"The plot is, big purple cracks are appearing across Hyrule with evil designs in mind — purple being the standard color for evil thanks to its association with the Green Goblin's underpants."
This is purple being used to symbolize concepts like stagnation, decadence, impurity, degradation, rot, disease, infection, and corruption. As well as standard, deep purple, other popular shades include very dark purple, purple with black highlights, and purple mixed with red.
It's speculated that one reason this is a common choice is purple's connection with the upper class, who are well known for often exploiting those below them for their own ends. If purple is power, and power corrupts, then corruption is purple. It's for this reason that it's associated with excess and is considered the color of the sin of pride. Another possible reason is how rare it is in nature, giving it connotations of being alien, artificial, and invasive. The few times we do see it in nature are poisonous plants and animals, as well as bruises, further tying it to the idea of danger, poison, and damage.
This makes it a popular color to use in designs for Evil Knockoffs, Evil Counterparts, Evil Doppelgängers and other dark mirrors to heroic characters, especially if these characters exist to highlight their good counterpart's negative traits. It may also be used to indicate that something or someone has been cursed or afflicted by negative supernatural forces, such as a Cursed Item having a dark purple aura or corruptive Black Magic being associated with purple.
Sub-Trope of Dark Is Evil, as a dark color is used to represent a negative concept, and of Good Colors, Evil Colors. Super-Trope to cases of Technicolor Toxin when the purple is used to represent poison. Sister Trope to Sickly Green Glow. May also overlap with Purple Is the New Black, especially if decay is represented by Ominous Obsidian Ooze. Contrast Green Means Natural, White Is Pure, and Gold and White Are Divine. May result in Yellow/Purple Contrast when paired with yellow representing positive concepts like healing. See also Mysterious Purple, which similarly uses purple's unnatural connotations, but to represent mystery and being unknowable rather than impurity or corruption. Compare Purple Is Powerful, Green Is Gross, and Green and Mean for another color sometimes used in a similar context, and Psycho Pink for a similar color that is used to signify a negative concept, in this case violence and insanity. Green or pink may be used together with purple to signify the effects of corruption. See Secondary-Color Nemesis for more general cases of purple being associated with and worn by villains. Also see Paranormal Palette, which commonly includes purple to signify something mystical and/or unusual.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- DARLING in the FRANXX: Zigzagged; the VIRM have a purple motif to contrast the good guy's heroic red and the Klaxosaur's frightening blue. While they are a genocidal Hive Mind race who assimilate other races by completely eradicating their physical forms, they view their intentions as cleansing their victims to be pure, justifying this with the offer of a peaceful existence as a hive mind over the thought of decaying and dying. Yet their actions all but declare they are driven by vices, as they loathe those with free will and will kill out of spite. The fact that their avatars are made of light also places them in Light Is Not Good.
- Digimon:
- Digimon Tamers: Sakuyamon, who is based on a miko, inverts this by having a purple light power. The darker Virus types are more associated with red.
- Digimon Frontier: Cherubimon, one of the three great Angelic Digimon, is actually a giant and lovable rabbit-like creature in white and soft pink. When he is corrupted into his Evil/Vice version, his soft pink body turns into shades of purple, representing his corruption into his malevolent version.
- Final Fantasy: Unlimited: Although the "core" of Chaos seems to be a peaceful blue at first, its powers manifest as an intense purple, and it is an Eldritch Abomination that swallows up worlds and replicates pieces of them. Anything associated with Chaos' soul is also associated with purple: Chaos' human avatar Earl Tyrant has purple in his wardrobe, and when Makenshi forces a Fusion Dance between himself and Chaos, the end result is a misshapen purple dragon that has to be given a Mercy Kill.
- Kurei's flames from Flame of Recca are purple to contrast with Recca's normal orange flames.
- Futari wa Pretty Cure: The Power of Darkness is a destructive, dark purple energy that eats away and consumes anything it touches, behaving less like darkness and more like antimatter. It's so virulent that not even Jaaku King, who generates it, is immune to its effects. He wants to get the Prism Stones so he doesn't die of Power Incontinence.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Purple Haze is a Stand that fights by unleashing a flesh-eating virus in the form of a purple gas. The Stand itself is also purple.
