Bizarro Elements

...But everything changed when the Candy Nation attacked.

The range of elemental powers on display is pretty creative, although the word elemental is getting stretched... We're past all of your fire, lightning, and ice, granddad. The cool kids now use smoke, concrete, video, and neon, which admittedly is an element (points to neon on the Periodic Table).

— Zero Punctuation, inFAMOUS: Second Son review

Everybody knows the four traditional Classical Elements of fire, water, earth, and air, which tend to serve as the basis of almost everything related to magic in almost any Fantasy setting. Throughout the years, many writers have pushed the concept, expanding to include other elements, like Element No. 5, Heart, Metal, Wood, and Lightning.^note There are actual Chinese traditions in which the five elements are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, and Indian systems which add "void", "space", "ether", or "sound" to the classic European four. But sometimes, it is just not enough. Bizarro Elements are Natural Elements with a weirdness factor.

Instead of the aforementioned standard elements, the basis of a work's universe revolves around unnatural, seemingly random, and very unusual elements, like say "Banana", "Cookie Dough" or "Cement". They either form their new elemental ensemble or are added atop the traditional four. These bizarro elements aren't limited to magical usage, as they could be on an atomic level and, thus, compose part of the very fabric of the universe. They are mostly Played for Laughs, but are as often taken very seriously In-Universe.

To be considered a Bizarro Element, the element must truly be unconventional and rather unseen. Over the years, some Bizarro Elements became so widely accepted and popular that many "secondary elements" started to pop up here and there, becoming their own tropes. (For a more precise list of these "promoted" elements, see the "Other Elements" folder in Elemental Powers.)

For a similarly irreverent take on modern chemical elements, see Parodic Table of the Elements. Compare and contrast What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway? and Heart Is an Awesome Power, depending on the situation. When used effectively, can be Lethal Harmless Powers.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The five basic "Breathing Forms" of the Demon Slayer's swordplay reflect the basic elements of Lightning, Flame, Rock, Water and Wind, but over time Slayers have managed to create their own Breaths from the five basic ones, some based on "lesser" elements such as Sound or Fog, other more unusual such as "Beast", "Love", "Snake" and "Insects".
• Elemental Gelade: some of the Elemental Powers of the Edel Raids are classical, such as Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Green (Vegetation), Light and Darkness, and also rare ones such as Life, Void and Death... but others are much more exotic and bizarre, including elemental attributes of "Wisdom", "Sword", "Shield", "Love", "Beauty", "Motion" and "Silence". That's without going into the six unknown elements.
• Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest introduces the fifth generation of Dragon Slayers, the "Dragon Eaters". While the previously seen Dragon Slayer magics were based on classical elements such as Fire, Metal, Lightning, Air, Poison, Shadow, White (Holy) and Pure Magic (Non-Elemental), the Dragon Eaters showcases rather odd elemental attributes, showcasing powers coming from the Blade Dragon, Armor Dragon, Carrion Dragon, Ghost Dragon, Sticky Dragon and... Sword Saint Dragon.
• Naruto: Some of the elemental Kekkai Genkai fall under this. While we have stuff like Ice Release and Lava Release, there's also stuff like Dark Release, Explosion Release, and Magnetic Release.
• One Piece:
  • Logia Devil Fruits grant its user complete control over an element or force of nature, as well as power to turn into that element. These elements are, in ascending order of weirdness: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Plants, Light, Darkness, Snow (different from and weaker than Ice), Magma (different from and stronger than Fire), Smoke, Gas (in general), Sand, Swamp^note which would be more accurately translated as "Mud" and Soot. Non-canon materials also add Paper, Syrup/Candy and Jelly.
• Sailor Moon treats love as an element equal to lightning, fire, and water.

Arts

• The surrealist Max Ernst's Une semaine de bonté ("A Week of Kindness") aligns the days of the week with particular elements, including conventional elements like water for Monday and fire for Tuesday alongside more unusual ones, like Thursday with blackness and Saturday with sight.

