A useless image.
Gray is a rather dull color. So, if it is used for normally brightly colored buttons or even people, that's probably a bad sign. As far as the most common use is concerned, it means that button cannot be used, or that person is dead or can't help for some other reason.
Commonly used in Video Games for both gameplay and storytelling, especially for menus indicating incapacitated members. In most examples of Subsystem Damage, the system that is lost, disabled, and/or destroyed is often grayed out on the diagram if red isn't used instead (or red is reserved for when a system is destroyed versus gray when it's merely disabled).
A Sub-Trope of Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Super trope to Death Is Gray and No Power, No Color.
Contrast Power-Up Full Color Change. See Color Failure for when the change to a singular color scheme is the result of a state of shock.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Mobile Suits with Phase Shift Armor depend on the color of their activated armor to determine its strength and power consumption. If the armor is deactivated from the suit being on standby in a hangar or the battery running low on power, the only color the armor will have is gray and the machine will be left vulnerable.
Fan Works
- The Harry Potter fanfiction Core Threads represents each person's magical core as a ball of colorful threads. Muggles, who are incapable of doing magic, have gray threads.
Literature
- Warbreaker: The Awakening magic system uses color as fuel: when you Awaken something you need to be touching something colorful, which fades to grey as part of the Awakening. This also means that items that are already grey can't be used to fuel Awakenings.
Live-Action TV
- Black Mirror: In "Nosedive", as part of the deconstruction of Good Colours, Evil Colours, Ryan, who is portrayed as lazy, and Susan, who is a 1.4, both wear gray, contrasting with the bright pastel colors of the setting and the clothes worn by most characters.
- In Kamen Rider Ryuki/Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, Kamen Riders who lack a Contract Monster are reduced to a gray-colored Blank Form.
Sports
- In the latter part of The '90s, Manchester United experimented with playing in a grey away strip note . A team formerly unbeatable in its characteristic bright red suddenly struggled on the field and could barely scrape a scoredraw. This became so marked that in an away game at Southampton, United began in the grey strip. At half-time, they abruptly ditched the grey shirts and changed into blue.note The grey was never seen again.
Tabletop Games
- Dead of Winter: "Helpless survivors" are represented as grey silhouette tokens and don't do any work for the Colony, whereas the player characters have names and full-colour portraits.
Toys
Video Games
- 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel:
- The undo move button is grayed out when there are no moves to undo.
- The submit moves button is grayed out before you can complete your turn. (This is either because The Present is still on your turn, or because you'd be allowing your opponent to capture one of your kings if you ended your turn.)
- In a puzzle, the reset puzzle button is grayed out before you've played a turn.
- The cycle boards button, which cycles between active boards in The Present on your turn, is grayed out when it's not your turn. Also, it's grayed out when there's only a single active board in The Present and the camera is already focused on it, since there are no other active boards in The Present to cycle through.
- When you don't have a piece selected, and you mouse over a history board (a board where a move has already been made, shown with a thin outline), all history boards are grayed out. This might be to emphasize the fact that you can't move a piece starting from a history board.
- When you mouse over or select a selectable piece, each board is grayed out unless the piece is either standing on that board or able to move to that board.
- Among Us: Players have buttons on the bottom right of their screen to perform necessary functions. If they are not allowed to use said functions (i.e. an Impostor's "Kill" function is on cooldown), the buttons will be grayed out.
- Bear & Breakfast: If a room doesn't have all the essential items to be functional, it'll be grayed out and unusable.
- In the Burger Shop series, already completed orders will be grayed out, to prevent filling out the same thing twice.
- Command & Conquer:
- In some games, unpowered structures turn very dark gray, sometimes with a lightning symbol above them. Starting with Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, exceeding the power supply to your base slows production and disables base defenses and superweapons, which turn almost pitch-black. The same thing happens if any building is voluntarily powered down, along with an icon to denote it. Vehicles under the effect of an EMP also darken.
- The Global Conquest mode in the PC version of Kane's Wrath uses this for cities to denote that the population is outright decimated by the Scrin rather than the cold-to-hot colors indicating the level of panic and unrest.
- In both Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, icons for units and structures are grayed out until you meet the tech level requirements for them but in missions with a restricted tech level, they have a grayed out lock icon instead. The icons for structure upgrades, unit abilities, support powers, etc. are also grayed out if they can't be performed for their respective reasons.
- In de Blob, Raydians who have their color drained by INKT are turned into constantly-depressed Graydians. Thankfully, Blob can restore their color and happiness by rolling over them.
- Doom has the numbers 2 through 7 on the status bar that represent the various weapons Doomguy can use. Doomguy always starts a level with the pistol, #2, but must collect better weapons in his travels. These corresponding numbers will be in dull grey until Doomguy obtains that weapon, although he can collect the ammunition for it beforehand.
- In the health screen, Dwarf Fortress grays out one's missing body parts.
- Endless Sky:
- Ships disabled by excessive damage are grayed out on the minimap and can't act until repaired back to normal. Ships only temporarily disabled are marked blinking between gray and the usual color instead, to signify this state won't last.