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004): Shadow Link is shown in color prints to have purple hair, and sometimes purple accents on his otherwise black clothes. He is a malignant and cruel spirit in Link's shape that has nonhuman traits like fangs and claws. Ultimately subverted when he pulls a Heel–Face Turn and helps the other Links.
- Metal Fight Beyblade:
- Lightning L-Drago emits a purple Battle Aura to indicate its corruption by the Dark Power. Its user, Ryuga, later purifies it of the Dark Power, causing it to transform into Meteo L-Drago and its aura to change from purple to orange.
- Being afflicted with the Dark Power, Tsubasa's Enemy Within has the same look as him but with a purple shade.
- The Rebirth of Buddha: When Tousaku Arai falls unconscious after the spirit of Taiyou Sorano negates his demonic powers and destroys his floating platform, the demon possessing him assumes the form of a rotund, pale, black-haired young man in purple Buddhist robes. Such an appearance is also a potshot at Shoko Asahara, leader of Aum Shinrikyo, whose initial flag was purple.
- Yo-kai Watch:
- Yokai Watch: Like the games, people or objects who are being inspirited by Yo-kai are identified by a purple aura, signalling how they're being warped by supernatural influence.
- Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside:
- Arc Villain Fukurou uses a weapon called the Arrow of Omen to find his group's messiah. When it hits someone who isn't that person, they get surrounded by a massive purple aura as their worst impulses are multiplied. While Yo-kai only turn into a larger version of their Shadowside form, humans turn an unhealthy shade of purple before aggressively mutating, marked by a series of purple growths on their body, into violent purple Yo-kai.
- Whenever Ayame acts as "the Princess", she's surrounded by a purple aura, signifying how Jorogumo is overriding and corrupting the poor girl for her nefarious ends. When Jorogumo herself is released and begins taking over the town, draining human souls, turning people into puppets, and spreading her webbing, it's represented by the sky over the affected area turning a pinkish-purple. The same happens to her victims who have lost their souls or been bitten by her.
- The Shinma Virus is an infection that drives Yo-kai to madness and violence. The creatures that spread it are purple, as is the aura it gives the infected.
Comic Books
- Green Lantern: Played with. The purple-hued half of the Emotional Spectrum is a natural part of the Emotional Spectrum and is connected to selfless emotions, the problem is that it's much harder to wield these colors, so it ironically becomes more corruptive than the self-serving other half. Indigo (compassion) and violet (love) both downplay this by utilizing Heel–Face Brainwashing to force people to experience their respective emotion; though while indigo will eventually ensure rehabilitation, violet will induce love-fueled madness. Ultraviolet Lanterns of the Invisible Spectrum play this straight, as they represent the repressed parts of oneself they hate the most (guilt, shame, resentment). Unlike the seven colors of the Emotional Spectrum, the Invisible Spectrum controls the wielder, and recruiting members works by attracting self-destructive people and letting them act on their darkest impulses.
Fan Works
- Vow of Nudity: Spectra's necklace which cursed her with permanent nudity has a purple pendant, and juxtaposes itself with her own bodily features all being pure white thanks to her changeling heritage.
- We Are All Pokémon Trainers: The Demon Mutagen, a mysterious substance that twists humans and Pokémon who get drenched in it into horrific monsters, is purple in color.
Films — Animation
- Despicable Me 2: The PX41 serum turns the subject into a super-strong, ravening monster and Extreme Omnivore, while also turning them purple, as is the case for the unfortunate lab rabbit appearing in an AVL file video and the Minions.
Films — Live-Action
- Shin Godzilla: This version of Godzilla is easily one of the most unnatural and revoltingly abominable incarnations of the character ever, if not in personality then certainly in biology, and his Breath Weapon when it fully manifests is a thin beam of purple energy instead of the more common bluish or white energy of other incarnations.
Literature
- A theme running through the occult horror novels of Dennis Wheatley, notably The Devil Rides Out, is that sentient evil announces its presence with magenta-purple light.note
Live-Action TV
- The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: The Darkening is a metaphysical blight afflicting the world of Thra, caused by its Cosmic Keystone being tampered with. It takes the form of a noxious purple glow or mist that poisons all life it touches, causing plants to decay and animals to become rabid and aggressive.