Fan Works

• Moving House describes the Cybertronian equivalent of the four classical elements being Metal (Earth), Smoke (Air), Lightning (Fire), and Oil (Water). Every Cybertronian or creature is aspected towards one of the four elements, with Jazz being Lightning aspected. This may be a Shout-Out to the Elemental Poles of Autochthon from Exalted.
• Pokémon: Too Many Types is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a Pokémon Emerald hack that features 63 different types. In addition to the 18 canon types, there are new types that are based on a great number of qualities, many of them jokes. Body shape (Crab, Ball, Little), personality (Silly, Boring, Angy), age (Baby, Zoomer, Boomer), American political parties (Left, Right), indie games (Sus, Sans), how well one member of the evolutionary family lends itself to a What's a Henway?-type joke (Deez Nuts), what kind of people might find that Pokémon attractive (Furry, Smash), the concept of gender (Gender), and so many more.
• Pokémon Wack: While some of the new types are rather straightforward, such as Wood, Magma, Wind, Light, and Sound, others are material-based (such as Paper, Rubber, Plastic, and Fabric), similar to already existing types (such as Magic being similar to Psychic, and Nuclear being similar to Poison), or just downright weird (such as Paint, Food, Grease, Ogre, and perhaps most strange of all, Meme).
• In Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse, the first Logia that our heroes encounter in the story is Gasparde from 'Dead End Adventure, whose Logia, the Candy-Candy Fruit, lets him turn into candy syrup, whose consistency he can alter from gooey and sticky to hard and solid as he sees fit. In a subsequent chapter, Ranma actually comments on how little imagination Gasparde showed in using it, relying on just turning into gooey syrup rather than really exploiting its harder forms.
• Used as a Sadly Mythtaken joke in Iron Hearts. A khorne berserker is asked what the Four Elements are, and he responds "Blood, Fire, Plasma, and Spicy Nacho."

Films — Live-Action

• The Fifth Element averts this for the actual film, with the titular fifth element, "Life", being relatively normal. But according to Word of God, the actual fifth element is "Sex".

Literature

• The Cosmere:
  • The twelve aethers are widely believed to represent primal elements of the cosmere. Some are fairly standard (roseite aether produces stone, zephyr aether produces air), some are a little more exotic but still relatively common (verdant aether produces woody vines), and some are just bizzare (crimson aether corresponds to flesh and produces spines of red chitin, while midnight aether produces Midnight Essence, an Ominous Obsidian Ooze which shapes itself into imitations of living creatures).
  • The Stormlight Archive has the Ten Essences, which are generally believed to be the ten fundamental elements on the world of Roshar. They are air, smoke, fire, crystal, wood, blood, oil, metal, stone, and flesh.

 * Cradle Series: Aura and madra come in many different forms. You've got the basics like fire, water, life and death, then the weirder ones like dream and hunger. Since aura can also be influenced by human creations, some really weird types are perfectly commonplace; sword aura is technically a specialized type of force aura that gathers around edged weapons, but it's generally more common since people use sharp weapons more than blunt ones.

• Discworld:
  • Though the series includes the typical Classical Elements of fire, water, earth, and air, they also assert that surprise is Element No. 5. One of them also discusses the Reson (or "thing-ie"), the fundamental particle of magic. Resons come in 5 flavors: Up, Down, Sideways, Sex-Appeal, and Peppermint. This is a parody of the real-world varieties of quarks - they actually are divided into "flavors," including Charm and Strange.
  • The Light Fantastic: It's stated that the druids believe the world consists of four elements: magic, uncertainty, charm and bloody-mindedness.
• In How To by Randall Munroe, the chapter "How to Charge Your Phone" sets up a scenario where xkcd's Ponytail Girl is trying to charge her phone in an airport, using available resources other than the electricity supply, while Megan snarks about it; the point being that everything in an airport is already using power. After considering water (plausible until they shut off the pipes, especially as they were helpful enough to already dam it for you), air (not nearly as active in an airport as outside), and fire ("You can't set random things on fire and call it a lifehack!") she hits upon the idea of connecting a turbine to the escalator.
  Megan: Ah, yes, the four elements. Water, air, fire and escalators.
• The Kane Chronicles has the Cheese element in addition to Fire, Earth, Air and Water. There's also Light, Darkness, Rain, Death, Healing, Ice, Lighting, Storm, Poison, and Sand.
• Trash of the Count's Family:
  • Dragons each have their own element unique from any other dragon. This means that while some dragons get conventional elements like fire or uncommon but not unheard of abilities like dust, others have "elements" that are conceptual or ideas. Raon's element is "the present", and no, even he doesn't know what that means.
  • Related is the element of "despair" which is generated by prolonged torture or by brutally killing large numbers of people.

