Follow TV Tropes

Following

Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/multicolored.png
Now available in vanilla, cool mint, blue raspberry, cherry, banana, and lemon-lime!

"...I mean, he does have computer-generated blue all over him. That's what electricity looks like, right?"

In Real Life, most lightning bolts are purplish white or bluish white. Sometimes they're reddish, orange or even greenish.

However, in certain types of works, lightning bolts and other types of electricity are chiefly yellow (which is quite an uncommon color for lightning, at least when not having an orange tinge), often a simple zigzag shape and seldom striking from the ground to sky or from the one to be shocked to the object. Justified since yellow is a standard warning sign color, associated with electricity and fire in general (and as we all know, lightning is electric). Plus, etymologically, the word "electric" came from the Greek word for amber, a yellow gem that was known and used by ancient scientists for its electrostatic properties.

Most video games with the Fire, Ice, Lightning trinity will also make lightning yellow to differentiate it from ice (and to exhaust the three primary colours).

In live-action films and more realistic video games, though, lightning bolts are still predominantly blue. However, sometimes it is very blue so that there is no white seen. Alternatively, purple can be added to the mix, but again it tends to be a very vibrant purple. In a manner, such purple lightning can clash well with the traditional yellow.

A Sub-Trope of Color-Coded Elements.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

Yellow Lightning

    Anime & Manga 
  • Fate Testarossa in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has an inherent affinity for lightning-based magic. Her lightning (as well as other spells) is yellow or golden in color.
  • One Piece
    • The lightning created by Nami's Clima Tact is yellow.
    • Enel's lightning produced from his Devil Fruit powers is blue in the anime. In the manga, it is yellow.
  • Laxus, from Fairy Tail, is a lightning mage whose attacks are all yellow or pale yellow.
  • In the manga version of Naruto, lightning from ninjutsu is supposed to be yellow because of the color of chakra in the series was supposed to be yellow; the anime makes both blue.
  • Cure Peace from Smile Pretty Cure! can use yellow lightning attacks.
  • Along with the other elemental themed robots in GaoGaiGar (Hyoryu, Enryu and Fuuryu), Rairyu is the yellow one, with lightning powers.
  • In the anime adaptation of My Hero Academia, Denki Kaminari's Quirk produces yellow electricity.
  • In the anime of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Kanna's lightning is yellow.

    Comic Books 
  • The Flash: Every version of the Flash uses a yellow lightning bolt as part of his costumery. Thunder and lightning are a near-ubiquitous motif for the Flash family; their power source, the Speed Force, is sometimes physically represented as an eternal thunderstorm. Depending on the Artist, the Flash even leaves trails of yellow electricity (usually emanating from the yellow parts of his costume, as the quirk started from being a visual representation of their fast movement, before Serial Escalation lead to it becoming genuine lightning). The yellow colour is somewhat justified by the fact the Speed Force isn't normal lightning, but a magical, metaphysical force that just looks like lightning, thus explaining why it can do anything.
  • Shazam!: The Marvel Family's lightning is yellow. They are even transformed by yellow bolts.
  • Spider-Man's Electro throws bolts of yellow electricity. They're also represented that way on his costume, although certain incarnations of the character fall firmly into blue lightning territory. This has been referenced in a few comics where Spider-Man is able to identify electricity at a distance as being from Electro because of its distinct yellow hue. In The Spectacular Spider-Man, it's actually green.
  • Wonder Woman: When Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark uses her lightning generating powers the resulting bolts are pale yellow.

