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"Well, I see your problem: you're bleeding tang!"

On the outside, they may be Human Aliens, completely indistinguishable from us Puny Earthlings. Or they can be shapeshifters. Or Rubber-Forehead Aliens. Whatever...

What is the best way to quickly establish that a character is not human, sometimes to shock other characters around? Dissection? Squick. They may have Bizarre Alien Biology, but that's usually just an informed characteristic which is rarely appealed to, if ever. Unless it's something very obvious, like having two hearts. Solution? Make them bleed. If their blood (assuming it is actually blood and doesn't serve an entirely different purpose in the body) is not red, or nonexistent at all, they might as well have the words "NOT HUMAN" written on their forehead.

The trope, of course, is not limited to Human Aliens, but for other types, it doesn't allow for The Reveal in such an effective way.

In general, aliens and monsters bleed in sickly or unpleasant shades of orange, green, or yellow (blue and violet also happen, but more rarely). Plant People often have green blood. Among aliens, green blood is also popular as it can explained fairly simply by having the alien species' blood pigment be copper-based, instead of the red, iron-based hemoglobin of Earth life. Dragons often have boiling or scalding blood.

With Human Aliens, this is a very mild case of Artistic License – Biology: Since the skin is translucent, a creature with different-colored blood wouldn't have the same skin color as a human... if the skin is white. Darker-skinned aliens, or ones with scales, feathers, hair, or something else hiding their skins avert this problem, albeit probably unintentionally.

Of course, here on Earth, all vertebrates (with the exception of certain lizards and genetic conditions), the largest and most complex members of the animal kingdom, have red blood—the reason? Because all animals breathe oxygen. Red blood cells are red because they contain a protein chemical called hemoglobin, which is bright red in color. This is because hemoglobin contains iron, which is vital for transporting life-sustaining oxygen where it needs to go. There are other pigments like hemocyanin or chlorocurorin that come in such vibrant shades as pink, orange, blue, and green, but these are much less efficient at transporting oxygen than hemoglobin and thus only appear in invertebrates, which have smaller bodies and a better surface-area-to-volume ratio, and thus less need of efficient oxygen transport. Usually hand-waved by having different chemicals in their blood.

In Video Games, aliens and monsters often have different colors of blood than red, frequently appearing as optional Adjustable Censorship, to appease the Moral Guardians. Because it's okay to shoot non-human beings if they don't bleed the same way.

Not to be confused with Blue Blood or Black Blood, even if it is, in fact, blue or black. (Though some blue-blooded aliens can, in fact, be Blue Bloods.) Also not to be confused with a book of same name by Joan D. Vinge.

See also Machine Blood, which is for bleeding machines/robots.


Example subpages:

Other examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Black★Rock Shooter: The Otherselves bleed their color theme. For example, Black Rock Shooter bleeds blue and Dead Master bleeds green.
  • Blue Drop: The Arume have white blood, as do their halfbreed kids.
  • Blue Gender: The Blue initially have red blood, but the new breed that shows up towards the end of the series bleeds purple.
  • Blue Seed: The Aragami, being essentially plants, have green blood; this extends to the half-Aragami mutants like Kusanagi, though the latter looks extraordinarily enough not to be mistaken for a normal human. (The color of his blood still helps, considering that he tends to get injured a lot.)
  • Bubblegum Crisis: Most of the Boomers bleed bright orange fluid when damaged, which is unusual for robotic enemies.
  • Claymore: The shapeshifting, human-eating yoma have purple blood. The titular half-yoma warriors have red blood, normally, unless they Awaken, permanently turning into their Superpowered Evil Side. From then on, they'll bleed purple.
  • Cells at Work!: In a weird aversion and a strange case of Furry Confusion, the blood cells are shown having red blood, as well as the various pathogens and bacteria which are often killed by the White Blood Cells with lots of Ludicrous Gibs. (Though probably justified that the blood is really cytoplasm, the inner fluids of a cell, and the red is just artistic license, though it's still bizarre to see anthropomorphic blood cells ''bleeding''.) In Cells at Work! CODE BLACK, the White Blood Cells bleed pus. Justified, as it's a symptom of inflammation in the male genitals often caused by STD.
  • Cutey Honey: Jango the demon Panther from episode 7 has blue blood.
  • Devil Man Crybaby: Most of the demon blood is mustard yellow or dark green.
  • D.Gray-Man both averts and plays it. The human-based machines akumas have red "blood-oil" (that looks exactly like regular blood) but superpowered but humans Noah have their blood turn black under certain circumstances.
  • Digimon Adventure: (2020): It's shown that Digimon can bleed glowing blue data when WereGarurumon picks up a broken piece of a blade during a fight with a Zanbamon. Said Zanbamon gets a pair of head wounds that bleed the same stuff right before CresGarurumon finishes it off.
  • Dorohedoro: Magic-users have black particles mixed in with their blood.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Originally, Great Demon King Piccolo and his reincarnation had red blood until the early Saiyan Saga, but after their Namekian heritage was revealed, all Namekians from there on have purple blood, including Piccolo himself. Dragon Ball Kai later re-colored Piccolo's red blood into purple.
    • Dragon Ball Z has a few other instances as well. Most villains bled purple (e.g. Cell and Buu) or magenta (e.g. Freeza), but occasionally you'd see something weirder. For instance, Zarbon (one of Freeza's henchmen) bled dark blue, which was also reflected in his skin color.
    • There was at least one instance of a retconned blood color: Piccolo's blood was red in an early DBZ episode, censored to light green in the dub. It later became purple and was no longer censored.
    • Freeza's blood color is also retconned. In the series his blood was dark magenta, however in Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' it's purple. In the colourized Manga however, its blue.
    • Perfect Cell is shown bleeding either green or purple, changing from one episode to the next.
    • Captain Ginyu has dark blue blood.
  • Genesis Climber MOSPEADA: The aliens learn to adopt a human appearance; however their blood is green, which leads to The Reveal that Aisha/Marlene is actually an Inbit/Invid.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The androids consistently have white blood, a possible reference to the Alien franchise.
  • Karas: The Mikura have flourescent green blood.
  • In the Hentai anime La Blue Girl, Shikima demons have blue blood; this is also the case of the heroine, Miko Mido (hence the title), since she is half-Shikima.
  • Naruto: Tobi bleeds white... stuff. It's discovered that Tobi is in fact Obito and that the crushed half of his body was augmented and held by Spiral Zetsu, who becomes a part of Tobi. That "white stuff" bleeding out of his right half? That's plant matter, for all intents and purposes. He still bleeds normal blood from his left side, however.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Magical constructs built by the Lifemaker such as the Averruncus series have blood that is white or transparent. Given the way they come into being and what happens when they die, it's likely that they are essentially built out of pure magic and are actually bleeding magical energy.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Subverted. The robots (well, bio-engineered giant cyborgs encased in Powered Armor) bleed lots and lots of red, but played straight with the blood of the second angel, used as LCL — the orange liquid that fills the cockpits. Also played straight with Unit-02, which bleeds purple High-Pressure Blood.
  • RahXephon: The Mulians are Human Aliens with blue blood.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Judging from the scenes where Nephrite is bleeding and dying, the Dark Kingdom Generals from the first season of Sailor Moon have green blood, even though they have normal human skin tones and the insides of their mouths are pink (as can clearly be seen on any of the numerous occasions when they Evil Laugh).
    • Zoisite, at least, has been shown to have normal red blood (in episode 34 Mamoru injures him with his rose). Nephrite is apparently somewhat of a case of censorship.
    • Kunzite appears to have hot pink blood (in the episode where a Crescent Beam cuts his hands). Perhaps he's a Klingon?
    • In a rather bizarre reversal of this, the aliens Eiru and An from the first arc of the second season have red blood, even though they have green skin and the insides of their mouths are clearly also green.
  • Seiketsu No Hagurama: The impetus for the war between two groups of people, with one side having red blood and the other with blue blood. The main character and Gadgeteer Genius is a blue-blooded prince who discovers to his horror that all his steam-punk looking inventions have been used to eradicate the remaining refugee red bloods by orders of his father and king.
  • Soul Eater: Having black blood is a sign that someone has been infected with Asura's blood. The blood is not only different in appearance it has also several battle properties.
  • Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry: The Emilys bleed green.
  • Tenchi Muyo!: Zig-zagged. Tenchi is surprised to find that alien princess Ayeka has red blood. Villainous Kagato, on the other hand, bleeds green.
  • The Vision of Escaflowne: The dragon from the first episode bled blue-green blood.
  • Witchblade: While not aliens or monsters, transformed wielders bleed clear crystalline blood.

