Basic Trope: Purple is used as a stand-in for black for depictions of either darkness or evil.
- Straight:
- Shade's Shadow Bolt spell is mostly purple in color despite being implied to be manipulation of darkness.
- Lady Amethyst is a darkness-themed villain who wears mostly purple.
- The Black Knight wears purple armor with a dark motif rather than a black armor, but still gets called the Black Knight.
- Exaggerated:
- Every single darkness spell, including manipulation of literal shadows, is purple in color instead of black.
- Lady Amethyst's castle, minions, and monogrammed towels are also purple.
- Downplayed:
- Shade's Shadow Bolt spell has a slight tinge of purple.
- Lady Amethyst's most iconic accessory is a purple amulet, but she doesn't restrict herself to wearing purple.
- Despite wearing purple armor, The Black Knight only uses black and red darkness.
- Justified:
- Shade's Shadow Bolt is partially poisonous. The poison in the spell is represented by its purple color.
- For whatever reason, darkness and shadows in that world are purple.
- The work in question uses purple as a way to distinguish the good darkness powers over its evil counterparts.
- Inverted: Brighton uses Smite, a light spell strikes down the foe with a fiery orange blast rather than the bright yellow/white color audiences are used to.
- Subverted: Shade's Shadow Bolt is named only after its appearance; it is actually a poison spell.
- Double Subverted: ...Except Shade's Shadow Bolts are empowered by actual dark magic.
- Parodied:
- The black color itself is not referred as "black" by characters, but as "dark dark purple".
- The Shadow Bolt spell is vibrant magenta, and yet Shade still manages to use it in dark areas as a sneak attack.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes the bolts appear purple, sometimes black.
- Averted: Shade's Shadow Bolts are completely black.
- Enforced:
- It's an animated show. As noted in the main page, the purple color does the job of representing objects that are supposed to be 3-dimensional much better than the actual black color as purple allows visible contours.
- A complete lack of color is reserved for Non-Elemental attacks.
- Lampshaded: "You'd expect things based on darkness would be black, darknesses actual colour or would that make too much sense?"
- Invoked:
- Building on the Justified example, Shade adds an extra touch of poison to his spell to increase its power and get a more powerful-looking purple hue.
- Lady Amethyst deliberately adds more purple to her wardrobe because Purple Is Powerful.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Purple Is the New Black