    Live-Action TV 

    Pinballs 

    Video Games 
  • Bug Fables: Electricity is represented with yellow throughout the game. Electric attacks appear as yellow lightning bolts, and the electric-themed Numb status ailment sees the the affected character flashing the same color. Medals relating to the Numb status are yellow as well. Electric-themed enemies are also fairly common in the Hive Factory and the Ancient Castle areas, both of which have a predominantly yellow color scheme.
  • Crono, the protagonist of Chrono Trigger, uses lightning magic and has a yellow frame around the "lightning" reading on his status screen (whereas Marle's water is blue and Lucca's fire is red). The lightning that he actually calls forth though are much more realistic and are very white with a light tinge of blue. "Lightning 2" does shoot out yellow light before it releases the actual lightning though.
  • For some time City of Heroes gave hero players blue lightning and villain players red lightning, despite being the same powers. After issue 15 the player can make the lightning whatever color they want.
  • DuckTales 2 on the NES had a yellow lightning bolt strike a block to make it go away. Magica DeSpell's lightning bolts in the first were yellow.
  • PSI Thunder in EarthBound and Mother 3
  • The Jumper series features electricity traps coloured yellow with red sections which indicate a safe zone in the current. (Don't ask how it works. Just be glad they exist.)
  • Mega Man games have yellow lightning. For an example, Mega Man's Elec Man and Mega Man 10's Sheep Man. Mega Man X4 went with (mostly) yellow lightning, in contrast with the rest of the series which usually went with blue.
  • Zap-elemental Meteos are yellow, as are the electricity-based inhabitants of the planet Wiral.
  • The Pikmin series starting from the second installment usually portrays electricity as yellow. Yellow Pikmin are the ones immune to it, most enemies that emit it have yellow on their coloration, and electric walls are mainly yellow-colored in all designs. Pikmin 3 has some instances of white and purple-tinted electricity, such as the electric attack used by the Final Boss, but the series overall favors using yellow.
  • The lightning item in the Platform Racing series has a yellow icon and effect.
  • Electric monsters in Pokémon have yellow lightning attacks (except Thunder, which is white in Ruby/Sapphire), and many Electric-type Pokémon like Pikachu tend to be yellow-colored as well.
  • The Shantae series:
  • Lightning is shown as yellow for the Defect's orbs in Slay the Spire. It does serve a useful purpose, though: since the Defect already has two pale blue orbs (frost orbs being only pale blue and plasma orbs having an orange ring around them), having lightning as yellow means you can immediately tell what your orb balance is like.

    Webcomics 
  • Aurora (2019): Lightning is consistently depicted as bright yellow, as are the glow effects of lightning magic.
  • In The Order of the Stick, most lightning spells create either white or yellow bolts — though Tsukiko's Electric Orb is blue. There is also the notable exception of Zz'dtri, who produces green lightning.

    Western Animation 

    Real Life 
  • Symbols in weather reports, to differentiate the bolts from the rainclouds, typically colored blue.
  • "Risk of Electric Shock" warning signs in the United States are typically black on a yellow background, but that's more for OSHA compliance here than anything else.

Very Blue Lightning

    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • During Superman's Audience-Alienating Era as Superman Blue, he generated blue lightning. When Superman Red is introduced, he uses red lightning.
  • Static projects pale blue lightning these days. Though in his original series it was depicted as white.

    Fan Works 
  • After being genetically altered with Jolteon DNA in The Myamoto Project, James gains electric powers. He's associated with blue, lightning and all.
    An aura of blue and white electricity surrounded the young man, and his eyes glowed an unnatural, phosphorous blue, the same color as the electric aura surrounding his body. A sound like a great thunderclap shook the Gym and the air smelled thickly of an odor like burnt wires.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 

    Video Games 
  • In Viewtiful Joe, Captain Blue and his daughter Sylvia's lightning attacks are, appropriately, blue. Electrical sources are also blue in general. Alastor's lightning is stylishly purple.
  • In the inFAMOUS series, Cole's good karma lightning is blue.
  • In the Shin Megami Tensei games, Zio spells typically release blue lightning bolts when cast. To drive the point home, the defensive spell to nullify lightning attacks in Persona 3 and Persona 4 is called Blue Wall.
  • Luigi from Super Mario Bros. uses very bright blue electric attacks in a few games. note 
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable, Fate's Evil Twin, Material-L/Levi the Slasher, has blue lightning compared to Fate's yellow. For each character, their lightning is the same color as their hair.
  • Almost all MechWarrior games since 3 portray the PPC weapon as firing blue-white bolts, often intentionally meant to evoke comparisons to lightning as per the source material. The 2 series of games as well as MechAssault featured crackling blue ball lightning for PPC shots, while the first game simply featured a nondescript blue beam. MechCommander features blue-white electrical bolts in both iterations of the game. Mechwarrior Tactics looks like it will take the same route.
  • Azure Striker Gunvolt definitely lives up to its name. The main character wears blue clothes, and his default lightning attacks are mostly blue-colored, though they can be tinted with different colors like purple or yellow depending on his equipment loadout. It seems to be common to all Azure Strikers, as Asimov also uses blue lightning.
  • The Borderlands series uses blue as the color code for shock weapons and hazards. Yellow is exclusively for anything explosive.
  • In Evolve, the Kraken's electrical attacks are faintly tinted blue. Markov's lightning gun plays this straight, with bright blue lightning.
  • Every electricity themed hero in Dota2 (Razor, Storm Spirit, Disruptor, Zeus) uses blue lightning.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition breaks with its predecessors by making shock damage display in light purple text, to complement purple icons and blue lightning effects.
  • Electric grenades in Resident Evil 5 are cyan.
  • Bayonetta: Most angels that use electricity are blue or wear blue armor, with electricity itself being a bright blue.
  • Terraria: Electrical attacks are cyan, which is most commonly seen in the Martian Invasion event. Both of the electrical weapons that can be found in the Underground Desert also have dark blue gems as part of their designs.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 