    Asian Animation 
  • Happy Heroes: Shapeshifter's blood is green, while Kalo's blood is blue.

    Card Games 
  • Magic: The Gathering: Old Stickfingers, a boogeyman that haunts the forests of Innistrad, has white blood that's compared to liquid moonlight and to mercury in appearance.

    Comic Books 
  • Alien (Marvel Comics):
    • As with the original films, the xenomorphs' blood is Hollywood Acid, weaponised for Bloody Murder and capable of almost instantly dissolving metal and humans.
    • Aliens: Aftermath, a new variant of the usual Hollywood Acid blood appears. The pale xenomorph that stalks the Renegade XM team on the frozen, radioactive world of LV-426 has acidic blood that eats through clothing and objects as usual, then instantly freezes any flesh it reaches — which is swiftly followed by the frozen body parts shattering.
  • Animorphs: In the graphic novels, the centipede-like Taxxons have blood that looks like blue foam.
  • Copperhead: The Sewell family, in addition to having a single eye and two extra arms, bleed gouts of green when injured.
  • Gea: Extradimensional beings live on the Earth and are the basis of every myth or religion. They try to live undercover, enforced by the Guardians ("Baluardi" in the original) such as the main character. Even when outsiders are outwardly identical to humans (not so common), expect them to be killed in a gore splash of weird blood and alien organs. In one particular case, a team of racist vigilantes kills a group of "outsiders" living in a slum, and are horrified to see that they bleed yellow, smelly liquids. The leader opts for a "foreign disease" and orders the bodies to be burnt.
  • Hellboy: One character has yellow blood because his body contains the soul of a worm-like demon.
  • Horizon: The natives of the planet Valius have blue blood.
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk very often bleeds a dark green. The Red Hulk has glowing yellow blood.
  • Jurassic Park (1993): In the comic adaptation, when the Tyrannosaurus kills the two Velociraptor, their blood is colored green for some reason, despite it being red in the films.
  • Lanfeust: In Lanfeust of the Stars, due to Inconsistent Coloring, goules are shown to have blue and black blood on top of red blood. Pathacelces have consistently black blood.
  • Nova (2007): Given a nod on Rich's first visit to Knowhere, when he finds something written on the wall and asks Worldmind if it's blood. It says no, and Rich then asks if it's alien blood. Which it is, so Rich points out alien blood is still blood.
  • Paperinik New Adventures: Xerbians have black-ink blood, as shown in a flashback. If this still applies to Xadhoom, who became a Physical God and an Energy Being, is up to debate.
  • Sin City: Even though he's not an alien, That Yellow Bastard had yellow blood, since he's incapable of processing bodily waste, which means his yellow blood is... exactly what it looks like due to Rule of Cool.
  • Resident Alien: Harry Vanderspeigle, an alien masquerading as a human, bleeds pink blood.
  • Star Trek: Early Voyages: In "The Fallen, Part Two", it can be seen that the Chakuun have blue blood.
  • Star Wars Legends: Jabba the Hutt: Betrayal shows a half-dozen or so Rubber-Forehead Aliens who work for Jabba trying to capture their master for Bib Fortuna but getting attacked by a horde of ravenous weasel-like creatures who kill and eat everything they see — along with Jabba and Bib themselves and four of Jabba's Gamorrean guards. Everyone but Jabba and Bib dies horribly before the creatures can be slaughtered; and the reader has some fun seeing how many different colors of blood all the species shed before the carnage is over.
  • Superman:
    • Coluans like Brainiac are supposed to have green blood but it's not uncommon for colorists to forget it and color it red anyway.
    • Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom, In the beginning of the second chapter, both Superman and Supergirl fight two alien monsters who bleed green.
  • Transformers: You will get familiar with the bright pink energon that passes for Cybertronian blood reading any of the comic books written (or co-written) by James Roberts (The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, The Transformers: Dark Cybertron, special mention going to The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers). There are two exceptions, however: Tailgate's innermost energon is green because he's suffering from cybercrosis, and his innermost energon has curdled, and Brainstorm has a more reddish-orange colour because he's been infected with the Dead Universe.
  • The Umbrella Academy: Following Vanya's transformation into the White Violin, she has grey blood.
  • We Kill Monsters: The monster Andrew kills to save Jake has blue blood. The giant insect monster has green blood.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Medusa's blood is blue.
  • X-Men: The Xenomorph Xerox species Brood have green blood, though thankfully without any acidic properties.

    Fan Works 
The Black Cauldron
  • Hope for the Heartless: The Horned King is shown to have in the place of blood thick and blackish substance that is called blood only because of the lack of a better term.

Compilation of Final Fantasy VII

  • Seventh Endmost Vision: Dr. Lucrecia's blood has flecks that look like white gold in it. It's probably because she's turned herself into a Tsiviet through self-experimentation.

Crossovers

  • Boop the Snoot for Critical Damage!: Bandits are no longer human due to the Grimm masks forced on them, and bleed a black, oil-like substance that smells of rot and decay.
  • Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters:
    • Lurden blood is noted to be thicker and a darker shade of red than that of humans.
    • Sniffer's blood is a sickly green.
  • The Last Daughter: It turns out that Taylor, who is a Kryptonian in the story, has bright pink blood.
  • My Little Pony: Nakama Is Magic: When the Straw Hats manage to finally actually wound him, Discord spits up green blood.
  • The Night Unfurls:
    • Inverted for the Hunter. He is no longer human due to the Eldritch Transformation that happened prior to the events of the story, yet he bleeds the same way a human would (i.e., bleeding red blood). Fittingly, he values his humanity and desires to conceal his true nature.
    • In order to drive home that Shamuhaza has gone One-Winged Angel during the climactic battle between him and the Hunters, he is shown to bleed white ichor when damaged.
  • One Hell of an Afternoon: Taylor's blood is green and glowing now, like the vat she got dumped into, which concerns her a bit.
  • Protoculture Effect: Shepard is revealed to have green blood when he gets injured. He explains that this is because he's a quarter-Invid.
  • Royal Heights: As a Utopian Android the Headmaster is revealed to have a metallic silver fluid for blood after Yuck kills her by slicing her open with his sword.
  • Theogony: When Taylor is shot and wounded by Shadow Stalker's phasing bolt, she notices that her blood is black when she touches her wound and sees "black ichor" on her fingers.

