Basic Trope: Characters with elemental powers have hair to match.
- Straight: In Tales of Troperia's Five-Man Band, Fire-user Alice has red spiky hair, Earth-user Bob has brown hair, Water-user Claire has flowing blue hair, Air-user Danny has fluffy platinum blond hair, and Heart-powered Evelyn has pink hair.
- Exaggerated: Every character with the same element has the exact same hair color and style.
- Downplayed: Claire has blonde hair that is drawn to resemble water, but is not in fact blue.
- Justified:
- Their powers give them these hair colors and textures.
- They were specifically given a clear mark of their powers, which happened to be their new hair colors.
- The empowerer uses one's hair color to decide what elemental power to give.
- Subverted: Claire straightens her hair and dyes it brown...
- Double Subverted: Until she accidentally causes a rain storm that causes the hair coloring and hairspray out of her hair, returning it to its blue waves.
- Parodied:
- The Team Normal Franklin is bald.
- Elemental power is literally based on your hair color, so dyeing your hair will instantly change your power to a more fitting element.
- Zigzagged: Their hairstyles change between seasons.
- Averted: Everyone's hair has nothing to do with their elemental powers.
- Enforced: To keep their action figures distinct, producers give them each their own hair color.
- Lampshaded: Evelyn: Of course I'm the Heart. I have pink hair for Pete's sake!
- Invoked: When they find out about their powers, they dye their hair their element's color.
- Exploited:
- Emperor Evulz successfully prepares countermeasures for the new heroes because he knows what their hair is like and what that means about their powers.
- The Five-Man Band all wear wigs of completely unrelated colors, for the point of fooling otherwise savvy foes.
- Defied:
- Everyone is bald.
- The team decides to switch up their hairstyles and hair colors so their powers aren't immediately obvious.
- Discussed:Alice: How do you know Danny has air powers?
Bob: Well, in visual-based fantasy media, hairstyle tends to match up with powersets. Just look at you and me! - Conversed:"Seriously, matching the hair with their power is incredibly obvious! Leaves no room for surprise."
"Well in a large cast it helps with instantly identifying characters, and honestly it presents a perfect means of fooling people- If you think all redheads are pyros, then one could easily disguise their real powers just by disguising their hair color." - Implied: Though pyrokinetic Alice has blue hair, she's regularly seen generating blue flames- Yet whether that's a coincidence or her hair reflects that fact isn't clear.
- Deconstruction: Since hair color reflects elemental power, that makes it incredibly obvious to all what abilities someone possesses- Thus meaning all their foes are capable of easily preparing themselves before attacking them.
- Reconstruction:
- Though their real hair color is an obvious tell, there's nothing stopping them from hiding it- Thus their foes can only make general precautions, preventing them from perfectly developing an accurate counter before the first battle.
- While their power may reflect their hair, many elements are associated with multiple different colors. So just because someone has green hair doesn't mean they control plants or the wind- Just as likely they possess power over poison or the earth itself.
- Played For Laughs: Rosie's green hair acts like real plantlife, such as wilting without sunlight or "dying out" from too much water.
- Played For Drama: Stereotypes form from the fact hair color and power are intertwined, thus all redheads are treated like ticking timebombs, people with brown & green hair are pigeonholed into farming, blue haired people are pressured into oceanic work, and so on.
Back to Elemental Hair Colors, a handy guide for all aspiring Elementalists!