- Game of Thrones: The episode "The Lion and the Rose" has purple symbolic of decadence - the wedding between Joffrey and Margaery, representing the height of Joffrey's power, is officiated with Joffrey drinking dark purple wine as a toast to himself, wine that has been poisoned with a deadly toxin. As soon as he ingests it, he starts choking and vomiting before it turns him deathly violet as he dies. This notorious event comes to be known as the "Purple Wedding" due to Joffrey's sickening demise.
- Mahou Sentai Magiranger/Power Rangers Mystic Force: Dark Magic Knight Wolzard/Koragg The Night Wolf is a Black Knight donning purple armor who serves as one of The Psycho Rangers to the Magirangers/Mystic Force. In truth, he is the Ozu family's Archnemesis Dad Isamu/fallen Mystic Ranger Leanbow, who was corrupted by the dark forces to serve evil. After returning to the side of good, he keeps his armor, which turns from purple to Red.
Myths & Religion
- The revival of European ritual magick of the FinDeSiecle saw groups such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn spring up to practice ritual magic with baroque rituals and liturgies that inevitably drew on the Judeo-Christian cultural heritage. Summoning demons or interactions with evil spirits, deemed impure and corrupt in religious texts, were associated with the colour magenta, a sort of light purple shade. It should also be said that in a system of colour correspondences drawn from Hindu practice, purple is associated with spirit and Aether. This is probably where Gerald Gardiner got the idea from when he revived Wiccan practice in the 1940s.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering sorts its cards into five colors: White for law, Blue for intellect, Black for power, Red for emotion, and Green for destiny. (These are gross oversimplifications.) Black tends to focus on Necromancy, Life Drain spells, and Deals with the Devil. As such, the color purple figures prominently in much of its card art. (White, likewise, features the Gold and White Are Divine trope.)
- Warhammer 40,000: Purple is often associated with the Warp and the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, both as a color typically used for Warp energy and corruption and for the Chaos god Slaanesh in particular. Specific examples include:
- As stated, the Chaos god Slaanesh and its daemons are almost always depicted in various shades of purple, along with pink. It is known as the God of Unspeakable Excess and embodies hedonism, debauchery, and revelling in excess of sensory stimulation to an insane degree. Its humanoid daemons are a mix of sensual and grotesque features, as well as blending male and female attributes in a similarly twisted way.
- The Emperor's Children are a former Space Marine Legion who wore light purple armor. They, along with their Primarch Fulgrim, became corrupted by Slaanesh and have become horrifically mutated and disfigured Sense Freaks who commit all manner of atrocities. Fulgrim himself has become a Daemon Primarch with four arms, wings, and a snake-like lower body, all of which have a purple tone to their skin.
- The Soul Drinkers were a Space Marine Chapter with purple armor who had a schism in their ranks after almost falling to corruption by the Chaos god Tzeentch. Several of its Marines underwent severe mutations, and they eventually went renegade, although they didn't turn to Chaos.
Toys
- Transformers: Dark Energon is a recurring, purple substance throughout the series known for its corruptive properties. It's capable of bestowing strength upon those who take it, but at the cost of eroding their mind and sometimes even killing the Transformer in question. It's also known to convert normal, benign energon into more Dark Energon, and to have disastrous effects on the Transformers' home world of Cybertron, poisoning the planet. The reason for this is that it's often the blood of Unicron.
Video Games
- AdventureQuest Worlds: Chaos, the main antagonistic corruptive force of the game, has a purple motif for those who use or are infected by it.
- Age of Mythology: The "Evil Clouds" are purple and black, and the Big Bad Kronos has the same color smoke rising off of him.
- Age of Wonders 4: Purple is a color associated with the Shadow affinity, representing tyranny, knowledge, and death. Purple is also a color representing the Eldritch Realms expansion, which is focused on Eldritch Abominations and its corruption.
- In Ancient Domains of Mystery, chaos beings are often represented with purple glyphs, with flavor text often implying that chaos itself manifests as purple radiation.
- Bayonetta: Downplayed; purple is associated with the dark magic of the Umbra Witches in general. Apart from being the general color for magic and the powerups that boost it, the Color-Coded Time Stop of Witch Time is purple, and activating Umbran Climax in the second game causes a large burst of purple energy to occur. This contrasts with the angels, who are heavily gold-themed and "pure". However, in a case of Pure Is Not Good, the dark magic is the art of the main character who uses it for heroic purposes, while the angels are heavily corrupt themselves.
