alt Hacker NewsSimple answer: There is no physical basis, it's style
Pedantic answer: Unless the light source has different colors on different sides
Complex answer: Kind of. Even a linear color fade (from reality) can turn non-linear (and therefore induce color effects) when pushed through a color grading pipeline. So if you count e.g. film emulation as a "physical effect", then yes.
> when pushed through a color grading pipeline. So if you count e.g. film emulation as a "physical effect", then yes.
I've seen some footage from a particular Red camera body that introduced some very interesting effects. This particular camera had an issue with the Green channel. The camera was used in a commercial shoot for some fast food chain's shakes. The whip cream would turn magenta when the exposure was pushed because the green channel just wouldn't get there as fast as the red and blue channels. The secondaries had to go dig out extra green channel data plus other tricks to get the whip cream to end up white. After pushing other footage, the magenta tint could be seen else where as well.
TL;DR it's not just film emulsion issues where weird edge case things like this happen.