Podcasts

• In the Olde English Comedy short "Unity Force", the titular parody team's members have the powers of the "four elemental powers of the universe": fire, karate, invisibility, and blue.

Poetry

• In his Ode to Intoxication poem Punschlied, Friedrich Schiller identifies Water, Spirit, Sugar and Lemon as the four elements that make up life and the cosmos.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons
  • The game has generally stuck to classical elements for its damage types: bludgeoning, piercing and slashing for non-magical attacks; the classical elements fire, cold, lightning, thunder (for sound-based damage) and poison; slightly more obscure damage types like acid, radiant (holy, light), necrotic (evil, dark), psychic and force (for pure energy) damage. Then came The Wild Beyond the Witchlight that added a new damage type: Custard damage.^note Which a character takes during a custard pie eating contest. Being reduced to 0 hit points by custard damage results in being too full to continue.
  • A borderline example is the quasi-elemental and paraelemental planes, which exist where the elemental planes intersect with either the positive or negative energy planes, or each other. This results in a few odd pseudo-elements like salt, ooze, ash, dust, and radiance. These do have their own elementals, but ultimately aren't "true" elements, just combinations of the more basic elements and energies.
• In Exalted, the Primordial Autochthon, who is essentially a sapient planet-shaped machine, has six Elemental Poles that make up his reality, similarly to how the mortal world of Exalted is comprised of the Elemental Poles of Earth, Air, Wood, Fire and Water. In Autochthon's case, however, the Elemental Poles are Metal, Steam, Smoke, Oil, Lightning and Crystal. These Elemental Poles are at once place and organ as well as elemental force; Metal is Autochthon's flesh, Steam and Lightning are his circulatory system, Oil is his blood, Crystal is his brain, and Smoke is his lungs and stomach.

