Snow Means Death

""Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.""

- Alfred Hitchcock

There are many ideas associated with snow: Tranquility, purity, cleanliness, beauty...

So naturally, many people are shown dramatically dying in the snow. It may have something to do with how red blood contrasts so sharply with white snow, especially when gentle snowflakes are falling around a scene of carnage. It may have something to do with the way the snow seems to try and wash away the unclean corpses and ruins. It may have something to do with how it looks like a beautiful and peaceful way to die, just letting the cold embrace you as you fall to sleep. It may have something to do with how snow melts on living bodies, but coats those that have passed on.

And then there's the symbolism.

As beautiful as snow is, it also signifies winter, associated with the death of the year (in the northern hemisphere at least), the death of crops, and the death of the sun. Snow also covers the world with a blanket of white, and in Eastern cultures, white is the color of death (as it was until a few hundred years ago in Slavic states as well).

Whatever the reason, using snow is a great way to portray a character on the verge of dying or a place torn by war in a very artful manner.

A sub-trope of Empathic Environment. For a different interpretation of snow, see Snow Means Love. See White Shirt of Death and Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress for a similar trope, only applied to clothing instead. May or may not be related to Grim Up North.

Anime and Manga

 * In 07-Ghost, the first scene involves two hands (we are to assume they're Teito's) holding snow. Just as the line The snow was so beautiful...and so merciless appears, the snow immediately turns into blood. We later learn that this was foreshadowing to.
 * In the 2006 version of Kanon, this trope is so prevalent that it's hard to pick out which examples fit it the best. The lyrics of the opening theme ("Last Regrets") practically announce it. Yuuichi's repressed memories are first hinted at in how much he hates snow. When dies, the illusion of a green field fades to show that the surroundings were covered in snow. Snow is practically a central theme for Yuuichi's meetings and conversations with Shiori,  Snow is arguably the cause of the subverted Look Both Ways incident , and the imagery of the red strawberries thrown into the snow where it happened is painfully evocative. The same symbolism is made brutally real shortly after, when Yuuichi finally remembers : unable to take any more, Yuuichi runs out into a snowstorm . The upbeat ending theme about someone trying to find their way home seems to contradict the trope, showing Ayu happily running through the snow - until.
 * Clannad, another Anime by Key Visual Arts, makes use of this trope on several occasions. As a young child,  nearly dies in the snow, thus Foreshadowing events years later in After Story.   A few episodes later, when   dies, it is not because of the snow (most likely) -- she's been ill for a long time—but the scene does take place in the snow, and immediately afterwards   dies of grief. In addition, in the Illusionary World,.
 * Pulled a third time by Key with Angel Beats! but on a smaller scale..
 * In Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex, the flashback origin story of Kuze takes place in the Korean winter. Let's just say it sufficiently explains how he became the White-Haired Pretty Boy terrorist leader.
 * Pulled a 4th time by Key, though much earlier on with Planetarian. In the finale,
 * The incident in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS where Nanoha was unprepared for a sudden ambush. There was so much blood on her white Barrier Jacket and the snow-covered terrain, while Vita tried to keep her awake in the gently falling snow.
 * And then there's last moments in Nanoha A's. Also snow. For bonus points, it was during Christmas.
 * The first Gundam Wing intro. A city in ruins and an Empathy Doll Shot, all covered in a sheet of falling snow. The Movie Endless Waltz actually shows how it happened ; as the realization sinks in, snow starts to fall.
 * The Death Note anime has this one. It starts snowing.
 * Also doubles as a massive amount of luck on Light's part, as.
 * In Naruto, the deaths of Zabuza and Haku are marked with the falling of snow. Though this is also partially because Haku's name means white, and he comes from a snowy village...
 * The first Suzaku Seishi to die in Fushigi Yuugi—and by extension the Seiryuu Seishi he did the death-battle with—does so after a bloody battle in a field of snow.
 * Also invoked when
 * Snow falling in summer is taken as an omen of Happosai's impending death in Ranma ½. (He recovers, though.)
 * The Happy Flashback to Sara meeting her brother Ralph in the snow in Soukou no Strain appears just before they prepare to fight to the death in the present.
 * In Rurouni Kenshin, dies in the snow.