Yellow and Blue Lightning

    Anime & Manga 
  • Dragon Ball Z: The auras of Saiyans in the Super Saiyan 2 and 3 forms (as well as Vegetto in his Super Saiyan form, and Gohan post-Elder Kai powerup) crackle with blue lightning. In some of the games, it's yellow, however.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: Erio Mondial has yellow as his magic color, but when he uses lightning magic, his body and/or his weapon are surrounded by blue sparks. Fate taught him her spell Thunder Rage, but his version is blue in contrast to Fate's yellow (and it looks completely different, anyway). And Signum taught him her spell Shiden Issen, hers is a fire-elemental sword slash. His version is a lightning-elemental punch; when he charges it, his arm is surrounded by blue sparks, the impact of the punch creates a yellow explosion with yellow lightnings, and when it's over, his arm is surrounded with blue sparks again.
    • Fate's Zanber form had blue sparks in the movie version of A's (they were purple in the original version).
  • One Piece: Enel is on both sides — his electricity is yellow in the manga, and pale blue in the anime and video games.
  • Pokémon: The Series: Most Electric-type attacks are yellow, but certain Pokemon - such as Mareep and Pachirisu - display blue. Sometimes both are seen at the same time.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Osiris the Heaven Dragon/Slifer the Sky Dragon has two Breath Weapons, since it has two mouths. The first mouth fires its regular attack—a long yellow thunder beam attack, called "Thunder Force." The second mouth fires blue lightning ball attacks, called Shou Raidan ("Summon Lightning Bolt"), that decreases the ATK (and in the anime, the DEF when the monsters are summoned in Defense Position) by the amount of 2000 points, and it will destroy any monster below 2000 points.
  • Zatch Bell!: Zatch uses yellow lightning while his twin brother uses blue.