The DCU

Gravity Falls

  • Transcendence AU: Demons have different blood colors. After his transformation, Dipper bleeds gold.

Helluva Boss

  • Shadows Over Hell: The King's green ikor-like blood is acidic and burns the flesh, as Moxxie learns the hard way.

Invader Zim

The Legend of Spyro

The Legend of Zelda

  • Their Bond: Subverted. After finding Zelda bleeding out from a suicide attempt, Impa makes a split decision to take her to the Twili Realm for help. She tells herself that she's lucky the Twili share the same blood as the Hylia, or else the blood transplant would have failed.

Minecraft

Monsterverse

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

  • Actually, I'm Dead: After dying and subsequently being brought back by the Alicorn Amulet, Trixie's blood appears to have turned black. It is later revealed that concentrated dark magic has replaced her bodily fluids.
  • Diaries of a Madman: Changeling blood is always green, no matter what species they're currently posing as. The protagonist of the story, Navarone, also gains this after his Emergency Transformation, going from regular human blood to a more viscous amber blood.
  • Equestria: Across the Multiverse: Celestial Ponies, alien ponies from the planet Stellaria, have glowing pink blood. Black Star, a Stellarian supervillain, has black blood due to being mutated by her Void Prism. Celestial/Equusian Pony hybrids like Brightglow and her sisters have a lighter red blood than normal ponies that glows like the Celestials' does.
  • My Fluttering Heart: Discussed. Shining always imagined that Chrysalis bled an abnormal green, but it turns out she bleeds red like a normal pony. Shining finds it unnerving since it makes it harder to dehumanize her.
  • My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic: Grand Ruler Celesto, a deity alicorn, has a blood type that sparkles.
  • Oversaturated World: The alien Vaucoi bleed orange.
  • Principal Celestia Hunts the Undead: Changelings have green blood, so Sunset differentiates the Equestrian Chrysalis from the human one by shooting her in the shoulder. She gets the human one, who complains that Sunset could have just pricked her finger.

RWBY

Sonic the Hedgehog

  • Prison Island Break: Shadow Robotnik is repeatedly mentioned as having black blood while everybody else clearly has red blood, because he is canonically part alien.

Splatoon

Worm

  • The Taste of Peaches: As a goddess, Taylor has golden ichor in place of blood. When Panacea has a power reaction trying to read her, Victoria ends up getting blood with an odd golden tinge as well.

    Films — Animation 
  • Cyborg 009 (1966): When 009 the cyborg is being operated on, his blood is shown to be dark green.
  • Heavy Metal: The mutants in the Taarna segment have green blood, as a side effect of being tainted by the Loc Nar's power.
  • Hercules: The Hydra's blood is green slime.
  • Interstella 5555: Shep's blood is yellow.
  • Lilo & Stitch: Stitch's blood is pink, as seen when Gantu extracts some to put into some gun turrets so they will lock onto his every move if he tries to escape.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas: Though not seen directly, the song "Kidnap the Sandy Claws" mentions being "beaten black and green", suggesting this is the case.
  • Puss in Boots (2011): In the flashback where Puss and Humpty become Blood Brothers, Humpty bleeds yolk instead of blood.
  • The Return of Hanuman: Rahu and Ketu (who are definitely not human)'s blood is green.
  • The Sea Beast: In the fight against the brickleback at the start of the film, its severed tentacles bleed inky-black blood.

