Battle in the Rain



"Pintel: Have you noticed, on top of everything, that it's raining?

Ragetti: That's a bad sign!"

- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Two opponents, either individuals or armies, face off against each other, ready to throw down at a moment's notice, with clouds lowering overhead. Just as the fight is about to start, it begins to rain on the combatants, as if the tension in the air has wrung the moisture out of it.

Interestingly, hardly anyone in these fights ever slips because of the rain.

In Real Life, military situations fighting in the rain can have mixed results. On the one hand, it reduces visibility and makes for a better defensive fight. On the other hand, the rain is yet one more source of stress (few like getting rained on, after all), reducing morale and causing yet more mistakes. Along with that, the ground generally gets turned to mud, making it harder for mechanized units and sometimes infantry to move. And just to make things even more interesting weather can even affect the projection of bullets...a sniper would have considerably more trouble hitting a target in heavy wind and rain, for example. See Weather of War for when the weather really does have an impact.

A subtrope of Empathic Environment. Sometimes combined with Dramatic Thunder. Often, obviously, foreshadowed by A Storm Is Coming. At the end, Sand in My Eyes may be expressed by blaming the wetness on their faces as rainfall. Characters often Dies Wide Open, so the rain can fall into their open eyes and confirm He's Dead Jim. (Though, this is more common in animation, because trying it in live-action would become Narm rather quickly due to the "dead" characters reflexively closing their eyes.)

Anime & Manga

 * The second fight between Mugen and Sara in episode 21 of Samurai Champloo. Given the animation and detail, viewing is a must.
 * Both the aptly-named "Memories in the Rain" arcs in Bleach. The first being where Ichigo fights the Grand Fisher to try to avenge his mother, the second being a flashback of Rukia's.
 * Also done again in the Bount arc.
 * The Gotei 13 Invasion Arc has Kenpachi vs. Kenpachi in the rain.
 * Fate's battle against the last six Jewel Seeds in the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, not surprising since she summoned a thunderstorm to activate all of them at the same time. When Nanoha joins in to help her, the rain had stopped.
 * Surprisingly enough, very few fights take place in the rain in Ranma One Half. Of course, those few times are against Pantyhose Taro, which quickly turn very, very bad for Ranma.
 * In the Dragon Ball Z TV special the History of Trunks, Future Gohan's final showdown with androids #17 and #18 takes place in the rain.
 * Played straight in Gundam Seed Destiny when Complete with Dramatic Thunder.
 * When, in Axis Powers Hetalia, England and America go through The American Revolution, their biggest encounter happens in the rain. A fight itself doesn't ensue, though, since England can't bring himself to harm the rebellious America and collapses in tears.
 * Spike and Vincent's final battle in Cowboy Bebop: The Movie took place in the rain. That's no coincidence -- it takes a lot to arrange rain on Mars, and it means that Vincent has already lost the war whether he beats Spike or not: the rain is wiping Vincent's nanoplague out of the atmosphere.
 * The battle against Wilhelm and his Slime Trio in Mahou Sensei Negima
 * Seems to happen a lot in Ayashi no Ceres.
 * The notorious sword fight between Tamahome and Hotohori from Fushigi Yuugi falls under this trope. A ray of moonlight cuts right through the clouds once it ends.
 * The third gang fight in the series starts out with a cloudy sky, then gets rainy when Tamahome becomes really pissed.
 * The last fight between Cure Peach and Eas in Fresh Pretty Cure.
 * In Pokémon Special, when Norman finds and has a battle with his son, Ruby. The rain actually does affect the battle, as Zuzu (Ruby's Marshtomp) uses mud for his attacks and is strengthened as well. The battle (sort of) ended as a draw as both father and son nearly end up killed in it.
 * Happens several times in Darker Than Black. Both Hei's and November 11's abilities are more useful when it's wet, and it's justified when April is there, since she has the ability to make it rain.
 * In Transformers Armada, Starscream (with the Star Saber) battles Optimus Prime in a rainshower; the events of the battle precipitate his defection.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist has a quick battle between Scar and the Elric brothers in the rain right after Sadly, Ed didn't have any chance of winning. Thank goodness Roy and everyone else made it on time.
 * The final showdown in Monster takes place in the rain-drenched Ruhenheim.
 * In Fairy Tail, there is Gray's battle against Juvia (who it rains around at all times before she gets beaten), and then there's just about half the battles between the heroes and the members of Grimoire Heart during the Tenrou Island arc (incidentally, the first rain-soaked battle in this arc featured Juvia, who may have even caused the rain).
 * This allows Seaman to use his powers against Kuwabara and friends in Yu Yu Hakusho

