A Storm Is Coming: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:BouguereauStorm.jpg|frame]]

'''[[The Watson|Dr. Watson]]:''' I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.<br />

'''Sherlock Holmes:''' [[Literal Minded|Good old Watson]]! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.|''His Last Bow'' ([[World War I|set in August 1914, published 1917]])}}

* In ''[[Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea]]'', inverted: Ponyo's appearance is taken as a harbinger of a ''tsunami'', and actually brings about a near-apocalyptic storm and flood.

* In ''[[Laputa: Castle in the Sky|Castle in The Sky]]'', while on the Kiteglider, Pazu points out an approaching storm ''incredibly'' casually...

** ...before getting ambushed by [[Cool Airship|Goliath]].

** Played much more dramatically with the <s> Thunderhead</s> hurricane {{spoiler|that contains [[Floating Continent|Laputa]].}}

== Films -- Live Action ==

* Used in the ending of ''[[Firefly|Sere]][[Serenity|nity]]'':

'''Mal:''' [[A World Half Full|We'll pass through it soon enough.]] }}

* The film [[Take Shelter]] is this trope combined with [[Crazy Prepared]], [[Crazy Survivalist]], [[Mind Screw]], and [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]] applied to earth changes and social changes.

* The first ''[[X-Men 1]]'' movie. Said by a security guard as the X-Men, [[A Worldwide Punomenon|including Storm]], fly past hidden by fog.

* Completely botched in the ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''-worthy film ''[[Red Zone Cuba]]'', when ominous thunder during our "[[Anti-Hero|heroes]]"' plane ride with [[Ensemble Darkhorse|Cherokee Jack]] fails to match the local weather conditions...

* Subverted in ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes]]'' (2009). The storm is coming line is AFTER the finale, and everything being resolved... {{spoiler|Unless it was about Moriarty!}}

* In ''The Gift'', the dead grandmother of Cate Blanchett's character visits her to tell her this.

* Every ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' book opens with a description of a wind rising, which is "not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was ''a'' beginning."

** A separate instance in ''A Crown of Swords'' [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this:

** Further, when the literally weather-sensing Nynaeve warns that she senses an explicitly metaphorical storm coming, the other Aes Sedai laugh at her. Then they get ''enslaved''.

** For bonus points, the first volume of the final book is titled ''The Gathering Storm''. Which is aptly named, as the storm finally comes in a literal sense: a cover of black-and-silver stormclouds that eventually cover, apparently, the whole world.

** To put the above quote from ''A Crown of Swords'' in context: Over the course of two chapters Nynaeve repeatedly claims a storm is coming, "and it's not this wind." Eventually Mat finds himself repeating the warning but doesn't know why. A few minutes later he witnesses the Seanchan launch a massive attack on Ebou Dar, and realizes this is the beginning of their attempt to recolonize the continent. Then a building falls on him (he gets better). End that plotline for the remainder of the book. The above quote is the end of the last chapter. [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|Ebou Dar lies to the south.]]

** There are more:

** And this:

* ''[[A Sound of Thunder]]'' by [[Ray Bradbury]]. The same phrase used for the title would be used a few times to foreshadow the danger within the story.

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' has the motto of House Stark: "Winter is coming." It is also played straight in the title of third book, ''A Storm of Swords'', where the predicted storm actually does arrive.

* In ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]'' sequence, a character comments to Will the night before he comes into his power: "This night will be bad. And tomorrow will be beyond imagining."

* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' uses it in ''Dead Beat'':

:: Boy was there. In spades.

** And played with in ''Small Favor'': A massive, early snowstorm is pretty much shutting down Chicago as the book starts. {{spoiler|It turns out the storm is courtesy of Queen Mab, who sent it out to ''protect'' Harry from the emissaries of Summer. But, of course, it also means trouble for the heroes, especially when they end up soaking wet and have to walk around in it.}}

* Ray Bradbury's ''[[Something Wicked This Way Comes]]'' opens with a lightning rod salesman warning of the coming storm.

* In [[James Swallow]]'s ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''The Flight of the Eisenstein'', Garro thinks of the unknown problems as a storm -- on a spaceship.

* ''[[The Stand]]'': "There's a storm comin'! His storm!"

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[Black Colossus]]" part of a much longer [[Vagueness Is Coming]].

* In the Agatha Christie novel [[And Then There Were None]], a storm begins to brew as the situation on the island becomes more dire.

* From [[The Stormlight Archive]] "The Everstorm comes, the True Desolation, the Night of Sorrows." a warming given to Dalinar by {{spoiler|The Almighty}}, this world has massive storms across the entire landmass every few days, it's noted by some of the characters that they are [[It Got Worse|getting worse]].

