Green Rocks

It also makes delicious ice cream...

Dr. Dinosaur: Imbecile! You'll kill us both! The crystals power this entire station!
Robo: I thought you said it was an anti-gravity crystal.
Dr. Dinosaur: It can do lots of things!

— Atomic Robo

An object or technology with powers so diverse and magical that it can cause almost any effect as needed by the plot.

If an actual substance, a common variation is to have it come in different colors, each with a varying set of effects. This occasionally ties in with Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, with each color variation attuned to a different classical element.

The name refers to the Kryptonite meteor rocks found in most incarnations of the Superman franchise (which were most famously, but not always, green). These Green Rocks, in addition to functioning as Big Blue's primary weakness, have been known to: give people random superpowers, turning them into the Monster of the Week; help people recall memories; make cars go faster; and send a phone call back in time, among many other things.

When it is exotic, difficult to find, and you must have it to power the Applied Phlebotinum, it is Unobtainium. When the Green Rocks are crystals that double as a Gotta Catch Them All, it is a Mineral MacGuffin. If Green Rocks are animal or vegetable rather than mineral, they might be domesticated as a Multipurpose Monocultured Crop. If the Green Rocks are spread across a range anywhere from a small town to the entire world, area-of-effect Green Rocks so to speak, then it may constitute as a Mass Super-Empowering Event. It can also be a source of great evil: see Repo Man and Heavy Metal.

Why green? Why do they glow? They're made of uranium glass! It glows when exposed to that mystery radiation, ultraviolet light.

This is sometimes used in video games as a Plot Coupon, for the reason that game designers often have the pieces of whatever it is being in different lands/environments/cultures, riffing the level design and changing the reason as to why this super mega artifact is being used to power a dance club.

Contrast substances under the well-defined Minovsky Physics, which is where something has a variety of, but internally consistent, powers.

When it is a standing device to attract weirdness to the characters, it is a Magnetic Plot Device.

Related to Phlebotinum du Jour, Meta Origin. For less-exotic variants, see Lightning Can Do Anything, and Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke. Contrast Minovsky Physics, Magic A Is Magic A.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass has Sakuradite, a natural resource with high conductivity that's used in everything in the series; the Lancelot's Super Prototype-ness is explained by saying that it uses more Sakuradite than normal Knightmare Frames, giving it incredible energy efficiency. The Gefjun Disturber is a device that blocks Sakuradite's conductivity, making it work something like an EMP weapon. It also somehow has the properties to block radar and aids in the blooming of energy weapons, which allows the Gawain's hadron cannons to go from awful to amazing.
• Legion in Chrono Crusade is described as the "building block" of a demon's body, similar to human cells, and it's what fuels their regeneration abilities and probably aids a demon with their unique powers as well. On top of that, it's also used to bring a human girl back from the dead (and give her regeneration powers), possibly turns a human boy insane by connecting to his mind, and dissolves another human being on contact, apparently eating him alive. And to top it all, legion also seems to be the building blocks for demonic architecture as well, which allows them to create shields and hidden doors, among other things. When left unchecked, it can cause a host to turn into a spiky mutant with a mind driven so insane it's boiled down to its basic instincts of kill or be killed. Scary stuff.
• Trapars (transparent light particles) in Eureka Seven are responsible for many barely-explained phenomena, including powering the series's LFO (Light Finding Operation) and KLF (Kraft Light Fighter) mecha.
• Lacrima Crystals in Fairy Tail tend to have whatever power is convenient at the time. Lightning Storms, engines, dragon slayer magic. Justified in that Lacrima Crystals are just vessels. The magic placed inside them causes the effects desired by their creator, e.g. Laxus had to make hundreds of lightning lacrima in order to create the thunder palace, but if he wants them to do anything other than zap people he'd have to make new crystals using a different type of magic.
• GaoGaiGar has a literal green rock, the G-Stone, used as the power source for all of its main mecha, as its power output increases as a function of the pilot's or robot's raw courage. There's also a red counterpart, the J-Jewel, with even less well-defined powers, one of which is explosive output when combined with a G-Stone. Indeed, many of the fuzzy properties of the G-Stone and J-Jewel are related to their interactions with other substances and energies.
• Which was inspired by Getter Rays from Getter Robo. Practically the same thing, actually (which is Lampshaded in Super Robot Wars Z 2), including leading to the destruction of the entire universe if over/misused.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stone Ocean: The bone of DIO, as the key essential for Pucci's Evil Plan, relays on the integration of several Stand abilities in order to absorb the souls of dozens that transforms it into The Green Baby.
  • JoJolion: The Locacaca fruits that appear with the Rock Humans are basically this, able to heal any ailment. However, the healing is a form of Equivalent Exchange; for whatever part of the body it heals, another part is destroyed and turned to stone.
  • The JoJoLands: The main crux of the story is the lava rock, obtained during the heist in lieu of the diamond the team were actually after. It is a mysterious object that Jodio correctly assumes to be even more important and valuable than the diamond, and it's shown to have the power to attract valuable objects like a diamond, money, and even expensive valuables towards it.
• Kemono Friends has Sandstar, the substance that seems to be behind all the weird goings-on in Japari Park (and there's a lot of weirdness). It's shown that if a living creature (or even its remains) is exposed to Sandstar, it will take on humanoid form, resulting in the eponymous Friends; this includes human remains, as the main character Kaban was born from a single strand of hair left in a pith helmet. Meanwhile, Sandstar turns inorganic matter like igneous rock into blob monsters called Ceruleans. There's also an unexplained "Sandstar Low" that causes much of the problems in the last leg of the anime by creating a super-strong black Cerulean. However, subverted as of later expansions and revisions to the franchise lore. Sandstar has only one ability: Turning Animals into Friends. Celliens (mistranslated as Ceruleans) actually come from Cellium, a susbtance that copies, rather than transforms, copying inorganic matter into Celliens derived from it. Incidentally? That's what Sandstar Rho ("Low") actually was, hence its entirely different properties.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has the mysterious GN Particles, which can jam communications, be used as a propellant, be used as protective shielding, and is even the basis for the Gundams' energy swords. GN Particles have the added bonus of coming in two distinct "flavours"; the "Pure", green coloured particles used by the protagonists, and "Impure", red (or orange, in the second series) particles used by the villains in their mass-manufactured drives. Incidentally, the red particles seem to impede cell functions and healing in humans, while the green version improves it.
• One Piece:
  • Eating Devil Fruit can give you any superpower imaginable, the type depending on the fruit you ate. Powers range from animal transformation to elemental control to coming back from the dead as a living skeleton, among a lot of other effects. What really pushes it into Green Rocks territory is the ability for inanimate objects to "eat" the animal-type fruits, becoming Empathic Weapons in the process. But, unlike some Green Rocks, the Devil Fruits have a strong stigma. The user is unable to swim, and loses all power upon significant contact with seawater. In addition, the result of eating the fruit is generally unknown. You could control lightning, or you could gain a completely (or seemingly) useless ability. There is no antidote, and eating a second fruit causes instant death.
  • Devil Fruit powers seem to encompass any sort of power you can think of, and more. However this means that they also encompass the sucky ones. Namely there's a fruit that allows you to change into each type of animal (ranging from specific species to a general family). However, this means that if an animal ate a fruit that turned them into their own species, it effectively robbed them the ability to swim, while giving them nothing. Again, there's no way of knowing this beforehand. Word of God stated that if a human ate the Human-Human Fruit, they would simply be "enlightened", but didn't elaborate on what this meant or if animals had the same effect. Good thing only one fruit of each kind exists, and the regular human one was eaten by a reindeer.
  • The Dials, magical seashells from the sky (somewhat vaguely implied to be related to the Den Den Mushi) that all have different magical powers based on color. Much of the Skypeia arc was the Skypieans getting New Powers as the Plot Demands attributed to Dials and the Dials are used from then on in the story to explain away the setting's Schizo Tech.
• The Silver Crystal from Sailor Moon seems to gain whatever properties are necessary for a particular arc's plot. It can defeat evil beings, except for when it only seals them away or heals them! It can grant its user's dying wish, except when using it doesn't cause death! It's useful for saving cities of the future, initiating Transformation Sequences, and also apparently could serve as a great power battery for Big Bads! It even plays music!
• In weaving together Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA into one long story arc as Robotech, Harmony Gold changed Macross's "Protoculture" into a mysterious energy source that allowed the creation of transformable mecha, and is also (at least in the Mospeada part of the story) the fuel used to power them, while in the first part, the humans barely seem to understand what it is.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Spiral Energy solves everything. It is Hot-Blooded power incarnate. And is usually green. It's also specifically stated to defy the laws of physics.