- The Binding of Isaac: Purple is generally used to represent occult powers, ranging from simple homing shots of Spoon Bender to the wisps summoned by the demonic Lemegeton item. The Mausoleum floor in particular has purple all over it, and is a haunted chamber full of spirits whose attacks often make use of this color. Isaac's last will calls it, as well as its bloodier red-colored counterpart Gehenna, "some cursed place".
- Cassette Beasts:The Poison type is represented by purple. The Astral type gets buffs from the "pure" elements (fire, water, etc) and a debuff from the "impure" ones (as they throw it off balance), poison and plastic (which itself becomes poison when exposed to fire).
- Celeste (2018): Badeline is a shadowy counterpart to the game's protagonist, Madeline, representing her insecurities. This manifests in her having purple hair and clothing instead of red hair and blue clothing.
- Deepwoken:
- The Depths, a sentient, corruptive force that seeks to consume the universe and bring it below the waves (and also happens to be analogous to climate change), is often represented by the color purple, using purple fire, purple wind and general purple particles.
- Anti-Regeneration effects are represented by a purple smoke surrounding the afflicted. For bonus points, they're often due to rot or disease.
- The Mudskipper Broodlord is the final evolution of the Mudskipper, allowing them to inflict diseases and decay on a victim with a single punch. Fittingly, they're purple Palette Swaps of the Mudskipper Brute.
- Dark Souls: The corruptive power of the abyss, which had its presence amplified by the world's stagnation, is often represented by the color purple.
- Donkey Kong Bananza:
- The Void Company use Terravoiders to turn normal terrain into purple voided terrain, which becomes indestructible unless the machine is broken with help from Pauline's singing.
- Most of Void Company's constructions and automations are purple-coloured or have purple highlights, helping denote how unnatural they all are.
- In Dragon Project, the Dark element's icon and damage numbers are purple. It's also used by more sinister Behemoths (which often have purple), and its Damage Over Time effect is called Corruption, which only works against Light-Elemented Behemoths.
- Dungeon Boss:
- The Diseased Status Effect is represented by the color purple. It reduces the afflicted person's ability to take and deal damage.
- Lord Zomm is a Scary Skeleton who wears purple clothes and has purple Glowing Eyelights of Undeath. He specialises in causing and spreading Disease.
- Kobal the Pestilent, as his name would suggest, is an Evil Sorcerer who specialises in plagues and disease. His multiple, disease-centric abilities are represented by purple clouds of insects and purple bolts of energy.
- Dungeon Crawl: Demonic plants are purple and can occur in the Abyss, the dominion of Lugonu, the god of chaos and corruption. The entrance to the Abyss is also purple.
- Elden Ring: The nectar of the Deep-Purple Lily is compared to a poison.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: The color most associated with William Afton is purple, and he is primarily responsible for the decay of Fazbear Entertainment, his company, through his wanton child murders and ruthless business dealings. His son later turns a shade of purple after he quite literally begins rotting away due to having his internal organs removed.
- Genshin Impact:
- The Abyss, a corroding force that seeks to consume Teyvat, is heavily associated with the color purple. Its influence often manifests in malignant tumors and pustules on the environment, as well as purple gunk, purple smoke, purple mist, and "Dark Mud" that destroys the environment around it and any living material not considered a monster. Entities with strong association with the Abyss tend to fade out in purple particles rather than red or blue.
- The dragon Dvalin's turn to villainy was partially accelerated by poisoned blood from the abyssal dragon Durin in his system. This results in the formation of purple "Tainted Blood" clots on his spine and his scales turning purple, representing his corruption. Once the purple blood clots are destroyed, he returns to being a heroic figure.
- The Festering Desire is an Evil Weapon made from Durin's remains. This has infused it with corruption and decay, making it unsafe for ordinary people to use. This manifests in it being a bright purple.
- The Dragon of the City of Flowing Ash is an evil dragon corroded by the Abyss, the end result of Och-Kan's descent into madness and villainy. Hence, it's a purple Palette Swap of the Goldflame Qucusaur Tyrant.
- Tenebrous Mimiflora and Papilla are Botanical Abominations that are capable of mimicking lifeforms and objects found on Teyvat. However, they always have a purple tint to them, representing their status as imperfect replicas.
