"Drown in darkness!"
— Mephiles, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
As Elemental Powers go, darkness is pretty hard to visually portray. Since darkness is nothing but the absence of light, it's hard to make it especially flashy. Swarms of bats or other darkness-associated creatures are pretty flamboyant, but it's hard to make it clearly read as "darkness" if your character isn't conveniently in a lit environment to Kill the Lights and Hard Light projections of solid shadow might be seen as cliche, insufficiently menacing, or making darkness too much like light.
An alternative method for portraying elemental darkness is to show it as a dark-colored, usually black or purple, liquid. Characters who use Liquid Darkness might behave much like water users, save with a Palette Swap. They can "sink into" darkness to act as a Shadow Walker or become invisible, or even liquefy themselves to turn into Living Shadows. They may even straight-up drop the pretenses and swim through the darkness like a pool.
Liquid Darkness tends to be dangerous to be around, acting as an Ominous Obsidian Ooze that can stain or corrupt creatures it touches or even shadows as sentient Blob Monsters, but it doesn't have to be. Versions using liquid sacred darkness might identify it with water as a symbol of peace or creation, or with the darkness of space in a variant of Space Is an Ocean. If Dark Is Evil or identified directly with negative emotions, creatures made of liquid darkness are typically Made of Evil.
Older Than Dirt — both Egyptian Mythology and Mesopotamian Mythology identify Primordial Chaos as a massive, dark ocean, with the darkness and water pretty much synonymous.
This is common in inkblot-styled works, where shadows are treated like liquid ink. May be a component of Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious. See also Tendrils of Darkness for another more tangible version of darkness.
Compare and contrast Eldritch Ocean Abyss, which also draws on the concept of the ocean as dark and primordial. For supernatural ink which might be compared to shadow, but isn't actually made of it, see Art Attacker. For general black liquids being bad news, see Ominous Obsidian Ooze.
Physically manifested "pure evil" being liquid only qualifies for this trope if it's explicitly identified with darkness or the void as an element. If it's not, then it just falls under Made of Evil or Ominous Obsidian Ooze even if it's called "Dark". Subtrope of Tangible Darkness.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Cardcaptor Sakura: The Shadow Card manifests as darkness that resembles a rippling mass of purple goo. Its true form only reshapes into a hooded figure that can still stretch and contort like liquid or engulf its foes in combat.
- Chainsaw Man: The Darkness Devil, the embodiment of humanity’s fear of the dark, is introduced when a drop of pitch-black liquid falls from the sky, plunging all of hell into darkness.
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004): Shadow Link describes the Dark Mirror as a "fountain" of unlimited dark power, and it turns out he wasn't just being figurative. When Ganon uses the mirror to pull him back into the Light World, Shadow comes crawling out of it drenched in liquid. Moreover, Shadow's nominal superior Vaati, having been rejuvenated and empowered by the Dark Mirror, eventually becomes a giant Blob Monster that can reshape himself like water.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Megumi's domain is described as a liquid shadow by Reggie Star.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The character Darkness (Nightshroud in the English dub) is heavily associated with water. He traps almost all of the cast in orbs of dark water, symbolizing them "sinking" into despair and nihilism.
Comic Books
- The Shade: The darkness powers of the Shade are sometimes portrayed this way. Other times, they manifest as pitch-black creatures or a mixture of the two.
- Venom: Played with in regard to the Symbiotes, which are made of an inorganic substance that originates from the abyssal void that exists beyond formed from Knull. The natural form they take is liquid-like, and conforms to any shape they need for combat, such as tentacles, teeth, and claws. While they are not the same thing as pure darkness, which exists as darkforce energy, they do resonate with it.
Fan Fiction
- Codex Equus: Andhera Mahaaraanee, the goddess of primordial darkness, specializes in manipulating darkness as a water-like liquid substance, with which she overwhelms and drowns her foes. Her body-plane also takes the form on a bottomless ocean of liquid darkness in which those that she devours lose themselves forever.
Literature
- The Keys to the Kingdom: All of existence was created from Nothing which is described as being a black substance that simultaneously has the properties of smoke and liquid, while also dissolving anything made of normal matter upon contact. There are multiple instances of Nothing described as behaving like a liquid; it can be bottled, it can form into globules, or even surge out as a gigantic wave.
