampire. Since he's not a real vampire, sunlight will not reduce him to dust. But he does have to avoid the sun due to his extremely pale skin, or he'll quickly suffer burns which could lead to melanoma, and is at risk of retina damage.
  • Preacher: Cassidy the vampire outright catches fire when exposed to sunlight. He kills another vampire by nailing him to a roof and waiting for dawn, and later commits temporary suicide by waiting for daybreak.
  • The "Octopus Plants" which attacked Wonder Woman, the Holliday Girls and Steve Trevor in an issue of Sensation Comics wither and die in sunlight.
  • X-Men: Supporting character Greymalkin has Super-Strength when he is in darkness.

    Fairy Tales 

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): The Timeline states that here, unlike in the MonsterVerse canon, the Titan Camazotz's aversion to sunlight is put on display when Monster X causes sunlight to break through his storm on Skull Island.
  • Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: The monsters under Calvin's bed vanish with light. Except for Jark, because he's partly absorbed Calvin's DNA. It doesn't last, though.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: Vampires are not directly harmed by sunlight, but it interferes with their ability to resurrect themselves in their coffins; a vampire killed in sunlight is properly dead. Apparently this is a result of sunlight carrying a portion of the power of the light gods, and priests can replicate the effect by infusing holy power into their weapons.
  • Hope Comes to Brockton Bay: This is the downside of Shadow Stalker's new powers, and she is finally killed by very powerful lamps.
  • The Life and Times of a Winning Pony: Direct sunlight interferes with necromantic energy, and as a result undead creatures are weakened (or in some cases outright destroyed) by being exposed to daylight or daylight-based spells.
  • The Long Eventide: This is shown to be a weakness of the ponies who are part of the Umbral Society. One is shown fleeing a sunrise in the first chapter, and another screams in pain when willingly stepping out the protection of the Shroud that surrounds the titular city-state of Eventide.
  • Mother of Invention: The unseen monster is never active during the day, from which Applejack correctly deduces it is vulnerable to bright light. This enables her to finally defeat it by restoring the power to the underground facility where it hides.
  • Nosflutteratu: Fluttershy explains that sunlight weakens vampires, preventing them from using abilities like transforming into a bat.
  • Pokémon Wack: Bug, Dark, Ghost, Chaos, Crystal, Glass, Ice, Fear, and Zombie are all weak to Light-type moves.
  • Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead: Ghasts are a form of undead that are particularly vulnerable to light — full exposure is almost always fatal in a very short time, unless they can get out of it quickly enough, and concentrated flashlight beams are viable weapons when fighting them.
  • Princess of the Blacks: Between the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes, while the days are longer than the nights, black magic is weakened and white magic is strengthened. And on the summer solstice itself, black mages are rendered feverish and comatose from sunrise to sunset. The same applies in reverse to white mages, who are helpless on the winter solstice.