    Comic Books 
  • Marvel's Thor and Storm of the X-Men have lightning of both colors, Depending on the Artist.
  • As of DC Rebirth, The Flash has gone down this route to distinguish between Wally West and Barry Allen. Essentially, the idea is that because Wally is so powerful, his Speed Force lightning burns much hotter and now looks like pale blue lightning. According to artist Brett Booth (who designed this), his headcanon is that the speedsters' lightning colours dictate how powerful they are, though this is far from being explicitly canon.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Video Games 
  • DC Universe Online: Players with the electricity power set uses yellow lightning for attacks and blue lightning for healing effects.
  • The Legend of Spyro: Spyro's electric breaths take the form of crackling yellow bolts of electricity. Volteer, the Guardian of Electricity, is primarily bight yellow in color, with blue spines, claws, horns, wing fingers, and belly plates. Electric elemental enemies also glow yellow.
  • Pokémon: The Electric type is color-coded and most of its attacks are yellow, but in Pokémon Black and White, the electric dragon Zekrom uses blue lightning in its Fusion Bolt move, and blue lightning surges through its tail. The electric lizard Toxtricity from Pokémon Sword and Shield comes in two variants: Amped Form has yellow accents on its body while Low Key Form has blue accents.
  • God of War uses both in regards to the gods, with Zeus' usual lightning attacks being yellow/golde, but with Poseidon's, Kronos' and younger Zeus's being blue. Kratos later gains the whips of Nemesis, which generate green lightning.
  • This shows up in the Kingdom Hearts series sometimes. Typically, heroic characters like Sora and Aqua use yellow lightning, while villains like Xemnas and Vanitas use Sith-style blue lightning.
  • Although normal lightning in Tales of Symphonia is consistently blue- or purple-white, the Temple of Lightning requires you to shift the Sorcerer's Ring between blue, yellow, and red lightning types, which each break blocks of their own color.
  • Two of the customizable boosts available in Rocket League are both yellow and blue lightning.
  • Visible to Super Smash Bros. player on the receiving end of a thunder-abusing Pikachu. The attack is most deadly when it turns from yellow to blue.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic III: The game is all over the place with the colour of lightning. Storm Elementals crackle with yellow electricity and shoot yellow lightning bolts at enemies, while Energy Elementals and Titans attack with blue lightning instead. Meanwhile, the spells Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a more realistic white.
  • Suikoden uses yellow in its early installments and whitish-blue later on. Flik uses lightning magic (though can change that if you want) and he is called "the Blue Lightning." Though this has to do with the color of his garment more than anything else.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • In Super Mario RPG, Mallow's basic lightning attack, Thunderbolt (which is a Herd-Hitting Attack) sends down a storm of white-blue bolts, resembling real-life thunderbolts. His more powerful Shocker move uses a cartoony yellow one, however.
    • Super Mario Sunshine: Electric goop is both yellow and blue, and shocks Mario if he makes contact with it.
  • Monster Hunter uses yellow and blue lightning effects on certain weapons to represent paralysis ailment and thunder element, respectively. As a result of this distinction we have the somewhat ironic scenario of most thunder weapons being unable to inflict paralysis (and conversely, most paralysis-inflicting weapons don't deal elemental damage). Note that this only applies to the player; most thunder-element monsters are capable of calling down blue-colored bolts that inflict paralysis. Additionally, two monsters have red lightning: White Fatalis and Stygian Zinogre, the latter of which has Dragon-elemental lightning.
  • Metroid Prime: Hunters has two electric weapons: Sylux's Shock Coil is blue, short-ranged, and drains health, while Kanden's Volt Driver is yellow and can cause an Interface Screw.
  • Persona 4: Arena has three characters using Zio skills, so it uses different colors for each of them. Yu Narukami has the traditional blue lightning of the series, Kanji Tatsumi's is yellow to match his Persona's lightning bolt sword, and Akihiko Sanada has purple lightning, though it's really only noticeable in his Awakening Super, Maziodyne. Elizabeth also uses purple lightning in one of her special moves. Ultimax adds even more colors to the mix: Ken Amada uses greenish lightning for two of his moves, and Tohru Adachi has blood red lightning to match the color scheme of his Persona.
  • Mega Man 7 goes with both. Cloud Man uses yellow lightning, but the weapon Mega Man copies from him shoots out a blue lightning ball. Same goes for Clown Man in Mega Man 8 and Elec Man in Mega Man Powered Up.
  • Characters with the lightning element in Sengoku Basara display a variety of colours. Masamune, Kojuro, and Tadakatsu are blue, Muneshige is yellow, Yoshihiro is white, and Ranmaru and Matabe are purple.
  • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Tesla coils attacked with blue lightning in normal circumstances and yellow lightning when supplemented by a Tesla trooper.
  • In the Devil May Cry series we have yellow lightning, which Trish usesnote , blue lightning from Dante's sword, Alastor, and in the third game, purple lightning from his weaponized electric guitar, Nevan.
  • The elements in Chrono Cross, including the summon, when cast will create yellow lightning. Yellow is also the element color of lightning. Guile however, has a tech that strikes the foe with purple lightning.
  • The animations for PSI Thunder in EarthBound flash between yellow and blue.
  • Every single lightning-based miracle in Dark Souls is either yellow or if very potent, orange. This is believed to be because they are all derived from the same source: the powers of Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. In the final DLC for Dark Souls III, we finally see some blue lightning: the source of which is the titular Dark Soul itself, completely unconnected to Gwyn.
  • In M.U.G.E.N, the original characters that use electricity, usually use blue or yellow (mostly), but there're others that can vary depending of the palette chosen. One known case is Tetsu Yatogi, who can use blue or yellow electricity depending of which button do you use to choose him.
  • In Dengeki Stryker, the electricity generated by the heroes' Stryker System is blue in contrast to the Balbora Empire's orange flames. Chou Dengeki Stryker mixes things up a bit with the Balboran cyborg Iron Clie, who can wreath her artificial arm in golden lightning; in addition, Stryker Zero's lightning becomes gold when he equips the custom-built Stryker Drive Kamui. When Clie receives a proper Stryker System as part of her upgrade to Stryker Hagane, her lightning defaults to blue, but becomes gold again when her safeties are removed.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, lightning spells are colored blue, but have purple icons and shock damage is represented in yellow text.
  • In Dragon Age II, lightning spells have yellow and black icons, and shock damage is represented in yellow text, but the spells themselves show blue lightning effects.
  • Path of Exile uses primarily blue lightning, but also yellow lightning for divine-themed lightning skills, which all deal part physical damage.
  • Dragon Quest: Depending on the game, the Zap series of lightning spells are depicted as yellow or bluish-white lightning bolts. Some spinoffs, particularly the Monsters series of games, tend to have yellow electricity for Zap in order to tie a color to each element.
    • Dragon Quest Monsters introduced the ZapBird monster, later known as the Thunderbird, which could use various lightning spells and techniques. In the original GBC version, it was depicted as a large bird with blue plumage with a thundercloud in the middle of its body. When the game was remade for the Nintendo 3DS years later, the Thunderbird was changed to a yellow and black palette swap of the Firebird and Snowbird monsters instead.
    • Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker introduced the Zam series of darkness spells, which are represented as purple bolts of lightning as an opposite to Zap.
  • Spider-Man (Insomniac):
    • Spider-Man (PS4) features yellow as the color for Electro's lightning, while any of Peter's web gadgets that utilize electricity give off blue-tinted electrical effects.
    • Spider-Man: Miles Morales shows Miles' bioelectric Venom Powers as being an orange-yellow in color, while the Remote Mine gadget gives off blue-tinted sparks.
    • Marvel's Spider-Man 2 keeps the blue tint for electrical effects from deployable gadgets and any attacks using Peter's mechanical Spider-Arms that involve shocking opponents, and Miles' basic Venom Powers are the same Orangey-Yellow as they were in Miles Morales. When Miles starts unlocking "Evolved" Venom Powers when the Hunters break Martin Li out of jail, they're depicted as a very vibrant blue, with the difference in color being noted in universe.

