Basic Trope: Powerful weapons, armor, people, et cetera glow inexplicably.
- Straight: There are powerful weapons. They glow.
- Exaggerated:
- Downplayed: Powerful weapons glow, but the glow is very dim.
- Justified:
- Powerful weapons glow because our heroes are fighting shadows.
- The weapons' power makes them hot enough to cause them to glow.
- Our heroes are fighting in underground caverns and don't have a free hand to hold a light. The wizards are as good at making them glow as making them powerful.
- All magical objects produce heat, light, or other side effect. Light's a common choice because it's useful.
- The weapons are radioactive. (Then why doesn't anyone have cancer?)
- Anything powerful enough to matter on the scale this show is dealing with is too powerful for the objects to reliably contain. The excess power wants to get out, and barring any Kame Hame Hadoukens they may cast, its only choice is to turn into light and escape that way.
- Inverted:
- A glowing weapon is a sign of an amateur enchanter. The truly powerful weapons don't waste energy that way.
- How about this. The more powerful something is, the less glow there is.
- Alternatively: Powerful weapons emit darkness.
- Subverted:
- A huge glowing bomb is assumed to be a superweapon, and is then revealed to not have any effective blast due to its inefficiency.
- Double Subverted:
- A huge glowing bomb is assumed to be a superweapon, and is then revealed to not have any effective blast due to its inefficiency. But the glow itself is plenty effective.
- They can be recharged, it's like ammo while fighting dark being.
- The more powerful something is, the less glow there is... except the deglow is like a glow to beings made of light.
- Parodied:
- The heroes fight with giant glowsticks.note
- The Hero defeats the Big Bad using a giant lightbulb.
- A master of unarmed combat must wear gloves to conceal his glowing hands.
- Zig Zagged: There's a fifteen-page-long chart explaining how effective weapons with different glow intensities are against one another. And the authors still manage to do a complete Ass Pull every once in a while.
- Averted:
- Glowing weapons are purely aesthetic.
- The weapons do not glow at all.
- There are no weapons.
- Enforced: The toy company handling the merchandising wants to make all the best toy weapons glow in the dark, so the producers have that incorporated into the strongest weapons on the show.
- Lampshaded: "Why are glowing swords more powerful? I mean, it just doesn't make much sense."
- Invoked: "I'll win! I have to! I have a GLOWING! SWORD!"
- Exploited:
- The heroes use their weapons as flashlights when they need to find their way in the dark.
- While tracking down the heroes, the villains keep note of how bright their weapons are in order to strike them down with exactly as much force as is needed.
- Defied: "Target their leader! The one with the glowing halberd, kill him first and snuff out his light!"
- Discussed: "I don't care what anime has taught you: in the real world, a glowier sword is not more powerful."
- Conversed: "What's with all the glowing swords? Is this a skirmish or a rave?"
- Implied: Weapons emit light when used, with stronger light seeming to correlate with stronger weapons. Everyone just thinks its a pointless effect given the number of non glowing powerful weapons.
- Deconstructed:
- Powerful weapons glow — thereby expending their energy and becoming powerless.
- The most powerful characters are all blind. What was the audience expecting, to be able to see after that ultimate attack that's rated at 47 million Candela? Furthermore, the energy loss from the glow turns out to be a major waste of energy, as a similarly-rated sword that was forged from a light-absorbing material can do the same attack better.
- The swords look impressive, but that's part of the problem: their glow lights up the heroes like a christmas tree, making stealth impossible: which is a very bad things when the Big Bad outguns you.
- Reconstructed:
- Vision damage is a risk that the heroes must take to defeat the threat. And the heroes, at least, take eye protection seriously.
- The glow is not powerful enough to cause eye damage.
- The swords only glow when in use: although they still make stealth missions hard...
- Played For Laughs: The heroine's glowing sword goes out in the middle of a fight, and she has to smack it a few times to get it glowing again.
- Played For Drama: Evil weapons do not glow, giving the villains the advantage when they fight in the Cave of Shadows, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Logical Extreme: The business end of the weapon is made of energy, such as the case with Laser Blade.
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