Because Elemental Powers often have specific colors associated with them, Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors may also apply.
Video games are where this trope is most common, though it is not unheard of in other media or even real life.
Video Game Examples:
Action Games
- Dynasty Warriors 8 featured an unusual selection of elements for its weapons. While you could still have fire, ice, etc. for special elemental weapon skills, each weapon had an affinity: Man, Earth, and Heaven. Man, in red, overcomes Heaven, blue, which in turn beats Earth, green. Earth defeats Man, and the cycle continues. Having affinity advantage against enemy officers meant causing more flinching and extra critical damage to them, while having an affinity disadvantage meant taking more damage and having your blocks broken more often.
- In Eternal Darkness, Chattur'gha (red) beats Xel'lotath (green) beats Ulyaoth (blue) beats Chattur'gha.
- Gundam Breaker Mobile has red-marked Power builds doing more damage to green-marked Technique builds, which do more damage to blue-mark Speed builds. Speed builds do bonus damage to Power builds, and certain Non-Elemental 'balanced' builds neither gain bonuses from nor suffer drawbacks from this system. As many Gunpla parts reward a specific build type, the typeless builds are extremely uncommon.
- Honkai Impact 3rd started out with three character types, Biological (yellow-orange) beating Psychic (light purple) beating Mecha (light blue) beating Biological. Two further types were later added, Quantum (dark purple) and Imaginary (gold-tinged silver) which beat their own, were weak against each other, and had no advantage over the other types.
- Kingdom Hearts χ: Power (red) beats Speed (green) beats Magic (blue) beats Power.
- Monster Hunter: Stories and Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin have Power (red), Technical (green), and Speed (blue) attacks.
- In the first two Spectrobes games, Corona Spectrobes and Krawl are red, Aurora ones are green, and Flash ones are blue. Corona beats Aurora, which beats Flash, which beats Corona. You can even get special outfits for Rallen which imbue him with the given element, and are colored accordingly.
Card Games
- Dinosaur King: Being the More Popular Spin Off of Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking, not only does the Rock-Paper-Scissors style gameplay carry over (Rock (Red) beats Scissors (Yellow) which beats Paper (Blue) which beats Rock), but it also introduces six elemental types (Lightning (Yellow), Wind (Blue-Grey), Grass (Green), Fire (Red), Water (Blue) and Earth (Purple)) for each dinosaur type note , with their own strengths and weaknesses (Lightning beats Water, Water beats Fire, Fire beats Wind, Wind beats Grass, Grass beats Earth, Earth beats Lightning).
- Hearthstone's Mercenaries mode has Protectors (red) beating Fighters (green) beating Casters (blue) beating Protectors.
- Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking: The bugs' typings are literally sorted by Rock–Paper–Scissors, where Rock (Red) beats Scissors (Yellow) which beats Paper (Blue), which beats Rock.
- The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross: Most units have the attributes of Speed (blue), Health (green), and Strength (red). Speed beats Strength, Strength beats Health, and Health beats Speed. The game would later add the Light (yellow) and Dark (purple) attributes, which, when paired with the three base attributes, allow for more damage dealt against advantageous attributes with Light or disadvantageous attributes with Dark.
Fighting Games
- Jump Super Stars has each character and assist koma assigned one of 3 types. Power (red), which beats Intelligence (blue), which beats Gag (yellow). If you're weak to a type, you take more damage from them and deal less yourself. Certain komas, when upgraded, will change their type.
- Pokkén Tournament uses a fighting game triangle with color effects on the Pokémon performing the moves. Attacks (red) beat throws (green), which beat counters (blue), which beat attacks.
- Spirits in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are color-coded Attack (red), Throw (green), Defense (blue), or Neutral (purple). The first three are strong or weak against each other in the usual red > green > blue > red order. The last one is, appropiately, neutral to everything.