Comic Books

• Atomic Robo: Spoofed with crystals. They can do everything! — at least according to Dr. Dinosaur. Robo himself is quite doubtful of this claim.
• Batgirl: In the storyline The Attack of the Annihilator, a glowing meteorite shard found by the titular villain can transform people into psychically-empowered mutants.
• Batman: During the Dark Nights: Metal story, Batman is treated with 5 different metals over the course of multiple lifetimes, which apparently turns him into a portal for a demon god from a dark parallel multiverse to pass through. Yeah, it makes about as much sense as it sounds like.
• Black Panther: Vibranium. When introduced, Vibranium was the setting's ultimate Unobtainium; a hyper-durable, Nigh-Invulnerable metal that absorbed vibrations and converted them into durability, so the more you hit it, the tougher it became. To put things in perspective, the famous Adamantium is a softer knock-off version. It was subsequently retconned into also serving as the foundation for Wakanda's ultra-advanced technology, because somehow having access to a super-durable metal translates to figuring out anti-gravity and energy blasters at a time when the rest of the world has only just figured out flintlock pistols. Subverted in Ultimate Marvel, where instead Vibranium is just a super-durable metal and Wakanda is so technologically advanced because it's reverse-engineered a crashed alien spaceship.
• Dastardly & Muttley: The linchpin of the plot is the strange substance known as Unstabilium-239. It's a strange, glowy material that warps anything (or anyone) nearby into a wacky caricature of itself and makes Toon Physics possible. It is revealed to be connected to mysterious Elder Gods that happen to look like classic cartoon characters.

• The DCU: There are various metals which can give people powers merely by wearing them, or other godly properties. The Nth metal Hawkman's mace is made of primarily negates gravity, but is also capable of regeneration, metamorphosis, reincarnation, magic nullification, emotional manipulation, dimensional travel and basically anything the plot requires of it. Some versions have Nth metal as part of Hawkman's belt. Wonder Woman's various metal items accomplish all sorts of feats, which are primarily due to the blessings of the gods upon the item, but the post-Rebirth continuity ties together all of these metals as being different, less pure forms of 'Tenth Metal', used in the Forge of Worlds as the very essence of creation. The Nth metal is in fact 'Ninth Metal' and the metal of Earth's gods is the Eighth. Tenth Metal is so powerful that it basically lets you alter reality with the smallest piece.
• Fantastic Four: The exact same burst of radiation gave four people each a completely different power. Some iterations have explained it as the powers coming from what each felt was their greatest weakness. Which just happened to correspond with the classic Alchemical "Elements": Air (Invisible Girl), Earth (The Thing), Fire (The Human Torch) and Water (Mr. Fantastic). Or possibly the four stages of matter (gaseous, solid, plasma, & liquid, respective to the previous examples), if you prefer a more scientific outlook. The current explanation is that Reed was partially responsible for designing the entire universe.
  • And inspired by the FF, four other people flew into that same radiation storm, becoming Vector, Vapor, X-ray and Ironclad, collectively the U-Foes.
  • Also Red Ghost and his Super-Apes who gained similar powers to the Fantastic Four, as a result of him specifically launching through the same cloud, but with even less shielding..
• Green Lantern (1941): Despite all the differences between Alan Scott and all the other Green Lanterns that would follow, it's interesting to note that even in his 1940 origin story, the source of Alan's power is extraterrestrial Green Rocks. A burning green meteor crashes in China, and it is first formed into a lamp, then a lantern, and finally comes to Alan Scott to grant him power. The two would eventually be connected by an explanation that, after collecting all the magic they could gather, the Guardians of the Universe just dump it into another universe which happened to be Alan's.
• Hitman (1993): As seen in the series, multiple powered characters in DC Comics are a result not of the accidents they had, but mutating to survive the accidents; it's fairly common for people to crawl out of a vat of toxic goo and go on a rampage. The title character is often called in to provide a very discreet bullet.
• The Incredible Hulk: Gamma radiation often has a completely random effect on the individual exposed, usually something to do with their psychological makeup, although this effect is often completely arbitrary. This is the way they explained gamma radiation turning Hulk into a id-like monster, She-Hulk into a fun-loving Amazon, Doc Samson into a musclebound superhero type, and the Abomination into what you'd expect.
  • It's also been revealed that most people would just die horribly when exposed to such large amounts of gamma radiation (which is a rather more plausible result), and the people who got superpowers from it did so because the radiation interacted in some pseudoscientific way with random genetic anomalies they already had. It was explained once that everyone who got a positive mutation from gamma exposure had a single common genetic ancestor somewhere back in the mists of history. No one else has that funny genetic quirk. This was demonstrated when the Leader dropped a gamma bomb on a town of about ten thousand people or so; everyone died, except five individuals who mutated. One of the Leader's main goals is perfecting gene therapy to allow anyone to achieve powers from gamma radiation.
• The Inhumans: The Terrigen Mists, the source of superpowers for the Inhumans, bestow random superpowers and physical mutations upon anyone exposed to them. However, if any non-Inhuman is exposed to them it will inevitably lead to a serious Deadly Upgrade or some similarly unpleasant fate.
• Just Imagine...: In the line of comics where Stan Lee re-imagines several classic DC characters, almost every character with powers gains them through some form of green energy, mist, or chemical. The green manifestations turn out to be linked back to an ancient magical tree that may be Yggdrasil or the Tree of Knowledge.
• Milestone Comics: In the Dakota Universe, most super powers are the result of exposure to Quantum Juice, a.k.a. Q-Juice.
• Scarlet Witch: The Scarlet Witch's mutant power over probability is another example, letting her do anything the writers need, like making all the bullets in a gun defective. Some Willing Suspension of Disbelief is needed, since she's been known to use her powers to do things physically impossible no matter how much luck you have, like make gravity stop affecting her. Later retconning revealed that her powers were combined with actual magic to far exceed what should have been possible. Yet later they were again retconned as the power to play merry havoc with the very fabric of reality as she pleased. Wanda's powers were also affected by her having been born on Mount Wundagore, a mountain where a Chthon, an Eldritch Abomination, was imprisoned.
• Shade, the Changing Man: The eponymous Shade, a Reality Warper whose "Power of Madness" can do anything.
• Superman:
  • In the original comics, Red Kryptonite had a random yet temporary effect.
  • Many Happy Returns introduces Pink Kryptonite, which turns Kryptonians homosexual. This wasn't a thing in the original comics; it appears when 90's Supergirl visits a version of the Pre-Crisis universe that exaggerates the "weird subtext" that nobody except her notices.
  • There's also Gold Kryptonite (which can take away all of a Kryptonian's superpowers forever), Blue Kryptonite (which is Bizarro Kryptonite), and White Kryptonite (which only hurts plants), to name just the most common varieties.
  • Post-Crisis, however, Kryptonite from one universe cannot affect a Kryptonian from a different universe due to a difference in radiation emissions, as Superman from the mainstream DC Universe found out when he was exposed to the isotopes of Kryptonite from the Pocket Universe and nothing happened to him — a fact that he put to good use in The Supergirl Saga when he used that world's Gold and Green Kryptonite (the remaining hidden samples stored away in Superboy's lab) on the Phantom Zone criminals.
• Supreme has supremium, an obvious homage to kryptonite. Its radiation alters reality depending on its constantly shifting color, both giving the title character his powers and weakening him, sending people through time, and turning a man into a growing mess of arms and legs.
• Tales of the Unexpected: Towards the end of its run, the series introduced a floating little plot device called the Green Glob. It would enter a person or object and do whatever was needed to teach the main character(s) whichever particular Aesop they were in need of learning.
• Top 10: The Top 10 universe has S.T.O.R.M.S. (Sexually Transmitted Organic Rapid Mutation Syndrome), a sexually transmitted disease that can mutate you into a monster, a god or (most often) a monstrous corpse.
• The Transformers (IDW): The IDW Transformers was used to connect the other toy property titles in the shared universe by having Shockwave engineer variations of Energon, which was already this trope, some of which ended up being their phlebotinum. One variant became the basis for Galadorian Space Knight armor, while another with space-bending properties became important to the Microverse.
• Vandal Savage gained immortality when, as a caveman, he slept near a mysterious glowing meteorite on a cold winter night for warmth. Said immortality isn't quite perfect. Savage needs to eat the flesh and organs of his own descendants to maintain his longevity. The same meteorite gave The Immortal Man his powers, which work differently than Savage's; instead of living forever he is continuously reborn into a new life as soon as he dies.
• WildStorm: The Wildstorm universe has The Bleed doing all kinds of things.
• X-Men: The mutant gene is probably the most extreme example of this, letting writers forgo the need for any sort of origin story whatsoever by saying the character's a mutant. Mutants can have any power imaginable, ranging from the ability to regenerate any and all wounds received, to duplication. Whether this was a bad thing is debatable, since non-mutants' origin stories are often cheesy or downright stupid (mongoose blood granting Super-Speed to The Whizzer comes to mind...)
  • In fact, that's part of the stated goal of it: Stan Lee intended to create a Meta Origin that many heroes could be spun out of. Of course, that's not the way it went, with the Fantastic Racism angle as well as the Mad Scientist and government types wanting to exploit mutants: due to the way the world treats them, what it means to be a mutant and what it means to have powers from any other source are so different that you don't really get many non-X-Men-related characters having "I woke up one morning with superpowers" as an origin.