Live-Action TV
- GARO: Versus Road: The evil energy being harvested from the contestants of the murder-game becomes a sticky, viscous liquid called "Dark Metal" once it's added to the Garo Armor. This is because it's meant to be magically sculpted into an Evil Knockoff of said armor called "The Veil", which the organizer wants to use to Take Over the World. Azami demonstrates a special ability to control this force in a way even Shousetsu can't, and after Kuon beats him as the new Garo, she takes the Metal for her own.
- Once Upon a Time (2011): The raw form of the Darkness is a viscous, oily substance that appears within its hosts, known as the Dark Ones. The entity was created by Nimue, the original Dark One, through a combination of the magic she gained from the Holy Grail with her corrupted heart then tainting it into dark magic.
- Titans (2018): Rachel's power manifests this way, flowing out from her body in dark blobs and streams, with numerous different effects, physical, mental, and spiritual.
Myths & Religion
- The Bible: Tehom is the "deep" primordial ocean that exists before God creates heaven and earth, identified as both darkness and water.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
- In Daoism, the force of Yin, representing darkness, is connected to the element of water and denotes slow movement and murkiness, in contrast to the force of Yang, which is fiery and bright.
- Egyptian Mythology: Nun or Nu is the primordial ocean that exists prior to the emergence of the sun. In some cases, it's also identified with the darkness of space.
- Mesopotamian Mythology: Along with being creator deities, Abzu / Apsu and Tiamat are personifications of fresh and salt water, forming a dark ocean that when the waters mix, produces the world.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering: Some Black cards depict shadows with more substance than normal. "Grasp of Darkness
", for instance, depicts a mass of shadows that have formed themselves into a viscous, tarry, grasping fluid.
- RuneQuest: At the beginning of the Gloranthan cosmogony, Darkness was the first element to emerge from the unformed mass of Chaos. This primal Darkness went through several periods of self-reflection and devolution, which caused it to birth or break apart into numerous lesser and more defined deities and locations. One of these coalesced into and birthed a new thing, a form of Darkness that was still Darkness, but even so was a liquid that flowed to form a river. This new deity was Styx and drew from the still seething potential of Chaos a new element — Zaramaka, the primordial entity of Water.
Video Games
- Alan Wake II: Invoked. Areas under the influence of the Dark Presence around Bright Falls are heavily flooded; after removing said influence, the water retreats, and new paths open up.
- BlazBlue: Arakune is essentially a "failed Black Beast", reduced to a sentient mass of black and red liquid that can morph and occasionally produce darkness elemental attacks, mainly with one of his Distortion Drives. He is sometimes mistaken for a trash bag due to the rancid stench he gives off, though this is likely due to the vermin and bones contained in his body
- Deltarune: The Dark Worlds are all created by Dark Fountains, which expels pure Tangible Darkness in fluid/gaseous form, which expands in an enclosed space in the Light World and solidifies into a Bigger on the Inside location populated by Darkners.
- Drawn to Life: In the first game, the darkness taking over each world is primarily portrayed as black ooze that the player needs to scrub away with the stylus. Shadow monsters can spawn from this ooze if it's not cleared fast enough, and cleaning up each area is required for level progression. This is contrasted with how the darkness is portrayed in the village itself, which is more of a black cloud barrier.
- Elements: The Liquid Shadow is an alchemical spell that concentrates darkness into a fluid poison to hurt enemies but also grants the target damage-based self-healing.
- Final Fantasy VIII: When summoning Diabolos, a swarm of bats made of darkness converge to create a black hole that Diabolos then emerges out of the bottom of, making darkness ooze and drip around him, followed by him spreading his wings, splashing liquid darkness around himself. And then he chucks the black hole at the enemies.
- Final Fantasy XII: The enemy-exclusive attack Darkness creates a bubbling black pool under the target and any nearby allies to deal dark-elemental damage.
- Flight Rising: The Shadow Flight's magic resembles a thick black or dark purple liquid, which players affectionately call "goop". The Shadowbinder drools out this black liquid, which is identified with darkness itself. Dragons with Shadow Primal eyes have their eyes dripping the same stuff, and many Shadow-themed festival items feature projections or even creatures made of Shadow goop. The Thorndark Altar, a map location in Shadow territory, used to be a scrying pool before the Shadowbinder herself moved in and took over it, blocking its powers with liquid darkness and debris.