 * In Full Moon o Sagashite, it's snowing once Mitsuki has learned of 's death.
 * Episode 13 of Cowboy Bebop, as Gren's ship crashes in a snowy field. He doesn't die there, but he starts coughing up blood and is clearly a goner.
 * At the end of the Galaxian Wars arc of Saint Seiya, it starts to snow in the mountains where Phoenix Ikki has just been defeated by the other Bronze Saints. While Seiya and the others hold off Docrates' forces, preventing them from stealing the Sagittarius Gold Cloth, a dying Ikki regards the snow as a symbol of his purification... and then gets up and brings down the mountain on himself and Docrates to save the Saints' lives, burying everything and everyone in rock and snow. Then again, he IS the Phoenix Saint.
 * The winter scenes in Millennium Actress portend doom: when she first meets and falls in love with the artist he's bleeding; later during WWII she's imprisoned for helping him ; during the 50s she tries to find him in the snow fields of Hokkaido and nearly dies.
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, the destruction of Negi's hometown occurred over the course of one snowy night.
 * The last episode of Welcome to The NHK combines this with Snow Means Love; for various reasons, Sato and Misaki both attempt to commit suicide at a snow-covered jetty and realise they love each other.
 * At the end of Winter Cicada, the doomed lovers commit seppuku in the snow.
 * In Wolf's Rain there's a scene where Quent, thinking Blue is dead, lies down in the snow to die. It's a subversion because Toboe saves him by sharing his body warmth.
 * in Gamble Fish.
 * The tear-jerking scene (which scarred many Latin American children in The Nineties) of Nobody's Boy Remi (Ie Naki Ko, based on French novel "Sans famille," by Hector Malot), when the performing monkey Jolie-Coeur dies of pneumonia after forcing itself to perform one last time on the snowy streets.
 * It soon gets worse,.
 * in Gundam Seed Destiny.
 * The Downer Ending to The Dog of Flanders, which can be read about here.
 * Kara no Kyoukai::  Narrowly averted with
 * It snows in Bokurano during the deaths of  and
 * In Sailor Moon, the final confrontation with the Dark Kingdom takes place at "D Point" near the North Pole, and the penultimate episode in which  is appropriately snow-covered. To fit with the theme, .   (Unless you're watching the North American dub, where they simply walk off-screen one by one, leaving Usagi to face the Big Bad alone.)
 * So Ra No Wo To's last three episodes happen in the middle of Winter. A minor secondary character commits suicide by walking out into a snowstorm, and the truce going on since the first episode is suddenly broken and war finally comes to the small town our heroines are deployed.
 * In Sakura Gari,
 * My-HiME: Immediately following Alyssa Searrs' defeat, the Searrs corporation ordered the "termination" of the project Alyssa had been created for due to her failure. This involves firing missiles at most of the main characters. No one actually dies from this, but it begins snowing immediately after. What happens next, you ask? Miyu, the robot girl, flees with a weakened Alyssa, who gets shot while Miyu is fetching water for her. So Miyu takes Alyssa's body, walks into a nearby pond with it, and freezes the two of them at the bottom.
 * Shows up in episode 10 of Figure 17  Shot of falling snowflakes against night sky is used repeatedly.
 * in One Piece.
 * in 7 Seeds commits suicide by freezing to death in the snow.
 * The entire Northern Campaign in Claymore ends this way. Most emotional was when
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist scenes at the  house are often shown with the three kids playing in snow.
 * In Claudine,  It also snows when
 * In Gundam AGE,
 * As Detective Conan is a series where people fall dead in almost every episode, there are many murder cases that happen in the snow, and where footprints and other signals happen to be totally vital as clues to reveal who killed the victim of the week. One of the most emblematic cases is The Ski Lodge Mystery, where
 * Also weaponized in a filler case, where
 * Makoto Shinkai has used this in several of his films:
 * 5 Centimeters per Second: Technically the death of a relationship rather than a person, but Takaki and Akari's relationship peaks when they kiss in the snow under a sakura tree, and things go downhill for them from there. Later on, Takaki gets a breakup email from Risa while walking home in the falling snow.
 * Children Who Chase Lost Voices: Asuna's father died during the winter. Morisaki is also shown standing above his wife's grave in falling snow.
 * Weathering with You: As bad as the constant heavy rain is, it is once snow starts falling in summer that things race rapidly to their nadir.
 * Your Lie in April: The last time Kousei sees alive is on a snowy rooftop. Later, he visits her grave in the snow and gets a letter with her last words from her parents.