Comics

 * The Mighty Thor summons rain during The Avengers' first bout with the Justice League of America in JLA-Avengers.
 * Dwight takes on a team of former IRA mercenaries during a rainy night in Sin City.
 * Happens at least twice in J Michael Straczynski 's run on Thor. The battle between Iron Man and Thor (Thor Vol 3, #3) in the ruins of New Orleans takes place in the rain, as does the Asgardians attack on Doom's castle in the Latverian Prometheus story arc.

Fan Works

 * The final few days of the Battle/Siege of Crassus. Particularly poignant in that it's the first rain in a decade.
 * Finishing the Fight gives us this One of Us comment: "Yeah, all we need is a torrential downpour and the trope is complete." True enough...
 * Princess: Julien, while running away from the zoo, makes a comment about how things couldn't be worse and it promptly starts raining. It's still raining when he battles the Rat King - he does, in fact, slip in a puddle at the beginning.

Films -- Animation

 * The fight between the Beast and Gaston at the end of the Disney version of Beauty and The Beast.
 * Disney's The Great Mouse Detective has the final battle in a rainstorm, to the point where Basil and Ratigan can hardly be seen clearly.
 * The fight between the Pridelanders and Outsiders in The Lion King 2.
 * Subverted in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children: Cloud and Sephiroth are having their massive stare down before their epic battle on a particularly sunny afternoon. What does Sephiroth do? Summons heavy thunderstorm clouds that envelope the sky to signify that it's time to fight.
 * And still no rain. In fact, it doesn't rain until after he's beaten, and it's because he was holding back Great Gospel.
 * The opening fight between Ryu and Sagat in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, which became an actual stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2.
 * The Tyrannosaurus Rex/Stegosaurus battle from Fantasia.
 * The battle between Shifu and Tai Lung near the end of Kung Fu Panda. However, when Po finally arrives to confront the evil snow leopard, the rain stops and the ensuing battle between Po and Tai Lung instead takes place in sunlight.
 * In keeping with the series' attitude of fulfilling as many tropes as possible, the (very) short film Scott Pilgrim vs the Animation from Adult Swim has the main battle take place in sudden rainfall.

