Basic Trope: Items or interface are grayed out to show they can't be used.
- Straight:
- Alice has a gun that turns gray when out of ammo.
- In Legends of Troperia, the button to flee battles is grayed out during mandatory boss fights.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's gun not only turns gray, light and dark components all move to the same shade.
- The flee button isn't just grayed out - it's obscured by a gray square altogether.
- Downplayed: Useless items are still colorful, but they're noticeably more dull.
- Justified:
- Alice's gun uses color as a projectile. When she fires her last shot, it uses the color from the weapon itself for the last bit of energy.
- The flee button uses color to show how many uses are left before your party needs to regain stamina.
- Inverted: Gray items are useful, colorful ones are useless.
- Subverted: Due to a bug, you can still hit the flee button, despite it being grayed out.
- Double Subverted: ...However, a failsafe in the code ensures the enemy will catch up to you no matter what.
- Parodied: Pencils, rubber bands, and other ordinary items inexplicitly turn gray upon breaking.
- Zig Zagged: While color is usually a good indicator of whether Alice's gun will work, it can still jam up while colorful, or fire a few extra rounds despite graying-out.
- Averted: Color, or lack thereof, is non-indicative of whether an item will work.
- Enforced: The producers want an easy-to-notice indicator of whether an option is on the table.
- Lampshaded:
- "Oh a weapon! Nevermind, it's gray, no point picking it up."
- "You can't escape me! Your flee button is grayer than ash."
- Invoked: Professor Galactic designs her weapons to gray out when they need reloaded.
- Exploited:
- Alice uses weapon color as an eye-test to determine which weapons are already loaded.
- Emperor Evuls paints over gray weapons so they falsely appear useful.
- Defied: After seeing Evuls catch on to the grayed-out weapons, Galactic switches to a more subtle indicator to allow Alice a better chance at bluffing ammo.
- Discussed: "If your speed stat is too low compared to the enemy's, your flee button will turn gray, meaning you can't run away."
- Conversed: "Gray meaning useless makes no sense. If I painted a chair red, I can still sit on it. What makes gray any different?"
- Implied: Alice looks through a weapons depot. While there are items of all colors, including gray, she only seriously considers the ones that are red, blue, or green.
- Deconstructed: As gray being useless catches on, the blind and colorblind are put at a distinct disadvantage by not being able to tell what items are still useable.
- Reconstructed: Rather than throw out color as an indicator, it is used alongside shape and non-visual cues to maintain accessibility.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice uses a stone as an improvised weapon. Amazingly, it phases right through Evuls, as the stone was gray.
- A boss fight looks at your menu options, stick a straw in your flee button, and drinks the color out of it.
- Played For Drama: Alice's weapon runs out of ammo sooner than expected, allowing the genre savvy Evuls to corner her without fear of retaliation.
- Played for Horror: A group of wandering ghosts haunt a dreary neighborhood. Anyone caught out at night slowly has the color sucked out of them until they are left a pale, empty shell.
Huh, the link to the main page isn't gray? Guess it still works.