    Literature 
  • Animorphs: Andalite blood is blue-black. Elfangor and Arbron are squicked out when they find that humans have red blood. Hork-Bajir have black blood, and Taxxons have a sickly yellow.
  • And The Devil Will Drag You Under by L. Sprague deCamp had a race of alien demons with blue blood. "Not dark blue, but a nice, pretty sky blue."
  • Black Dagger Brotherhood: Sympaths bleed blue.
  • The Camp Half-Blood Series:
    • It's frequently noted that gods and similar beings bleed golden ichor, as in mythology.
    • Juniper, a dryad, apparently has chlorophyll instead of blood, as her blushes or bloodshot eyes are green.
  • Conan the Barbarian: In "Rogues in the House", Conan professes to believe that Nabonidus has black blood when offering to cut his throat and see what color it is.
  • The Daevabad Trilogy: Full-blooded daeva have distinctive black blood. In one infamous pogrom against human-daeva hybrids, an entire town's population was scourged to root out everyone who bled red.
  • Discworld:
    • Discworld elves have green blood — just like some other famous fictional beings with pointy ears. The explanation is that they have copper-based blood, since elves are allergic to iron.
    • Trolls have... ooze. We're not told what colour it is, but, given that they're Silicon-Based Life, grey-to-brown seems likely.
  • Doctor Who Expanded Universe: The Venusians in the novel Venusian Lullaby have blue blood.
  • The Doorway and the Deep: It's shown in this book that the Wisps of the world of Limn have white blood. Also, coming into contact with Wisp blood can put people into a deep sleep.
  • Dragonback: The K'da have black blood, which shows through their scales when they go into battle mode, making them look even more intimidating.
  • Dragonriders of Pern: The dragons have green, copper-based blood.
  • The Dresden Files: White Court vampires have blood that is slightly, yet noticeably, paler than that of normal humans. In fact, this trope is so common among the Dresdenverse's many, many kinds of monsters that by the later books, "Bleed for me" has become the standard test for a mortal trying to decide whether to invite a stranger into their home.
  • Fortunes of War: Dreadnought! features two instances.
    • A pointed reference to Vulcans having green blood is made when Piper describes Sarda blushing in shame ("going olive", as she describes it) at the commendation ceremony for his research.
    • Piper learns the hard way that Merete and others of her species have lavender blood. She uses the stains on her uniform to galvanize her anger toward the book's villain, whose attacks on their ship led to Merete's injuries.
  • Goblins in the Castle: Implied — when Herky gets his tail caught in a rock and has to have it pried loose, it's oozing something green where the skin is torn. On seeing it, William wonders if it's goblin blood.
  • Great Ship: Humanity have very dark red, almost black blood due to the huge amount of genetic engineering and extra bits of DNA and cells in their bloodstream. The Remoras, twisted by radiation and their own tailored viruses, often have odd blood — one of the characters, Orleans, has very thick black blood.
  • Elves in Simon R. Green's various urban fantasy novels have golden blood. So does Ishmael Jones, an alien in human guise.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Unicorns in this universe have mercury-like silver blood, which is powerfully magical and will heal but curse you if you drink it.
    • Dragon blood is either green or red, depending on the source. Of course, there are different breeds...
  • Helliconia: The blood of Helliconia's native fauna, including the sapient phagors, is golden.
  • Her Crown Of Fire: After absorbing Lydia Greatcast's blood to become the new Queen, Rose's blood turns a bright, luminous, white.
  • "Hostess", by Isaac Asimov: The aliens from Hawkin's Planet are yellow-coloured, six-legged space cows. Their blood is clear, and Dr Asimov goes into detail, explaining how the lack of metal in their bloodstream makes it colourless.
  • InCryptid: Johrlac have clear blood that has natural healing properties when applied to human wounds.
  • Inheritance Cycle: Lethrblaka blood is bluish-green, like aged copper.
  • Jacob's Ladder Trilogy: The Transhuman Exalts have blue or purple blood due to the nanomachine colonies in their bodies. This is noted to affect their skin and eye color as well, particularly Tristen Conn, whose albino.
  • Junction Point: The ktrit'zal have neon-orange blood that smells faintly of lilac, while the tianlong have sky-blue blood.
  • Keys to the Kingdom: Denizens of the House have blue blood, and some of them, including Arthur due to The Corruption, have golden blood.
  • Knights of Doom: Lord Belgaroth, the Dread Serpent bleeds green ooze in place of blood, having sold his soul into becoming a powerful demon.
  • When the rulers spill their blood in The Lightlark Saga, it carries a magical effect that reflects their powers. Oro's blood burns, Celeste's blood gives off sparks, Azul's blood floats, Cleo's blood freezes and Grim's blood turns black. As a Wildling ruler, Isla's blood is supposed to cause a flower to bloom when split, but as she lacks powers she has to fake this effect during a public demonstration.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Orcs and Trolls have black blood.
  • The Machineries of Empire: The clone of Jedao gets a Tomato in the Mirror realization when he gets shot and suffers no worse effect than a trickle of thick black blood. His body turns out to be a genetic engineered voidmoth, the same species that form the chassis for the Hexarchate's Living Ships.
  • The Malloreon: Dragons have boiling blood.
  • Mindwarp: The protagonists all discover superpowers on their thirteenth birthday, and their blood turns silver, the first real sign that they're not 100% traditionally human.
  • Monster Girl Tower: Elves bleed sap, just as a plant would.
  • Myth Adventures: It took nineteen books and a bad-luck-induced paper cut to find out that Aahz has yellow-green blood.
  • Nemesis Saga: Most of the Kaiju bleed brown blood. Nemesis, on the other hand, bleeds red blood like a human.
  • Neverwhere: Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar don't even bleed when wounded — just another sign of their inhuman nature.
  • The Number of the Beast: The main characters discover the "ranger" hassling them isn't human when they discover that "he" has blue-green blood.
  • Old Man's War: CDF soldiers have their blood replaced with SmartBlood, a gray nanotech fluid that carries 4x the oxygen that human blood can and which can instantly seal wounds and even be commanded to ignite remotely in case something drinks your blood (or if you spit some of it in an attacker's eyes).
  • Paradise Lost: The angels and demons all have golden blood that looks like ambrosia to highlight their god-like power.
  • The Pride of Parahumans: Parahuman blood is so thick with hemoglobin that it looks black. As does their muscle tissue.
  • Red Queen: Silvers have silver blood, which gives them a certain superpower. However, superpowers are not restricted to silver-blooded people, as Reds like Mare can and do have them. According to Broken Throne, the silver blood is the result of nuclear radiation altering the genes of Silvers.
  • Relic Master: The Sekoi bleed amber, to further emphasize their alien nature.
  • The Salvation War: The demons have yellow, green, and acid blood. Not an instance of the Rule of Cool, however. They've been evolving in a very different environment for the past 5 million years. Quite possibly the colors have something to do with the environment... the angels in the sequel have silver or white blood. For both species, blood color was observed to function like blood groups in humans for purposes of transfusions.
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
    • Vampires still have red blood, but that red is much lighter than human blood.
    • All demons have black blood. It is also often slightly toxic if someone accidentally drinks it or if it gets into an open wound.
    • Angels basically have golden and shining blood.
    • Emma Carstairs once killed a fairy in battle who had green blood. However, it is not known whether all fairies have green blood or only a few have green blood.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Drogon, the largest of Daenerys Targaryen's dragons, bleeds black blood. Her other dragon Viserion bleeds reddish gold blood.
  • Stardoc: Jorenians have green blood. And a few other odd anatomical traits.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • New Jedi Order: The Yuuzhan Vong have blood that is a shade of blue so dark it's almost black.
    • Averted by the Chiss (Grand Admiral Thrawn's species), who, despite their periwinkle-blue skin and glowing red eyes, bleed ordinary red blood. This is because the Chiss are actually long-lost human colonists from the pre-hyperdrive era who mutated as a result of the chemicals in the atmosphere of their adopted home planet of Csilla.
  • Nowhere Stars: Keepers' bodies tend to get... weird as they get more powerful. Case in point, Liadain has her blood replaced with crow feathers. This has absolutely no impact on her health.
  • The Stormlight Archive: The Parshendi have orange blood, and chasmfiends have purple blood, both of which are described as having a moldy smell. This similarity of the various lifeforms on Roshar hints that Humans aren't actually native to the planet.
  • A Study in Emerald: The central crime scene is splashed with green blood, since in this universe all those of noble blood are descended from Lovecraftian Elder Gods.
  • Temeraire: Dragon blood is a red so dark it's almost black, which makes it quite easy to tell after a battle whether an Aerial Corps Dragon Rider is injured or it's Not His Blood.
  • Ukiah Oregon: Ontongard/Pack blood will coalesce into mice, insects, or other small animals and flee. The original owner, or another member of the same species, can later reabsorb the animal, gaining memories stored therein.
  • The War of the Worlds (1898): The Martians are a strange case in that they have no blood. And no digestive system. They obtain oxygen and nutrients by removing blood from other species and injecting into their own bodies.
  • Wings of Fire: The IceWing dragons bleed blue blood, unlike the other red-blooded dragons.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The 100: "Nightblood" — pitch-black blood, revealed to be genetically engineered to withstand high levels of radiation — is used to identify potential leaders of the Grounders.