Films -- Live-Action

 * The final battle in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is arguably the Trope Maker for film.
 * And, there is a great deal of slipping and sliding about because of it, unlike many examples.
 * The Battle of Shrewsbury in Orson Welles' Chimes At Midnight.
 * A variation of this is seen in two films by Kihachi Okamoto, Samurai Assassin and The Sword of Doom, both of which feature important battle scenes that take place during snowstorms.
 * The fight between Zatoichi and his Evil Counterpart in Takeshi Kitano's version of Zatoichi.
 * The Battle of Agincourt in Kenneth Branagh's version of Shakespeare's Henry V.
 * Which, to be fair, actually was fought in the rain.
 * And, unlike most of the battles here, the rain turns the battlefield into a muddy slaughterhouse -- again, this is historically accurate.
 * Road to Perdition wrapped up with one of these, though 'silent slaughter in the rain' may be a bit more appropriate.
 * The fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jango Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
 * The Battle of Helm's Deep in the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It begins pouring at the start of the battle interestingly, but it doesn't last long.
 * But the brief upward eyeroll of the Rider directly behind Theoden as the rain starts is priceless.
 * The final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith at the climax of The Matrix Revolutions. (Of course, that was because Smith made it rain. Smith loves the rain.)
 * It took several months to perfect the right type of raindrop for the scene.
 * The final battle in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End takes place at sea, not just in the rain, but during a maelstrom! For a one-on-one battle in the rain, see Jack Sparrow vs. Davy Jones.
 * Justified, since they just released the goddess of the sea, and asked for her blessing in the fight. She goes crazy, and its probably the result.
 * The fight between Nameless and Sky in Zhang Yimou's Hero.
 * The famous T. Rex car attack in Jurassic Park. The two sequels mimic this with similar scenes.
 * Happened in the 1999 Hong Kong film, A Man Called Hero, with an extra bonus of using the rain itself as offense. (You can watch it here. It starts at 1:43.)
 * The fight between Leonardo and Raphael in the fourth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
 * The final battle with the Wendol happens in the rain at the end of The Thirteenth Warrior. One character comments that "at least we won't have to worry about fire this time", referring to the previous time the Wendol attacked the village with torches in hand.
 * Several movies featuring Rutger Hauer, among them:
 * Blade Runner (lots and lots of rain) which also ends with a Redemption in The Rain.
 * Blind Fury
 * Wedlock
 * Blood of Heroes a.k.a. Salute of the Jugger
 * Flesh And Blood (rain AND a bath tub)
 * Ladyhawke (rain and frozen lake)
 * Split Second (frequent rain plus global warming flooding)
 * And even if there isn't actual rain, there will be a waterfall, or a lake, swimming pool or large bath tub into which the two protagonists fall while fighting. No matter what it is, Rutger Hauer's character will end up soaking wet and looking Badass.
 * Godzilla 1985 has the title character fight a bunch of army tanks in the rain.
 * The 2002 Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla also opens with an army fight in the rain.
 * The cheesiest battle in an already cheesy movie in DOA: Dead or Alive was done by two bikini-clad fighters, on a beach, in the rain. Fanservice much?
 * The movie In the Name of The King had the final battle take place in the rain. Though the good guys won the last battle, the army that they fight then is far larger and though they manage to hold the Krug off for a brief time, they eventually start getting overwhelmed.
 * Korean action movie Volcano High climaxes with two telekinetic martial artists fighting in the rain, in an interesting aversion,
 * The final battle in the film Mongol, where Temujin defeats his blood brother Jamukha to finally unite the tribes of Mongolia.
 * Underworld Rise of the Lycans between Sonia and Viktor, as well as Lucian and a bunch of Vampire Soldiers.
 * Played realistically in Hamburger Hill the American Airborne soldiers try to fight there way up the hill in one of the last battles while it's pouring rain, a lot of them are slipping and falling from fatigue and the slippery mud making them perfect targets for the NVA also a quarter of the M-16's are jamming...it's a all around clusterfuck.
 * The climactic battle between Riggs and the Psycho for Hire dragon, in the first Lethal Weapon movie.
 * A busted fire hydrant actually. Still counts if only for Rule of Cool.
 * Used in Wimbledon when Peter is playing against Jake Hammond. It actually looks pretty cool, too.
 * The entire premise of Hard Rain, a1998 film that stars Morgan Freeman as a villain. Exactly What It Says On the Tin. It rains the entire movie in a flooded town, where one man is on the run from people trying to kill him for 3 million dollars he hid somewhere in the flooded city, after his partner is killed when Morgan Freeman's character attempts to rob his armored truck.
 * The final battle between Steed and Sir August in The Avengers 1998 took place in a torrential downpour, because it occured in the underground lair where Sir August had his weather control machine, which was set on "storm" at the time.
 * The 2003 German film Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Berne) tells the story of the West German team that won the The World Cup in 1954. The win against the greatly favoured Hungarians (at that point it had been four years since their last defeat) would probably not have happened if not for the heavy rain on the day of the final (and the newly developed screw-in spikes on the German team's boots).
 * It rains when Swamp Thing fights the leech mutant for the second time in The Return of Swamp Thing.
 * The entire battle sequence in Passchendaele.
 * Again, a fair example, as Passchendaele was very muddy and very wet.
 * In The Warriors Way, the final showdown between Yang and the Saddest Flute takes in a rainstorm that literally blows up out of nowhere (in the middle of the desert).

Literature

 * In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, when Rafen is cornered in the factory by Sachiel's honour guard, it starts to rain. Then, during the single combat between Rafen and Arkio, rain starts, shortly after Rafen drew First Blood; when Sachiel realizes from the blood that they are tainted, Inquisitor Stele murders him and uses it to start a general battle.
 * In Michael Crichton's Congo, the killer gorillas attack the expedition's campsite during a rainstorm.
 * The only memorable part of the Roge Zelazny collaboration novel The Mask of Loki(?) is a do-over of the Battle of Hattin. The Army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, having trapped itself in a waterless valley, is surrounded by Saladin's much more numerous army. The Saracens close in and overheated, dehydrated Crusaders start to drop as they did in reality. Then, by manipulation of some sort (Science? Magic?), it clouds up and starts to rain. Revitalized,the Frankish army wins the day, or at least survives -- as it did not in reality.
 * Echo Burning by Lee Child has Jack Reacher stalking his opponent in a desert shootout in the middle of a rainfall so intense,
 * At the end of the first book in the Shadowleague series, the battle with the Ak'Zahar takes place in the rain.
 * The breakout from Efrafa in Watership Down. The sudden downpour provides a usesful distraction at a crucial moment, though General Woundwort's more disciplined rabbits are able to cope better with the storm.
 * The eponymous Strange in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell has been known to summon storms for momentous battles, either to provide a distinct strategic advantage to the British army, or so that he can surround Wellington with a halo of light at the moment of victory (or both).
 * In the Warrior Cats Expanded Universe novel Bluestar's Prophecy, the battle between ThunderClan and WindClan takes place in the rain.
 * Also, in the climax of Into The Wild, the final battle takes place in the midst of a massive storm.
 * In The Hunger Games, there's an implied epic showdown between Cato and Thresh that happens over two days of rain. The reader doesn't get to see it because Katniss is busy smooching Peeta in a cave.
 * Many of the normal issues are averted in The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell, in the rainy duel between Arthur and . Arthur doesn't wear his normal scale armour, since it rusts in the rain, and goes barefoot rather than booted, thinking this will give him a better grip in the mud. The slipperiness of the flooring is critical in the outcome of the duel, too.
 * The climax of the third Knight and Rogue book takes place during a rainstorm. It kind of had to, considering the villains only work during storms, but that doesn't make the sword fight any less cool.
 * The Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Wedge's Gamble had a Dogfight in the Rain. Rogue Squadron made use of Coruscant's justifiably extreme weather patterns to bring down a section of the inner layer of the planetary deflector shield with an enormous thunderstorm. Then Corran Horn flew a fighter into the thunderstorm (and was followed by TIE fighters) to blow up the power supply of the shield's outer layer.

Live Action TV

 * The fight at the end of the first episode of the reboot of The Bionic Woman.
 * Subversion: In the Angel episode "Five by Five", a fight that looks like it's going to be a Battle in the Rain quickly turns into Redemption in The Rain.
 * Of course, according to an episode commentary, the rain just happened while the scene was being filmed. Early scripts called for rain-making equipment, but these did not fit into the budget.
 * Their final battle, which we don't really see, looks like it's about to be in the rain.
 * Ethan and Jack's fight in the Lost episode "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues".
 * Not to mention the final battle between Jack and in the series finale.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer manages to pull this off indoors in the episode "Innocence" after an explosion triggers automatic sprinkler systems right before the climactic battle.
 * The final battle between Clark and Zod in Smallville's 9th season finale, "Salvation".
 * Tony spends the entire episode "Swan Song" predicting an imminent monsoon. It finally arrives as  faces off against
 * Fourze in Cosmic States vs Aquarius Zodiarts in Kamen Rider Fourze.