- Grand Theft Auto:
- Grand Theft Auto III has the Purple Nines, a subdivision of the Southside Hoods who are engaged in an Enemy Civil War with the Red Jacks concerning the distribution of SPANK. The Nines are in favor of it, while the Jacks (who Claude sides with as a hired gun) are against it.
- Similarly, the Ballas from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have purple as their gang color and take on a villainous tole for their involvement with the drug trade during the Crack Epidemic (at least, the Grand Theft Auto world's version of it). Jizzy B also has a bit of a color motif between his Pimp Duds and the interior of his club, and is connected to the Loco Syndicate.
- In Hob, one of the player's tasks is to eradicate a purple infectious mass that corrupts the environment.
- Jak and Daxter: Dark Eco is colored a dark purple, and it infects and mutates whatever it comes in contact with, including the Big Bads of the first game who were poisoned by prolonged exposure while experimenting with the substance, despite warnings from Samos.
- Kingdom Hearts: Darkness-based attacks, whose usage can erode the user's heart if they aren't careful, are always signified by purple.
- Iori Yagami and Chris's flames from The King of Fighters games are purple due to their association with Orocho to contrast with the Kusanagi clan's normal orange flames.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Evil Crystals are purple in color and are literally pure crystalized monster malice.
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The forces of the titular Majora served to corrupt the land of Termina, such as by poisoning the water, altering the weather, and raising the dead, while the mask itself corrupted its wearer. The five all feature purple highlights in their designs, and the Four Masked Beasts dissipate in purple smoke and flame on death.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
- Monster Extract is a cooking ingredient implied to be created from monsters that is purple in color.
- The color purple is associated with Calamity Ganon's corruption of the land - Guardians that are under his control have purple Tron Lines across their bodies, and places where his corruption is strongest spawn purple-and-black Meat Moss called Malice that impedes Link's progress.
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has the Rifts and anything else associated with Null be purple. The Rifts and their creator are an anathema to the Goddesses themselves.
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: Characters affected by Malatone Formula:X from the 3DS remake's Bowser Jr.'s Journey side mode become stronger, but also become more hostile and crazy, and their bodies have a purple fiery aura. Bowser Junior and Morton Koopa learn this the hard way, though Morton does make an attempt to resist the hostility affect.
- Monster Hunter: Purple tends to be bad news in this series. Two of the Elemental damage types, Poison and Dragonblight, are symbolized by purple icons, and purple monsters tend to be pretty nasty (like Yian Garuga) or an outright crisis that needs the Hunter's Guild's undivided attention (like Gore Magala). Purple is also the icon color for Tempered Monsters, older monsters who've survived encounters with Hunters and are tougher and meaner for it.
- In No Man's Sky, dissonant planets are covered in bright-purple crystals and patrolled by "renegade" Sentinels, which are black and purple.
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps: Decay is a mysterious force that has afflicted the lands of Niwen and Nibel, destroying their environment. Many of its effects involve the color purple, like the tainted water.
- Overwatch: Damaging or debuffing abilities used by your team are usually purple, including Zenyatta's Orb of Discord and Moira's damaging Biotic Orb among other life-draining attacks. As of Overwatch 2, Moira's entire right arm has turned purple, presumably as a consequence of her self-experimentation.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The The Indigo Disk expansion introduces Pecharunt, a purple Poison/Ghost-type Pokémon that feeds people and Pokémon alike its toxic mochi to not only control them, but draw out their latent capabilities and desires. It is also responsible for creating the Loyal Three, which are purple and black.
- Risk of Rain 2: Deep Purple is the color of the invading force known as "Void." The Void is an alternate dimension populated by anthropomorphic aquatic life, and anything not native to it will rapidly decay when exposed to its energy. The Void invades the planet of Petrichor-IV by setting up "Void Seeds" which surround a given area in a sphere of void. Should a void seed be cleared out by killing all void creatures, you can open void pods that contain corrupted alternate versions of existing items, and picking them up will transform all copies of said item into it for the rest of the run. Opening the pod also releases Void Infestors, tiny little ticks that are annoying on their own but will corrupt nearby enemies, dramatically increasing their strength. There is even a void corrupted version of another survivor called The Void Fiend, a Commando who was trapped in the void for so long that they adapted to it.