Comic Books

 * The most famous example of this trope in Argentina is Hector German Osterheld's magnum opus, El Eternauta. There, the first sign of the alien invasion of the Manos and the Ellos is glowing snow that kills within contact with the skin, forcing the protagonist, his friends and family to don radiation suits in order to survive.
 * in 52. Renee Montoya drags him through the snow,
 * The final chapters of Watchmen, for the big reveal on Laurie's past, and the final fate of one of the mains.
 * Sin City. That Yellow Bastard.
 * Elf Quest had a bloody elf-troll battle in the frozen north.

Film

 * In the movie Three Days of the Condor, the protagonist, Joseph Turner (a.k.a. Condor), notices that Kathy Hale photographs and displays only scenes of winter (bare trees, lifeless snow). He comments to her that she is focusing on death, which she confirms.
 * Not a straight example, but the snow globe in Citizen Kane should get an honorable mention.
 * The Chinese movie Raise the Red Lantern has the servant Yan'er kneel outdoors in winter until she dies from the cold, while snow flakes fall around her.
 * O-Ren in Kill Bill also enjoys picturesque death on the snow.
 * Although few consider anywhere near picturesque...
 * Quentin Tarantino would.
 * The end of House of Flying Daggers went from brightly sunlit to a blizzard, just in time for the dramatic death scene.
 * Moulin Rouge! ends with the defeated Duke walking through a snowfall, leaving the theater in which the heroine Satine has just died
 * Fargo, where several people die before a snowy background.
 * Subverted in The Shining. Jack does freeze to death, but his expression is anything but peaceful!
 * Played straight and subverted in The Day After Tomorrow. The first time, some survivors have fallen asleep and froze to death while sleeping. They look peaceful. The second time is the naysaying policeman, whose frozen expression is rather pained. But that's what you get for ignoring the expert.
 * One segment of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams features the story of a mountain climber who, trapped in a blizzard and suffering from frostbite, either hallucinates or experiences a visit from a yuki-onna - a snow demon who takes the form of a beautiful woman.
 * A yuki-onna figures in one of the stories in Kwaidan, an anthology film adapting several Japanese folk tales.
 * In the 1989 film of Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont gets stabbed to death in a midwinter duel. This is pretty much entirely so the director can have a cool shot of his blood splattered across the snow.
 * The Ice Storm is the cinematic tribute to this trope.
 * The Sweet Hereafter depicts children in a horrific bus accident, caused and contrasted by the peacefulness of the snow around them. Snow and cold are used throughout the movie to symbolize the original serenity in the town.
 * Sin City: John shoots himself in a snowy field.
 * In Dead Poets Society, the boys are seen in a snowy field after learning of Neil's death. The sense of hopelessness that scene brings the rest of the film really is incredible.
 * A less obvious but more literal Snow Means Death moment in DPS is that you see through the window that it's snowing just before Neil shoots himself.
 * Used somewhat more literally in Mulan.
 * White Fang, in the film, after getting wounded in a skirmish between her pack and a group of humans, White Fang's mother limps to her den before collapsing in the entrance, her pup goes out and she gives a farewell lick to him, then it starts snowing.
 * Definitely not a straight example but on Titanic many people,, freeze to death in the ocean, they even show having frost on their hair and face before dying.
 * The Fountain,.
 * The ending of anti-Western McCabe & Mrs Miller
 * Played with in the 2001 movie Cats And Dogs.
 * Used subtly in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. The movie ends in the snow  White is also used actively to symbolize purity, which is what Geum-ja is trying to move toward.
 * Oldboy similarly ends in a field of snow . It may be used as a symbol for leaving the past behind or renewal.
 * Dead Snow: is made of this trope, even if it's used for horror and comedy instead of explicit beauty.
 * In Kunio Watanabe's 1958 version of The 47 Ronin, the whole film builds to the epic battle in a snow-covered courtyard.
 * Let the Right One In is full of this. Considering it takes place in Sweden...
 * An interesting subversion in It's a Wonderful Life. The snow stops after George wishes that he'd never been born and only starts up again after he decides that he wants to live again.
 * Vertical Limit takes this literally. The characters are climbing one of them most dangerous mountains in the world, and quite a few of them die, either in an avalanche or on the mission sent to rescue the first team. One of the points stressed by the movie is just how dangerous a thing climbing like that is.
 * Averted in a Soviet movie The Needle: the protagonist is stabbed with a knife, falls to his knees in the blood-stained snow... but he sruggles to his feet and walks away, disappearing in the snowstorm, and we never see him dead. Word of God later stated that the protagonist survived.
 * In The Patriot, a few battles set in winter, with corpses covered by snow.
 * In Shutter Island : Dachau.