Video Games

 * The final mission of Bully.
 * Extreme overkill example: The final battle in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker takes place while the entire ocean is raining down around you.
 * The battle against Argorok, in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. Fighting a dragon on-top of a city in the city, using double-clawshots to go even higher. All taking place in a raging thunderstorm. And it's awesome. It also occasionally rains in Hyrule Field, and is likely to rain at least once when you fight King Bublin.
 * Ditto for Bicolyte and the final battle in Skyward Sword. Except in the latter case,.
 * The first Dante vs. Vergil fight in Devil May Cry 3.
 * Inversion: Snake and Olga in Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty begin their gunfight almost immediately after a lull in the ongoing downpour. When the fight is done, it starts raining again.
 * Streets of Rage 2 had the first boss fight take place in a back alley during a rainstorm.
 * The majority of the Virmire mission in Mass Effect is almost a subversion; it takes place in a lightly misting rain that's hard to see if you aren't looking closely, and once the climactic second half of the mission begins, it stops raining.
 * In Final Fantasy IX, the closing battle of Disc 1 is against Beatrix in Burmecia, the City of Eternal Rain. Made more ominous as, upon defeat, Beatrix will use a special technique to utterly demolish Zidane and his friends, so Queen Brahne, Big Bad Kuja, and Beatrix leave them for dead on the flooded marble halls of the central palace.
 * In Donkey Kong Country 2, the boss of the fifth world (Gloomy Gulch) is a rematch with a ghostly Krow in a rainstorm.
 * The final battle of Shadow of the Colossus has Wander facing down the final colossus atop a sea-side plateau in the midst of a torential thunder storm while the most hauntingly solem music on the soundtrack plays away in the background.
 * Variation: in Touhou fighting game Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, each fighters are associated with a certain weather condition and generally gain advantage in that condition. Weather change randomly, but you can force a weather to begin or end through certain methods. Marisa Kirisame is associated with drizzly rain.
 * Capcom vs. SNK 2 had, as one of the possible final stages, a fight on the rooftop of Osaka Castle in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, complete with Dramatic Thunder.
 * Part of the battlefield in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption against Gandrayda is covered in rain. However, this counts more as an obstacle, as it's ACID RAIN which hurts you but not the boss. For some reason...
 * She was with the Pirates. The Pirates made the Hazard Shield. So...
 * In Metroid Prime, the entire Tallon Overworld is always covered in rain, resulting in many mini-battles in the rain in addition to the rain during the Ridley fight at the Artifact Temple.
 * The secret ending to Kingdom Hearts features Riku and Roxas fighting Heartless/each other in the rain. Because the scene was so epic, it was remade in full for Kingdom Hearts II, and was playable in Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2.
 * This happens in the opening in Backyard Football.
 * Happens in Dragon Age: Origins at the Battle of Ostagar, which is no real surprise seeing how much it was inspired by the aforementioned Battle of Helm's Deep.
 * Crysis has its final battle in the middle of a thunderstorm.
 * Left 4 Dead 2 has a campaign called Hard Rain, in which the Survivors must fight their way through what isn't so much a rainstorm as a full blown flood. Every so often, the storm intensifies so it's almost impossible to see and even communicating via mike is difficult. The thunder and lightning summons hordes of zombies.
 * The Passing, meanwhile, puts you on a nighttime city with a rather strong rain. This rain, however, varies from game to game; from a light rain, to a Hard Rain-styled monsoon.
 * Any Pokémon battle can technically become this if the move Rain Dance is used. This also means that Kyogre is pretty much physically incapable of averting this trope, since its ability automatically makes it rain when it comes into play. Dream Politoed invoke this trope involuntarily as well for the same reason.
 * A few routes in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (Platinum included)always have rain present as well. Also seen in parts of Unova.
 * Fatal Fury: Tung Fu Rue's stage has a nice gimmick to it in that the battle background starts out clear, then gradually changes to a storm as you advance in rounds.
 * Played for laughs in Kingdom of Loathing. In one quest, you have to influence the outcome of a war between the hippies and the frat boys. If you manipulate the battle correctly, you can force a confrontation between The Man, the Frat boy's leader, and Mr. Wisniewski, leader of the hippies. In the dialogue that follows, The Man remarks that the weather isn't quite right for a final stand-off, and Wisniewski will have a Hippie Shaman summon a rain storm.
 * The Final Battle between Starkiller and Darth Vader in The Force Unleashed II.
 * In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, in one of the "dungeons"; in fact it is the only time you will see a difference in the weather. There is a chase on top of Saint Peter's Cathedral, where Ezio has to chase and eventually kill a papal cardinal, and this is all while it's raining.
 * Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal starts out like this on a dark and stormy night as Guybrush tries to finish the ingredients for the Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu in order to destroy LeChuck,
 * The final case of LA Noire.
 * Fighting a Kushala Daora in the jungle in "Monster Hunter" will always yield a battle in the rain.
 * Heavy Rain? Pretty much every battle in the whole bloody game.
 * Well...
 * Eternal Sonata has a sequence in Agogo Forest where it's raining and all encounters take place in the rain. Particularly notable, though, for the Hopeless Boss Fight against Fugue in which he decimates Frederic and Polka each with one hit (two at most) then continues on his way.
 * Thanks to the (mostly) dynamic weather, any outdoor boss battle can become this in Xenoblade Chronicles.
 * No matter how clear the weather is before you warp there, it'll always be raining when you get to.
 * If it's not already raining when the battle starts, the Sani Telethia usually ends up calling a rainstorm as one of its first moves so it can (potentially) unleash water based ether attacks later. On the other hand, the opposite tends to occur if it's already raining.