  • ALF: In "Someone to Watch Over Me", Alf mentions that he has green blood.
    TV Reporter: This quiet suburban home [referring to the Tanners] is about to run red with blood.
    ALF: [gasps] Oh, wait, why am I worried? My blood is green.
  • Alien Nation: Newcomers are revealed as having pinkish blood.
  • Andromeda: Doyle, an android, "bleeds" superconductor fluid when cut. Due to her in-built Weirdness Censor, she sees it as ordinary blood, thinking herself human.
  • Babylon 5: The Drazi have white blood. On the other hand, the other major races — the Minbari, the Centauri, and the Narns — have red blood.
  • Brimstone: This happened a couple of times, where someone Stone suspected of being one of the 113, was revealed to be human because they bled.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Earshot", a mouthless demon's fluorescent blood splashes onto Buffy's hand and gives her an "aspect of the demon", which turns out to be hearing people's thoughts. Similarly, in the Angel episode "I Will Remember You", the title character is "infected" with demonic blood that cures him of his vampirism. It's bright neon green.
  • Conan the Adventurer: Yag-Kosha has green blood.
  • CSI: In "The Theory of Everything", several victims with green blood turn up. It's eventually revealed that this is the result of said victims having massive overdoses of a sulfur-containing medication against migraines in their bodies.
  • The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: When Mayrin, leader of all Gelfling Clans, is struck down by the Skeksis General, she bleeds pink blood.
  • Defiance: Castithans have pink blood, which looks like a strawberry milkshake, while Indogenes have silver blood.
  • Doctor Who:
    • In "The Tomb of the Cybermen", Cyberman blood is white.
    • The Daleks, as well as Davros himself, all have green blood. It can then be assumed that the rest of the Kaleds, before their mutation, also had green blood as well — although the Tenth Doctor remarks in dialogue that Kaled blood is the same as human blood but a little purpler.
    • Time Lord blood has been subject to Retcons:
      • In "State of Decay", the Doctor's blood is blue. In every other episode of the series where he (or other Time Lords) bleed, it's red. Reportedly, Fourth Doctor Tom Baker insisted on his blood being blue in that story for reasons known only to himself.
      • The Expanded Universe goes with the idea that Time Lord blood is just a little bit brighter or oranger than human blood. It's sometimes described as basically red, but "orange-ish". (This was partially an attempt to explain away the slightly too bright fake blood used by the BBC's special effects department in the 1970s.)
      • In the movie it's red, but is different enough from human blood on a cellular level that Grace describes it as "not blood" when she looks at it under a microscope.
    • Strangely, a scene from "Warriors of the Deep", Episode 4, indicates that the Sea Devils have green blood. This is odd because this particular species is not alien, but rather a race of intelligent Earth reptiles. Perhaps their case is similar to the real life green-blooded skink (Prasinohaema virens)?
    • The Sontarans have green blood, as seen in "The Two Doctors" and "The Last Sontaran".
    • In "Planet of the Ood", Ood blood is shown to be purple.
    • In The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "Prisoner of the Judoon", the Judoon have yellow blood.
    • The shapeshifting Nostrovites from the Torchwood episode "Something Borrowed" are known to have black blood.
    • Mr. Sweet from "The Crimson Horror" has green blood.
  • Falling Skies:
    • Averted with the Skitters, they bleed red as any human (which we get to see on several occasions when their heads blow up real good.)
    • The Espheni on the other hand have blue blood.
    • The Volm bleed dark purple.
  • Farscape:
    • Luxans have clear blood which turns to black when they get hurt. Black blood is toxic, thus the bleeding has to be stimulated until it turns clear again. Nebari have dark blue blood. Delvians, being humanoid, sapient plants, bleed a sap-like substance.
    • The Nebari have blue blood.
    • Pilots have purple blood, but for some reason have red scar tissue.
  • The Gifted (2017):
    • Marcos "bleeds" sunlight. It's later clarified that he has blood just like anyone else, but his powers charge his cells with energy that has to dissipate before it looks like normal blood.
    • Glow has light-infused blood like Marcos, though not quite as powerful.
  • Humans: Synths have a blue fluid that looks like blood flowing through them.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: Basco ta Jolokia is shown to have light bluish-green blood when he dies.
  • Kamen Rider Blade has the Undead, who bleed green. This serves as a Chekhov's Gun as one of the main characters is an Undead himself and another main character becomes an Undead in the finale, and they both bled this color. The gun goes off cross-series, as in Kamen Rider Decade, the Big Bad of Ryuki's world turns out to be an Undead. This gets carried over in Kamen Rider Zi-O, where both aforementioned main characters get their Undead powers stolen, and their blood immediately turns red to signify that they've become human again.
  • Kamen Rider Zi-O has one of the most bizarre examples in fiction with Woz, whose blood appears to consist of sheets of paper.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: All the orcs have black blood. Notably, so does Adar, showing that he's also closer to an orc than an Elf, in spite of external appearances.note 
  • The Outer Limits (1995):
    • "The Voyage Home": The alien's blood is green and slimy.
    • "Promised Land": The Tsal-Khan's blood is black.
    • "The Grell": The titular race's blood can alter DNA, meaning that a human who is exposed to it will turn into a Grell.
    • "Manifest Destiny": The Trion have yellow-green blood. Given that it is rich in copper, it is highly conductive of electricity.
    • "A New Life": Father's species has bright green blood.
  • The Outpost: Talon's blood is as black as ink. It's why her people are known as "Blackbloods". The Masters also have black blood. It turns out that Blackbloods descended from a Half-Human Hybrid fathered by one of them.
  • Power Rangers: A reversal occurs when a villain's human nature is revealed when he does bleed human blood. There was also something of a straight example with Lipsyncher, who "bled" lipstick when her cheek was scarred by Jason's sword.
  • Roswell: The alien teenagers have both blood and saliva that looks normal to the naked eye, but not under a microscope.
  • Smallville: While the Human Alien Clark Kent bleeds red blood on the few occasions he's hurt enough to bleed, the cyborg human Victor Stone bleeds black fluids, keeping in line with the comics. This does not carry over to the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon, in which it appears to be clear.
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • An episode has the team realize something is amiss when an attempt to draw blood from O'Neill yields silvery-white fluid instead.
    • Goa'uld have blue blood.
    • In another episode the first indication that a bounty hunter isn't human is that his blood is green.
  • Star Trek:
    • Vulcans have green copper-based blood, not unlike Earth insects.[[note]]In reality, Haemocyanin (the oxygen-carrying pigment that is the copper-blood equivalent of iron-based haemoglobin) does not carry oxygen very efficiently, which is why molluscs like squids and octopi tend to operate on a 'dart and rest' principle. To a limited extent, Star Trek did Shown Their Work in that Leonard Nimoy's make-up did tend towards a more greenish cast than everyone else's. It did take several tries, however, to get this to work the way they wanted when combined with the lighting and the other make-up, which occasionally had hilarious results—especially in early episodes of the show.
    • While the pigment in Vulcan and Romulan blood may use copper similarly to how human blood uses iron, the pigment would not be all that much like hemoglobin. The usual color of copper-based respiratory pigments in Earth life (which are similar to hemoglobin) is blue.
    • Parodied in a comic by Mark Parisi (Off the Mark, August 4th 1996), which shows a movie theater on planet Vulcan. The father reassures his son that what he sees on the screen is not real blood, just guacamole.
    • In the movies, Klingons have pink blood. Ironically, Star Trek VI, which introduced the Klingon Pepto-Bismol Blood, shows a Klingon bleeding red blood in a climactic scene - at least in the theatrical version. Video releases restored a scene cut from the theatrical release explaining this (the "Klingon" is really a human wearing a rubber forehead).
    • The shapeshifters of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine once caused some paranoia over their infiltration capabilities. As such, Starfleet briefly initiated required blood tests of officers and their family, as any of the shapeshifters' substance removed from their body would instantly revert to their protoplasm. Reassuring? Not quite, as Captain Sisko's father proceeds to point out that if he were a shapeshifter, he'd just kill some poor shlub and use their blood to get around the test. The fact the idea is introduced by someone who later proved to be a changeling infiltrator didn't help.
    • The Andorians have blue blood, which is just icing on the cake since they also have blue skin and antennae. Bolians also have blue blood (and, again, blue skin).
    • Cardassian blood is black. This also applies to other animal life native to Cardassia Prime, such as the raw fertilized taspar egg Picard eats in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Chain of Command".
  • Supernatural: In "Wayward Sister", the Canids who originate from an Alternate Universe have blue blood.
  • In the TV series spin-off of V (1983), the distinctive reverberation of the Visitor's voices was dropped due to the expense of sound dubbing, and the Visitors were given cliché green blood instead. Some viewers missed the plot point about a human who'd cut his hand actually being a Visitor infiltrator, as they lacked a colour television at the time.
  • The X-Files: The alien-human hybrids bleed green blood that can produce a deadly gas (to non-aliens) when exposed to the atmosphere, as do the aliens themselves. This is lampshaded in "The Unnatural". Ironically, this means that Mulder can see an alien-human hybrid bleeding and not know there's anything weird going on because he's red/green colorblind!

    Myths & Religion 
  • Christianity: Wine is said to actually be the blood of Jesus Christ. Denominations that view this as happening literally (such as Catholicism and Orthodoxy) understand this as happening due to normal wine being blessed and transformed.
  • Classical Mythology: Gods and other divine beings don't bleed red blood but a golden glowing substance called Ichor.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Ars Magica: Lord Marsyne rules over a wintry Faerie Court, wields ice-related magic, and literally has ice water running through his veins. The liquid is also saturated with Mana.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Fire trolls have mauve blood that corrodes metal.
    • Oriental Adventures: One way to identify octopus hengeyokai (shapeshifters) is that, even in human form, they have blue blood.
  • Empire of Satanis: The blood of fiends is green and poisonous.
  • Malifaux: The Nephilim have black blood that burns any non-Nephilim that come in contact with it.
  • Vampire: The Requiem downplays this with the "vitae" of vampires: it looks like the mortal blood it's derived from, sometimes growing thicker and darker as the vampire's blood potency grows, but flows according to the vampire's will — it doesn't spill out of injuries, gravity or no, unless the vampire wants it to.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has a number of different takes on this:
    • In an aversion of the "Human Aliens have coloured blood and pink skin" error, the Tau do not look like humans partly because they have deep blue-purple blood (their equivalent of haemoglobin uses cobalt instead of iron), which has the expected effect on their skin tone. In one of the Ciaphas Cain novels, Amberley Vail notes that it smells horrible.
    • The Orks, who are in fact genetically-engineered carnivorous space-fungi, have green skin but red blood (and mouths). It wasn't always this way and earlier sourcebooks for the game described Ork blood as green, but eventually red gore was decided on. This was explained in White Dwarf magazine with an in-universe biologist's report: while Orks' dense green skin is a chlorophyll- and spore-producing layer, the rest of their body is relatively normal meat, and they have a normal (if supercharged) food-based metabolism to support it. On the same page, the game developers gave the real reason: green injuries on green-skinned aliens were hard to notice, and made the models look like "they've had an accident eating a gooseberry squishy". Some sources have indicated that the Orks' blood does double duty as their equivalent of a lymphatic system, and that the colour of the blood will as a result vary depending on their diet, ranging from bright crimson to almost black.
    • The Eldar have red blood like humans, but it crystallizes instead of forming scabs.
    • On the transhuman spectrum, Space Marines are sometimes mentioned in-universe to have extremely bright red blood, due to its efficiency in transporting oxygen. Some also have corrosive or otherwise dangerous blood as a further defense against attackers.
  • Warhammer Fantasy: Older editions allowed Chaos Champions and mutants to gain this — as Lovecraftian Superpowers. Some of the types of blood they could have included molten metal, electrically-charged slime, and a symbiotic Blob Monster that reacts to anyone poking holes in its host's skin by sticking Combat Tentacles out through the wounds to try and kill them. The most detailed list can be found in the Tome of Corruption for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which details twenty different kinds of blood replacement.
    • Acid, electricity, fire, molten metal and poison, obviously, are all lethal to your assailant.
    • There are several variants where "blood" equates to "living animals" — centipedes, ants, beetles, leeches, maggots, worms, even mice and small birds. In all cases, these attack the person who wounded you, usually causing minor damage and fighting penalties (birds just cause penalties and mice just cause damage).
    • Excrement (you do not want details) makes you so disgusting that your enemies find it harder to fight you.
    • Eyeballs give you a tactical advantage because you can still see through them.
    • Glue can temporarily stick an enemy against you.
    • Mucous, mud and wax are disgusting, but harmless.
    • Protoplasm means that, if you die, a Blob Monster will emerge and attack your killers.
    • Tar will spurt out and make your enemy all sticky, impairing their mobility.
    • Vines will rip into enemy flesh, harming them and impairing movement.
    • Vomit is not only disgusting, but induces mutations.
    • Wind is deafening and eerie.
  • World War Cthulhu: Agents are instructed to take care to avoid contact with any fluids discharged from knife wounds. Not all creatures bleed as humans do, and some such discharges are toxic or corrosive.