    Films — Animation 
  • BoBoiBoy Movie 2: The Kang Kong are nocturnal sloth-like aliens that are very slow during the day, but viciously swift at night. Gopal slows one down with a flashlight while BoBoiBoy Blaze's fireball reveals many Kang Kongs slowly approaching them.
  • Fantasia: Chernabog is interrupted when light shines on him, causing him to wince and shield his eyes.
  • Hotel Transylvania: Subverted as the Sun will burn a vampire's skin but is not instantly fatal, as seen on Dracula when he went to bring Johnny back home to Mavis during the first film. Vampires can easily avoid the effects of sunlight with sunscreen, large hats, wearing cloaks as well as by remaining in the shade during daylight, they go outside during nighttime, cloudy and rainy days.
  • Minions: One of the Minions' old bosses was Dracula. They end up inadvertently killing him on his 357th birthday when they try wake him up in his coffin and open the curtains to let in the sunlight, which immediately turns him to ashes.
  • Rock-A-Doodle: The Owls hate any kind of light, even something minuscule like a flashlight. Sunlight is enough to actually strip the Grand Duke of his powers and turns him smaller than a mouse.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Mr. Freeze at the end of Batman & Robin. It isn't entirely the sunlight as much as it is the warmth of the sun's rays after his freeze suit malfunctions.
  • Blade Trilogy:
  • Daybreakers: The light burns the vampires alive.
  • At the end of Dracula vs. Frankenstein, the Monster forces Dracula out of the church and into the surrounding forest, where a fierce battle ensues between the two monsters. Dracula tears off the Monster's arms and head, but gets caught in the rays of the sun before he can make it back to his coffin and disintegrates into dust.
  • Embrace of the Vampire (2013): Having stabbed the vampire through the heart with with a sharpened cross, Charlotte finishes him off by ripping down the curtain and exposing him to the direct sunlight, causing him to burst into flames.
  • The Eye Creatures: The titular creatures can be taken down by ordinary car headlamps. A camera flash was enough to instantly vaporize one.
  • Fright Night (1985): When Charley and Peter Vincent confront the vampire Jerry Dandrige in the cellar where his coffin is located, they destroy him by ripping the coverings off the windows and allowing the sunlight inside.
  • Fright Night (2011): Jerry exploits this to Kick the Dog. He allows Charley to "rescue" one of the girls he'd kidnapped and already converted, just so he could see the look of horror on the boy's face as she disintegrated into ashes.
  • Since Frostbite takes place during the arctic night the vampires are never exposed to sunlight, but through out the film they are shown as hating strong light of any kind.
  • Game of Death: Kareem Abdul Jabbar's character loses significant strength when Bruce Lee smashes the windows and lets the sunlight hit Jabbar's lizard eyes.
  • Gremlins: Strong light will hurt Mogwai and Gremlins, and sunlight will kill them. Defied in one case in Gremlins 2: The New Batch when the Gremlins raid a genetics lab and the Brain-Gremlin injects the Bat-Gremlin with an anti-UV potion so that he can go and wreak havoc in the city. Fortunately, he didn't think to use it on any of his other brothers...
  • In Halloweentown, the villain's powers are at their strongest in darkened areas like the movie theater. The radiance from Merlin's Talisman destroys him.
  • Hostile: Harry tells Juliette over her radio that Reapers hate the light. She uses this knowledge and shines a bright light on the Reaper to ward it off.
  • Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend has three official adaptations; The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, The Ωmega Man with Charlton Heston and I Am Legend with Will Smith. In all the Last of His Kind homo sapien has to fight hordes of vampire-like creatures that are harm by sunlight and bright lights.
  • In I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, the titular monster is eventually killed by being lured into a gymnasium and trapped in a circle of tanning beds.
  • Kiss of the Damned: Vampires can be killed by sunlight here, as usual. Maia is killed this way in the end.
  • Legend (1985): At the beginning, Darkness says: "Sunshine is my destroyer." Near the end we see what he means: when he's hit by the reflected light of the sun, he's Blown Across the Room as if it were a giant bullet hitting him.
  • Cailban from Logan is burnt by sunlight, requiring him to wear a hat and goggles whenever he's outside; Cailban likens himself to Nosferatu at one point. Donald Pierce has a particularly cruel Kick the Dog moment when he tortures Caliban by forcing him into some sunlight.
  • The Monster (2016): The eponymous monster is averse to bright light and will retreat from it.
  • Near Dark: Depending on the strength the daylight and the length of exposure, vampires will either smoke, burn, or explode.
  • Nosferatu is usually credited as the origin of the idea that sunlight kills vampires.
  • Pitch Black: The alien monsters are burned by light. Additionally, Riddick's eyeshine treatment leaves him easily blinded by bright lights.
  • Rolli – Amazing Tales: When the High Priest is forced to enter the Rölli Forest from the Trashers' Collapsing Lair, his face starts deteriorating. He says this is because the light and purity of the forest are detrimental to evil creatures such as him. He claims that this will be remedied once the Trashers are revigorated and the forest destroyed through pollution, but he's killed before this claim can be put to the test.
  • The demons in Scooby-Doo (2002) take control of human bodies to shield themselves against sunlight. Once their human bodies regain their souls and they're ejected out, the sun kills them.
  • Space Amoeba: Ganimes' eyes are very sensitive to anything too bright.
  • In Underworld (2003), vampires are sensitive to ultraviolet light. The protagonist therefore uses ultraviolet light-producing ammo to great effect.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Automan's title character himself is not adversely affected by sunlight, but his physical form takes so much electrical power to maintain that he normally can do it only during offpeak hours of the local electrical grid, which is predominately nighttime.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and sister series Angel vampires have a strange version of this. Direct sunlight will almost instantly immolate them, but they are portrayed as perfectly fine operating during the day as long as they remain in the shade. They can even move around in sunlight while covering themselves up with a jacket or hoodie - though if that cover gets pulled off, they'll fry immediately.
  • In Castle, a case involving vampire fetishists uncovers an obsessively fixated "vampire" whose skin burns when it makes contact with light. Turns out he has an exceptionally rare skin condition.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Vampires of Venice": The "vampires" are weak to light because they're actually Fish People. The young women they're converting develop this even before the transformation is complete — Isabella is captured during the escape because she flinches away from a ray of sunlight hitting a door.
    • "The Ghost Monument" has the Remnants, killer cloth developed as weapons that are inactive in the daytime.
  • Farscape:
    • In episode "Through The Looking Glass", one dimension is bathed in red light with debilitating effects. Chiana is somehow unaffected, but is debilitated by the noise in the blue dimension instead.
    • In episode "Crackers Don't Matter", Moya's crew is warned that "lower species" sometimes experience impaired judgment from the light of the pulsars they are traveling through. The trope is subverted when Crichton realizes that T'raltixx is causing their symptoms, not the pulsars. T'raltixx himself is an inversion, drawing his power from light and planning to use Moya to provide the light his people need to become a large-scale threat.
  • The title character in Fireman originally came from the Earth's core, so exposure to sunlight in his powered form for more than three minutes could kill him. He even had a light that worked like a "Color Timer" that alerted him.
  • Goosebumps (1995): Several Monsters of the Week had this as a weakness.
    • "Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes": Unlike the books, the episode makes it so light paralyzes the gnomes rather than certain sounds. They are inert during the day and only come alive at night. A flaslight will do the trick, but it doesn't stop or kill them, it just slows them down, so you better hope that battery keeps working.
    • "Welcome to Dead House": As in the novel it's adapted from, the (kind of) undead townsfolk of Dark Falls are cannibals who are weakened by daylight, and can be killed by direct sunlight. Instead of pushing a tree over to expose the sun, the Bensons smash out a window inside of a house during The Siege after the townspeople have managed to get inside of the house, causing their undead neighbors to disintegrate into Empty Piles of Clothing. Unlike the book, it appears as if this does permanently kill them, and the Twist Ending is something completely different.
    • "The Haunted House Game": The ghosts are harmed by the flash from Jonathan's camera, which allows him and Nadine to escape through the front door.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022): Most vampires (with the exception of those who are ancient like Armand) can only stand in direct sunlight for a few seconds before their flesh starts to char and crumble. Louis de Pointe du Lac gets around this in Dubai by having specially shielded windows for his penthouse, and in 1910s New Orleans, he and Lestat de Lioncourt have the excuse of being expected to do their business at night rather than during the day.
  • Let the Right One In: As usual, vampires here are harmed by sunlight. It's shown in the very first scene as a young male vampire starts to burn when the light hits him, and with Eleanor later as well. Peter, as the first male vampire's revealed to be, gets left with hideous burns.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Direct sunlight greatly bothers the Orcs, causing their skin to actually boil, meaning they have to cloak themselves on the surface.
  • The Orville: The antagonist species, the Krill, die if exposed to strong enough UV light. This is why they wear helmets on Earth-like worlds.
  • The giant winged serpent in the Sanctuary (2007) episode "The Depths" is intolerant of sunlight. This is what kicks off the plot initially. Remembering this helps Magnus and Will sneak past it later in the episode.
  • Smallville, Bizarro is a sort of opposite to Clark Kent. Kryptonite makes him stronger and sunlight makes him weaker.
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Operation: Annihilate!", the parasites that infected the colonists on the planet Deneva are destroyed by bright light.
  • Star Trek: Discovery establishes that Terrans are significantly more sensitive to light than Prime-universe humans; this is why Evil Is Not Well-Lit.
  • True Blood: Vampires who meet the sunlight directly explode into flames. In the season 1 finale, Bill demonstrates the extent to which it weakens them by going out during the day to save Sookie from Rene (although it's sort of a Senseless Sacrifice since Sam had already saved her). Sookie finds him burning under the sunlight a few moments later and she and Sam get him under cover again. Older vampires are even more susceptible; the 2000-year-old Godric Disappears into Light within seconds of exposure.
  • Two Sentence Horror Stories: In "Teeth" vampires like Olivia burn from exposure to sunlight.
  • Speaking of Ultraman, the Underground people from Episode 22 died when a captured Hayata transformed into Ultraman in their presence, and the light from the transformation was too much for them.
  • In an episode of The X-Files, one of the Monsters of the Week was explained as someone suffering from a similar skin condition. In truth, no, he was a freakin' vampire.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Vampires traditionally avoided sunlight, though the idea that it would rapidly kill them is a modern invention.
  • In Norse mythology, Thor tricks the dark elf Alvis to stay up answering questions until the sun rises and kills him.
  • In Scandinavian folklore trolls either turn to stone or explode when exposed to sunlight.

