Follow TV Tropes


Technicolor Toxin

Go To

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

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 works like anime or video games, 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.

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 or not. 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 and Perfect Poison. See also Sickly Green Glow and Purple Is the New Black.


    open/close all folders 

Purple Poison

    Anime and 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 hasn't been seen in color in the manga, but JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle shows it as being purple.
  • In Joujuu Senjin Mushibugyou, 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 that have strong poisonous attacks are often depicted as purple, such as 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 the anime of 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Cobra-themed Kamen Rider Ohja of Kamen Rider Ryuki is conveniently purple.
    • As is scorpion-themed Sasword in Kabuto. Purple poison actually drips from his weaponry as he attacks.

    Video Games 
  • The poisonous essence that regularly expands and shrinks the playable area in is purple-colored.
  • In most Brave Frontier games, the Poison status is purple in color, but its symbol shows green bubbles on a purple background.
  • In 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.
  • 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.
  • In Disgaea, poisoned characters are signaled with purple bubbles.
  • "Poisonous Pipeline" in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! 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).
  • In the Dragon Quest series, poison swamps are always colored violet.
  • Starting from Final Fantasy I, almost all the games in the saga features purple swamps where you take damage as you walk.
  • Skulryk's poison clouds in Gemfire are deep purple.
  • In Genji: Dawn Of The Samurai, the Poison element is Purple.
  • Poisonous swamps are always bright purple in Highborn.
  • Giant mushrooms in Hive Jump spit clouds of purple gas.
  • Poisonous swamps are purple in Jesus Christ RPG Trilogy.
  • In 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.
  • The poison from both the Poison Staff and the blowpipes in is represented as purple.
  • You can tell Woodfall Swamp is poisoned in Majora's Mask due to the water having a distinct reddish-purple hue. Even the plants take on bright, unnatural colors.
  • In 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 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.
  • In 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.
  • In the Pikmin games, the spores from the Puffstool and the poison gas in the sequel are purple. 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 tothough they can't be blown by wind, making Whites the only Pikmin who's color does not match that of their element.
  • In 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.
  • 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.
  • Poison in Shin Megami Tensei games turns characters purple with violet bubbles coming off them.
  • In 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.
  • In Mario games, the purple shroom inflicts poison or disables the playable characters, depending on the game.
    • In Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel there are swamps with purple gunk that instantly cause you to drown.
    • The stronger version of the poison status in the Mario & Luigi games turns the brothers bright violet.
  • In the Cave level of the Subspace Emissary story in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the poison gas you encounter is purple colored.
  • The Grimy Water in the final level of Tonic Trouble is shaded purple.
  • The poison in Where's My Water?.
The poisonous gas that regularly advances and shrinks the playable area in Zombs is purple-colored.

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

    Real Life 
  • Iodine has a bright purple color in its liquid and gaseous form. It is also toxic in those forms: on the contrary, its refined ethanol mixture used for disinfecting wounds appears beige.

Green Poison

    Anime and Manga 

  • 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.

  • Averted and lampshaded in Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay - Vimes expects arsenic to be green and is surprised to learn otherwise.

    Live-Action TV 
  • A promotional picture for the first 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 the remake of Altered Beast, a Giant Spider boss attacks by spitting body parts coated in green stuff, implied to be venom.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has this level called "Toxic Tower", where the player must climb platforms to avoid contact with the rising green water.
  • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • Later games in the Emergency! 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.
  • In Final Fantasy, the "Poison" and "Toxin" status itself is usually shown in the form of green bubbles/green oozing stuff.
  • In Final Fantasy II, Venom magic is bright green at low levels and dark green at high levels.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, not only are poison spells green, characters also glow green when poisoned.
  • Bio spell in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
  • Poison weapons and potions are vibrantly green in Fury Unleashed, and cause the afflicted enemies to have a Sickly Green Glow.
  • In Gem Craft green gems are the poisonous ones.
  • The acid in Impressive Title: Badlands always glows green.
  • 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.
  • In The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, Cynder's Poison element is green.
  • 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.
    • On the other hand, the poison that was implemented in a large Game Mod The Aether before the base game is color-coded purple.
  • The poison in Neopets: The Darkest Faerie is bright green.
  • The poisonous attacks in Operencia: The Stolen Sun are always very bright (almost whitish) green in color.
  • In Perfect Dark, the nerve gas in Area 51 is greenish in color.
  • In 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.
  • In Stinkoman 20X6, the poison dripping from "Tortan" (a bottle of poison) is bright lime-green in color.
  • Titan Quest consistently represents poison by a vibrant green color.
  • Throughout the Ultima 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).
  • In 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.
  • In one of the X-Men Legends 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.

  • 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, Season 3: pyschopathic Sram assassin Toxine 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.

  • 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 is usually dyed green.

Other Colors

    Anime and 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.

    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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The Creepy Centipedes from Project Altered Beast 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.


    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, also subvert 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.
  • Besides chlorine, the rest of the halogen elements are like this. Fluorine is extremely toxic and reactive and has a yellow colour. Bromine is either a red-brown liquid or a bright orange 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.
  • 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 subversions, such as the snowy white highly lethal Destroying Angel mushroom,or lye crystals, the latter of which will cause severe burns on contact.

Alternative Title(s): Purple Poison, Poison Is Green, Technicolor Poison, Brightly Colored Poison


How well does it match the trope?

Example of:


Media sources: