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Tron Lines

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Looks futuristic enough.

When your technology isn't just bleeding-edge, but laser-edged, disruption-fielded-with-motorized-teeth high-tech. Power Glows, and now so does your tech. A common design scheme used for this glow is a series of lines along the edges or between panels of the machine. Others will have flat surfaces crossed by circuit-like lines that glow when activated, or have occasional pulses of light race down their length in tandem. Others have glowing components such as engines, weapon barrels, forcefield projectors and the like.

"Tron Lines" are strongly influenced from the wireframe graphics used in early video games, especially as it appeared in Atari's "Quadrascan Display"-based games such as Tempest, Battlezone and Asteroids. As 3D modeling transitioned from empty frames to solid polygons, the edges were still rendered, ergo, "Tron Lines".

If this were to take place in a world using technology similar to ours, this would be pretty inefficient. A big waste of power to maintain the glow (assuming this was electricity and not some power source that glowed on its own), and impossible to conceal, but damn, it looks cool. In harder SF, this trope is usually justified by the use of Fiber-optics. When your tech uses this, Hard Light systems and Holographic Terminals are pretty much prerequisites.

Of course, Tron Lines are Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Usually blue is "good" or at least standard; if they turn red or purple the A.I. Is a Crapshoot or else has been taken over by some virus or hacker. A new or unique color can indicate a new level of power or a unique function. The lines get fainter or even turn off the closer the person or device is to deactivation. Likewise any power-up usually results in brighter lines; pushing this to the limit causes every line to have a fan of light shining out.

The ultimate expression of Shiny-Looking Spaceships. See also Instant Runes, essentially the Magic version, and Volcanic Veins, an organic equivalent seen among Elemental Embodiments. If you do this to a whole urban environment, it counts as a Neon City. Equipping your car or computer with neons and strobes counts as Truth in Television to some degree, though it's well known these things need their own power supply to get them running.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, when Alita jacks into Melchizedek her avatar has jet-black skin but glowing green hair and cybernetic markings.
  • EDENS ZERO: When Ether Gear users activate their powers, Ether Lines appear on the appropriate body parts (normally the hands, but Rebecca's appear on her feet because her power is normally speed-based while Noah's is in his eyes because his is vision-based).
  • In GaoGaiGar FINAL, Evoludar Guy gets them glowing through his skin sometimes due to his body being composed of G-Stone based Nano Machines or something like that.
  • Gundam:
    • In Mobile Suit Gundam 00, whenever the 4 main Gundams go into the super powered Trans-Am mode, they gain Tron Lines and a healthy red glow.
    • A similar phenomenon occurs with the RX-0 Unicorn when it enters Destroy-Mode, where segments of the Unicorn's armour open up to expose the glowing psychoframe underneath. The colour depends on the strength of the pilot's psycommu resonance: red or gold at the basic level, and bright green if they're in full control.
  • In Infinite Ryvius, the Ryvius lights up with Tron Lines when first activated.
  • Kiddy Grade: Lumiere emits these when she invokes her machine-controlling powers.
  • Appears on the Lyrical Nanoha franchise's Boost Devices, such as those used by Caro and Lutecia, when they're in use. Formula Suits in Reflection and Detonation also look this way.
  • The mechas Argent, Sable and Gueules in M3: The Dark Metal, outside and inside from the mecha. Outside the main color is blue, but change according to the feelings from the pilot.
  • People who activate Nanomachines in Martian Successor Nadesico get glowing Tron Lines over their body. This includes the limited forms (basically on their hands) when they use the nanite-based control system for machinery like the Aestivalus, and the ones that appear on their bodies on a Boson Jump.
  • In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Chao displays these as a Marked Change during the Battle of Mahora.
  • Since Scrapped Princess's magic comes from technology, Tron Lines are traced along the air every time a spell is cast.
  • The ultra-tech STRAINs in Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry, compared to the GAMBEEs piloted by the Redshirt Army.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • Post-Time Skip Nia gets these when she becomes an Anti-Spiral.
    • The Mugann mech/attack craft as well.
  • Tiger & Bunny both have some on their suits that light up whenever they use their Hundred Power.
  • Most of the Majeran technology (especially anything upgraded by the Paksis) in Vandread.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • In the earlier seasons of the anime, whenever a card was played onto one of the many hologram-generator playfields present in the series, Tron Lines would flash briefly around it. Justified in that the field (or Duel Disk, for that matter) has to read the microchip that's embedded within the card, and a full scan is necessary to locate said chip.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, whenever a character performs a Synchro or Dark Synchro Summon, the outline of the non-Tuner monsters glow (usually golden, but a white outline appeared when a monster had a Negative Level).
    • The Earthbound Immortals are also covered in them, themed after the Nazca Lines.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, thanks to the series Cyberspace theme, expect a lot of this all over LINK VRAINS. Playmaker's bodysuit sports golden trimmings, which glow light blue when Ritual Summoning, light purple when Fusion Summoning, light green when Synchro Summoning, and dark purple when Xyz Summoning.
  • Applies to just about every mecha in Zegapain.

    Card Games 
  • In The Spoils Collectible Card Game, the Gearsmith artifacts such as the Runic Cannon or the Runic Whale often have curly glowing runes of power running around their surface.
  • From the Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG, any paraphernalia coming from the 5D's era (Deckboxes, Binders, Sleeves, Deckmats, etc.) would have Tron Lines all over it, designed so that it looks like a microchip.

    Comic Books 
  • The current Buck Rogers comic book has the heroes wearing uniforms with Tron Lines.
  • The Marvel storyline Fear Itself has some ancient evil Norse god creating a bunch of knockoffs of Mjölnir and giving them to various characters such as Hulk and Juggernaut, with varying levels of Tron Lines accompanying them.
  • Non-Technological example: the runes on Hellboy's Red Right Hand glow when he plugs it in to a demonic power source.
  • Iron Man has had at least one armor with this feature.
  • A number of New 52 characters and teams, such as Superboy, the Teen Titans and the Ravagers wear very Tron-inspired costumes; black with glowing lines depending on the character. A design sketch for Ridge even refers to them as "Tron Lines"
  • Grant Morrison's redesign of DC's New Gods feature this, particularly Darkseid, Metron, and Mister Miracle.
  • Since the comic changed colorists from Josh Burcham to Joana Lafuente, the characters in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye have been covered in Tron lines.
  • In honor of TRON: Legacy, Marvel made a series of illustrations for heroes such as Iron Man, Wolverine, Spider-Woman, and a Lightcycle-riding Ghost Rider done TRON-style. Spider-Man's stealth suit is basically a toned-down version of this.
  • Featured heavily with Woden and Mimir and associated gadgets (including the headquarters of the Pantheon) in The Wicked + The Divine.
  • Marvel mutant Havok got to have a costume with such when he was jammin' with the Starjammers. When he returns to earth and briefly rejoins X-Factor Pip the Troll doesn't miss the chance in calling him Tron, much to his annoyance.

    Eastern Animation 
  • NAMI, the host of Toonami Asia, was shown to have these on her body when her character design was revealed.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Black Widow's suit in Avengers: Age of Ultron features Tron Lines that light up when her Widow's Bite gauntlets are activated, while in previous movies the Tron Lines just appeared on her gauntlets and gloves.
  • Back to the Future: The distinctive blue "time-coils" which line the body of the DeLorean do this when the car hits 88 miles-per-hour.
  • Busby Berkeley used an early version of this aesthetic during the "Shadow Waltz" sequence in Gold Diggers of 1933, by outlining a few dozen violins with neon lights; unfortunately, the visible electrical cords coming from each violin (which apparently shocked more than a couple dancers, who were wearing dresses that were lined with metal wire) undermines the effect.
  • This occurs on Lantern Corps uniforms and other ring-generated items in the Green Lantern (2011) film starring Ryan Reynolds.
  • The kaiju from Pacific Rim have a biological version of this trope.
  • The Fallen from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. Of course that's because his internals are permanently on fire, and are visible through cracks in his armour
  • TRON
    • Named, of course, after the computer world of TRON, which, being a representation of technology itself, has pretty much everything and every character covered in them - the effect earned TRON an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume (interestingly though, the lights were not actually part of the original costume; they simply used underlighting, similarly to many of the film's other special effects, since putting light strips on the costumes was far too impractical at the time). In that universe, a Program's circuitry lines appear to be an identifier with the colors and patterns communicating their position, function, system of origin, and loyalties within a system.
    • It's worth pointing out that one shot in TRON in the real world includes a black Encom helicopter with fluorescent red paint stripes, effectively real-life Tron lines.
    • It shouldn't seem surprising that TRON: Legacy, the movie sequel, uses this. What is surprising is how controlled this effect is. On a special note, all Tron Lines on characters were achieved using flexible light strips built into the clothing. Not one line is CGI or underlighting.

    Literature 
  • The Cosmere 'Verse:
    • The Stormlight Archive: "Living" Shardblades, as well as the Shardplate of the ancient Knights Radiant, is marked with faint glowing lines in colors that correspond to the type of Spren spirit that manifests it. When Dalinar has a vision of the original Knights abandoning their Shards, they lose their glow, since the spren were "killed" by the Knights' violation of their Oaths.
    • Mistborn: Secret History: The Ire's fortress in the Spirit World of the Cognitive Realm has a glowing, fractal pattern across every solid surface, stemming from a large central cable. This appears to be a sort of power source that holds the "cognitive shadows" of real-world construction materials in place, when ordinarily they'd dissipate and reappear near the original rocks and trees.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Automan in "hero mode", his car and his helicopter. The similitude with TRON is not unexpected, as the AutoCopter seems lifted directly from the corporate helicopter from TRON, and Cursor is suspiciously similar to the Bit sidekicks of the tank pilots in said movie. Both TRON and Automan were produced by the same person, Donald Kushner.
  • In Farscape, whenever a Leviathan goes into Starburst, they get pretty blue (or in Talyn's case, yellow) glowy lines all over them.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • Present in all the riders of the Kamen Rider 555 universe, which powers all the gears. The lines only glow during the Transformation Sequence, although the finishers all involve a pulse of energy traveling from the Rider Belt to an arm or leg. The supplementary materials say that these lines carry a substance known as Photon Blood, which may explain why they need actual "lines" to carry it. It's part of 555's slightly more "realistic" idea of the way a Rider suit works. Energy is always seen traveling from the power source to the place it's going to be used (not just the arm or leg, but specific devices on it). For Rider Kick finishers, it's the circle on the boot with the Rider's emblem.
    • Kamen Rider Stronger's lead character also has similar features, but they're far less prominent
  • Power Rangers
    • In Power Rangers in Space, Ecliptor's body is covered with green Tron Lines. The Dark Fortress is also half-solid and half-green Tron Lines (as in, half of it seems to be made of green Tron Lines) in many scenes. Interestingly, most establishment shots make it appear to be in another dimension, and when it's in normal space, the Tron Line half becomes solid before it actually interacts with the outside world (such as sending out fighters or putting the Rangers' ship in that web thing). It stays Tronified during Make My Monster Grow scenes, though.
    • This makes even more sense when you consider that the Super Sentai season that provided the basis for In Space was themed not around space, but rather technology; its title, translated into English, was Electromagnetic Task Force Megaranger.
    • The Time Force Rangers had them in their helmets. They'd typically light up when they received data on something. Unusually, they're not solid; circuitry patterns are visible within the lines.
    • In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, the in-scene non-Transformation Sequence morphs and demorphs are very much like Kamen Rider 555, though a lot faster and with optional dramatic use of the Overdrive logo.
  • The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Drone" has some of Seven's nanoprobes infect the Doctor's 29th century mobile emitter, eventually resulting in a highly advanced Borg drone, featuring extrapolations of the Borg in that century. More sleek and organic-looking than the usual drone, it also has embedded Tron Lines which pulse at regular intervals.

    Music 
  • The cover for Def Leppard's album Hysteria has Tron-like circuit lines surrounding the center image.

    Music Videos 

    Pinballs 
  • Appropriately enough, TRON: Legacy has these all over the playfield, most notably on the ramps when the playfield blacks out.
  • An early example appears in Bally's Xenon, which uses blue plastics and lights to give a futuristic Tron Lines-style aesthetic. Some collectors modify their tables with blue LEDs to further emphasize the effect.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech has the Enhanced Imaging system, a cybernetic interface between the pilot and his Mech. One side effect of the system is that the user's body is covered in what looks like full-body tattoos, but are in fact cybernetic circutry. In the cartoon, they glowed when activated, and EI visuals outlined mechs color-coded by IFF.
  • Androids in Pathfinder have lines resembling tattoos on their body that may glow during physical activity. It is explained in-universe as being their equivalent to blood vessels, containing nanites.
  • The Necrons in Warhammer 40,000 revel in this trope, as nearly all of their buildings possess these. Depending on the painter, they themselves might be glowing as well.

    Video Games 

  • Happens a lot in .hack//G.U.. Then again, it is in a MMORPG setting, so impracticality doesn't need to count.
  • In Achron, units are depicted as mostly-translucent silhouettes with edges that glow with the unit's team colour. This is an interface concession to make your troops easier to spot: according to the setting, all three of the species use advanced camouflage on their military units, making them near invisible. This doubles as an explanation for why your units have extremely short sight (insofar as they have RTS-standard near-blind line of sight radii). You can actually hear battles occurring outside your vision radius.
  • Assassin's Creed:
    • All the tech left behind by Those Who Came Before features this, particularly the Temple of Juno underneath the Colosseum in Rome.
    • Desmond himself gains them in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene at the end of Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
    • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey has the Isu covered in them, going from their temples down their arms, the sides of their stomach and their legs. Once the Eagle Bearer gets their mitts on the Armor of the Dikastes set, they get a set of Lines of their own, in gold.
  • The Demigods from Asura's Wrath have these, to emphasize the fact that the game is South Asian Mythology meets Scifi.
  • The Azure Striker Gunvolt Series is chock-full of this — QUILL operators in uniform (GV, Zeno, Asimov, and Moniqa), Copen, Sumeragi and Eden troops, and those under a weaponized form will emit a glow on their accessories and parts of their combat armor, which is more noticeable in their official art. The only characters who don't follow suit are Kirin (she is a shrine maiden), and the rank-and-file ATEMS grunts.
  • Battlezone (2016) takes place in a futuristic metropolis landscape with glowing neon lines for trim everywhere.
  • Borderlands has them on some of the many, many, weapons the game has, as well as on large rocks lying around, typically related to the Vault.
  • As does the protagonist of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, whenever he uses his Deadly Upgrade.
  • Champions Online has many examples:
    • Force Station Steelhead has orange lines on many surfaces, possibly representing a heating system.
    • Cyberlord's flying fortress and robots have yellow lines.
    • Enchanted objects often have glowing lines and runes on them, usually in red or purple. Lemurian Magitek features green or teal lines.
    • The Empyrean Mecha-Mooks have them in various colors.
    • Instances set in the "Intranet" are made entirely out of Tron Lines and colorful binary code, including the NPCs.
    • Many costume pieces come with these, even featuring customizable glow intensity. Pitch black costumes with bright neon lines are actually considered a fashion trend amongst the community, often referred to as "blackredder", due to red being the most commonly used glow color.
  • Chronopolis in Chrono Cross.
  • The Black Omen and some of the Zeal kingdom in Chrono Trigger.
  • In the game City of Heroes, certain of the conduits found in Council installations display the "racing pulse" variation.
  • The agents' suits in Crackdown display this, as do vehicles in the process of upgrading.
  • Destiny:
    • As of the April update, players get a new little resource known as Chroma that allows you to do this for your Guardians (provided they have gear that can use a chroma).
    • Destiny 2 features the ACD/0 Feedback Fence gauntlets, with two sets of glowing Tron Lines, one of which varies its color depending on the shader applied. There's also the Red Dwarf, an ornament for the Sunshot hand cannon.
  • In Deus Ex, nano-augmented individuals have silvery lines across their bodies. Also, thermoptic camos, which render the wearer invisible, are covered with light blue, glowing patches and lines.
  • The Stonehenge base in EarthBound (1994). Also, Moonside would count.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy has Cosmic Monoliths, an enemy from the "monolith" line. It is black and has red Tron Lines on it. Those also have really high Evasion and drop an immensely damaging attack every three turns. Their side length proportions probably would be 1:4:9 if they were ever measured.
  • Tomorrow City from Epic Mickey is Disney's Tomorrowland decorated with Tron Lines. The boss, "Petetronic", wears armor that glows with Tron Lines as well. It should be noted Petetronic's suit is specifically modeled after Sark, The Dragon of the original TRON, and his "purified" form uses Kevin Flynn's. Tomorrow City also borrows heavily from the movie in more than just the lines.
  • In EVE Online, turning on an armor repair unit causes this.
  • In Fable, powerful magic-users naturally have glowing-blue tattoos. They seem to break through your skin more and more as you attain more magical power. Possibly hinting at a potential Energy Being future — it is said in Fable II that particularly powerful Will-users can live a long time.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Some areas in Final Fantasy IV, such as the Towers of Zot and Babil or the Lunar Whale. Especially in the DS remake.
    • Every single character and object in Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. Nomura was obviously still on the same high from when he put the world in Kingdom Hearts II, because "Space Paranoids" was nothing short of awesome and he understood that.
    • One puzzle in Final Fantasy X involves rearranging blocks and switches to connect glowing Tron Lines from point A to point B, with point B being the exit door.
  • Several ships, especially Lost Technology, in the Galaxy Angel gameverse.
  • Most of the armor in Global Agenda.
  • God of War III, oddly enough, gives Poseidon these. They flicker on and off after wounding him.
  • Shows up a lot on ancient Magitek manipulated by the heroes in Golden Sun games.
    • A recurring puzzle is a broken circut, and a few movable blocks lying around that happen to have corresponding circut lines etched on them. When finished, the circut glows, and a door opens.
    • Dark Dawn takes this a few notches further; summons such as Tiamat and Coatlicue now involve towers covered in Tron Lines, and a Mineral MacGuffin material, zol, apparently is covered in such lines naturally. Plus the "fix the circut" puzzle shows up several times.
    • The Mountain Roc's guts have Tron Lines on them. This becomes a bit of a Chekhov's Gun later in the story, when the towns whose machines the party activated are the only safe places underneath the Eclipse, the glowing lines keeping the darkness-spawned monsters away.
  • Halo:
    • Cortana is practically made of these.
    • Forerunner artifacts (and the Covenant technology styled after them) often have tiny geometric patterns carved on most flat surfaces. These lines often glow, or have tiny lights flickering behind them. Of course, it helps that a lot of Forerunner constructions are actually made of very well-disguised Hard Light.
  • All of Homeworld 2's Progenitor space warships that are frigate-sized and larger emit Tron Lines along the side of their hulls either when powering a Phased Cannon Array, or in one particular case, when temporarily resisting enemy fire.
  • Naturally, "Space Paranoids", the TRON-themed world of Kingdom Hearts II, has them as well, as does the Grid in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance].
  • El Vibrato technology in Kingdom of Loathing and West of Loathing is often accrediting to being inspired by either TRON, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (or some combination of the three).
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Tower of the Gods boss in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, as well as the controllable statues from the same dungeon.
    • And in Twilight Princess, everything remotely associated with Twilight has a sort of Lovecraft+TRON thing going on. The Dominion Rod imparts Tron Lines to statues, similar to the ones from Wind Waker, when you take control of them. Plus, the Twili have tron-line markings on their bodies. Look at the ones on Midna's forearms for example.
    • Ancient Sheikah Magitek in Breath of the Wild exhibits this. Orange lines indicate Ancient Sheikah objects that Link hasn't activated or "solved," blue lines indicate the ones he has, and purplish-red indicates objects corrupted by Calamity Ganon's vicious Malice.
  • Althena's Tower in Lunar: The Silver Star sports these.
  • Mass Effect tech has this as well.
    • Specifically: VI holograms have brighter lines going through them. Additionally, the Geth Armory Medium and Heavy suits for the Krogan Wrex has glowing cables and lines.
    • In Mass Effect 2, some of the suits or armor have these. A few glowing lines are present on the back of all of Shepard's N7 armor, and glowing lines are especially noticeable on some of the krogan armors, particularly Gatatong Uvenk's suit. The downloadable Kestrel Armor features a number of these lines as well, on each of the armor components. A couple of the alternate appearance packs also feature armor with glowing lines, most notably Garrus and Grunt's. Jack even gets a leather jacket that has a couple of bright red lines down the back.
    • Also from Mass Effect 2 is Shepard's glowing orange scars. A case of Evil Is Cool and Made of Evil all wrapped into one if you pursue the renegade path.
    • Reaper tech is easily recognizable through these.
    • One of the endings for Mass Effect 3 features a world where a phenomenon called synthesis changes the DNA in all synthetic and organic lifeforms into a mix of the two. The effect can be seen on a character's skin as faint green lines that, while looking more like circuit lines, still evoke the same imagery.
    • The Remnant from Mass Effect: Andromeda are covered in them - green for when they're friendly or neutral, red for when they're attacking, and white if their programming's gone blank.
    • The Andromeda Explorer armor also has them, cycling between purple and blue, and the Remnant Heritage armor Ryder can make.
  • The ruins found in Mega Man Legends have this design aesthetic, and its re-appearance in the Mega Man Zero series more explicitly spells out a continuity connection between the two.
  • Metal Gear Solid:
    • The "VR Training" level of the LittleBigPlanet level pack has them in a grid arrangement on most of the walls and obstacles. The material you get for Create Mode from this level comes in red, green, and blue flavors. Even the glowing of the lines is visually close to the ones from TRON.
    • There's also an unlockable skin and helmet that are clearly evocative of TRON; they even glow in the dark!
  • Metroid:
    • Much of the tech in the Metroid Prime Trilogy glows, usually so you can tell what happened when you hit a switch; in the case of Samus's cannon, the color of the glow tells you the weapon you're currently using. There's also the green glowing lines between the panels in Samus's armor.
    • Sanctuary Fortress, a Cyberpunk-styled city in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, has its share of Tron Lines.
    • In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, when Samus's Phazon corruption reaches the highest levels near the end of the game, her suit really starts to show those blue lines. Yellow and blue lines can also be seen in Skytown, Elysia.
    • Metroid: Samus Returns has this with Samus's armor. Lines on the armor have this effect, as do lines on the arm cannon. The color of the suit lines depend on what armor you have, while the color of the arm cannon lines depend on what beam is currently equipped.
  • All over the place in Nitronic Rush, from the Interceptor to the city itself.
  • Ōkami:
    • Yami has these, with the color (red, blue, orange, or green) being indicative of which form and powers he's using.
    • The The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, a spaceship made by moon people.
  • Justified in Phantasy Star Universe, as the "Tron Lines" woven into all clothing are part of a protection system called a "line shield" they perform the same effect of looking cool as most Tron Lines, but also perform the function of being the means by which energy barriers are projected, the game's form of armour.
  • PlanetSide 2 has the Lumifiber cosmetic on vehicles with different colors for each faction; Yellow for the New Conglomerate, Red for the Terran Republic, and Cyan for the Vanu Sovereignty. Though slapping bright neon lights on a fighter might seem like a bad idea, they can be toggled on and off at will, and serve as perhaps the best IFF available to the Liberators and Galaxies, both of which are at risk of friendly fire because their faction specific paint lines can be hard to see at long range. Completing the Master-level Directive on a vehicle grants a special lumifiber; TR fades between orange, red, and pink, VS between cyan and turquoise, and NC between yellow and blue. In the original game, Ancient Vanu equipment often had recessed glowing lines set within them, most noticeable in the hallways of the Cavern bases.
  • Pokémon:
    • Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza all have these as natural markings. They only glow on the title screens, though. Additionally, the fake Groudon from Pokemon Jirachi Wish Maker had all its marks glowing once it deteriorated into its more monstrous state. In OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire, their Primal modes have much more pronounced Tron lines with a much brighter glow.
    • Dialga and Palkia.
    • Umbreon has Tron Rings. And (in the anime at least) they glow in the dark.
    • The Embedded Tower in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver.
    • Opelucid City in Pokémon Black.
    • Ultra Megalopolis from Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon has this kind of aesthetic, fitting as the city's inhabitants revere Necrozma as a god of light.
  • In Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, the Prince has a magical version of this running down his wounded/partially transformed arm. The "Dark Prince" persona has this all over his body.
  • Plenty of these can be found throughout the Ratchet & Clank series, mostly on Ratchet's armor (most noticeably his armor in A Crack in Time).
  • Red Faction 2 gives us the nano-soldiers with glowing lines on their skin. The lines appear and pulse when they show strong emotions and when they are healing. The nano-based weapons also tend to have pulsing Tron Lines.
  • The Cuotl units and buildings from Rise of Legends combine this trope with Mayincatec designs for some really cool-looking stuff.
  • Robocraft has these on many of the components, especially the Electroplates and TX-1 armor cubes.
  • Saints Row:
    • Saints Row: The Third features a gang made up entirely of cyber punks, whose clothing was all black with neon blue Tron Lines. Also, their story-arch culminates with a mission where the player character is transported inside their user mainframe to stop their hacking/money laundering schemes, and render the gang powerless. This entire mission's design was a clear reference to Tron, and finishing it unlocks two vehicles with Tron Lines as a major design point, the Cyber Blaster used throughout the mission, and the Cyber SMG that the cyber-gangsters used against you.
    • The Lotus-Eater Machine cyberscape holding Matt Miller, former boss of the aforementioned gang, in Saints Row IV is also very Tron.
  • Secret of Mana: The Mana Fortress is filled with such lines.
  • The main character in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne gets as version that looks like ordinary full-body tattoos, but then they start glowing in the dark! Apparently becoming mostly-demon does that to ya.
  • Skies of Arcadia's final dungeon is an entire continent covered in these.
  • In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, there is a giant wooden fish statue full of these in Turning Japanese. Its colors are, however, green and yellow.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Silver has these on his gloves/hands. Since things he grabs with his psychic powers light up the same color, there's probably some kind of connection.
    • Digital Circuit and Mad Matrix in Shadow the Hedgehog, both cyberspace levels which aesthetics are pretty much ripped off from TRON.
  • It's subtle, in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-Man: Edge of Time, Spider-Man 2099 has glowing blue lines on his costume.
  • StarCraft II:
    • Ghosts and Spectres have these. Ghosts are blue and Spectres are red; which ones are "good" and "evil" is largely a question of your perspective. While specifically being noted as being more eccentric and intimidating than the previous generations of Ghosts but not actually crazy and/or evil, Spectres are (probably!) just color-coded for distinction between the two rather than as a reflection of their morality; Blue for the old guard and Red for the maligned new generation. On the other hand, since whatever choices the player (as Jim Raynor) makes in the campaign automatically become and always were the objectively right ones (i.e.; siding with Tosh means that he was and remains loyal, and that his men were being used as scapegoats, while siding against him means Tosh was using you the whole time and his entire Spectre cadre betrays you along with him), it's probably a moot point.
    • Protoss technology also tends to include glowing blue bits, although they seem to have an aversion to straight lines.
  • The "Aegis" ship equipment set in Star Trek Online has optional Tron Lines for the player's starship. It's even Color-Coded for Your Convenience: the glow on Starfleet ships is blue, and that on Klingon ships is red.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic has the Return of the Gree event. their ship is just plain lit up in silver Tron lines and bright geometric shapes of neon coloring. there are also armor sets unique to the event that are black with blue or red lines (like TRON 2.0) or white and blue, similar to the Renegade's in TRON: Uprising. Needless to say, the armor quickly got called "Tron armor" and the event caused a lot of jokes about Disney's purchase of Lucasarts.
  • Added to most of the Balmarian/Aerogater mecha in Super Robot Wars Original Generation: Divine Wars.
  • System Shock:
    • When the player enters into Cyberspace, the game switches to a vertical zero-gravity shooter in other to open doors or unlock passwords. The cyberspace's graphics is formed by vectors and polygons instead of the two-dimensional sprites as the rest of the game, looking like something straight of out Tron.
    • The tutorial System Shock 2 is set in a cyberspace environment reminiscent of the first game, as are the final levels where SHODAN starts to rewrite reality.
  • Tron Lines are a common motif on Digital types in Temtem. Chromeon, Pupoise, Loatle, and Digital Koish all have a glowing stripe on their foreheads. Tuwire has one around its neck. Chubee and Waspeen have these on their eyes.
  • The Virtual theme in the TimeSplitters 2 mapmaker has Tron Lines as decorations.
  • In Transformers: War for Cybertron, this is used on pretty much all the characters and lots of the scenery. There's a bit of colour-coding involved too: while regular Transformers can have orange or red or other colours, Decepticons who've been empowered by Dark Energon gain purple lines. This was also done by the design team to show the effect of the war: as the game progresses and the war intensifies, the scenery begins losing more and more of the Tron Lines as energy becomes scarcer. By the time of the sequel Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, while the player can still see where the Tron Lines should go in buildings and the like, they've long since gone dark due to the intensifying energy crisis. This isn't even related to battle damage; when Jazz and Cliffjumper happen upon an otherwise pristine abandoned building while searching for Grimlock's team the place is dark.
  • All over the place in TRON 2.0. The page picture is Jet Bradley, the game's protagonist before and after digitization. In 2.0, each faction from the game had a different color and pattern, and it was important to tell the difference, lest you accidentally shoot an ally or civilian.
  • Nezha from Warriors Orochi has these.
  • Some of the instances and bosses in the Ulduar area of World of Warcraft have these of one sort or another. It's arguable whether they are Tron Lines or Instant Runes since Ulduar is Titan architecture and represents something between technology and magic (but closer to technology).
  • The Xenoblade Chronicles series features these a lot, and they glow even brighter at night:
    • In the first game, the Monado has blue lines, which are justified as Ether. The Face Mechon have red lines flowing throughout their body. The red lines are later revealed to be veins for pumping the Homs pilots' blood through, and provide the Face Mechon their immunity to the Monado (at first), and the blood supply being cut off is indicated by it temporarily turning blue.
    • The Skells in Xenoblade Chronicles X have blue lines throughout their body, which are justified in game as fuel veins. The color of this fuel can be changed via customization, which also ties to the color of their engines.
    • Various Blades in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 also feature Tron Lines that are normally blue in correspondence with their Core Crystal, whether on their clothing or somewhere on their body. As the Aegis, Pyra/Mythra have green lines in correspondence with their green core crystal. Flesh Eater Blades have a little bit of red mixed in with their blue lines. Titans have similar, but much larger lines that cross over with Volcanic Veins as they show the degree of ether flow through the Titan's body. As the Titans are part of the Blade life cycle and were once Blades themselves, this isn't a coincidence.
  • The Spirit Stones and the titular Ark in Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim.
  • Orbital Frames in Zone of the Enders. The color changes as the frame becomes more and more damaged.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Bionic Heart, Luke's apartment has the traditional blue Tron Lines on the walls. The function of these lines are never explained and seem to be only aesthetic.
  • Not strictly related to technology, but when mages use or reinforce magic circuits (like blood vessels, but for magic) in Fate/stay night, the affected parts of their body begin to glow with a web of angular turquoise lines. By the "Heaven's Feel" route, Dark Sakura and Saber Alter, having been overcharged with the mana flowing from the Holy Grail, manifest sinister red lines--complete with predominantly-black outfits.
  • Lisa Basil from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations has a futuristic suit with flashing lights running up and down the sides and front of it. It's implied that she may or may not be a robot (yes, the game is that vague).

    Webcomics 
  • Comedity: Alice's more advanced forms have these around her face, and her "upgraded body" displays them when her holographic clothing generation system isn't covering them. Presumably, as a computer with conscious awareness of her own power consumption, she deactivates them when they aren't needed.
  • Tower of God: Rabdevil's Devil of the Right Hand is a magically equipped device enclosing the arm and greatly increasing its power. And it has shiny stripes.
  • In Alice and the Nightmare, oneironautic uniforms have glowing lines of Suit's colour, bringing Tron to mind.
  • Eve from Applegeeks.
  • Coga Suro: Blue on Persephone, red on Styx, and either red or purple on Hades.
  • Eileen from Electric Wonderland has these on her traditional outfit, befitting her nickname, Trawn.
  • Goblins: Anyone wielding the Axe of Prissan gets a magical armor whose design was directly inspired by the outfits in TRON.

    Web Original 
  • Fate/Nuovo Guerra has the sword Clarent, owned by the heroic spirit Mordred. The red lines very well reflect his... erm... her status as an antihero.
  • RWBY has Penny Polendina, who has bright green lines of light that go up her trousers. They even appear to glow at times!

    Western Animation 
  • The future Batsuit from Batman Beyond shows them when interfacing with the Batmobile, or under its surface when damaged.
  • Ben 10's "Upgrade" form does this to whatever machinery he enhances.
  • Danny Phantom. Valerie Grey gets loads of these, color-coded red, when Technus upgrades her battle suit.
  • Fairly OddParents: In "Power Mad," players within the world of the most dangerous virtual reality game wear cybersuits with Tron Lines.
  • Generator Rex, whenever Rex uses his nanites to interface with machines or cure E.V.O.s and while changing his limbs into mechanical devices. His new transformations in season two have blue-white lines and black coverings not unlike TRON: Legacy.
  • Spaceships in Green Lantern: The Animated Series have this look, with green lines for Green Lanterns and red for Red Lanterns. Handily, this means that the good guys don't have to kill anyone, they can just attack the ships until their lights go out, meaning they're un-powered.
  • Kim Possible's battlesuit from season 3 finale, So the Drama, throughout season 4 is pure white, with glowing light blue stitching and padding. As a Disney property it's probably an intentional Shout-Out, it can even change Kim's gloves into a scoop like Flynn used in the games in the first movie.
  • In Monster Buster Club, parts of the kids' costumes are fluorescent and give off a Tron Line effect in the dark.
  • South Park, when Stan is sucked into Facebook.
  • The title robot of Sym-Bionic Titan.
  • Teen Titans, in its animated incarnation, has Cyborg covered with these, outside and (as we saw in a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot) inside.
  • Young Justice: The Atom and Bumblebee have fluorescent trim along the muscle groups of their costumes. Similarly, characters hailing from Jack Kirby's Fourth World, the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips, have been redesigned to incorporate fluorescent line-patterns reminiscent of their Kirby designs.

    Real Life 
  • The closest thing we have to real life practical Tron Lines is Fibre-optics technology. Transmission of data using copper cables is terribly inefficient, and a massive amount of energy and data is wasted in entropy (heat) from resistance, so instead, why not use the fastest, most entropy-less object in physics: Light? This technology is already used in high-speed Internet and medical endoscopy, however, such systems (currently based on glass or plastic) are rather fragile, and thus unable to be implemented yet on Power Armor.
  • Running Lights under the car can be seen as a way of imitating this in Real Life, as would be gratuitous use of neon.
    • The Buick Lacrosse now comes with Tron Lines of a sort as standard ambient lighting in the interior.
    • There are several entire websites devoted to selling products of this nature.
    • As a result, every single car in the Fast and the Furious series has neon lights all over the body. Of course, they need extra batteries to keep them glowing.
    • With LEDs becoming cheaper a lot of concept and higher-end production cars are getting this treatment, especially in the headlights.
    • Audi: LED daytime running lights, also taillight design.
    • There's a London-By-Night tour bus with a LED Tron Line encircling the top deck.
  • This has even bled into the world of computing, there is no modder unfamiliar with blue CCFLs.
  • The Luxor casino/hotel in Las Vegas was designed as a huge black glass pyramid with Tron Lines flowing to and from the giant column of light at the peak.
    • There's also a bulding in London's Docklands which, although the conventional upright slab, has Tron Lines running up it — they even change colour.
  • The Connection Machine, a supercomputer which was never as amazing as its price would indicate, but which looked damn cool. Though those are more Blinkenlights, actually. The Connection Machine is one of the most beautiful computers ever made, but pretty much every supercomputer made after the '70s looks pretty awesome. After all, if a machine's going to cost over a million dollars, why not throw a few thousand into the case?
  • Truth in Television: Try looking at your feet next time you ride an escalator. They are actually there to warn you not to put your feet there as you may fall, but still pretty cool.
  • The Corpus Clock, which ironically uses no computers whatsoever. (Everything is controlled by bleeding edge clockwork, including the evil blinking grasshopper on top.)
  • The Wii console: the disc slot has a steady blue glow around the edge when powered on, and will pulse when a system upgrade is available or a new message is in your inbox. Possible connection of Everything Is an iPod in the Future.
  • The Playstation 4 console: the controllers have a strip on top, and a triangle on front, that is illuminated with leds that change colors depending on programmed actions in the videogames.
  • This trope is practically the reason EL-wire exists.
  • It's possible to get an iPod connector cable with an embedded EL strip (in blue, green or purple) which lights up and gives an animated representation of the charge flowing down the cable into the iPod. When the device is fully charged, the light goes out.
  • Waterproof LEDs that can be implanted underneath your skin.
  • Razer products, particularly the company's logo, a glowing blue or green triquetra made of SNAKES placed on EVERYTHING.
  • The Motorola RAZR cellphone has this on its keypad.
  • While neon accents on buildings have existed well before this trope came into existence, Metreon in San Francisco is clearly inspired by it, with plenty of lines to showcase how high-tech and cyberpunk it was intended to be.
  • Alienware gaming computers have these, and they change. It's pretty much a TRON computer.
  • In fact, these days this has become the norm for computer products, especially high end ones geared towards gaming. They're even programmable to make all sorts of color patterns or rainbow effects. It also comes with a practical use of reducing eye strain and improving visiblity at night for LED keyboards, or as visual indicators for things like heat.
  • Comb Jellies.
    • Really, a lot of bioluminescent sea creatures can resemble this: squids, jellyfish, certain fish, etc.
  • EPCOT's Test Track 2.0, with appropriate soundtrack.
  • The Tracer 360 visibility vest.
  • Advancements in diode manufacture apparently allow for paper-thin, flexible and durable light sources of any size and shape (solid light strips being likely the most in-demand), at a fraction of the cost of traditional LEDs.
  • The Emirates Air Line (spelled that way to distinguish it from the Emirates Airline) has a red Tron Line on the rear of each car.
  • NASA's Advanced Space Suits will include electroluminescent patches and piping. It's not just Stylish Protection Gear; the lighting makes the suit easier to find in dust storms and other emergencies.
  • The light ring on the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot. It glows red if the microphones are turned off, white (in a partial circle, usually) when the volume is adjusted, blue (with a cyan segment indicating the direction of the sound) if it detects a voice command, etc.
  • The Beijing Olympics Data Center has lines on its exterior reminiscent of the architecture in Tron.
  • Or the Bank of America Plaza in Downtown Dallas, Texas.


Alternative Title(s): Cyber Lines

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