Fan Works

• The Discworld fics of A.A. Pessimal expand on the inner workings of the Assasins' Guild, and one of the first Troll teachers at the Guild School is Mr Tobernite, who fittingly teaches geology as well as the Troll martial art of Great Big Club Wiv A Nail Through One End. As fits Discworld trolls, Mr Tobernite is made largely of a naturally occuring stone crystal which gives him his name. In his case, it is tobernite, a mineral crystal with a glowing lustrous green quality. The reason why he got good at fighting is that tobernite is a naturally occurring ore of uranium: a component of Class S Drugs. When a large part of the world wants to kill you, grind up your body and sell it for a few thousand dollars a pound so that other trolls can nasally ingest you - then you have no option other than to be good at self-defence. The Assassins' School gave him a safe place, but he still has to wear a lead-lined suit so as not to poison the humans around him. Hey, this is geology for Assassins.

Films — Animation

• Heavy Metal: The Loc-Nar is a Green Rock; a floating, sentient, utterly evil, sadistic Green Rock. It's a green sphere that proclaims itself (correctly, given the havoc that constantly tends to surround it) the sum of all evil in Heavy Metal's universe, and is the MacGuffin for all the stories told in the movie.
• Metropolis (2001) features a radioactive metal called Omotanium that can cause animals to grow to giant sizes, create artificial sunspots, and helps to create a superpowered Artificial Human.
• In Monsters vs. Aliens, Susan gets hit with a huge, glowing, green meteorite. It's "quantonium", the phlebotinum of the plot. It turns her into a (nearly) fifty foot woman and leads the Big Bad right to Earth.

Films — Live-Action

• Subverted in Creepshow, where the "meteor shit!" only had one effect. It was green, though.
• Deadtime Stories: Volume 2: The eponymous Martian dust in "Dust" can cure cancer, bring people back from the dead, and imbue people with an insatiable libido. Who knows what over properties it may possess?
• In District 9, the "black fluid" serves as some sort of fuel for a space ship. It has the bizarre side-effect of altering the DNA of any human exposed to it, causing them to transform into a "prawn".
• Godzilla vs. Kong: The Tesseract-colored, crystalline Unobtainium in the Hollow Earth acts as the underworld's equivalent to a sun, enabling ultraterrestrial life to evolve and thrive there, and it's indicated that the unobtainium is the source of Godzilla's bio-atomic powers and possibly even what enabled all the other Titans on Earth to evolve. Apex believe it can fully charge their Secret Weapon Mechagodzilla (a feat which literally no manmade power source can do because the weapon just guzzles too much energy), fueling Team Kong's half of the plot which centers around entering the Hollow Earth with Kong's aid. The element certainly does what Apex expect it to, but it also comes with unexpected side-effects: as Ghidorah's haunted skull is being used as Mechagodzilla's remote controller, Ghidorah's remaining consciousness takes over the system and takes control of Mechagodzilla for itself once the Unobtainium is infused into Mechagodzilla, leading to Mechagodzilla supplanting Apex and setting up the film's Final Battle.
• The Tesseract in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was confirmed by Kevin Feige in this interview to be the Space Gem of the Infinity Stones, but besides opening portals (which it does several times) it also powers weapons and disintegrates people, both effects being easily explained as derivative of space manipulation.
• My Super Ex-Girlfriend: The title superheroine got her powers from a magical meteorite. In addition to making her a Flying Brick, it also turns blondes into redheads and redheads into blondes. It can also take away her power if she comes in contact with it a second time.