    Webcomics 
  • Aurora: The element of Lightning has two physical aspects that are yellow or blue respectively that repel themselves and attract their opposing aspect. Mages tend to use one or the other the way most people have a dominant hand.
  • Magic in Slightly Damned is elemental in nature and those who use wind magic can create wind and lightning that is colored green. Except for Sakido who unlike every other wind magic user her lightning is blue, whether this is significant or not is currently unknown.

    Web Original 
  • DEATH BATTLE!
    • In the fight between Thor and Raiden, they had Thor use Yellow lightning, against Raiden's Blue lightning, both in order to show who shot which lightning bolts, and for a bit where Raiden redirects Thor's lightning back at him, which recolors it Blue. This is largely an artistic choice, as both Raiden and Thor are usually shown using the Blue variety.
    • Similarly, in the fight between Killua Zoldyck and Misaka Mikoto (while both usually use the Blue variety in their canons), they had Killua use Blue lightning against Misaka's Yellow lightning in order to show whose electrical attacks are whose...and likely because giving Killua the Yellow would have made him look like a Super Saiyan when he uses Godspeed.

    Western Animation 
  • Ben 10:
  • Mixels: The Electroids are primarily yellow, but the parts that harness their electric abilities are a light purplish-blue.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Flash bees, a type of electrogenic insect, are striped blue and yellow, their swarms are depicted as a bright blue core with a yellow border, and they produce a bright yellow glow effect when they sting.