Video Games

• Brütal Legend has the elements Fire, Blood, Metal, and Noise. Each were given to the world by Ormagöden when he killed himself rather than let the hideous First Ones kill him. His fiery breath became the sun, his blood became the sea, his dying scream became noise, and his body became metal, and each element holds a part of his power. The noise echoed through the world and became the foundation for heavy metal music, and with it, magic. The metal of his body still retained his love for great speed and allowed for the construction of armor that let its wearer run extremely fast and cars that raced across the land, powered by fiery engines. And his blood contains gifts of power for those daring enough to unleash it. There is also Tears, the concentrated despair of the goddess whose beautiful singing-voice was used to lure Ormagöden to his doom. Tears covers aspects of Necromancy and emotional control (usually compelling depression).
• CrossCode: Heat, Cold, and Shock are straightforward enough... then there's Wave. It's associated with aquatic enemies, but instead of the water you'd expect it's a rubbery-sounding green energy that, in the player's hands, grants Combo Platter Powers including Gradual Regeneration, Life Drain, pushing enemies backwards, explosions, illusions, appropriately enough a Wave-Motion Gun, and making enemies more vulnerable to projectiles. The other characters aren't sure what to make of it either.
• What Dawn of the Breakers calls elements are named after abstractions. The four main ones are Vita, Fate, Terra, and Fortune, and each one has three sub-elements named after color^note Vita has Red, Pink, and White; Fate has Blue, Violet, and Silver; Terra has Green, Cyan, and Black; and Fortune has Yellow, Orange, and Gold. What hero has what element seems to be based on their character's associated color, as even if some heroes use "traditional" elements, this is not related to their abstraction/color element. Fire can be seen being used by various Vita heroes as well as at least one Fate (Calamity Trigger) and one Fortune (Flame of the Suzaku); in-game they're considered Vita/Fate/Fortune heroes first, not "Fire" heroes, in terms of enemy weakness.
• Used to somewhat parodic levels in Doodle God. In the game, you start with the typical four of fire, water, earth, and air then combine them to create new objects and elements that could then be used in further combinations.
• Doom: The existence of the Pain Elemental implies that pain is somehow an element. Maybe only in hell.
• In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion — Shivering Isles, Relmyna Verenim says that previous alchemists have identified a fifth element, Light. She herself claims Flesh is a sixth.
• DragonFable has several elements ranging from expected (Fire, Ice, wind) to unusual (Fear, Poison, Silver), with Bacon being the only truly bizarre element. Especially given that unlike the other primary elements, it has no balancing counterpart. Bacon becomes very important in the Book 1 finale. Most weapons using the Bacon element have a food motif.
• The SNES version of Final Fantasy VI (released as III in the US) has Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Water, Earth, Poison... and Pearl, actually a clumsy bit of censorship of what was originally "Holy", based on a superficial resemblance of the spell of that name to a string of pearls.
• Flight Rising: The eleven Flights mostly follow typical fantasy elements, such as Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, etc. It starts getting odd with numbers 10 and 11, though, being Plague and Arcane (Arcane is especially odd, since it’s moreso radiation rather than just magic).
• Jack Move: Due to battles taking place in Cyberspace, the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors consists of Cyberware (hacking, bugs, and glitches), Electroware (Shock and Awe, direct electrical connections), and Wetware (biological in nature, associated with purple liquid).
• Kingdom of Loathing's main five elements are Hot and Cold (self-explanatory), Spooky (mostly associated with undead enemies), Stench, and Sleaze (inflicted by both grease and sexual harassment), plus the Sixth Element, Cute. Other minor elements include Shadow, Slime, Supercold, and Bad Spelling.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Spyro's elements are still the usual Fire, Ice, Earth and Lightning. Cynder's are a bit more unusual — she has the standard Wind, the less-conventional-but-still-plausible Shadow and Poison, and the truly out-there element of Fear.
• Mega Man Battle Network: Battle Chip elements, aside from "regular" ones like Fire, Aqua, Elec, Wood or Wind, also has (depending on the game) Break, Cursor, Sword, Invisibility (basically sneaky chips), Obstacle, Recovery and Plus, aside from Non-Elemental. In regards to elements, there were originally only the four, with the rest being 'attributes'. It was Battle Network 6 that established them as "Secondary" elements with their own weaknesses; Sword beats Wind, which beats Cursor, which beats Break, which beats Sword.
• My Singing Monsters starts out with Plant, Cold, Air, Water and Earth as the natural elements, with Electricity and Fire in their own categories. From there, we have the Ethereal elements, Plasma, Shadow, Mech, Crystal and Poison. Mythicals have their own element, alongside the Dream element embodied by the Catalyzt and Dreamythicals. In a similar situation, Legendaries, Dipsters and Celestials have their own categorical elements, although the Celestials associate with one natural, Ethereal or Supernatural element each. The Magical elements include Light, Psychic, Faerie and Bone. Finally, while they used to share a categorical element, the Seasonals all have their own elements representing their associated seasons, including Spooktacle, Festival of Yay, Season of Love, Eggs-Travaganza, SummerSong, Feast-Ember and many more.
• Obsidian: One of the dream worlds involves a giant robotic spider, and the puzzles therein each embody one of four machine versions of the elements; Air, Fire, Metal and Oil, with biblical descriptions of each at the end of said puzzles. Solving each puzzle imbues the spider with that element. And completing all of them brings the spider to life, at which point it attacks the player and devours them, transitioning to the next level.
