The Great Flood: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:deluge.jpg|frame|[[Look Around You|Water, water, what hast thou donest?]]]]

 

What happens when [[God]] (or [[Our Gods Are Different|the gods]]) decides to [[Kill It with Water]]. [[The End of the World as We Know It|All of it]].

[[Older Than Dirt|Older than the book itself]], this is the one element that seems nearly ubiquitous in mythology, and with good reason: it may have had a basis in reality (a hypothesized late Pleistocene/Early Holocene flooding event, possibly from a [[Colony Drop|small asteroid impact]] or earthquake off the coast of Madagascar causing a tsunami), but as a kind of cultural memory it forms the backbone of many origin mythologies, from the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime to the biblical Book of Genesis. Usually the moral of the story is "don't piss off the gods," but sometimes the flooding is part of the process of (re)creating a world.

 

 

== Mythology and Religion ==

* ''[[The Bible]]'', obviously. {{spoiler|[[It Was His Sled|Noah lives.]]}}

* ''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]'': The earliest recorded example.

* Various Native American Mythologies

* Various Asia-Pacific and Polynesian Mythologies

* <s>Greek</s> [[Classical Mythology]] has ''three'', most notably Deucalion's.

* According to [[Plato]], [[Atlantis]] was actually destroyed by a giant tidal wave known as the "Mebhelmok" (which actually means "great flood").

* [[Norse Mythology]]. Ymir is killed and his blood flooded the earth and drowned all but two of the frost giants.

* ''[[Saint Seiya]]'': the god Poseidon, wishing to wash away the filth of mankind, raises the oceans to destroy all of civilization. In the anime, this is compounded by the [[Barrier Maiden|priestess]] Hilda praying to [[Crossover Cosmology|Odin]] to preserve the ice in the [[Grim Up North]] eternally frozen; her absence causes it to melt and contribute to the flooding. Confusingly, this (and the first major story arc) is all part of a [[Xanatos Roulette]] that started long before the start of the series.

* ''[[Dragon Knights]]'': the demon fish Varawoo sunk the world before it was sealed away.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In Shane Johnson's ''Ice'' an astronaut ends up traveling back in time where he experiences the biblical flood.

* ''[[Flood]]'', by [[Stephen Baxter]], is a hard sci-fi depiction of a global flood in modern times.

* According to [[Word of God]], the past of the ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' universe featured one, causing Syren Island to sink beneath the sea.

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: [[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Wind Waker]]'' takes place in a world where the Flood waters have yet to recede. [[Ocean Punk|Everybody lives on mountaintops]].

* In ''[[Final Fantasy III]]'', destroying the balance between Light and Darkness plunges the world into the latter, [[Time Stands Still|freezing the surface in time]] and then flooding it so only a temple and a priestess remain above water.

* Killing Poseidon unleashes a great flood in [[God of War (series)|God of War]] 3. And he's merely the ''first'' God to die in that game.

* [[Fire Emblem]]: {{spoiler|Radiant Dawn explains that before years began to be counted, Ashunera expressed great grief over the warring of the Beorc and Laguz, and caused the entire world to be flooded due to her grief overlapping with her power unintentionally. She then split into Ashera and Yune, causing a war of dominance to take place.}}

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* A number of record-breaking floods throughout recorded history could be considered as these, at least in terms of regional and economic effects.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Native American Mythology]]

[[Category:Instant Index, Just Add Water]]

[[Category:Older Than Dirt]]

[[Category:Oral Tradition]]