Caught in the Rain

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Oh COME ON!

—Clark Kent after this happens

The hero and heroine, usually a Will They or Won't They? couple, are outdoors when rain or other inclement weather kicks up. They are take shelter in the same house, cave, or car, and one thing leads to another.

A subtrope of Snowed In, closely related to Together Umbrella. See also Snow Means Love, Happy Rain.

Compare Rain, Rain, Go Away for a more general application of the trope. See also Ten Minutes in the Closet.

Examples of Caught in the Rain include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Tenchi Muyo!, Tenchi and Ayeka take cover in a shed. An awkward moment for Ayeka as she has a sprained ankle and treated Tenchi rudely because she believes him to be the lover of the woman who killed her brother, IIRC; Tenchi is very gentlemanly towards her. Nothing happens between them except conversation, but afterwards Ayeka joins his Unwanted Harem.
  • A major Ship Tease moment happened in Ouran High School Host Club when Hikaru runs off to look for Haruhi during a storm. The situation didn't play out quite as you may have expected, "thanks" to Haruhi's severe Fear of Thunder.
  • Quite a pivotal point of Hachibe and Tenmaku's relationship in Ai Kora happens because of this.
  • Happens in Elfen Lied when Kohta and Yuka are looking for Nyu and it suddenly starts raining. By the time they find shelter at a nearby shrine, they're both drenched, so they huddle together for warmth. Yuka admits her feelings for him, kisses him unexpectedly, and tells him that she doesn't want to be separated from him again. Kohta wipes her tears away and returns the kiss. The rain stops just as suddenly as it started, and when Kohta comments on it, Yuka realizes what she did, panics a little, and falls off of Kohta's lap. Cue Panty Shot, Accidental Pervert, and Megaton Punch.
    • The manga takes their encounter a few steps further...
  • Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Fuse and Kei kiss while hiding from their pursuers on a rain-drenched rooftop playground.
  • In another possible Ship Tease, Kyon and Haruhi are trapped in a cave after falling down from a cliff in an episode in Suzumiya Haruhi. The Ship Tease however does not come from getting stuck in the rain, but because of the hand holding and worried expression on Haruhi's face beforehand.
  • Ai once ran into the rain to comfort Mew in one chapter of Psychic Academy. This was necessary due to Mew's crippling fear of rain, which made her have a panic attack when she was caught out in it.
  • Another one of the cave of convenience scenarios comes with Guts and Casca from Berserk. After they fall off a cliff together during a battle, Guts and an unconscious Casca wash up on shore and take shelter in a nearby cave, where Intimate Healing comes into play. They don't dive right into a romantic relationship, but the time they spent together does allow for Casca, who didn't take well to Guts, to warm up to him and they both learn that they weren't very different people.


Film

  • The Notebook anyone?
  • The Alfred Hitchcock film I Confess, in a flashback.
  • This happens in First Knight which gives Guinevere and Lancelot a moment to play in the rain water and just talk.
  • Happens to Brad and Janet in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Subverted in that, after they find shelter, they end up having sex with Dr. Frank N Furter rather than with each other.
  • This trope is skewered for uncomfortable laughs in Without a Paddle - the three main (male) characters are stranded in the rain in just their underwear and have to huddle together for warmth. They do, but only after agreeing that they never speak of the incident again.
  • In the last scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's Fred and Holly find themselves caught in the rain, finding her cat. It's in the rain when they're drenched they admit their love for each other with a long kiss.
  • This is how Jane and Kevin first hook up in 27 Dresses.
  • Something New The pivotal moment between Brian and Kenya's relationship occurs when they are on a hike and it begins to rain, causing them to seek shelter beneath a tree. This of course brings on the obligatory kiss

Literature

  • In The Aeneid, Aeneas and Dido are out hunting and take shelter from the rain in the same cave. The rain was part of Juno's successful plan to hook them up. Makes this one Older Than Feudalism.
  • Snow Falling on Cedars has Hatsue and Ishmael, as teenagers, taking shelter from the rain in a fallen tree.
  • At the end of Little Women, when Jo shares an umbrella with Mr. Baer, a proposal soon follows.
  • Evidently Jane Austen liked to use rain as a plot device:
    • In Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby carries Marianne home after she twists her ankle while running home because of the rain, thus sparking their romance.
    • Invoked by Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice when she sends Jane on her visit to the Bingleys on horseback so the pending rain later that day will force her to spend the night. The plan Goes Horribly Right when a cold forces her to stay several days.
    • Rain forces Fanny to seek shelter one day at the parsonage in Mansfield Park, sparking her closer friendship with Mary Crawford... going by a loose definition of "friendship."
  • Referenced in The Crow Road by Iain Banks, when the protagonist denies he is in bed with his aunt "because we’d gone hill walking together and been caught out in a snow storm an eventually found shelter in some exceptionally well-appointed bothy that just so happened to have only one bed and we had got in together to keep warm". As he says, they were fucking, but she's not really his aunt.

Live Action TV

  • Happens in A Woman Of Substance with the heroine and the cad who is after her sheltering a cave after being caught in the rain on a picnic (although it's not love, merely lust). It's certainly in the TV mini-series. I don't know about novel.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. But we all know what happened to Angel afterwards.
  • Spoofed on The Golden Girls:

Blanche: I do love the rain so. It reminds me of my first kiss...
Dorothy: Ah, your first kiss was in the rain?
Blanche: No, it was in the shower.

  • A variant in M*A*S*H, involving artillery fire, occurs between Hawkeye and Houlihan.
  • Mary Margaret and David have to take shelter together in Once Upon a Time.

Music

  • The Hollies' song "Bus Stop".
  • "Golf Girl" by Caravan has a rain of golf balls with this effect.
  • "Walk Between Raindrops" by Donald Fagen.
  • "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police: "Wet bus stop/she's waiting/his car is warm and dry."
  • A comic musical inversion: Mister Murray, "Down Came the Rain", in which the rain not only interrupts the singer's romantic interludes but also causes his crooning voice to turn into a hideous whine.
  • "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" references this, with the iconic lyrics of a man seeing a personal ad specifying a love of Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain.
  • "Geronimo" by The Divine Comedy ("With an arm around her waist/He leads her to a place he knows/Soaked through, but happy, they squelch up to the landing/The room before them makes a welcome sight")
  • "Laughter in the Rain" by Neil Sedaka
  • The danish children's song "Mariehønen Evigglad" is about a female ladybug, who gets caught in the rain, and moves in with a snail.
  • Sting's "Heavy Clouds, No Rain" forlornly hopes this will come to pass after the girl he is after says she will "save her love for a rainy day".

Webcomics


Western Animation

  • One episode of The Simpsons has this. Marge and Homer (who were experiencing some marriage troubles, feeling their relationship lost it's "spark" ) have to go to an outlet mall hours away to get a new motor for their fridge. It starts to rain and the car gets stuck in the mud. There's a barn nearby and they trudge through the mud to get there. They lie down in the hay, and one thing leads to another...
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Caught_in_the_Rain?oldid=2001708"