• Played for Laughs at one point in Octopath Traveler II. The game has fairly common elements as its main source of magic attacks: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light, and Dark. However, there's also a mysterious seventh source called the One True Magic. Ochette suspects that the seventh source is actually meat, because eating meat makes her feel stronger. Osvald considers it for a moment before telling her it sounds off.
• OFF's universe is based on four elements: Smoke, Metal, Plastic, and Meat. There is also an artificial Element No. 5, Sugar, very addictive and made from burned corpses.
• Zigzagged and a bit downplayed in Pokémon: if most of the types are classical elements, some sound unconventional but actually are classical powers. A lot of this comes down to the original, and revised physical/special split:
  • The last original special type, Dragon, was initially unique to one mon-line (the one used by Final Boss to have a defensive advantage against all four starter types) with only one move (essentially mystical fire that always did set damage.) As time went on, it kept 'mystical fire' for its special moves, but its physical moves became anything used with a reptilian or a dragonlike body part ("Dragon Tail", "Dragon Claw").
  • Dark uses Casting a Shadow for its special moves as you would expect, but its physical moves are just fighting dirty, ("Bite", "Sucker Punch", "Foul Play"). In Japan, this type is called the "Evil"-type so the latter moves play truer to what Dark-types are supposed to represent.
  • The Fairy-type is a combination of Light, Holy, Heart with a touch of "sinister". Some Fairy-type attacks dip into Lunacy as well (most moon-related moves already in the game before the Fairy type's introduction were retconned to be Fairy-type, and one of the Fairy type's strongest attacks is called Moonblast).
  • Fighting is just more technical Normal attacks, but after gaining special moves now includes Ki Manipulation.
  • Flying is a bizarre umbrella that encompasses the classical Air-type for special moves, but its physical moves are essentially Bird-type (even reflected in an unused type in Gen I) including anything with avian appendages ("Drill Peck", Wing Attack", "Feather Dance", etc.).
  • Instead of just having an Earth-type, it's split into Rock-type for solid stones and Ground-type for loose sand, mud, and earthquakes. This is probably to address the defense logic against physical trait types like Flying. A bird can fly above an earthquake and take no damage, but you can kill two birds with one stone if you shoot them out of the sky. And on the reverse end, a Fighting-type could crush bricks with their fist, while an untrained Normal-type would hurt their hand. Both would get dampened by digging into sand.
  • A third earthen element, the Steel-type, was introduced in Gen 2 and has been included in every game in the series since. The handful of special Rock and Steel moves tend to respectively be Gemstone Assault and using metal's reflectiveness to weaponize light, with a lot of focus put on mirrors. They also form a hardness scale with the Ice-type. Rock beats Ice, and Steel beats both.
  • Bug is just for any Natural Weapon associated with insects like horns and stingers, with bioluminescence and droning noises for their special moves. Bug-type is weak to Flying-type, since "the early bird gets the worm" but this also makes them weak to Air moves, not just Bird moves. The logic behind this may be that Bug-types are so light that they're easily blown about by the wind.
  • Ghost is mostly about Soul Power, hexes, and curses, with many of its mons looking like the undead. There's a slight overlap with Dark types in that some moves involve Casting a Shadow.
  • The mysterious "???" type is only used for the "Curse" attack and has been removed since Gen V.
  • Stellar, introduced in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's second DLC The Indigo Disk, is essentially a combination of every type. It always inflicts normal damage against all types, and a Stellar-type Terastalization will boost one single attack for each type (as opposed to Terastalizations of other types, which boost all attacks of one particular type).
• The Quest for Glory series normally involves the traditional four elements of fire, water, earth, and air. Getting accepted into the main wizard's school involves solving puzzles based on those four elements. The packaged manual in the second game alludes to a fifth element, and that it is Pizza. Mad Scientists in the fourth and fifth games keep this gag rolling, and the Copy Protection of the fourth game involves answering the elements that make up certain formulas, with the elements including the four traditional ones plus pizza. The Fan Remake of the second game in the series adds an Optional Boss fight against the Pizza Elemental.
• Warframe, being a sci-fi game with weird powers coming from the Void, has an interestingly scientific set of elements.
  • Fire, Cold, Electricity, and Toxin form the primary elements. In addition to this, there is also Void.
  • Mixing two primary elements give a secondary element.
    • Fire + Cold = Blast
    • Fire + Electricity = Radiation
    • Fire + Toxin = Gas
    • Cold + Electricity = Magnetic
    • Cold + Toxin = Viral
    • Electricity + Toxin = Corrosive
  • The Railjack mode originally had its own analogues to the existing elements, but players found it confusing and frustrating so they just changed them to the original names, while keeping the differing status effects.
    • Slash, Impact and Puncture became Particle, Ballistic and Plasma, respectively.
    • Heat became Incendiary
    • Electricity became Ionic
    • Toxin became Chem
    • Cold became Frost
    • Secondary elements did not have railjack analogues and while they existed in Railjack, could not proc status effects.
• In the Kingdom Hearts series, every member of Organization XIII has an "attribute" around which their attacks and powers are themed. The classical elements are in there, as are some natural extensions of the elements and a few bizarre ones. In the order of the Organization's ranks, these attributes are: Nothingness, Space, Wind, Ice, Earth, Illusion, Moon, Fire, Water, Time, Flower, Lightning, and Light.
• In addition to the standard Shin Megami Tensei elements (Fire, Ice, Wind, Electricity, Bless, Curse and Almighty), Persona 5 also adds Nuclear (Nuke for short) and Psychokinesis (Psy for short). While other elements can inflict status elements, Nuke attacks deal extra damage to enemies that are suffering from physical status effects, while Psy attacks deal extra damage to foes suffering mental status effects.