Web Comics

 * Hilariously lampshaded in a strip of Order of the Stick strip where Miko is introduced to the party.
 * Sluggy Freelance: The Zoe vs. Oasis vs. Kusari fight at the end of "Fire And Rain". Approriately enough, it's easily the most serious fight scene in the series with nary a joke to be seen.
 * It rains during the first battle in Goblins. As usual for this comic, it increases dramatic tension but has no effect on the plot.
 * The Fava flashback in Juathuur.
 * In American Beauty (no, not that one), rashly boasting of surviving being thrown into a pit while it stars to rain lead to the realization that it has dinosaurs.

Western Animation

 * Parodied in Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. There's no real way to accurately describe it, but think Battle of Helm's Deep.
 * In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Southern Raiders", the moments during Katara's confrontation against her mother's killer. Though being a waterbender, she uses the rain as a weapon. But not until after stopping the rain falling around them first.
 * In Kim Possible, the final fight scene in So the Drama is one of these.
 * "Job Unfair" has one of these between Kim and Shego too, but with snow and lightning instead of rain. But in this case, it's justified by the fact that they're fighting on top of a weather machine.
 * In Star Wars Clone Wars, it conveniently starts to rain during a faceoff between Anakin Skywalker and Asajj Ventress. Cue a dramatic pause where they both stand still while raindrops hit their lightsabers and turn into wisps of steam.
 * In Star Wars the Clone Wars, the season one episode Trespass occurs on an ice-planet during a heavy snowstorm. The episode climaxes in a pitched battle when, against all odds, a peace agreement is reached, which is symbolically sealed when Senator Chuchi of Pantora plunges a spear into the ground between the two battle lines. The storm breaks the exact second that she does so.
 * The 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 series. Leonardo is pursued by Foot Ninja whilst on a training run through the city. As soon as the circumstances start getting worse, it starts raining. The trope reaches boiling point here, where at the same time he encounters Shredder's Elite Guard, he discovers The Shredder himself is Not Quite Dead as was previously thought (with lightning starting to crack amongst the rain). He is badly beaten and almost killed soon after.
 * The final battle in Wakfu season 1, with Adamaï and Yugo versus Nox, happens under the rain at Mt. Zinit. It is used to great visual effect when Nox stops time, the raindrops first hanging... and then, rising upward when he reverses time.
 * "Haunted", an episode in "Teen Titans" had Robin seperated from the group while they were fighting and fought Slade in the rain. Particularly interesting in that