Literature

• Isaac Asimov's Pebble in the Sky: Subcritical uranium is used to excuse Accidental Time Travel, kicking off the plot of the story with Schwartz. Radioactivity does not work like is described in the book, which was first published during the 1950s, soon after nuclear fission was discovered.
• In the Destroyermen novels: Polta fruit has a mix a different properties, although none of its properties are really outlandish. You can eat it straight, and you can mash it up and ferment it into seep, the Lemurians' ethyl alcohol delivery mechanism of choice. The pulp left over from fermentation is used in wound treatment as an antiseptic and topical anesthetic, and in later books they discover that partially fermented seep has properties similar to battery acid, enabling construction of portable power sources.
• Discworld: Magic is broad and ambiguous, and distinctions are drawn on the use of magic rather than different types. However, magic has narrative properties similar to radiation (which is an example of Write What You Know, as Terry Pratchett used to work in the media relations office at a nuclear power station), with sites of old wizard battles essentially being uninhabitable fallout zones that mutate living things. It's also subject to some physical laws and nothing can be truly created with it (for example, Conservation of Mass applies when turning someone into a frog, and a cheese made by magic falls apart into a disgusting inedible mess). The most important reason for witches and wizards to learn magic is frequently said to be how to not use it when they could do it for every little thing. Sam Vimes once complains about the fact that "you can't explain how the magic is done because it's all done by magic."
• One of the finest examples is in the Dune series of books. Melange, a.k.a. "the Spice", was a combination of MacGuffin and Applied Phlebotinum. It was a flavoring, a drug, a source of magical visions, and it gave you cool-looking blue-on-blue eyes. It also made Faster-Than-Light Travel possible, and acted as a mutagen on consecutive generations of users. It also quadrupled the lifespan of anyone who took it. Too bad that The Spice was also insanely addictive, had only one source, and being cut off from supply resulted in an agonizing death.
  
  As elaborated in some of the later books (including later books by the author's estate) the Spice allows fast space travel because it confers a certain degree of prescience/psychic-knowledge to the navigators of the ships, which would otherwise be impossible to safely navigate, at least not without proscribed A.I. intelligences. The actual FTL physics are separate from the drug's effects.
  
  In Frank Herbert's books the Spice only had two properties — life extension and consciousness expansion. Essentially the ultimate nootropic. The variation of effect was due to the variation of short and long-term dosage. At low doses, it merely prolonged life and granted a moderate enhancement to thought processes. It was only at very high doses that the mind was sufficiently enhanced to manifest prescience; and for the addiction and fatal withdrawal symptoms to be an issue (and for the blue-within-blue eyes side effect to show up). FTL travel was stated to be purely technological in nature, and implied to be related to the Holtzman Effect. The prescience and cognitive enhancement granted by the Spice was necessary for navigation through folded space, since electronic A.I. has been subject to both legal and religious prohibition since the Butlerian Jihad (although the world of Ix is implied to have developed some in secret).
  
  The first book makes it abundantly clear that it can be used as, well, a spice. It tastes and smells like cinnamon. Though some characters state that it is never quite the same. Another properties is that the Spice is also stated to act as a neutralizer for most basic poisons in the Duniverse. It's also used to make cloth, plastics, liquor, candies, and many other things. Is there anything the Spice can't do?
• The gelstei crystals in the Ea Cycle come in all the colours of the rainbow and then some. Each type has different powers, but the more powerful ones are versatile. For example, green gelstei can be used to both heal and create mutated monsters.
• Keys to the Kingdom has the Keys, the description of which IS "magical items that can do almost anything". Although they might have specialties, seeing as the Third Key is almost always shown manipulating water, while the Fifth Key can transport its user anywhere they've already been, so long as there's a reflective surface there. And the Second Key is specifically used for making things, the Sixth Key appears to enhance spells written with it, as it is a quill pen and House sorcery almost always involves writing, and the Fourth Key seems to be awfully useful in a fight... Which may indicate that the Keys have powers specific to the demesne they preside over.
• In The Lorax, the Once-ler uses the tufts from the Lorax's truffula trees to make an all-purpose consumer product known as the Thneed.
  It's a shirt, it's a sock, it's a glove, it's a hat
  And it has other uses, far beyond that
• The Wild Cards virus can produce agonizing death, severe deformities and mutations, or superpowers ranging from useless to nearly Godlike. It also sometimes taps the infectee's subconscious and turns them into their fantasies or fears.
  • Actually, the virus does have the consistent effect of always mutating people according to their own subconscious desires/fears. Every single mutation is unique, because every person's psychological makeup is unique. The 90% fatality rate is explained as the human body almost always not surviving the mutagenic effects.

Live-Action TV

• Implied in one episode of Blackadder. Baldrick and Percy attempt to turn lead into gold. What they end up with instead is a glowing green rock ^note Well, more of a splat, really. that can only be described as "green".
• Doctor Who has the sonic screwdriver, which has been used for a variety of purposes ranging from opening locked doors and padlocks, doing scans, cutting things in half, used as a flashlight and tracking lifeforms. It's also been used as an actual screwdriver on occasion, though that's rare.
• The Flash (2014) likes to use dark matter as the go-to Super-Empowering Applied Phlebotinum. Virtually all of the metahumans that appear in the show can be traced back to dark matter, with a few rare instances being the result of some other form of mutagen.
• Promicin, the luminous green neurotransmitter from The 4400, has extremely unpredictable effects. Anybody injected with it will develop some kind of superpower, but there is apparently no way to predict what power that will be. It also has a good chance of killing you but that's the price of power, even if it does suck. It also has the power to ignore the blood-brain barrier.
• In Land of the Lost (1991), the light crystals could do any number of things, by themselves or in combination with other colors, including emit light, heat, and energy, explode, and open dimensional portals.
• The British sci-fi drama Misfits: within six episodes, the storm that strikes in the first episode has given time travel, mind reading, mind control, invisibility, psychopathy, the ability to make others' hair fall out, immortality, and youth, to name those that are known.
• Exaggerated in Monty Python's Flying Circus: string can be used to tie up small parcels, attach notes to pigeon's legs, destroy household pests, prevent floods....
• The Trope Namer is Smallville's kryptonite. It has been used to kill people, heal people, give people powers (the powers can be anything, including, cold, fire, shapeshifting, electricity, intangibility, bee control, death touch, splitting, sonic scream, and more... or in short, with no common theme other than the circumstances of exposure), erase memories, used as car fuel, add strength to dynamite, give back memories, make chewing gum, make a Love Potion, make Clark Kent crawl on the floor in pain, make Clark Kent act like a dick (red), make Clark Kent lose all his power (blue), give humans perfect health (also blue), give Kryptonians a Compelling Voice (jewel), make Bizarro Kent explode with too much power (blue), manifest, fuse or destroy polarized moral aspects of someone's personality (black), make Clark Kent crazily paranoid (silver), make a phone call to twenty-four hours ago (by teaming up with Lightning Can Do Anything), cause two people who were nearby during an explosion to psychically bond, make counterfeit banknotes, etc., etc. And it GLOWS! And even here, it is... diverse. Sometime it glows, sometime it doesn't, sometimes it glows only in Clark's presence, sometime it always glows, and sometimes it could somehow dim the lights around it by being next to Clark.
• Star Trek:
  • The almighty Deflector Array. Any time anything in the universe that's even remotely energy-based needs to be absorbed, converted, transmitted, created, destroyed, or, well, deflected, you can count on the ship's engineer thinking up a solution that uses the deflector array. No ship should be built without it! Federation/Starfleet ships seem to be the only ones in the Trekverse to have an obvious main deflector dish (and not all the time). Everyone else, from the Klingons to the Romulans to the Cardassians to Voyager's Delta-Quadrant-Menace-of-the-Week, seems to get by without them. Which is especially odd given that the basic vanilla function of a deflector array is to function as a futuristic cow catcher and would be hugely important if you didn't want to destroy your ship by flying into a piece of grit at warp speed...
  • At times, the "Orbs of the Prophets" in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine act as green rocks — for example, enabling Time Travel in the famous "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Seven of Nine's Borg implants and nanoprobes are used to resolve a number of problems.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Naquada is practically indestructible, is a room-temperature superconductor, enables forming stable wormholes, is a source of power second only to zero point energy, explodes with super-nuclear force on contact with potassium, increases the power of existing nuclear weapons, has an easily detectable energy pattern, etc.
  • Naquadria is exactly the same, except more powerful, highly radioactive, and with a tendency to explode. Whether the people using the stuff want it to or not. Plus that slight problem with creating stable hyperspace windows with it. In Stargate Universe, Naquadria is responsible from blowing up two planets.
  • Zero-Point Modules (ZPMs) are this combined with Lost Technology. Created by the Ancients who are long gone, only a scant few have been found, but these objects roughly the size of a paper-towel roll contain prodigious amounts of energy and thus are extremely useful for anyone to use. Many plots have been driven by the search, recovery, use, or theft of such modules.