* Parodied in ''[[Spaced]]'', where Mike quotes the "storm's coming" line from ''[[The Terminator]]''. The "storm" in question turns out to be all three of Tim's greatest fears -- lighting, dogs and bamboo.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' has a suitably ominous comment by [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|Kosh]] on the subject of Narn/Centauri relations (or possibly not... This ''is'' Kosh, aka the [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of [[Cryptic Conversation|Cryptic Conversations]] we're talking about here...) during the second season:

'''Kosh:''' ''In fire.'' }}

** {{spoiler|True enough, the episode ends with the outbreak of a second Narn/Centauri war... Followed shortly by the start of the Shadow War.}}

** Another, more explicit ''[[Babylon 5]]'' example occurred in the episode "The Geometry of Shadows", when Elric the Technomage is speaking to Captain Sheridan in the Zocalo (complete with eerie music):

** Yet another Koshism:

*** The latter was possibly a reference to the events of the [[Pilot Episode]]. Possibly. <ref>The conversation was about how Kosh would hypothetically feel about having an unwanted medical procedure, which was exactly what Kosh underwent in the pilot. Hence, "It already happened; my feelings about it are irrelevant."</ref>

* Near the end of the ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' episode "Dungeons And Dragons", Sarah's old fiance Charley, steps onto the Connor's porch after saving Derek Reese's life, has a conversation with Sarah, then notes, "Looks like a storm's coming."

* Abed points this out during his arrival at the party in ''[[Community]]'' episode "[[Community/Recap/S1 E07 Introduction to Statistics|Introduction to Statistics]]".

* In the ''[[Dollhouse]]'' episode "Belonging", Echo uses this metaphor to warn of an impending disaster (that the world will spiral into the chaos seen in the "Epitaph" episodes.) Boyd overhears her, and later gives her an all-access keycard with a note reading, "For the storm."

* ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' used "[[Winston Churchill|The Gathering Storm]]" as a title for several skits - including one purported to be a [[Non Indicative Title|documentary on the use of penguins in medical trials]].

* The opening of the first season finale of [[How I Met Your Mother]] foreshadows the massive rainstorm that occurs when {{spoiler|Robin and Ted get together while Marshall and Lily break up}} with both the narrator and a tv weatherman invoking this trope (in the past and future-tenses respectively).

* Jethro Tull's album "Stormwatch" is this trope turned up to eleven. Of course, it was written back when car exhaust & aerosol cans were going to trigger a new ice age...

* Leslie Fish's "Teacher, Teacher", from her album ''Firestorm: Songs of the Third World War'', ends with the lines,

Will you run save yourself, or fight to the last? }}

* "When The Levee Breaks" by [[Led Zeppelin]]

* [[Older Than Steam]]: [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Macbeth]]'' both plays this straight and subverts it. Act I features Macbeth commenting, "So foul and fair a day I have not seen," mirroring the comments of three witches making sinister plans. King Duncan later subverts this, cheerfully commenting on the pleasant weather {{spoiler|the day he's scheduled to be murdered}}.

* Another [[Shakespeare]] variation; in ''[[Henry V]]'', Exeter warns the French dauphin of the coming war:

That, if requiring fail, he will compel.'' }}

* In ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'', when deciding how to deal with Elphaba, Mrs. Morrible decides, "It's time for a change in the weather. She then summons the twister that drops a house on Nessarosa and brings Dorothy to Oz.

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Transformers]]: [[Beast Wars]]'' actually has an ''episode'' called "[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Before_the_Storm Before the Storm]".

* The ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Marjorine" -- "Storm's a-brewin', Stotch."

* The second season finale of ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]'':

* The animated TV show ''[[Clone High]]'' has an entire episode that continuously references an oncoming storm to highlight mounting tensions between two main characters. Joan of Arc's foster grandfather Toots [[Lampshades]] this by saying "Storm's a-brewin. Metaphorically, too."

* Happens in the ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' episode "The Storm". In this case, it's an unusual variant, where the metaphorical storm is a war that has already been going on for about 100 years. The literal storm in the episode isn't particularly important to the larger plot, but it brings up memories of Aang's past before the war started when the Air Nomads rushed his revelation as the Avatar because of the Fire Nation's escalating aggression (they could see the symbolic storm-clouds gathering). As a result, the young Aang was overwhelmed by the responsibility and ran away (getting caught in yet ''another'' literal storm) and ended up frozen for the next century. Of all the storms in this episode, only the one where Aang ended up frozen fits the traditional use of the trope.