    Visual Novels 
  • Kubitarou from Spirit Hunter: NG is sensitive to light, and will disappear if a strong light is shone on her. This is justified as Kubitarou having oxyopia when she was alive; her acute eyesight caused her to be overly sensitive to light, which became a straight-out weakness when she became a spirit.

    Web Animation 
  • DSBT InsaniT: Averted with Boo, as he gladly tells Bill after his Light Beam fails to harm him.

    Webcomics 
  • Champions of Far'aus: Subject x9x is reduced to an agonized, screeching blob when Flamel activates the light spell Hyperion provided.
  • Charby the Vampirate: Most of the vampires will burst into flame and be reduced to ashes near instantaneously if exposed to direct sunlight.
  • Crimson Stars: Vampires are somewhat allergic to ultraviolet light, which tends to stop their superhuman regeneration.
  • Derelict: The various Miasmic races are hurt by light — specifically, ultraviolet light. Long-term exposure to sunlight slowly burns them to death, while UV weapons can be used to great effect against even the largest members of their species.
  • Goblin Hollow: The gargoyles are an indirect example. Sunlight doesn't directly harm or weaken them, but since they are immobilized by direct observation (in the same vein as Doctor Who's Weeping Angels), they are much less dangerous in a well-illuminated area.
  • The Order of the Stick: Sunlight inflicts Deader than Dead on vampires within seconds. The vampire cleric Malack created a custom spell to negate this vulnerability. When he's in the desert, a timely Dispel Magic reduces him to ash.
  • Sam & Fuzzy:
    • One of the many mental illnesses that plague vampires is chronic Heliophobia, which makes the vampire act as though daylight (and bright light in general) is fatal to them. Those without the Heliophobia are as affected by the sun as regular humans however.
    • Jess Star and the rest of the shapeshifting slugs cannot shapeshift in direct sunlight and revert to their natural forms when exposed. As a result, most are happy staying Underground where this isn't an issue.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: Rash creatures are highly sensitive to sunlight, and direct exposure to it burns and eventually kills them; as a result, they're nocturnal by obligation and can't move in the open during the day unless it's raining or heavily overcast. Some develop natural armor and thickened hides which afford them some protection, but even these can only roam outside during twilight hours. UV radiation seems to be factor in this weakness, since soiled gear can be sanitized by being put under a UV lamp or left in the sun long enough.