Literature

 * As already mentioned, Malot's Sans Famille has
 * To Build A Fire by Jack London
 * The main character gradually falls asleep in the snow after his fire is put out and dies of hypothermia.
 * The Little Match Girl, which makes dying from cold and starvation lovely, glorious, and filled with so much Glurge.
 * Deconstructed in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, where Death (who's filling in for the local equivalent of Santa Claus) saves the archetypal Little Match Girl, dismissing her death as needlessly cruel, in the midst of his deconstructing a number of Christmastime tropes.
 * In Discworld, the dark pagan origins of the Hogfather (the local expy of Santa Claus) explain the choice of colours in his clothing: red and white from blood on the snow, ultimately coming from druidic human sacrifices in midwinter to make the sun come back.
 * James Joyce's The Dead may end with the definitive example of this trope. As the protagonist slowly drifts to sleep, thinking of the dead man his wife once loved, snow covers his window and his thoughts. The closing line: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
 * Raptor Red and her pack encounter a whip-tailed sauropod on a snowy mountain near the end of the book. It doesn't end well.
 * The death of Snowden obviously had quite the impact on the narrator of Catch-22, so much so that the first page of the book asks the random question: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" Snowden's last words are, "It's cold." Considering everyone else's name is symbolic, it's fair to see this as an example of this trope.
 * Harry Potter visits his parents' graves for the first time in Deathly Hallows, accompanied by Hermione. It so happens that they do this in December, and the graveyard is covered in snow. Harry, of course, cannot help but cry (and neither can many readers).
 * In Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, Lizzie reminds her sister of Jeanie, who ate the goblin fruit, but sickened and "fell with the first snow" of winter. (Since Laura has already eaten the fruit, this lets readers know just how much time she has left.)
 * In Bluestar's Prophecy, One of  kits, , freezes to death in the snow when   is taking them to.
 * In Miss Smillas Feeling for Snow, Smilla sees Isaiah's body in the snow, and her description of his funeral is punctuated by her observations about the snowfall. Of course, the book takes place in Denmark, it's winter, and the narrator is a bit obsessed with snow in general.
 * Nello and Patrasche in A Dog of Flanders freeze to death on Christmas Eve.
 * In My Ántonia, Mr. Shimerda commits suicide during his first Nebraskan winter.
 * In pretty much every adaptation of A Christmas Carol, there is snow in the churchyard when Scrooge discovers his (future) grave.
 * A Song of Ice and Fire: "Winter is coming", along with the living dead.
 * And seasons can last for years in Westeros.