    Theme Parks 

    Visual Novels 
  • Dra+Koi: Dragons bleed gold. When in human form, this also includes normal human blood.
  • Marco and the Galaxy Dragon: Zigzagged. While many aliens have purple blood and a few have green blood, some—like El Skeleton and Gargouille—have red blood.
  • Policenauts: The "Frozeners" have white artificial blood, called "first-generation" blood, which is said to be simpler than the "third-generation" blood used on Home (Earth). It's also said to transport oxygen more efficiently than regular blood, making blood loss less of a threat.

    Webcomics 
  • The Dreamland Chronicles: Nicodemus has green blood.
  • Earthsong: Used frequently. The colors don't always precisely match (Zaebos, a traditionally red demon, has black blood), likely for the same reasons they don't always in humans, but they tend to be darker versions of skintone.
  • Enemy Quest: The Skut possess acidic blood. This was taken advantage of during the war with the Visitors, where the Skut would strap bombs to their backs and ambush human fireteams. Anyone who the blast didn't get was splashed with the stuff.
  • Grrl Power: Maxima. She's a super who might technically not be human any more, and bleeds blue. She still blushes red, though. The author mentions originally planing to have her blush green, but that just made her look ill.
  • Heartcore: Salamander demons such as Carval have navy-blue blood that is highly volatile and ideal for making bombs. Common wisdom dictates that it's a bad idea to make salamander demons bleed. Carval's previous incarnation, Volaster, exemplified this when he bled enough to turn himself into an Unholy Nuke.
  • Hooves of Death: Both Played for Laughs and Played for Drama, as the unicorn soldiers literally bleed rainbows when wounded. While inherently humorous, it doesn't undo the fact that they live amidst a grim Zombie Apocalypse where being torn limb from limb is a real possibility.
  • Homestuck:
    • The trolls have a complex caste system based on the color (thirteen known exist) of their blood. Each troll has a different blood color, spanning the entire color spectrum. The highest castes have literal Royal (Purple) Blood, while the lowest castes have brownish red blood. Trolls higher on the spectrum live longer lives and tend to possess greater physical strength, while rustblood colors tend to have greater psychic powers. Greenbloods (the middle colors) tend to be more emotionally stable. Additionally, Karkat, Kanaya, and Feferi, have rare and special blood-types.
      • Karkat's blood is a mutation — bright red like human and carapace blood. This puts him completely outside (and beneath) the entire hemospectrum and has only been possessed by one other troll in history, his ancestor The Sufferer. As a result, Karkat opts for "blood anonymity" by typing in grey instead of his blood color as all the other trolls do.
      • Kanaya has jade blood, which also lets her enjoy Alternia's blistering sunlight and be awake during the day when the undead normally stir, making her Alternia's Goth equivalent. It also marks her as one of the trolls to tend to the mother grub.
      • Feferi's blood is literally royal purple, making her heiress to the throne, because it physically grants her protection from the Brown Note of her Eldritch Abomination guardian even at its highest level.
      • Each troll's lusus (a monstrous surrogate parent) shares the same blood color as their adopted troll. In addition, all the Horrorterrors share the same royal purple color Feferi and her lusus do.
      • Also, for some reason, troll robots and artificial limbs have blood. Equius uses this to give a rustblood he has a crush on a robot body with blue blood befitting his station. This makes her occasionally prone to violent outbursts, like Equius himself.
    • His Honorable Tyranny, the figurehead monster "in charge" of the Alternian court system, has black blood.
    • Cherubs blood color depends on which personality is dominant. Calliope has lime-colored blood (same name as an exterminated troll caste, but a different color), while her "brother" Caliborn has the same red as humans do. In fact, Calliope implies that an entire species having exactly the same color blood is very unusual across Paradox Space... apparently humans are the oddballs in this story.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons: In "King of Swords", there's a scene where Solomon David slaughters a horde of challengers of different species from around the multiverse. He uses Supernatural Martial Arts of a kind that easily tears his opponents apart. A couple of them are revealed to contain purple gore rather than red.
  • Leaving the Cradle: The Sashli — sapient squids — have blue blood.
  • Lore Olympus: True to Greek mythology, the blood of gods, Ichor, is gold in color.
  • Our Little Adventure: The Zebroian Outsider has very unique, multicolored, shifting blood, which he and others believe to be cool.
  • Outsider: Soia-Liron species, such as the Loroi and Barsam, have blue, copper-based blood.
  • Serix: Blood (and other fluids) come in a variety of colors across the wildly varying Human Subspecies the comic portrays. Even the characters that look just like normal humans can have this trait as a reminder of the various body modifications they might have. For example, Rees is shown to have blue tears and Avery's blood is green.
  • Sluggy Freelance: The alien that attacks Dykowski has concentrated orange juice for blood. The bad part, according to the crewmember studying the creature, is that it's the homestyle kind.
    Captain: With pulpy bits? EEEWWWW!
  • Snarlbear: The Snarlbear that Daisy kills has brilliantly hued, color-shifting blood. Daisy has it herself, now.
  • Supernormal Step: Hall and Eva are complete immortals that bleed black when injured.
  • Tower of God: Ren's creatures are green-blooded. And orange. And red.
  • Unknown Lands: Dark Elves' naturally red blood has been turned blue.

    Web Original 
  • The Adventures of the League of S.T.E.A.M.: When the leprechaun in "Fool's Gold" is dispatched, he turns into a pile of green goo.
  • Helluva Boss: As first displayed by Blitzo in "Murder Family" before being shown off extensively in "Loo Loo Land", hell-born demons have near-completely black blood with only a tint of red, unlike humans which bleed a natural full red.
  • The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon: The Ginosaji has black blood.
  • Let's Drown Out: When Yahtzee explained that the plot of Aquanox 2 revolves around horseshoe crabs, Gabriel waffled of the importance of them, specifically their blood. It is 'milky, kinda blue' and based around cobalt. It is used to test for blood borne pathogens because it reacted violently in any presence of infections.
  • Lobo (Webseries): Hilariously averted for most deaths. Almost everyone bleeds red. A few aliens have green blood, though.
  • Madness Combat:
    • A.T.P. units secrete yellow blood, a sign that they have been genetically enhanced.
    • The Madness Combat universe have two different hell and both seems associated with black blood, when Deimos is travelling in the normal hell, he bleed black goop, while Sanford's normal red wound become black shortly after being forced into the Auditor's hell.
  • Metro City Chronicles: Squid Kid has black blood.
  • The Nostalgia Critic: Santa Christ loves pancakes so much that he bleeds maple syrup.
  • Protectors of the Plot Continuum: "Mary Sue" characters bleed red or pink glittery blood, or, in extreme cases, "only" glitter.
  • The Salvation War: Angelic blood is white or silver, while demonic one is not only often acidic but also either green or yellow.
  • The Slender Man Mythos: Due to Running the Asylum, it varies, but if the Slender Man bleeds at all, his blood is often black. Injuring him in the first place requires multiple miracles, though, so this doesn't come up much.
  • Sock Series:
    • Gaeous the god of dirt can produce a green plant parasitic fluid which serves as their tears and their blood.
    • Uquorion the god of fluid have both purple blood when they gets bitten to death and gray blood when their corpse falls on the ground.
  • Void Domain: Demons are said to always have black blood.
  • Whateley Universe:
    • Carmilla, a student at the Super Hero School Whateley Academy, is mostly-demon, even if she looks like a hot 'urban vampire' goth kid. She bleeds a blackish-purple ichor which is definitely not blood.
    • Eldritch, another student, is a mystical Artificer who bleeds a roughly-blood colored stuff that's too high in metals to be anything a human could have in his/her veins.
  • Xanadu (Storyverse): Due to being transformed into a part-Vulcan, Hannah bleeds green, copper-based blood.