  • In addition, physical attacks are divided into two categories: Strike and Gun (focusing on melee and ranged attacks respectively)
• The first Persona game has an obscenely high number of elements, some of them being extremely specific.
  • First, instead of one or two physical types, all weapon and gun types have their own elements. So there are One-handed Sword element, Two-handed Sword element, Spear element, Whip element, and so on. The same applies to guns, resulting in Handgun element, Shotgun element, SMG element, and Rifle element.
  • There are 16 magical elements, divided into 4 groups.
    • The first group is "Elemental" types, covering the standard elements Fire, Ice, Wind and Earth.
    • The second group is "Force", covering elements that are more physical forces. It includes Electricity, Nuclear, Gravity, and Blast.
    • The third group is "Light", including weird subtypes such as Expel (focusing on instant death), Bless (focusing on recovery), Miracle (revival), and Prayer (status buffs).
    • The fourth group is "Dark", with each of its subtypes also opposing a Light subtype. It includes Death (instant death, opposes Expel), Curse (physical status ailments, opposes Miracle), Nerve (mental status ailments, opposes Bless), and Occult (status buffs with side-effects, opposes Prayer).
• Terra Battle originally features only Fire, Ice, Lightning and Darkness elements. However, the 4.0.0 patch introduces two new elements that are more scientifically named, Photon and Graviton.
• Skylanders features the original four, but adds in Magic, Tech, Life and Undead as well. As of Skylanders: Trap Team, Light and Dark have been thrown into the mix. In addition, Kaos has his own element.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE has physical attacks based on the major weapon types of one of its parents series; Sword, Lance, and Axe form an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, with Bow being seperate. The magic elements also include Body (Status Ailments, as well as dark magic) and Mind (Different Status Ailments, as well as holy magic).
• DragonVale features ten basic elements: Plant, Fire, Earth, Cold, Lightning, Water, Air, Metal, Light and Dark. It's the Epic Dragons that give us the real Bizzaro Elements. These include, in the order the game lists them, Galaxy, Rift, Rainbow, Gemstone, Crystalline, Seasonal, Treasure, Sun, Moon, Olympus, Apocalypse, Dream, Snowflake, Monolith, Ornamental, Aura, Chrysalis, Hidden, Surface and Melody.
• In Cultist Simulator, you work with several bizarro-element 'principles' that have multiple associated elements, some of which are themselves bizarro elements. They are as follows: Moth (chaos, whims, change, the woods), Lantern (knowledge, more literal light), Forge (fire, strength, artifice), Edge (betrayal, conflict, cleverness), Winter (death, beauty, cold), Heart (uniting, persistence, healing, rhythm), Grail (desire, blood, birth), and Knock (doors, paths, visions, wounds). There's also Secret Histories serving as Principle #9.
  • The sequel, Book of Hours, removes Secret Histories but adds 5 new principles: Sky (balance, harmony), Moon (secrets, darkness, forgotten things), Scale (earth, resilience, resistance to change), Nectar (nature, growth, the seasons), and Rose (exploration, hope).
• Recruitable enemies in Deltarune have elemental types, which more often than not fall into this trope, such as "JEWEL", "ORDER", "DUST", or "PUZZLE". This doesn't have any gameplay significance and is just flavor text. Suzie also has her signature move, Rude Buster, which has the Rude element.
• Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk and its sequel Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society use Flame, Mud, and Fog as their magical elements. While they may seem strange, the flavor texts explain them as different forms of Mana. Flame is ignited Mana, Mud is liquified Mana, and Fog is gaseous Mana.
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance plays with the trope by using two different sets of elemental powers. One set, used by Raziel, is your standard four, plus Light, Dark, and Spirit; the other is used by Kain, and uses the rather esoteric Balance, Fire, Lightning, Time and Dimension. This is because Fire and Lightning were originally called Conflict and Energy respectively, which when combined with Balance, Time and Dimension, link back to the Pillars of Nosgoth and their own elements, which also include Death, Mind, States, and Nature.
• The types in Temtem are mostly typical Elemental Powers, but there are some out-there ones like Crystal, Mental, Melee, and Digital, the last of which was created artificially.
• Trails Series has the usual Earth, Fire, Wind (which is combined with lightning) and Water (which is combined with ice), but it also has what is called "higher elements", which are the elements of Time, Space, and Mirage.
• In Risk of Rain 2, some monsters can have elemental buffs called Elite Aspects, which are fairly standard elements at first. In the late game however, some weird aspects begin to show up: Corruption, Perfection, Incorporeality, and Void.
  • In their experiments, Providence and Mithrix create things using the "compounds that drive reality", which are Mass, Design, Blood and Soul.
• In Super Mario RPG, in addition to the standard Fire, Ice, Lightning there's a "Jump" element exclusively used by Mario's jump attacks. A decent number of enemies have a weakness to jumps, but they're ineffective against ghosts and spiked enemies unless Mario is wearing the Jump Shoes accessory.
• The Way (RPG Maker)'s typing system has four major categories: Physical, Elemental, Oneness, and Transcendental, each with four sub-elements. Physical (Piercing, Slashing, Smashing, and Ripping) and Elemental (Fire, Water, Earth, Air) don't do anything too special, but Oneness and Transcendental elements are a bit more out-there: Oneness elements are based on the components of a person (Flesh, Blood, Mind, and Spirit) while Transcendental has the common Light and Shadow types, but also the vaguely-defined Cosmo and Atoma.
• Limbus Company has attacks associated with one of seven sins: Wrath, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, and Gloom. Each can overarchingly be associated with more traditional elements, such as Wrath being associated with fire, Sloth with earth, Envy with electricity and Gloom, water.