- Rock Raiders: In the PC game, when Energy Crystals are fully drained of energy, they turn from bright green to a dull purple. These purple Energy Crystals are useless unless they can be brought to a Recharge Seam and have their power restored.
- Ryse: Son of Rome: The uniform of the Roman Praetorian Guard is purple and black in color. Just like they were in Real Life, the Praetorians are corrupt, carrying out the selfish whims of Emperor Nero and terrorising the people of Rome. They become mooks for Marius to cut through in his quest to kill Nero.
- The 3rd Street Saints in Saints Row have purple as their gang color. At the best of times, they are anti-heroic gangbangers. At worst, they're little better than the degenerates they wage war against. They started out with a fairly noble goal (ridding the Saint's Row district and Stilwater as a whole of the other gangs), but (much like the Vice Kings before them) became just another street gang down the line. As its former leader Julius Little pointed out in Saints Row 2, drugs were still being sold and civilians were still being killed.
- Sonic Colors: Zigzagged. Out of the Wisps' Rainbow Motif, purple is the only color that isn't natural: it is the shade that Wisps take when they are drained of energy and mutate into Nega-Wisps. These include Purple Wisps and Violet Wisps that resemble black hole-shaped imps and are more violent than before. That said, Nega-Wisps still flock to Sonic's side to save the other wisps from Eggman. Played straight when the Mother Wisp is corrupted, however, and becomes a rampaging monster, as well as when Eggman uses his Nega Wisp Armor, a machine powered by Nega-Wisps that also turns the power of the normal Wisps purple while fighting Sonic.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: Corruptive forces, like the influence of Sel-Makor and particularly warped aspects of The Dark Side, are represented by purple smoke. Those heavily under the thrall of these forces usually have purple, glowing eyes to represent their statues as mindless slaves of the dark.
- Terraria: The Corruption is one of two evil biomes in the game, and takes the form of sickly purple grass and trees as well as deep purple rock, ice, and sand. Its associated ore, Demonite, is bright purple, as is the Shadow Orb pet that you can find there.
- Thaumcraft features Taint as a corrupted form of magic, acting as a toxic slime/Festering Fungus that kills and corrupts life in its range, with it and the biome it manifests being given a potent purple coloration.
- Trimps: Corrupted Imps are marked with a purple cell colour, and the corruption which creates them is described as smelling purple.
- World of Warcraft: N'Zoth, aptly named The Corrupter, is the most influential Old God responsible for subverting the people of Azeroth, swaying them to their side and warping the Emerald Dream into the Emerald Nightmare, changing it from a forest into a hellscape. Fittingly, when he appears in person, he's bright purple.
- Yo-kai Watch:
- Negative inspirits, which negatively twist or alter a person's personality, are represented by the color purple. Conversely, positive ones are represented by yellow. The same goes for Status Effects caused by these inspirits; bad ones have a purple icon. The purify mechanic, which involves removing this corruption, is also accessed via a purple button.
- The Wicked Yo-kai are either physical manifestations of negative emotions, or good Yo-kai forcibly corrupted into evil Yo-kai by parasites. Naturally, the color they're most associated with is purple.
- Onnen Tribe Yo-kai are Yo-kai associated with the discontent and grudges, with a general theme of being warped into something monstrous in death due to wrongdoings outside their control. Their icon is a purple flame with a pained expression.
- Yo-kai Watch 2: Several pieces of Stats-Tradeoff Equipment with special effects are Cursed Items, denoted by either being purple in color or having a purple aura surrounding them.
- Yo-kai Watch Jam - Yo-kai Academy Y: Bustlin' School Life: The postgame has several encounters with Evil Knockoffs of the playable cast, who are Palette Swaps of the Yo-kai Heroes but with purple highlights to their design. The aliens also return as Vengeful Ghosts, who are once again Palette Swaps with purple highlights.
- Yo-kai Watch Busters 2: Secret Treasure of the Legendary Banbarayar: BaiKING, a disease-themed Yo-kai who is known as the king of all bacteria, wears a cloak covered in purple smoke, as well as having purple shorts, a purple beard, and a purple trident.
- Yo-kai Watch: Wibble Wobble:
- Goku Bushinyan is absolutely insane and wields a cursed sword. His armor is purple, he has glowing purple eyes, and his sword's status as Cursed Item is made clear by the permanent purple aura it has.