- Uninhabited planets and systems are color-coded gray, as there are no services available there.
- In the dialog box, unavailable options are grayed out.
- Factorio allows the player to construct devices, even when there isn't sufficient fuel or power to operate them. One could build a nuclear reactor if one has the materials, but it will sit there, grey and useless, until sufficient uranium is obtained to energize it. At that point, the reactor will glow neon green (running normally) or golden yellow (overheating pending explosion).
- The Fossil Fighters series grays out combat actions that can't be used due to insufficient FP.
- Played With in Freedom Wars. The names of weapon mods that are incompatible with other weapons are colored gray, meaning gray weapon mods don't positively or negatively affect the weapon but activate with a compatible weapon. For example, a mod that increases Critical Hit damage doesn't affect a rocket launcher because all critical hit mods aren't compatible with ranged weapons or Life Drain melee weapons, but a non-leeching spear is compatible with the mod, benefitting from the critical damage increase. The same thing applies to negative weapon mods.
- In Grow Island, if the Onky man is rejected by the woman, he'll fall on the ground, turn gray, and will stop moving until the game is over. His inactivity hinders the game's progression.
- In Merge Dragons, dead land is grayed out, and you have to match and activate Life Essence in order to heal it. Matching items with those on dead land can also heal it, and this is the only way to heal the darkest corners of the earth.
- In Metal Warriors, undamaged mech suits are brightly colored, but when they get more and more damaged, their color fades. Empty mech suits are gray, and change color depending on which player enters one (players are either red or blue in multiplayer, and AI enemies in single-player mode are purple).
- Meteos has burnt Meteos, be it from launching them by lining up three or more or sent by the opponent like any puzzler with garbage blocks, are represented by gray blocks that can't be used until they restore themselves after staying grounded long enough. On the plus side, the annihilation countdown only starts after the burnt Meteos in a full column restore themselves.
- Murder by Numbers (2020):
- If all of the Investigate options have been used, then the option is darkened and unusable.
- If a Question dialogue option has been seen already, it's written in grey, but can be selected to hear it again.
- Ōkami: If the player counters certain attacks with specific Brush Techniques, the enemy will be stunned momentarily, which is represented by them turning grey and gaining a pair of Circling Birdies above their head.
- Open Sorcery: Options that are impossible are in grey text instead of the orange of usable ones.
- Prayer of the Faithless: Scrolling onto characters not in the main party, when checking party members' abilities, or statuses, has the non-mains be in greys instead of the colored version like the active party.
- In Project Hospital, procedures and treatments which can't be used because you don't have the right staff or facilities are grayed out.
- Project × Zone: If a playable unit falls in battle, its sprite in the map takes on a dark grey coloration.
- Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 grays out pieces that can't be used in the track editor, and in the tutorial, inaccessible menu options.
- The Shantae series:
- Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: The Saliva Island statues that rise when cannonballed only do that when the gems on their foreheads are lit up.
- Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Sold out items in the Item Shops have their names turn from white to gray.
- Space Station 13: Assistants are known for their signature gray uniforms and a lack of assigned job, and typically are useless at best and generally disruptive at worst, not to mention being frequently dismissed as noobs or just plain old griefers.
- Them's Fightin' Herds: No power in each character's magic meter slots is represented by empty gray bars.
- Three Fairies Hoppin Flappin Great Journey: Unsellable items are marked with a grey row in the selling screen instead of the regular blue.
- TinkerQuarry: While the toys cannot die, they can be "Impaired", which traps them in a death-like state. When a toy is either Impaired or close to being Impaired, they lose all their color and go grayscale.
- Transistor: Locked slots for function configuration are noted by a grey plate of (presumed) metal with a padlock icon on it.
- WarCraft III: Not-yet available units, abilities, and researches have icons that are grayed out and don't have a border (or when bringing up the menu). Amusingly enough, custom maps that lack the appropriate greyed-out version of the icons will display them as neon-bright green instead.
- In Wordle, letters that are not in the word will turn grey after the player attempts to use them.
- In World of Warcraft, poor-quality items, which are usually Shop Fodder, have their names in gray text.
- Yandere Simulator: Unavailable chat options when talking to people have the buttons grayed out.
Web Animation
- This video
explaining how to replace the internal batteries of Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, shifts pictures of batteries (both clipart and actual photos from the cartridge internals) into greyscale to represent the battery running dry.
Webcomics
- Grrl Power: In "#499 ? Inopportunity", Syndey notices that a new function has been activated:
Sydney: That mystery button isn't grayed out anymore.
Web Original
- On Neopets, Grey Faeries are Faeries who have lost their magic and wings, and are rendered sad and unable to do much.
Western Animation
- Code Lyoko: In "Sabotage", Ulrich's virtual avatar is affected by a glitch that turns him black and white. While in this state, he is unable to fight, as all his attacks pass through enemies harmlessly.
Real Life
- Most PC operating systems have certain buttons "greyed out" when the underlying functions are not available.
