Why is lightning portrayed as yellow?

[Dezerte]

Lightning is also almost always blue in in real-life movies, too much blue sometimes.

[Violent]

It just ticks me off so much!!!!! Nah just kidding. I was just wondering because it just doesn't seem to make sense. I remember back to high school class I was doing a project involving me drawing a thunderstorm (for a Spanish class), and I drew the lightning with a light blue marker. People were asking me why it was blue instead of yellow, the apparent correct color of lightning. I just don't understand.

Symbolism & the human brain.

Lightning is also almost always blue in in real-life movies, too much blue sometimes.

LOLwut? Real life movies?

[MrExcelion]

He means non-animated

[Deleted]

I'm guessing it has something to do with it being bright and white in most cases...making a symbal white doesn't really work now does it.

[Deleted]

People are seriously asking why Pokemon is not realistic? Time for another Gin and tonic.

[Thelxi]

If you tell a small child to draw a light bulb, sun rays or a lightning bolt they will pick up a yellow marker to do so. It's just how we categorize light and make it stand out on white.

[Mnevis]

Because of "Lightning Bugs", maybe?

In most of the games I play, lightning is a blue-white color.

[Neganova]

More importantly, why do the Final Fantasy games call their lightning spells Thunder? Thunder is the sound!

[Lord Pebbleton]

Well I know that, but who started it being portrayed as yellow? You don't see cartoons making water orange or fire green. Why the change to lightning?

Zeus did it first.
And he doesn't like when people disagree on what HE says.
(Even though greek/roman gods were generally useless drunkards)

[Deleted]

I got a drawing from my baby sis with brown lightning coming from green clouds........

[OrcsRLame]

Well, in Dark Souls lightning is yellow because the sun looks yellow and lightning is just sunlight shaped and amplified by the power of Gwyn's Lord Soul. Or at least, the original Sunlight Spear was. The Lightning Spear and Great Lightning Spear miracles are just imperfect copies of the original.

I'll just be going now...

[Mnevis]

I got a drawing from my baby sis with brown lightning coming from green clouds........

Green clouds are awesome. Like, try to tear yourself away and get in the basement.

[Arkenaw]

More importantly, why do the Final Fantasy games call their lightning spells Thunder? Thunder is the sound!

Translation error that just stuck is my guess. It uses the correct word in Japanese.

[belfpala]

People also portray the sun as yellow, but that's a common misconception because of atmospheric scattering :P

The sun's visible light does peak around the yellow part of the spectrum. So in that sense, it is yellow. But yes, absent an atmosphere it would look pretty much white.

[Stir]

Funny... Lightning is always portrayed as blue...

[Bullettime]

Usually see it portrayed as blue or white in most movies and games.

Also, keep in mind that Pokemon was originally animated as a kid's show. Light is often represented as yellow, such as the sun or light bulbs, and kids generally associate the two together. Because of that, lightning is generally presented as yellow in cartoons.

[Deleted]

Weird, I usually see it portrayed as Blue. Maybe in cartoons, but I don't watch many of those so I wouldn't know.

[napalm007]

More importantly, why do the Final Fantasy games call their lightning spells Thunder? Thunder is the sound!

Thundara and Thundaga sound better than Lightningara and Lightninga.

[stumpy]

More importantly, why do the Final Fantasy games call their lightning spells Thunder? Thunder is the sound!

Because サン*,　サン*ラ, and サン*ガ fit into the four characters allotted for spell names in the original, but ライトニング didn't.

[Zeras]

Same reason the sun is yellow, however if you look long enough into it you might find out its a totally different color, why not try?