Tabletop Games

• Deadlands has Ghost Rock, the Miracle Fuel made from the souls of the damned. Ghost Rock burns 100 times hotter and 100 times longer than coal, can act as a catalyst in a wide array of chemical reactions, can be used in place of coke to make superhard steel, and basically anything else you can imagine. Alchemy in this setting even uses a cocktail of carefully mixed Ghost Rock powder and human blood to create "The Philosopher's Stone", a literally magical chemical base that can be used for all kinds of impossible potions, lotions, ointments, unguents and elixirs.
• Dungeons Of Drakkenheim: Delerium is a purple-colored magical crystal that crashed to the world in a meteorite. It's incredibly rich in magical energies, making it useful to create a wide variety of magical items, even empowering artifacts that would have been all but impossible to make before. It can also be tapped directly to fuel extremely powerful spells, and even transform a user into a sorcerer. But it also induces intense madness and rampant mutation in those exposed to it. It's actually the creation of an Eldritch Abomination which is using it to literally erode reality, opening a slowly widening rift into its own dimension so it can consume the world.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Mystara: Large regions of the Red Steel setting are contaminated with a reddish toxic mineral called cinnabryl, which impairs mental attributes in those who are exposed to it. However, certain cinnabryl-derivatives can not only offset this effect, but can confer a wide range of superpower-like abilities to those who know how to prepare and administer them. Just to cap it off, depleted cinnabryl can be refined into a superior grade of red-tinted steel (hence the name), and smokepowder for firearms can be crafted using its residues.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: Of the crazy Phlebotinums in the setting, two in particular count for this: Isoflux-Alpha and OblivAeon shards.
  • Isoflux-Alpha is the result of a scientist's experimentation with an anti-matter generator and gives powers to most people who touch it, regardless of his weird and out there they may be. Characters with this power source include Mainstay, Dr. Medico, and Chokepoint.
  • OblivAeon shards are chipped off pieces of a massive beyond cosmic entity that serves as the main bad guy for the Card Game's final expansion. They can also give anybody any power though usually at the cost of driving them insane. Characters with this power source include Captain Cosmic, Infinitor, and Proletariat.
• Shadowrun: "Nerps for acne. Nerps for boredom. Nerps for kidney failure. Nerps for energy. Nerps for ring-around-the-collar."
• Warhammer: Warpstone is a magic rock, a form of solid Chaos, that absorbs all light from the surrounding area while emitting its own green light. It can be used to power magical machines or for Faster-Than-Light Travel or as a magic looking glass or to create mutations, etc. Generally, though, it's The Corruption. Oh, and did we mention that one of the two moons is made out of this stuff?
  • For some Skaven (and human sorcerers), fitting their generally-deranged style, it's a magical-power-boosting Fantastic Drug.
  • Warpstone is the center of all conflicts for the Mordheim tabletop game (and to an extension, Mordheim City of the Damned). Everybody is in town to grab the warpstone for their own purposes. The mercenaries from the Imperial provinces are hired by wealthy power bidders to grab warpstone to further their ends. The Sisters of Sigmar seeks to keep the warpstone away from other potential dangers from harnessing their power. The Skaven feeds on Warpstone for power. The Chaos warbands seeks to use warpstone to free the Shadowlord. The Undead warbands seeks to use it to further their necromantic rituals. In summary, everybody is in town for the Warpstone.
• Warhammer 40,000: You get all sorts of magic rocks — necrodermis, Standard Template Constructs, wraithbone, and the Warp itself all function as magic rocks at various points. Wraithbone is more or less the same as Warpstone, as it is solidified psychic energy. However it is far less chaotic than its fantasy counterpart, but apparently forms almost everything the Eldar use, down to possibly their clothes.

Video Games

• In Alpha Prime, hubbardium are literal green rocks coloured due to radiation from Glomar's heart and that are implied to have a variety of uses ranging from powering things, to alcohol, to Bullet Time.
• In ARK: Survival Evolved, the substance that powers Tek equipment is simply known as "Element". Its only source at the start of the series is boss drops, forcing players to challenge the Island's most powerful inhabitants to get some. Aberration reveals that its liquid form is glowing magenta and highly radioactive, and the final boss of Aberration and the plot of Extinction reveals that Element is the source of The Corruption that has rendered Earth That Was uninhabitable.
• Brave Fencer Musashi: Binchotite. It not only gets New Powers as the Plot Demands (from making floating islands to being refined into fuel to capturing people to powering Musashi's special abilities to making Super Soldiers), it's also green, and a rock (when exposed to air). One does wonder how Grillin' Village survives, though, what with the constant threat of a (non-nuclear) Phlebotinum explosion due to an incompetent reactor administrator.
• Bug Fables: The Ancient Crystals that appeared everywhere after the Day of Awakening. They’re used as expensive lighting all across the kingdom, and they also function as save points, with the in-universe explanation being that they literally store a record of nearby consciousnesses. Several machines exist that can read this data. There are gold variants that save and heal, and a red variant that only heals. There’s a giant one underneath Bugaria that prevents it from becoming a Dead Land, and the soil and plant life is laced with shards, which causes some plants to become animate, like Seedlings and Venus. Honey made from Bugarian flower nectar will also come to life if it gets too hot or in accumulations larger than the Honey Drop item. The Roaches used them as a power source for their robots and Cordyceps experiments. A large one in the Giant's lair has been supplying the appliances with electricity for years. It’s also apparently well documented that bugs with Ancient Crystal shards in their body will develop magical powers as a side effect.
• Tiberium from the Command & Conquer series is the most valuable substance in the world (leading to GDI and Nod fighting over it) and will either kill or mutate anybody who steps in it. It also corrupts the land so much that by the second game's expansion, the Earth's air and biosphere are one year or so away from becoming toxic to humans. To top it off, it's part of an alien invasion plan. Yes, it's green. There's also a blue variety, which has aged considerably, and thus is much more valuable, but tends to react poorly when people start slinging explosives around near it. There's supposedly a red strain as well... To be fair, Tiberium (at least the CNC 1-2 variety) contains valuable metals in high yields, conveniently sent to the surface in packed crystals. In CNC3, its more unappealing properties come through radiation. Either way, it's toxic and/or mutagenic in all forms.
  