Web Animation

• The classic fanimutation French Erotic Film by Andrew Kepple has the elements as Earth, Fire, Double-E, Water and Spleen (because What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?)... And My Axe! Combining the powers summons Plastic Dashboard Jesus.

Web Comics

• Homestuck has twelve main elements. Time, Space, Void, Life, Light, Rage... Hope... Mind? Doom? Heart? Blood? BREATH!?
  • It makes slightly more sense when you consider them ability sets than elements. For example, Mind has seer powers, Blood is about strength of bonds, Heart is related to souls, etc.
  • They're also less elements and more abstract forces that can be symbolised with elements. The four kids are given elemental associations, but only one of them really develops elemental powers related to their aspect. Breath is as much personal inspiration/motivation as it actual wind powers.
• xkcd's "Elements" subverts this trope by having all 118+ chemical elements as bend-able elements in direct parody to Avatar: The Last Airbender, with cultures and nations attached to each element being inferred.
• The same subversion is found in The Order of the Stick; Redcloak has a tendency to summon elementals directly off the periodic table, which always prove superior to the four classical elements. Played straight when Vaarsuvius discovers that there's a semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing.
• Adventurers! also uses periodic table elements for a very long (and fortunately mostly unseen) Plot Coupon sidequest. As far as magical elements go, Ardam is confused when he casts a scan spell on a monster, and its "element" is "tastes like orange Tang" (the opposite of which is, according to Karn, "doesn't taste like orange Tang".)
• Late in Digger, the backstory of events is revealed to involve a being called Famine, described as an elemental of an element which no longer exists.