- In the formerly-defunct mobile game Transformers Forged To Fight, classes are color-coded. Warriors (red) beat Scouts (green), which beat Tech-class bots (aqua), which beat Demolition-class bots (yellow), which beat Tacticians (blue), which beat Brawlers (purple), which beat Warriors.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games
- The four Card-Jitsu minigames in Club Penguin have three elements: Snow (white), which beats water (blue), which beats fire (red), which beats snow. There's also a rumored shadow element (black) and cheese (yellow or green) from a comic
.
Platform Games
- Sonic Heroes has three different types of color-coded character: Speed (blue) beats Flight (yellow) beats Power (red) beats Speed.
Role-Playing Games
- Dislyte: There are four elements in the game that an Esper can have that forms a Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanic and they each have their own color. Flow (purple) beats Inferno (orange), which beats Wind (teal), which in turn beats Flow. Shimmer (a gradient of neon purple, blue, and green) takes and receives neutral damage from the other elements.
- Final Fantasy VII Remake has the Fort Condor minigame in the Integrade DLC with Yuffie's side mission. Defense (blue) gets advantage against Vanguard (Red) which in turn has advantage against Range (green) which then in turn has advantage against Defense (Blue).
- Some of the Fire Emblem games (i.e. Fates, Heroes, and Engage) have the same weapon triangle as most other Fire Emblem games. Unlike most of them, they also color-code Swords red, Axes green, and Lances blue. Fates also adds the other weapon types to the weapon triangle: Spells (red), Bows (green), and Daggers (blue).
- Fossil Fighters: Using four elements compared to the traditional three, red fire beats yellow earth beats green air beats blue water and the cycle repeats.
- Gacha World: Its Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors include Fire (red) beating Wind (green), which beats Water (blue) that in turn beats Fire. Light (yellow) and Dark (purple) deal super effective damage against each other.
- Minion Quest: The Search for Bowser and Bowser Jr.'s Journey use a "power triangle" to determine weaknesses. They are Melee (red) beats Ranged (yellow) beats Flying (blue) beats Melee.
- OMORI: Emotion-based combat buffs follow a coloured rock-paper-scissors theme: Happy (yellow) beats angry (red) beats sad (blue) beats happy.
- Every Pokémon game starts with the player choosing one of three starter Pokémon, which have this relationship to each other and overlap neatly with Color-Coded Elements and Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire (red) beats Grass (green) beats Water (blue) beats Fire. Due to the franchise's popularity, this heuristic may be the Trope Codifier in general.
- SINoALICE has an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system where Fire (red) beats Wind (green), which beats Water (blue), which beats Fire.
- Present in Yakuza: Like a Dragon in the business management minigame. During board meetings, the share holders and other interested parties must be countered with the appropriately-skilled (indicated by their being either red, blue, or green) member on your board team in order to efficiently complete the "battle."
Sports Games
- Inazuma Eleven: Each character, hissatsu technique, avatar etc. has one of the four attributes: earth, fire, wind, and wood. Fire (red) beats wood (green), which beats wind (blue), which beats earth (orange), which beats fire.
Visual Novels
- Princess Waltz uses a card combat style where during the fight scenes Green overpowers Red, Red overpowers Blue, and Blue overpowers Green.
Non-video game examples:
Toys
- 1990's toy line Battle Beasts consisted of small figurines with a mystery rub-off decal on their chests, indicated which of the three factions they belonged to: Wood, Water, or Fire. Fire burns Wood, Water douses Fire, and Wood blocks Water.
Western Animation
- Redakai has the Red, Strength-based attacks that beat Green, Speed-based attacks that beat Blue, Intelligence-based attacks that beat Red.
Real Life
- Side-blotched lizards (Uta Stansburiana) are a species of lizard where males have three different throat colors, each corresponding to a different mating strategy. Orange males are the most physically dominant and control large territories. Blue males have less individual control and only have one mate, as opposed to many, but compensate by cooperating with each other. Yellow males are non-territorial, instead mimicking females to sneak into other territories and mate. The orange lizards can overpower the blues, the blue lizards can catch the yellows, and the yellow lizards can hide beneath the suspicion of the oranges.