Live Action TV
""Was it snowing on Mt. Amaro?""
 * Spoofed in Father Ted. In snows the night before Father Jack's funeral. Ted gives a monologue about how it's snowing all over the island. On all the living, and the dead...Then Father Jack tells him to Shut the feck up.
 * Jonathan Kent's funeral in Smallville.
 * Inverted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which Angel's First Evil-inspired attempt to kill himself is foiled by an inexplicable snowstorm in southern California.
 * Joss later played it straight in Firefly, with 's funeral.
 * The above is a meta-example, since it was also the very last scene shot for the entire series.
 * 's funeral in Queer as Folk.
 * The Cybermen gatecrash a funeral in the snow in Doctor Who The Next Doctor.
 * After he has seen Rose in a beautiful white snow scene punctuated with multicolored string lights, the Tenth Doctor while the ood begin to sing to him
 * In Mahou Sentai Magiranger, after Miyuki Ozu's death, snow fell.
 * David's funeral in the first episode of Rubicon.
 * Two episodes of Farscape occur on an ice planet: during these two episodes,  drowns when her ejector seat lands in a frozen lake, Diagnosan Tocot is killed by a Scarran operative in the crygenics facility, two Peackeepers are shot in the frozen corridors... finally, the Scarran agent himself ventures out into a blizzard, only to be shot repeatedly by   and stabbed to death with an icicle.
 * Averted in any episodes that take place in Einstein's dimension, which is essentially a large iceberg floating in a sea of wormholes. In the first visit Einstein does warn Crichton that he might be forced to kill him, but most of the carnage of that episode takes place in the thoroughly non-snowy Unrealised Realities Einstein displays.
 * The brutal, bloody final battle of Kamen Rider Kuuga happens on the snowy slopes of Mount Kuro.
 * The final episode of Dinosaurs.
 * Xena: Warrior Princess and Gabrielle on a snow capped mountain in season 4.

Music
"...and Michael, you would fall/ and turn the white snow red/ as strawberries in summer..."
 * The song "Tuonela," by Amorphis, deals with this theme.
 * "A Dark Congregation" by The Hush Sound mentions mourners throwing roses onto a snowy grave.
 * "My Last Breath" by Evanescence
 * Roman, the 5th album in Sound Horizon is all about this trope.
 * "South Side of the Sky" by Yes, about a party of mountain climbers that freeze to death.
 * From the Fleet Foxes song White Winter Hymnal:

Myth and Legend

 * Japanese legend speaks of the Yuki-onna, a female snow spirit that appears during the snow storm and leads travellers astray to die of exposure. Sometimes she might spare them, and once she fell for a young man and married him... but once he discovered her identity, she left in the middle of a snow storm.
 * The Pokémon Froslass is based on this.
 * The Greeks gave us Persephone, daughter of Demeter (goddess of the harvest), both kidnapped and raped by her uncle Hades to be his bride in the Underworld. The rules stated that anyone who ate in the kingdom of death would be trapped there, so even though her mother successfully sued for her return, she had to spend some time there, having eaten some pomegranate seeds (four, five, seven, or eight; it varies). So each year she returns, and each time she does, Nature dies. Thus winter. When she comes back, Nature thrives. Thus spring.
 * In most parts of ancient Greece, they considered Persephone to be gone during the hot, droughty summer, returning during the rainy winter.