Web Videos

• In the world of Aventures, one of the numerous Churches ruling the land is the Church of Whispers. At first, it sounds kinda silly when compared to say the Churches of Light, Blood, or Air, but it actually is one of the most influential Churches, led by the spooky Sister Maeda, and its apostles are blessed with a Power Nullifier ability.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, the four basic elements (which all have a reincarnated elemental blessed with the associated Elemental Powers) are Fire, Ice, Slime and Candy. The latter didn't prove to be very useful at first, only giving the user the ability to shoot jelly beans from their palm with an inelegant sound, but turns out to be as much as Swiss-Army Superpower as any other element (an exploding shower of minted soda being one application).
  • The end of the "Elements" mini-series concludes with the revelation that there is an Element No. 5 in the form of Lumps (the fabric of Lumpy Space and seemingly the figurative glue that binds everything in the universe together) and that it possesses Anti-Magic properties. LSP is then used to send a World-Healing Wave and restore the elementally corrupted Ooo to its original form.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has a downplayed example: there are some specific clans of benders like the Sandbenders, the Metalbenders, or even the Swampbenders, but all are specialized subcategories of the very strict four Classical Elements presented in the show. The first two are subcategories of Earthbending, while the latter is a subcategory of Waterbending (they bend the water inside vines to make them move).
• Downplayed with the Elements of Harmony from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Though the six elements (Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, Loyalty, Laughter, and Magic) are Equestria's most important McGuffins, they only work when combined and when associated with their rightful bearer, and are useless and powerless on their own.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers has the element of Heart (whose usefulness is often questioned) as well as the classic four. In the "Summit to Save the Earth" two-part episode, the villains created their own Psycho Rangers to the Planeteers' rings, with pollution-themed versions of their elements to match. Specifically, there was Deforestation (counterpart of Earth), Radiation (counterpart of Fire), Smog (counterpart of Wind), Toxins (counterpart of Water) and Hate (counterpart of Heart). Combining these together summoned Captain Planet's evil doppelganger, Captain Pollution.
• Ninjago started simple enough with Earth, Ice, Lightning, and Fire. Then came the Tournament of Elements which introduced several new elements, including speed of all things. Jay, being the Plucky Comic Relief he is, ends up lampshading this.
  Jay: Uh, Master of Speed? Pfft. That’s not an element.
  Garmadon: So asks the master of lightning.
• The runestones in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power grant magic of water, ice, lightning, plants, moon (Flashy Teleportation with sparkles and blasts of light), and power (Super-Strength, Healing Hands, various minor powers). There are other magic powers, including characters who control wind and darkness, though it's unclear if these are "elemental" in the same way. The somewhat arbitrary selection is justified by the six runestones not being manifestations of all natural elements, just the ones the Abusive Precursors used to siphon existing magic into a Fantastic Nuke.
• Tigtone: In "Tigtone and Those Elemental Kings", the first three Elemental Kings Tigtone slays for their essences are Metal, Blood and Lightning. The fourth, the Pain King has no physical form and only exists where pain does.

Real Life

• The elementary particles of the modern Standard Model are divided into fermions, which are matter and antimatter, and bosons, which transmit fundamental forces.
  • Fermions include the quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom), as well as electrons, muons, tauons, and their respective neutrinos. (And the antimatter equivalents of each of these.)
  • Bosons include photons (Electromagnetism), W and Z bosons (the Weak Nuclear Force, responsible for radioactive decay), gluons (the Strong Nuclear Force, responsible for binding quarks together using properties of "colour" and "anticolour"), the hypothetical gravitons (Gravity), and finally the Higgs bosons (mass).

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