Other

    Anime & Manga 
  • In the Bleach anime, Candice Catnipp's lightning goes from blue to green when she activates her Vollständig. It's also lime green in Bleach: Brave Souls.
  • As a God Slayer, Olga's spells in Fairy Tail are coloured 'black', or more precisely, dark purple. Laxus also activates 'Megaton Red Lightning' in his fight against Wall, which is black with a red aura in the anime, and is revealed in the sequel to be caused by him empowering his lightning with his own blood.
  • Hoshin Engi: In Soul Hunter, Shinkohyo's Super Paope Raikoben produces blue lightning bolts. Hakyu Hoshin Engi makes them red instead.
  • Precia Testarossa's lightning spells in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha are purple.
  • Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon is seen usually with blue lightning, but Depending on the Artist, also can be seen as green lightning.
  • In My Hero Academia, Izuku appears to emit green lightning while utilizing One For All: Full Cowl, but this is purely a visual effect and has yet to be seen shocking anything.
  • In Naruto, while most Lightning Release ninjutsu techniques are primarily blue, Kakashi developed a jutsu To accomodate for the loss of his Sharingan, as the Raikiri was no longer safe to use called Purple Electricity, which is, well, Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

    Eastern Animation 
  • The solid (!) lightning bolts that BoBoiBoy Lightning creates is colored yellow. Then there's his Super Mode, BoBoiBoy Thunderstorm, who creates red lightning bolts.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning and Red Lightning. Ghidorah's powers produce Yellow Lightning, Thor's bio-electrical powers produce Blue Lightning, and the half-Ghidorah Monster X's bio-electrical powers produce Red Lightning.
  • Amazing Fantasy: The bio-electricity that Izuku produces with his Venom Strike power is green, the same color as the energy his canon counterpart gives off while using One For All.
  • Destiny Intertwined: Electricity comes in a variety of colors, influenced by several possible factors:
    • Yellow is the most common and original form of the element.
    • White Electricity is the hottest, and leaves the strongest burns. It is believed to originate from mixing with Fire lineages.
    • Purple is cooler than yellow, but is more shocking. It is a relatively common variant.
    • Blue Electricity is the inverse of purple, being more hot than socking.
    • Green Electricity is rarer but not excessively so.
    • Red Electricity is the rarest kind. It is the coolest form of Electricity, but also the most shocking.
  • Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger:
    • During a flashback showing the Battle of Malachor V, the mass shadow generator creates a black hole that starts shooting out green lightning which chars the planet's surface.
    • Whenever Jaune uses Force Drain, he shoots out red-and-black lightning from his fingertips which drain the Life Energy out of their targets.
    • Nihilus's Force Drain works the same way as Jaune's. However, his lightning is colored orange.

    Literature 
  • In Star Wars Legends, force lightning is usually blue or purple, but can be virtually any color. Talzin and Luke both used green, Desolous, Tenebrous and Maul used red, which was also employed by the Son, though he's a special case, and Jaina Solo could use black. The Rakatan Infinite Empire also practiced yellow and orange force lightning.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Ace Lightning: Sparx's sword shoots pink lightning bolts.
  • In The Flash (2014), the various speedsters give off Speed Force lightning of various colors as they run:
    • Barry and most other speedsters give off yellow lightning.
    • The Reverse-Flash and the Rival have red lightning. It's not until Season 5 that it's revealed that the Reverse-Flash uses a Negative Speed Force that's fueled by The Power of Hate. The in-universe reasoning for the Rival's color is still up in the air, but the obvious out-of-universe reason for the different color is to mark its users as evil and contrast the yellow of the heroic speedsters.
    • Zoom gives off blue lightning. One episode shows another speedster, Trajectory, who gets her powers from a "Velocity-9" Super Serum; her lightning starts off yellow but turns blue just before she disintegrates from the drug's lethal side effect of cellular degeneration. The STAR Labs crew theorizes that the degeneration is the cause of the color change, and this serves as a clue that helps them figure out that Zoom is Jay Garrick (or rather the man they think is Jay), who was also known to take V-9 in the past and suffers from the side effects. When Zoom is turned into the Black Flash, his lightning turns red; he's not evil at this point but he is The Dreaded.
    • Savitar's Powered Armor turns his lightning white. Without the armor, it's the standard yellow.
    • Godspeed also has white lightning, either due to the different origin of his powers (tachyon research enhanced by Velocity-9, rather than being a natural metahuman) or the sheer power comparable to Savitar's.
    • The Accelerated Man, an Alternate Universe speedster and One-Scene Wonder, has purple lightning for some reason. When Barry's speed is briefly transferred to Iris in season four, her lightning is also purple.
    • XS has both purple and yellow lightning, the only speedster to have two colors at the same time. It's a combination of Barry's and Iris' colors, as she's their Kid from the Future. When she accessed the Negative Speed Force, the yellow lightning turned red, but the purple didn't.
  • Supernatural: The series largely averts this trope, featuring white lightning. Straight examples include the Wicked Witch's green lightning in Season 9, and the red lightning that flashes through Apocalypse World's skies.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Magic: The Gathering lightning and electricity in general fall under Red, so most lightning spells are portrayed with a red or magenta glow. This is by no means universal, however, with a few being portrayed as blue or white (ironic, considering Blue and White are Red's enemy colors). A solitary card seems to portray yellow lighting.