Video Games

 * Several levels throughout the Hitman series take place in snow-covered terrain.
 * One-Man Army Max Payne goes on his killing rampage while snow constantly falls down around him.
 * In Tales of Symphonia, You get a really clear mental picture from it.
 * Elise Deauxnim,  in the fifth case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations.
 * The series has a few cases set in the snowbound winter, and since Phoenix's cases are Always Murder...
 * in Metal Gear Solid.
 * And in Metal Gear Solid 4. Interestingly, this occurs
 * However, the entire first game takes place on an island in Alaska, so there's snow in every outdoor area. The first fights against Vulcan Raven and Liquid Snake also take place in the same snow storm, and nobody dies.
 * The snow and fog used in the Silent Hill games (and the ice in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories) might be a use of this trope.
 * The Undead Scourge of Warcraft make their base in the frozen north. Heck,just watch the new cinematic for the expansion that focuses on it
 * In Kana: Little Sister,
 * White Len, the "evil" counterpart to Len in Melty Blood specifically makes her zone snow with her dream powers.
 * The prologue of Katawa Shoujo initially appears to be Snow Means Love. The main character, Hisao, meets his High School Sweetheart on a snowy day for a confession of love. Unknown to anyone, he has cardiac arrythmia and the excitement brings on a heart attack. He barely survives, but his old life is over.
 * "For the first time in 120 years, snow had fallen on Santa Destroy."
 * In Kessen II, if you beat the final stage of Liu Bei's scenario, Cao Cao is seen dying in the snow, with Diao Chan kneeling beside him. Though, there was never any snow on the battlefield before or after this sequence.
 * Yuyuko of the Touhou is the Ghost Princess of the Netherworld and has the ability to induce death. Naturally, one of the things associated with her is snow, with her game taking place during a long winter. Even the weather effect assigned to her in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody is snow.
 * In Mass Effect 2
 * Sunset Over Imdahl takes place over the course of four seasons. Spring and summer are relatively cheerful, fall is when The Plague hits, and winter is when nobody's left to clear the snow out of the streets.
 * In the short adventure game Ulitsa Dimitrova, the Idle Animation is first a yawn, followed by a shiver, and falling asleep on the ground, before a localized snowfall starts. That's the only ending.
 * In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, just after it begins snowing.
 * Snow rather literally means death for everyone in Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove, where an ancient curse is going to freeze the entire world if it can't be stopped.
 * Similarly, the broken heart of The Snow Queen threatens to turn the world to ice in the third game of the Dark Parables series.

Webcomics

 * Slightly Damned: 's death occurs during wintertime on the surface.
 * On the other hand Rhea, killed during the fall,  in winter.
 * During Aggie's Near-Death Experience dream in Penny and Aggie, snow falls. This is significant in that we never otherwise see snow in the comic.
 * In Megatokyo, snow begins to fall just as.
 * Homestuck:
 * Aversion too;.

Western Animation

 * In the Rankin-Bass Stop Motion special Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, the title character's mother dies after covering him with her body and keeping him warm for all night during a blizzard.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender plays with this - black snowfall, caused by the soot put out by their ships, heralds the arrival of Fire Nation forces at both the North and South Pole when they attack the Water Tribes.
 * One of the more famous examples is from Bambi in which the titular character cries out for his mother during a heavy snowfall after she is shot dead.

Real Life

 * The Battle of the Bulge in World War Two.
 * Captain Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition.
 * Similarly, the various brave idiots explorers looking for the Northwest Passage, most famously Sir John Franklin.
 * Also Ernest Shackleton.
 * The day following the Halifax Explosion brought a huge blizzard that only helped to add to the the death toll.
 * Every time someone invades Russia.
 * Or Russia invades Finland
 * Especially for the Russians.
 * The Battle of Stalingrad started in August, but in movies and on pictures, you will almost always see the last weeks in January and February, when snow only added to the bleakness of the whole situation.
 * In Finland, mentioning a drunken person and snow in the same sentence is almost always interpreted as "froze to death", and it is regularly used as an example when explaining to teens why drinking outside during an arctic winter is a really bad idea.
 * There is a proverb in Finland Tulis talvi ja tappais köyhät (Wish winter would come and kill the poor) which is effectively hoping misfortune for someone disadvantaged.
 * The Wounded Knee massacre, which happened on a snowy December day in South Dakota.
 * December 29, 1890, to be exact. And South Dakota is known for extreme weather, so when it's hot, it's really hot, and when it's cold, it's really cold.
 * Heavy snow fell on rescue and relief operations in eastern Japan five days after the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
 * Throughout much of history this trope was subverted in that when it snowed the armies couldn't march so countries at war would call an armistace in winter.