  By Tiberium Wars, the mutagenic properties have gone down a notch but gained an even lovelier ability, via a process described as evolution (it's still unclear if Tiberium is alive or not). While still able to leech substances, Tiberium is also able to "infect" surfaces and grow into them, assimilating the object into its crystaline structure and turning it into itself. This is the reason we see some truly massive Tiberium formations in Wars and the intro of Twilight. When this happens to a human and is not treated immediately, Tiberium fuses into the skin and spreads, eventually resulting with the victim growing Tiberium crystals out of his/her body. Did we mention that in the worse-off parts of the world, you can breathe Tiberium particles without realising?
  
  Tiberium is also essential to the Scrin life cycle. The species is entirely dependent on it for its survival, and their modus operandi seems to be seeding a planet with a Tiberium meteor (or waiting for it to be seeded), and then biding their time until the population destroys itself fighting over the new resource or over unaffected territories. In the end, the crystal itself makes life on the planet impossible, and eventually grows into the planet's crust and hits the mantle, triggering an enormous explosion that signals the Scrin fleets to move in.
  
  The official strategy guide for Tiberian Dawn explained how Tiberium allowed for several of the aversions of reality seen in the game, like aspects of Easy Logistics (on-field construction) and Ridiculously Fast Construction (very effective on-field construction). Thus, the first Tiberium War: the value of Tiberium is both a reason for war and a necessary element of the modern way of waging war.
  • Tiberium makes an appearance in The Sims 3 as an Easter Egg, its attributes are that it can cut itself into a unique shape from its raw form (all other gem types in this game must be cut by the player), it's ridiculously valuable and makes a Sim ill when carrying it. Rumours of Tiberium being able to spread itself if left on the ground as in its parent games are untrue though.
• Similarly, Conflicks: Revolutions uses "Metamatter," a substance that can be turned into anything else (except for mayonnaise, for some reason), derived from chicken eggs.
• Nanites in Deus Ex. Super speed? Nanites. Being bulletproof? Nanites. Chinese lightsaber? Nanites!
• The Dig featured glowing Life Crystals created by an advanced alien civilization, which are capable of bringing the dead back to life (albeit with resulting insanity and crystal-addiction) by cracking them open and pouring the liquid they carry over a corpse. You can probably guess what colour they were. For some reason, the crystals were also used to power the various alien machines found throughout the city.
• Dragon Age:
  • Lyrium, a mineral that absorbs and stores magical energies from the surrounding environment. In mineral form it is a blueish green, becomes purple when crushed, red when ground to powder, and finally blue when turned into potions. The most common and direct use is in mana potions, but it is also used to forge magic weapons, destroy a persons magical abilities (and part of their minds), make warriors resistant to magic (and addicted to the stuff), and part of the concoction that turns normal people into Grey Wardens without mutating them into monsters. Whenever you want to create something magical, there surely is a lot of lyrium involved in the construction.
    • It is also alive on some level, and dwarf miners find veins by listening for want is always called it's "song", new veins can be seen growing in old ruins, and prolonged exposure causes anything from idiot savant status to full-on insanity. Hawke and company find large amounts of a new and unexplained red type in a long-lost Dwarven city which had a number of unique properties they never found any answers to. Whether any of this has any connection to the Dwarven religious belief that the dead "return to the stone" or the rise of the Darkspawn is unclear, but there is definitely more to it than has been revealed so far.
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition introduces Red Lyrium, lyrium tainted by the Blight, which can grow into and infect both living things (which strengthens them and also drives them insane) and even the landscape. It also reveals that lyrium is the blood of immense beings known as Titans.
  • There are also lifestones, a rare rock that has existed in close proximity to lyrium ore, and as such, they have absorbed some of its traits. Crushing a lifestone gives the user a small bonus to nature resistance for a short time — reasonable enough. But in addition, lifestones enhance the natural properties of other materials used in item creation, and how! These magic rocks are used as natural property 'enhancers' in all sorts of antidotes, salves, poisons, and grease traps conveniently making things more healing, more deadly, more acidic, or more greasy just by mere presence, it seems.
• In Endless Space and it's sequel, all civilizations rely on Dust (except for the Harmony). It is used for almost anything - from building structures and ships, to forming computer networks. It's also the currency.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Magicite in Final Fantasy VI are the green gems left behind by deceased espers.
  • Mako energy, from Final Fantasy VII. It's even green. And, by extension, materia.
  • Similarly, Pyreflies in Final Fantasy X, which (apart from additionally powering fiends, which replace the mutants, normal animals, and normal people fought in FF7) is Mako energy in floating pellet form.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, Magicite is merely a stone that has absorbed enough Mist to become magical itself, allowing one to cast basic elemental magic, keep airships aloft, or create city-wide barriers. The most significant (and powerful) Magicite in the Ivalice Alliance world is known as Nethicite and Auracite.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has ceruleum as its form of green rocks - it's aetheric energy, harvested from crystals and refined into a material form, and is apparently used mostly as an advanced fuel, propellant, or explosive.
• The Fire Emblem in the series by the same name seems to function somewhat like this. In Sacred Stones it's a plot device, and in Shadow Dragon all it does is let you open locked doors and chests without a key.
• Fortnite: Save the World has Bluglo, floating blue rocks that appeared at the same time as the storm. While the rest of the world runs and hides, the Vindertech labs figure out how to harness its power to fuel the MacGuffin of the moment, from laser emitters that clear up the storm to hot-air-balloon vans that act as storm observation labs. One thing they haven't figured out is how to get these things to activate a little faster.
• Energy X serves this purpose in Freedom Force and its sequel. Not only does it give almost all the super-characters their powers - which are as varied as anything the X-gene ever provided - but it provides the power-ups that are sprinkled around each battlefield. It heals injuries, temporarily super-energises characters, provides permanent power boosts for characters and can give the team a bonus helping them to recruit more members. It comes in easy-to-carry canisters, and is a sentient energy being with dark designs on the universe!
• Imulsion in Gears of War was originally discovered as an incredible fuel. It's actually a parasitic organism that is out to mutate all life on the planet as part of its life cycle.
• Ghost Trick: All ghost tricks performed by the users are a by-product of the Temsik Meteor, which is immediately implanted for any living being that dies in its radius.
• Psynergy Stones in Golden Sun, which were spread over the world by the erupting Mt. Aleph, hit animals and turned them into monsters. They had different effects on more sentient beings (humans, talking trees...), as well as the landscape (caused the sudden apparition of a forest, and a swamp in the second game) and non-living things such as statues. Everything that hinders you but isn't directly tied to the plot is blamed on them. To Adepts, they restored their Psynergy. They were purple and sparkly, though.
• Half-Life:
  • In Half-Life, green (actually gold) rocks and the mishandling of said rocks caused the resonance cascade, which allowed the creatures from Xen to come a-swarming in and nearly end humanity as we know it. The Nihilanth kept three of these crystals in its chamber to heal itself.
  • In Half-Life 2: Episode 2 it turns out that someone arranged for the rock to be placed into the machine for exactly that purpose, and that the computer problems on the same day were most likely to cover up that the machine had been tampered with. It is confirmed that the G-Man procured the crystal which blew up in the test chamber but for who's request is unknown (seeing that he presents himself as a freelance contractor, probably the Combine hired him). They also power that nifty Gravity Gun.
• The Harvest Moon series' equivalent to materia — Wonderfuls. Seven different colors with seven different effects (Blue and red ones extend the range of your tools, green ones reduce the amount of stamina needed to use them) with some varying slightly depending on which tool you put them in (Orange Wonderfuls increase the amount of water your watering can holds, and acts as a yield multiplier in your other tools)
• The Jak and Daxter series has Eco, a substance that comes in various states and colors: Green (healing), Red (strength), Blue (speed/motion), Yellow (ballistics), Dark (toxic), and Light.
• Literal green rocks appear in Super Karoshi, and as an obvious Expy of Kryptonite, they exist solely to take you out of your Super Mode. Since the object of every Karoshi game is to die, this is a good thing for you.