    Web Original 
  • In Brennus, the Dark's wraiths are weakenend by light.
  • Hamster's Paradise: The troglofauna living in the Sub-Arcuterran Cavern System are completely blind as they lack eyes but they do have patches of skin on their bodies that can detect light and they will instinctively flee from it. The reason for this is to deter them from traveling to the surface where they are at a distinct disadvantage to the sighted predators living there. Some of the insects and fungus living in the caves have evolved to take advantage of this by developing bioluminescence that scares away any troglofauna trying to eat them.
  • In The Sanguine Chronicles, sunlight doesn't directly harm vampires, but it does disable their supernatural powers.
  • SCP Foundation
  • The world of Taerel Setting has the kin'toni whom are vampic monsters that happen to be harmed by light, driving the kin'toni into caves and ruins during the day. Sunlight cases a kin'toni body to reject their own tissues.
  • As DIO is still a vampire in Vaguely Recalling JoJo, he carries around an umbrella to protect himself from the sunlight.
  • Vamp of the Whateley Universe. She's an albino with vampiric powers, and she's sensitive to sunlight. Carmilla used to be extremely sensitive, and wore special protective armor so she could go out during the day.
  • Unwanted Houseguest: Doctor Wolfula speculates that this may be the case for the Shadow Demon. He's proven correct when the Shadow Demon is defeated by the beam of Owl Head Lighthouse.

    Real Life 
  • Due to their soft, moist bodies being sensitive to heat and dehydration, earthworms spend much of their lives underground and display an aversion to bright light (they lack eyes, but have light-sensitive cells in their skin). They also die quickly when exposed to direct sunlight.
  • There’s a reason the genetic disorder Porphyria is nicknamed the Vampire Disease. The skin literally blisters when exposed to sunlight along with oodles of other unfortunate side effects.
  • The sun can cause sun burns and skin cancer. The genetic disorder xeroderma pigmentosum removes the body's ability to repair damage caused to the skin by ultraviolet radiation; as a result sufferers are highly vulnerable to skin cancer and must avoid sunlight as much as possible.
    • Relatedly, it's entirely possible to get a fatal sunburn if you are very pale and are outside with no clothes or sunblock all day.
  • Albinos do not like direct sunlight — they have no melanin to delay sunburn, and in bright light their eyes hurt and see even worse than they do normally ("normal" being half-blind).
  • Every species of plant has evolved to tolerate specific amounts of sunlight (usually divided by horticulturalists into three categories: Full sun, Partial sun, and Shaded). Plants that tolerate heavy shade will be killed surprisingly quickly by too much direct sunlight. For reference, most house plants are shade tolerant (or prefer indirect or filtered sunlight).
    • Lower school science teachers will probably have a story about this. Many textbooks will encourage teachers to demonstrate photosynthesis by taking two cuttings from some decorative plant that is available and placing one in the light and the other in the dark. The idea being that the plant kept in the shade will wither and die while the one kept in the sun will prosper. Since most house plants fall into the shade tolerant category, the experiment will often produce the opposite of the intended results.
  • People with Photophobia can experience a range of symptoms ranging from discomfort and sensitivity to headaches (unless the headaches themselves are the cause of photophobia) when they are in the presence of bright lights.
  • Many geeks, introverts and other people who spend much of their time indoors tend to quip about the "evil daystar" on the occasions that they must go outside during the day. Along with those people that work a graveyard shift.
  • Deepsea life relies so much on the lack of light around it that exposure to what is (to us) normal amounts can prove fatal, ranging from sensory overloading to flat-out blindness. (Most life isn't so much blind as it is supremely sensitive to faint light; that's what anglerfish rely on, after all.) Yes, this means that whenever we manage to capture footage of, say, a gulper eel or a viperfish, it usually ends up dead shortly afterwards- a blessing for the scavengers on the seafloor, a miserable feeling for us. Luckily, scientists are trying to switch over to red light to prevent this from happening. As red barely penetrates through even the surface of the water, most aquatic creatures can't perceive it.
  • A tried and true treatment for eczema is to expose it to sunlight. Why it works is still theoretical, but it's believed that the vitamin D from the sun may trigger an autoimmune response which fights viruses, bacteria, and fungi present in the skin that make eczema worse, and that the UV radiation of the sun reduces inflammation and alleviates some of the dryness and itching.

Alternative Title(s): Light Hurts Evil

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Death of the Demon King

The Messanger hits the rocket in the glass ceiling, causing the Demon King's eye to burn leaving nothing but his crown and dust.

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5 (5 votes)

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