    Video Games 
  • Cole's bad karma lightning in inFAMOUS and inFAMOUS 2 is red. In the first game choosing to activate the Ray Sphere again to enhance your powers, an act so vile it permanently locks you at the lowest possible karma rating, turns it black.
  • In Evolve, the Elder Kraken has red lightning. On the hunter's side, Blitz Markov's lightning gun, which does more damage the longer it fires without stopping, goes from blue to purple to red to gold.
  • Spark Kirby uses green lightning, as does Plasma Kirby. The Big Bad of Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Queen Sectonia, can shoot black lightning from her Magic Staff.
  • In Castle Crashers, the Red Knight is seen with purple lightnings, but in some fanarts is also seen with red ones.
  • Subscribed members in Champions Online can color their powers in a variety of hues. Naturally, this applies to lightning powers, so besides blue and yellow lightning, there can be red, orange, pink, brown, purple and green in different shades each. You can even make an electricity-based hero whose every power uses a different color.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild all of the electricity has a visible greenish hue (this is to visually distinguish it from the white wind, red fire, and blue water, as well as make it easier to see when you're in the yellow-and-orange Gerudo Desert in which the lightning-based Divine Beast roams), however, the menu icon for Urbosa's Fury, the ability that lets Link call down lightning, is yellow.
  • In DC Universe Online, the color of weapon effects corresponds to the color of the user's powers. One attack for hand blaster-using characters is a stream of lightning, which can, for example, be red for Fire and Rage characters or green for Nature and Light characters.
  • Electricity element in Genshin Impact is shown as a vibrant purple, and with their users having some purple as part of their outfit colors, also seen in the enemies and bosses. Also, from the seven nations of Teyvat, Inazuma represents the Electro element, with good part of their nature and cities colored purple.
  • Electric weapons in the Metroid Prime series tend to be purple: The Wave Beam and Wavebuster from the first game are purple, as is the Grapple Voltage from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
  • In the Mega Man Zero and ZX series, electricity (and often, air) is typically associated with the color green.
  • In Quest for Glory III, lightning balls are green. In Quest for Glory IV, the lightning ball are green again, but are inexplicably blue when used in close combat. In Quest for Glory V, lightning balls are changed to blue.
  • In Diablo II, Diablo's infamous and dreaded red lightning hose. While it's red, it's actually a combination of lightning and physical damage.

    Western Animation 
  • Ben 10:
    • Buzzshock, a future alien from the original series creates green lightning.
    • Eye Guy also created blue lightning in his debut.
    • Dr. Viktor can create purple lightning, though his Omnitrix counterpart, Frankenstrike, uses green instead.
  • Young Justice (2010): Black Lightning, in a partial aversion of the Color Character trope, has his lightning appear as black with a blue edge to the bolts.

Alternative Title(s): Technicolor Lightning, Blue Lightning Yellow Lightning

Top

Grodus lightning

Grodus summons yellow lightning

How well does it match the trope?

5 (7 votes)

Example of:

Main / YellowLightningBlueLightning

Media sources:

Report