- Guilty Gear: Zato-1's Forbidden Beast Eddie is this, being a creature of pure shadow that has on occasion shown to ooze.
- Hollow Knight: The Knight and all of their siblings are composed of "Void". Void is a pitch-black liquid substance that nullifies the light of The Radiance. The Hollow Knight and the rest of the vessels were made of void in a plot by the Pale King to contain The Radiance's infection driving Hallownest to ruin. If the plan worked, a single vessel would've been used to trap the infection inside of the Black Egg for eternity.
- Jak and Daxter: Of the six types of Eco in the world, Dark Eco often appears in the form of black liquid with swirling purple on its texture. It also has solid and gaseous forms, but its liquid form is a common hazard throughout the series that means instant death upon falling in.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- In Kingdom Hearts II, players are introduced to the Dark Margin, a shadowy beach. According to Word of God, the world in which the Dark Margin resides (the End of Sea) is pretty much right up against the dark end of the Realm Between, and the Margin is shown to be directly connected to the Realm of Darkness. This trope really comes into play in Kingdom Hearts III: Ansem, Seeker of Darkness goes to this place to find his mentor Ansem the Wise and meets Aqua, who tries to protect him. The Seeker launches an attack that throws Aqua into the water, and as she sinks in the murky depths, darkness envelops her and corrupts her into Anti-Aqua.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], when Riku dives into Sora's heart, he's greeted by Sora's Awakening platform covered in a thick pool of swirling darkness. The Nightmare fought there forms ink-like projectiles out of the stuff for most of its ranged attacks and can cause the place to shift between black and white.
- Kingdom Hearts III: In one cutscene, Riku and King Mickey are at the Dark Margin and are ambushed by a Demon Tower (a Worm That Walks of Shadows, the weakest of The Heartless). The Demon Tower engulfs Riku inside itself, and in the next cutscene, Riku is shown gasping for air as if he is drowning in water.
- Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope: The Darkmess that plaques the galaxy is a black sludge that grows tendrils that suck the life out of the environment to add to Cursa's power. Anyone who touches it is teleported to the Darkmess Dimension where the battles take place.
- Mortal Kombat: Noob Saibot gradually gained more liquid aspects of his darkness over the series. In Mortal Kombat Trilogy, when his Clone Toss is blocked, it explodes into black globs. In the TV series Mortal Kombat: Conquest, he's shown being able to morph into a liquid shadow, which was then brought over into canon in the NRS era as shown in his getup and retreat animations. By MK11, even his portals are shown dripping with black and purple liquid
- Pokémon Platinum: When Giratina emerges from the Distortion World, it appears as a Living Shadow that drips puddles of shadow onto the Spear Pillar below it. It emerging from pools of shadow dripping with darkness also occurs in its anime appearances.
- Pokkén Tournament: One of Gengar's victory animations has it diving into its own shadow to swim along the ground before sinking into the shadow completely, and one of its defeat animations shows it sulking face first into its shadow and getting stuck.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): The game's antagonist, Mephiles, was originally a viscous black ooze born from the sun god Solaris, him representing the darkness left behind when Solaris split, until he absorbs Shadow's shade and gains his shape.
Western Animation
- DuckTales (2017): Magica's shadow powers sometimes act in a manner like fluid. Even her shadow minions will subtly splatter and waver like ink. Her full possession of Lena also involves her shadow form soaking into her body and Lena's eyes filling up with shadow. The moments where Lena regains control depicts her "leaking" Magica out of her eyes.
- The short "Kagemono'' has a "shadow mouse" that feeds on other shadows by eating and slurping them up. After stealing the fox's shadow, the mouse is soon caught and peeled off from the surface by a wolf, who crushes it and releases the fox's shadow as a black liquid that flows back to the fox.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Shadow Weaver's dark magic is both dark as in evil and dark as in literally manipulating shadows and illusions, and it's shown to be damaging her body. This damage and the overload of magic is portrayed as black liquid dripping out of her underneath her mask.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Sh'Okanabo from Fast Forward is described as a creature of shadow, though this begins and ends as him simply being a mass of glossy purple liquid that can morph.