• Prismere in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. This strange crystal starts out blue but turns an eerie blood red after absorbing magical power. The power provided by Prismere is enough to alter the Fate of living beings — something that is normally impossible. The main villains of the game the Tuatha Deohn use Prismere in everything — their armor, their weapons, and their shrines. This is bad, since fully charged Prismere also drives magical beings like the Fae completely insane. Mortals on the other hand can use Prismere equipment with no ill side effects.
• In Kolibri, an Earth crystal empowers Kolibri in the opening stage, and other crystals produce Power Ups constantly.
• The Legend of Dark Witch games give us Pure Syega, crystallized magic that humans and beastmen can use for whatever situation they require. They're so ubiquitous that many characters are often seen with them on their character designs with some exceptions^note Zizou and Mati due to them both being Physical Gods and thus able to use magic without having to use them and Fae such as Stoj and someone stealing an entire nation's supply was enough to cause great concern for Zizou to get involved. In gameplay, they're often used to upgrade abilities. Riva's Red Syega in particular deserves special mention, being more powerful than regular blue Syega, to the point that they allow her to go One-Winged Angel in the final battle.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Zonaite, the glowing green material that makes all Zonai technology possible. It appears to both power and make up Zonai artifacts, as demonstrated by certain powered Zonai tools like rockets and batteries disappearing when used up. It's implicitly the "glue" used to attach objects by Ultrahand and can be used to completely replicate materials for builds when using Autobuild.
• The Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance is predicated on the falling to Earth of a substance known as Iso-8, which ... makes things better. There's a number of colours for different effects, it enhances all forms of energy manipulation, including physical, electrical, and mystical, Magneto's experimenting with it to make better mutants, etc etc. You can research it to make better Iso-8 (the ultimate variety enhancing all the character's attributes). That it's Phlebotinium is built into the game - there's no identifiable rhyme or reason to how it works so far, and probably the ultimate end game will have to do with what this stuff comes from. They've only opened 10 levels so far (with two more announced). Even the Special Operations missions, they still don't have a good clue on how Iso-8 works
  • The Marvel XP crossover game Avengers Initiative takes place around the same universe as MAA. The Iso-8 works in the same way, but there are less colors. You can upgrade your stats with the Iso-8, and it's implied in-game that Iso-8 is being used by Vault escapees and HYDRA to amp up their power and abilities. The only ways to gain Iso-8 are to defeat enemies and to mine them.
  • Quite a few Marvel games have been using the Iso-8 such as Spider-Man Unlimited, which is used to summon Spiders from high-level portals.
• Mass Effect: Element Zero and the eponymous "mass effects" it creates are responsible for and a key component of just about every major technological development in the games.
  • Humans first developed psychic powers when a fright transport of Element Zero exploded during reentry over Singapore. While no immediate health effects were noticed, traces of the substance inhaled by pregnant women affected their unborn children which developed biotic potential, though they still require implants to amplify their powers for combat use.
  • Mass Effect 3 suggests that this might probably also be the source for the apparent natural bionic powers of Asari Who secretly had access to a complete and working database of Prothean technology and would have had thousands of years to permanently modify the DNA of their entire species.
• Phazon from the Metroid Prime Trilogy was a poison, a mutagen, a weapon, and fuel, and interestingly, was the only thing that could hurt the Metroid Prime in the first game despite it also causing the Metroid's transformation in the first place. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption it turned out to be the corrupting influence of a living planet of the stuff seeking to take over the universe. Curiously, Phazon has No Ontological Inertia, the destruction of the planet Phaaze, the source of all Phazon leads to the obliteration of all Phazon everywhere even from the planets and life forms it was infecting.
• Minecraft has Redstone, a red dust that's commonly found deep underground. It can be used to make a compass, as well as a clock. Mix some into a potion and it lasts longer. Not to mention the fact that it can be used to make a wide variety of logic gates and digital circuits.
• Myst IV has actual green rocks on the prison Age of Spire. This mineral allows rocks infused with it to hover in repulsion to the sun-like core of the age. It also comes in crystals which store some kind of negative static electricity, and any grounding makes it discharge. Sirrus put this to use to power his machines and create sonic explosives.
• Gaussite in Prismata is used to build mysterious Nightsider tech. True to form, it looks like a green rock.
• The Blacklight virus in [PROTOTYPE] is defined to be the answer to everything in biology.
• The psychic summer camp in Psychonauts is built over a large deposit of Psitanium, which enhances psychic powers of the strong-minded and causes insanity in the weak-minded. Carrying a large block of this allows Cruller to come to the rescue without splitting into his multiple personalities.
• In Realms of the Haunting, green crystals appear in several instances, being shards of the Soulstone and usually serving the purpose of teleportation, as in you need one of these to meet the Gnarl, and later on to access Sheol.
• The runes in Runescape could count. While the player can only use the spells of whichever spellbook they're currently using, several other characters have been using them for spells that you can't use. For instance, a child in the "Meeting History" quest was shown banging together air and fire runes, which caused a small explosion. Nothing big, harmful, or destructive. Just enough to make a few sparks to start a fire and make a loud noise.
• One of Singularity's writers is quoted as saying that E99 can do whatever the plot needs it to. This includes time travel, gravity manipulation and time manipulation for a start.
• Skies of Arcadia features a system of six of these, of which only one is green; the others are red, yellow, blue, purple, and silver. These rocks are energized meteorites that fall from the moons and are used as a Magitek-ish power source for practically every vaguely mechanical item in the game, including prototype airship cannons, vehicle engines, torches, stoves, and liquor distillers (silver makes the good stuff). Said rocks also allow their owners to cast magic spells, or physically attack with elemental power by slotting a rock into their weapon.
• The Chaos Emeralds from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, whose functions throughout the games include everything from heroic transformation to manipulating time to powering doomsday machines.
• In Space Pirates and Zombies, there exists a substance called "Rez," which can be easily transmuted into any other element.
• Team Fortress 2 has Australium, a rare metal from Australia that grants enhanced intelligence and muscle mass but reduces common sense. It's the reason for Australia's simultaneous hyper-advanced technology and Testosterone Poisoning. The Engineer's grandfather Radigan Conagher was given 100 pounds of the stuff which he used to build all sorts of inventions, but the radiation eventually mutated him into a shirtless Australian with chest hair in the shape of Texas. The course of the comics show that it's still a finite resource, not helping by the Administrator absconding with most of it to power her life-extender machines. Eventually there's literally none of it left, with the all-powerful Australians brought down to regular humans and the Administrator used the last Australium on Earth; about a test-tube's worth of it estimated for a few months to reverse her age, which means she has less than a hour left to live.
• Septium (a fragment of this is called sepith) in Trails Series are gems which come in seven different energies representing four basic and three higher-tier existing elements in the series' universe; Fire (Red, called Carnelia), Water (Blue, called Sapphirl), Wind (Green, called Esmelas), Earth (Brown, called Amberl), Space (Gold, called Goldia), Mirage (Silver, called Argem), and Time (Black, called Nohval). Its purified form of sepith, quartz, is utilized in a mechanical device known as orbment in almost every technological aspect ranging from military to simple home cooking. In gameplay, each characters have tactical orbment with slots that can be filled with various types of quartz to grant them ability to use arts, alter their combat parameters or even their cooking proficiency in later games.
• Valkyria Chronicles has ragnite, a mysterious glowing substance used in anything humanly possible from first-aid kits to ammunition, including, but not limited to, street lamps and engine fuel and laser weapons.
• War of the Monsters has alien fuel, which is either leaked onto or injected into what would eventually be the monsters. Bonus points for having Sickly Green Glow.
• Azerite in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is the blood of the Titan Azeroth. Due to the massive amount of energy it contains, azerite has a wide range of uses. Sylvanas kicked off a rush on the crystal when its potential use in empowering or creating weapons was realized by the goblins.