Real Life

 * The Battle of Hydaspes according to most sources was fought during a torrential downpour
 * The Battle of Evesham (1265) was fought during a fierce thunderstorm.
 * The Battle of Agincourt, for which it's speculated that the heavy mud was a key factor in allowing the badly outnumbered English forces to win.
 * And also 70 years earlier at Crecy, where the rainy weather not only bogged the French knights in mud, but the large contingent of Genoese crossbowmen the French had hired were mishandled and allowed their bowstrings to become wet. The crossbowmen were rendered largely useless while the English longbowmen, who had kept their bowstrings meticulously dry, had no such problems.
 * Part of the battle of Preußisch Eylau (8 February, 1807) was fought in a snowstorm. One advancing French corps lost its way and suddenly found itself smack in front of a huge Russian battery. It was blown to pieces.
 * Heavy rains over Germany affected the outcome of three major battles in August 1813. The rains badly affected the soldiers' ability to shoot their flintlock muskets (which made infantry more vulnerable to cavalry, especially lancers) and slowed down movements.
 * At Großbeeren (23 August), where the Allied Army of the North stopped the French advance on Berlin, the men of the freshly raised Prussian Landwehr (militia) found that their inferior firing drill no longer put them at a disadvantage and used their muskets like clubs, saying "So flutscht dat bäter!" (It goes off the hand more easily that way).
 * During Napoleon's defeat of the Allied Main Army at Dresden (August 26-27), the infantry of his Young Guard successfully charged against Allied cavalry stuck in the mud.
 * In the battle of the Katzbach (August 26), Blücher's Russo-Prussian Army of Silesia smashed the French Army of the Bober. Part of the latter was driven into the Wütende Neisse ("Raging Neisse"), normally a pleasant small river, but swollen to a dangerous torrent due to the heavy rains.
 * It rained heavily the night before the battle of Waterloo (1815), which worked to the advantage of the defending Allied army.
 * To watch any film set on The Western Front, you might think it started raining in 1914 and rained continuously until 1918.
 * This common image of the war stems from the Battle of Passchendaele, in the long, wet summer and autumn of 1917. A mixture of the unseasonal rain and constant shelling had reduced the terrain to a vast bog in which men drowned before ever seeing the enemy. The horror of Passchendaele so deeply imprinted itself on the public consciousness that rain and mud are assumed for any WW 1 setting except for Gallipoli.
 * This trope is also fully justified for the last part of the Battle of the Somme a year earlier.
 * This Mixed Martial Arts fight from 2007 is pretty much the only one known to have actually taken place in the rain.
 * It wasn't just General Winter that halted the German's advance on Moscow in WW 2, but also the heavy mud that preceeded it.
 * The battle of Marston Moor in the English Civil War took place in a heavy rain storm, but then again it was in Yorkshire so should be expected.
 * The Battle of Quiberon Bay was fought in a heavy gale, which is the seaborne equivalent. Admiral Hawke truly cemented his reputation as an implacable Badass that day.
 * The Battle of Narva was fought in heavy mist that allowed 10,000 Swedes to defeat 40,000 Russians.
 * While not a battle per se, the Euro 2008 Group A match between Turkey and Switzerland took place in the rain, making for some wonderful pictures
 * Another sports example is the Super Bowl XLI between Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears.
 * When the British sacked Washington D.C and burned down the White House during the War of 1812 there were incredible monsoon rains similar to what is showcased in Modern Warfare 2. These rains are attributed to saving Washington D.C from being burned down to the ground and left enough of the original White House intact that it could be repaired rather than rebuilt from the ground up.
 * Just hope you don't get into one of these while flying an F-22.