    Western Animation 
  • American Dad!: Roger's blood is purple. However, some episodes depict Roger’s blood as red like human blood for no explained reason (since it's usually red while he's wearing a disguise and purple while he isn't, it's possible that Roger is able to somehow change the color of his blood in order to pass as human.)
  • Amphibia: In "All In", during their battle, Sasha cuts Darcy's cheek, and for some reason it spills a single drop of green blood despite Marcy being a human. Presumably this was a side-effect of whatever modifications and techniques Andrias used to save Marcy from his impalement and make her into a suitable vessel for the Core.
  • Animaniacs (2020): In "Bride of Pinky", the zombie and the two monsters Brain bring to life bleed green blood, which is how they were able to get away with it.
  • Batman: The Animated Series: In "Pretty Poison", Batman cuts himself free from the tendril grip of Poison Ivy's giant, carnivorous flytrap, which causes it to bleed green (chlorophyll).
  • Ben 10:
  • Danny Phantom: Apparently, ghosts (and half ghosts in their ghost forms) bleed glowing green Ectoplasm...
  • Final Space:
    • The diminutive alien Clarence bleeds purple blood...
    • ...as does his adoptive son (from another alien species), Fox.
    • The Lord Commander bleeds blood as black as his heart, but apparently this wasn't always the case — before his corruption and gaining his powers, his blood was shown to be pink.
    • The Titans Bolo and Oreskis bleed green blood when they fight in Season 3.
  • Fish Police: In "The Codfather", when the titular character is murdered (or so we're led to believe) his blood is purple.
  • Futurama: Kif Kroker bleeds viscous green blood. It's tangy!
  • Gravity Falls:
    • Both the zombies from "Scary-oke" and the shapeshifter from "Into the Bunker" bleed green blood, likely the only reason why the fairly graphic violence against them was allowed on the Disney Channel in the first place.
    • "The Last Mabelcorn": The titular unicorn is punched in the nose and starts bleeding rainbow-colored blood. Later, after Mabel, Grenda, Candy, and Wendy fight the unicorns, they come back with their clothes stained with blood the same color.
  • Invader Zim: In a scene near the end of "Lice", Zim the Irken is skinned and the tissue underneath is green. Of course, considering that Zim's skin is green, it makes sense. Word of God says that Irkens have see-through pink blood.
  • Lloyd in Space: It's mentioned that Verdigrians, Lloyd's race, have orange blood.
  • Megas XLR: One episode features a shapeshifting plant alien. Once Coop discovered its true nature, he formed one of the robot's limbs into a chainsaw and got to work. The scene of the chainsaw going into the creature while green goop flies out goes on for over thirty seconds.
  • The Owl House:
    • While most denizens of the Boiling Isles seem to have the same red blood that humans have (on the few occasions where bleeding is actually shown), the blood of the Titan is shown to be blue. Presumably, this is the reason why we never see the blood that Hooty drew for King's DNA test in "Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Hooty's Door", because it would give away the fact that he was an infant titan several episodes early.
    • Palismen blood (or, at the very least, the magical liquid that animates them) is a bright glowing green.
  • Solar Opposites: The Shlorpians' blood is blue.
  • The Simpsons: Parodied in "Treehouse of Horror XI" when Moe is trying to convince a group of kids that he's not a troll because he bleeds red. Then he nicks his finger, and a frustrated Moe sees green blood spurting from the wound.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Mugato, Gumato", when a mugato attacks a Ferengi, yellow fluid splashes out. Similarly, the Tellarite Patingi has purple blood.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Children of the Force", Cad Bane gets caught after disguising himself as a clone trooper because he was injured and bled a little bit on the floor of the shuttle, and no one who was supposed to be on that ship had green blood.
  • Steven Universe plays with it: Gems do not bleed, but they do blush strange colors — for Pearl it's teal, while for every other gem it's something close to their various skin colors. Making it even weirder is that as their bodies are Hard Light, they probably don't even have blood.
  • Superjail!: The Twins have green luminescent blood, as shown in "Combaticus", while their father has a more saturated lime color. This could be Artistic License or the colorists having forgotten the glowing detail. Other aliens shown in the series are also shown to bleed in green. On at least two brief occasions, the Twins have been depicted with red blood (after being crushed in "Combaticus", and with bleeding from their ears and noses in the ending of "Troubles with Triplets") which could either be a coloring error or another artistic choice.
  • Sym-Bionic Titan: Most of the alien blood is green.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): Agent Bishop seems to have this as a result of his alien-altered physiology; after he was impaled by a hook in one episode, one could briefly see a thick, silver-colored liquid seeping into his clothes.
  • Thunder Cats 2011: In "Ramlak Rising", the Giant Squid/Man-Eating Plant Hybrid Monster the Ramlak is shown to have a strange blue ichor dripping from the severed ends of tentacles that Lion-O slices off when it first surfaces from the Sand Sea and attacks. When Lion-O strikes a mortal blow, it's revealed that the monster's blood is, appropriately enough, water.
  • Transformers: Prime: The life-force of Cybertronians is Energon and it varies from blue, to green, to a purple-pink, and it glows. But when the robots are injured it acts exactly like blood.

    Real Life 
  • Arthropods:
    • While certainly not aliens, most insects bleed light yellow (as mentioned above), some green; crustaceans bleed blue.
    • The most famous of these is the humble horseshoe crab, with blue copper-based blood. Scientists routinely extract blood from the crabs for all kinds of medical procedures & tests, then release the animals after they've regenerated their blood.
  • Mollusks tend to have blue blood.
  • Ditto spiders, whose hemocyanin gives them greenish blue blood.
  • There is a species of pen shell called Pinna squamosa. What makes it unique is that it is the only mollusc to use manganese to store oxygen, in a protein called pinnaglobin. As a result, it has brown blood.
  • Inverted with deep-sea tube worms, which have red blood like ours despite being from a taxonomic line in which iron-based blood pigment isn't expected.
  • The Prasinohaema genus of skinks, in contrast to every other healthy vertebrate, have green blood (as well as green muscles, bone, and everything else). This is caused by levels of biliverdin (bile pigment) in the blood that are so high they would kill any other vertebrate. The name, of course, means "green blood."
  • Due to having little to no hemoglobin, Antarctic icefish have translucent white blood.
  • Underwater, red blood appears green below a certain depth (red blood cells separate from the plasma, turning it yellow, which then combines with the blue tint of the water).
  • Eel blood, although it doesn't look "alien", is toxic to humans and other mammals. Beware eel sushi that looks too pink!
  • In humans...
    • Blood coughed up by accident victims with pierced lungs can be foamy and pink.
    • Sulphur can turn a person's blood green.
    • Carbon monoxide poisoning turns red blood an even brighter, unnatural-looking shade of red.
    • A convention of anatomical illustration is that deoxygenated blood vessels are depicted in blue on drawings and models. This sometimes leads people to the false conclusion that deoxygenated blood is blue; in fact, it's a reference to how the outsides of systemic veins, which carry this type of blood, look blue when seen through the paler shades of human skin.
    • While their actual blood doesn't look different, the bone marrow of a patient with advanced leukemia looks lighter in color than that of a healthy person, due to being overloaded with immature, non-functional white blood cells.
    • Methemoglobinemia is a genetic disorder that causes heightened levels of methemoglobin, which has a lower affinity for oxygen than hemoglobin, making the blood blue or brown. The most famous cases of methemoglobinemia are the "Blue Fugates", a Kentucky family known for their blue complexion.
    • Everyone has a small quantity of "blue blood cells" in their body thanks to the element gallium. Gallium can and will take the place of iron in the red blood cell, turning the hemoglobin blue.
    • Cedi Osman of the Cleveland Cavaliers shocked viewers in an incident in December 2022 when, during a basketball game, he suffered facial trauma and began to have what appeared to be a nosebleed— except said blood was "yellow", much to the bewilderment of audience and announcers alike. It has been suggested Osman has a nasal infection and the yellow "blood" was really runny mucus, but that didn't stop Memetic Mutation on social media to joke that he was actually an alien.
  • Artificial blood:
    • The trope of artificial humans having white blood possibly comes from the early research into oxygen-carrying temporary blood replacements for emergency surgery. Some of these work using very different chemical processes to naturally occurring blood (of any colour) and look a lot like milk.
    • Other scientists are getting in on the fun too, it seems. They have created a oxygen-binding molecule called coboglobin, which is based on cobalt. Like human blood, it changes colors based on if it's oxygenated or not. If it is, then it's clear; if not, it turns amber yellow.
    • Perftoran/Perfukol/Fluozol-DA is blue. In the 1980s Soviet medics called it "blue blood". It's a water emulsion of fluororganic compound that can carry twice more oxygen than erythrocytes.
  • Invertebrates in the phylum Priapulida (also called "Penis Worms") actually have purple blood thanks to the presence of an organic molecule called haemerythrin.
  • Chickens of the Ayam Cemani breed, from Indonesia, have a type of extreme hypermelanism that makes every organ in their body - skin, feathers, legs, combs, meat, guts, bones, etc - pitch black. Their blood is the only non-black thing about them, and it's a very dark red compared to other birds'.
  • Sea cucumbers have yellow blood. Nobody knows why, as the substance (vanabin) that makes it that way doesn't appear to serve a function in gas transport like most bloodborne pigments do.

 
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Bug at Oblivion

While most of the aliens have red blood, a bug at Oblivion has green blood.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (3 votes)

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Main / AlienBlood

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