- In the Punigami No Yami storyline, the antagonists are Evil Knockoffs of pre-existing characters created by a Physical God. All of them, the god included, are born from congealed impurities, forcibly extracting their worst attributes. As a result, they feature heavy amounts of purple in their designs, representing their status as corrupted duplicates. Their Flower Motifs are also a dark purple Mystical Lotus, contrasting the usual light pink it's supposed to have.
- In Zenless Zone Zero, the Ether element's icon is a purple star, and its damage numbers are also purple. The element can corrupt living things within Hollows by turning them into hostile creatures known as Ethereals. In gameplay, Corruption is an elemental status effect that causes enemies to take extra Ether damage while disrupting their attacks.
Web Original
- In The Irate Gamer, the Evil Gamer creates an army of Mecha-Mooks based on the HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (whose A.I. resides in a Magnavox Odyssey). All of the robots have purple eyes, with the exception of the red-eyed head robot known as R.E.D. (Robotic Electromat Device), representing their allegiance to the protagonist's Evil Doppelgänger.
- Pirates SMP: The world-eating Corruption is purple in colour, and is disdained as a mark of impurity to be purged by the Church of Iris.
Western Animation
- American Dragon: Jake Long: The Dark Dragon is a corrupted dragon consumed by dark magic, with purple and black as his color motif. In season 2, the purple parts are switched to blue.
- Ben 10: The Anur System aliens all have purple accenting that is likely due to exposure to the Corrodium that is found there, which is harmless to them but mutates living organisms into gaunt, zombie-like monsters. This becomes the main part of their plan to turn Earth into a desolate landscape. Notably, Ben's versions trade the purple for his heroic green.
- Final Space:
- The Big Bad, Invictus, is a primordial, eldritch, thoroughly wicked, Satanic Archetype monster with a prominently magenta color motif nearly every time it manifests itself or its powers. It's capable of possessing others directly, corrupting morals across the universe indirectly, and it seeks to ultimately devour the entire universe's contents.
- This is also an early hint that Invictus is actually the source of Ash's psychokinetic super-powers, which have a similar magenta hue. And although Ash is initially an Anti-Anti-Christ, at the third season's end, she makes a complete Face–Heel Turn to being Invictus' herald and becomes directly responsible for setting it free upon the universe.
- Legend of Korra: Spiritual energy balance is denoted by the color of the spirit, where purple is used to represent imbalance in spirit energy. This is the case for dark spirits and Vaatu, the malevolent spirit of darkness and chaos, whose powers become purple the stronger he becomes. As he fuses with Unalaq into the Dark Avatar, his giant form becomes entirely purple with Vaatu's symbol on his chest.
- Miraculous Ladybug: Subverted; purple is the color of the Butterfly Miraculous, and when its user infuses one of their butterflies with Kamiko/Akuma power, the butterfly turns from pure white to blackish-purple. The transformation effect also envelopes the affected person in a bubble of dark purple substance. The power itself is identical regardless of whether it's used for good or evil, the only difference being the power's names and Hawk Moth's attire having darker purples to show his using it for evil, as opposed to the lighter purple that his good counterpart has.
- Ninjago:
- Lord Garmadon's Elemental Power of Destruction is colorized as purple, in contrast and balance to his brother Master Wu's gold and white Elemental Power of Creation. When he Came Back Wrong in a ritual intended to purge him of all his good qualities, this new version is shown leaking purple blood.
- Every form the Overlord has some form of purple in it, representing his ability to corrupt others and turn people to evil with a touch. For bonus points, the afflicted usually have purple Glowing Eyes of Doom.
- The Crystal King utilizes purple crystals to corrupt enemies and empower minions. Makes sense when he's revealed to be the Overlord again.
- Transformers: Prime: Dark Energon is a corruptive substance that glows purple. While Megatron uses it as a fuel source, it has other uses as a poison, and can create zombified Cybertronians. It's also the blood of Unicron.
- Voltron: Legendary Defender: The MacGuffin substance Quintessence has different colors depending on who uses it and to indicate one's true, innermost nature. In the Galra Empire, it is violet, contrasting the blue shade it has with the Alteans. This holds true for ambitious people falling victim to its power, to the point they are physically altered with traits such as violet Glowing Eyes of Doom, the very fate that befell Zarkon and Haggard when their Quintessence abuse corrupted and turned them into husks of their former selves.