Web Animation

• RWBY: In its raw form, Dust is a crystal that can be found anywhere in Remnant. When applied to objects, weapons, clothing or people, then activated with Aura, it can have magic-like effects, such as producing fire, lightning or gravity. Dust mining is a dangerous business that leads to serious, long-term health problems.

Web Comics

• Erfworld has the Arkentools, superpower magical artifacts created by the Titans that, when fully unlocked, grant their wielders tremendous power. There are four known Arkentools on the face of the Erf at this time, and only three have been revealed in the comic.
  • The Arkenhammer grants its user the ability to tame Dwagons as well as produce powerful lightning attacks. Its current wielder Stanley also found out that it also has the ability to turn walnuts into pigeons (and birds into walnuts) about twenty percent of the time. Stanley can also use the Arkenhammer to fly, though enemy forces suspect it's a poor kind of flight. Still better than none.
  • The Arkendish grants the wielder unmatched powers of thinkamancy (telepathy, mindcontrol, mind reading, etc.). It also grants its current wielder Charlie control of his Archons. Those who know Latin and watched TV in the '70s are now groaning.
  • The Arkenpliers' powers are mostly currently unknown, as they have only recently been attuned to their wielder. The single power they have demonstrated is perfectly raising a seemingly unlimited number of croaked (dead) units for no upkeep, no decay, and almost perfect obedience. In this world setting, that would be a Game-Breaker, though the "almost" is because one decrypted character has definitely revolted against the 'pliers.
  • The fourth known tool has yet to be revealed. Fans temporarily refer to the unknown item as the "Arkensaw" when making predictions about what role they think it will play. A popular theory is that there are more Arkentools, nine total, one for each class of magic on the Erf axis. This is supported by Destructomancy, Thinkamancy and Healomancy being on that axis. Another theory puts the total at 27, one for each school of magic.
  • The Arkenshoes were revealed during one of the text-only prologue chapters. In addition to being the Ruby Slippers from Wizard of Oz (quite literally, as the characters involved were expys), they also grant their attuned user unlimited move. Considering that the citizens of Erfworld can't move out of certain areas unless it's their turn, and can only move so many hexes per turn, and that night time is never anyone's turn... in the hands of a powerful combat unit, they would be a Game Breaker. It's implied that they were used as such in the past. However, when their last attuned wielder used them to leave Erfworld, they left with her.
• Tedd's Transformation Ray Gun from the webcomic El Goonish Shive can temporarily (up to a month at a time) transform anyone into any other humanoid form (subject to failsafes). He uses a computer to program the forms.
• The Blinker Stones from Gunnerkrigg Court were initially presented as Pink Rocks: creating fires and giant glowing sky signals alike, with nary an explanation of how for 20 chapters. Then it was revealed that they are lenses for latent psychic powers.
• "First Materials" in Unsounded are various substances, usually types of metal like steel or copper, that are in some sense untainted or unmodified since the world's creation. These have many convenient properties including Anti-Magic and, somewhat confusingly, a greater ability to retain enchantments placed on them.

Western Animation

• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has the green moon rock of the planet, Canis Lunis. This moon rock, combined with NOS-4-A2's bite, can transform Ty into a wirewolf.
• Darkwing Duck: Canardium, a green radioactive element used as a power source. It also caused a spider to grow large and sentient.
• Futurama: Bender's Big Score has "Torgo's Executive Powder" which is used for everything, from food to gunpowder substitute and plaster. This is made more bizarre by the fact that this power is made from ground up network executives. Granted, the cast of the show are fully willing to eat stupid sentient beings... Which explains their love of Glagnar's Human Rinds and Soylent Green.
• Justice League: Nth Metal, taking much inspiration from it's Comics Lore, is immune to almost any form of magic, virtually indestructible, and can be formed into insanely powerful hand-held weapons.
• The Chemical X in The Powerpuff Girls did weird and arbitrary things sometimes. Like turning a bowl of "sugar, spice, and everything nice" and a monkey into three Magical Girls and an evil genius. Disturbingly enough, the contents of Mojo Jojo's gross prison toilet is apparently a decent substitute for Chemical X since that's what's used to create the Rowdyruff Boys.
• Rick and Morty: Discussed in "The Jerrick Trap" when Morty tries to hide his drug dealing from Beth by claiming the crystals he's been selling could be anything, only for Chuxly to scupper that by clarifying the crystals he's dealing are specifically drugs. Burger and Fries are seen snorting them like cocaine.
• Quantum Juice (a.k.a. Q-Juice) serves this function in Static Shock, the animated version of Milestone Comics' Dakota Universe.
• While the mutagen in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) initially seemed to have one specific use—to give whomever touched it the qualities of whatever organism they themselves last touched, as in the original cartoon—the ooze has since diversified, with it doing whatever the writers need it to do, such as turning squirrels into ferocious and lethal monsters.
  • Justified since the Kraang actively modify the mutagen to perfect it for their sinister purposes, so each batch of mutagen could have subtle variations magnified by the environment.
• Transformers: Prime has two. Normal energon, which is the lifeblood of all Transformers, is said to be the emanation of Primus that they use for almost everything. Then there's dark energon, which according to the ancient text is the blood of Unicron, which has the ability to revive the dead into zombies. In some continuities, Energon takes the form of a mineral crystal that can be mined from the earth. Both of the above examples are like this (Energon is blue, Dark Energon is purple).
  • The show eventually introduced two other variants: Red Energon, which is capable of giving a Cybertronian super speed on the level of the Flash, and Tox-En, a version of the stuff developed by the Decepticons as a biological weapon. A synthetic version of Energon was also introduced, apparently having once been used by ancient Cybertronians and the formula lost for eons. Ratchet creates two versions; one that acts like a steroid (complete with causing alterations in the user's psyche) and the finished product once used by the Ancients, which proves to be a viable alternative fuel source for Cybertron and is used to help with revitalizing Cybertron itself by being fed right into the heart of Primus, the God of the Transformers.

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