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''We need its energy''<br />
''Without the sun, without a doubt''<br />
''There'd be no you and me"''|'''[[They Might Be Giants (Musicband)|They Might Be Giants]]''', ''Why Does The Sun Shine''}}
 
The big brother of [[Total Eclipse of the Plot]], who crashes on the couch for [[The Thing That Would Not Leave|a 'few' days]].
 
This trope usually involves a [[Big Bad]]'s attempt to bring about either an eternal or extremely long night, [[For the Evulz|for whatever reason]]. He could be trying to put out the sun <ref>It takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to get to earth</ref>, [[Partly Cloudy Withwith a Chance of Death|block it or just find a metaphorical light switch]]. The only requirement is that the darkness is supposed to last a ridiculous length of time, ranging from a hundred years to an eternity. It rarely does, though, thanks to those pesky [[Big Damn Heroes|heroes]], who somehow manage to get past all of the looting, panic and [[Night of the Living Mooks|mooks]] to [[Cue the Sun]].
 
In [[Real Life]], the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth has been dimmed by [[Chekhov's Volcano|dust thrown up by major volcanic eruptions]] (volcanic winter), [[Colony Drop|the asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous]] (helping to kill off the dinosaurs) (impact winter), and in theory, [[Atomic Hate|the fallout of a nuclear war]] (nuclear winter).
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Often the setting for a literal [[Darkest Hour]], and can result in widespread [[Darkness Equals Death]]. Don't be surprised if a [[Dark World]] happens to have a bad case of this.
 
See also [[Colour-Coded for Your Convenience]], [[The Stars Are Going Out]], [[Total Eclipse of the Plot]] and [[Partly Cloudy Withwith a Chance of Death]]. Contrast with [[Cue the Sun]]. Inverse of [[Endless Daytime]].
 
{{examples}}
 
== Anime and Manga ==
* The ''[[Darkstalkers (Video Game)|Darkstalkers]]'' OVA has Demitri inflicting this upon the Earth, driving humanity to desperation -- and setting up [[Light Is Not Good]] symbolism when [[Big Bad]] Pyron drives the night away with his presence.
** Incidentally, if the sky's perpetually covered with clouds, [[Fridge Logic|how can]] [[Our Werewolves Are Different|Jon Tailban]] turn into a wolfman if there's no moon?
* [[Big Bad|Hades]] in ''[[Saint Seiya (Manga)|Saint Seiya]]'' wants to {{spoiler|bring the Greatest Eclipse which would darken the earth forever.}}
 
 
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== Fanfiction ==
* [http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/06/story-corona-blaze.html Corona Blaze], a ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' fanfic, provides a [[Endless Daytime|rare]] [[Inverted Trope|inversion]] with a ''daytime'' that lasts forever. A great deal of fanwork involving Celestia transforming the way her sister did tends to share this theme.
** Antipodes features both, with the sun and moon freezing in place.
 
 
== Film ==
* In ''[[The Matrix (Film)|The Matrix]]'', the sky is darkened not by the villainous machines, but by the humans who sought to cut off their supply of solar power.
* The Strangers from ''[[Dark City]]'' die when exposed to sunlight, so they keep the titular city in a constant state of night.
* ''[[The Day the Earth Froze]]'' (based on ''[[The Kalevala]]'', seen on ''[[MST3KMystery Science Theater 3000]]'') has the witch Louhi cause this by stealing the Sun, resulting in a neverending winter night.
* Subverted in ''[[Thirty30 Days of Night]]'', in that the vampires don't cause the absence of sun, they take advantage of the fact that it's naturally absent.
 
 
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== Literature ==
* In [[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]], one of the ten plagues God punishes Egypt with in Exodus is darkness.
** Hell has a literal example of this trope.
* ''[[Black Jewels|Heir to the Shadows]]'' sees [[Mary Sue|Jaenelle]] create an ''illusion'' of this in order to force the government to let her stay with her guardian.
* In [[Diane Duane]]'s ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series, [[I Have Many Names|one]] of the villain's names is Starsnuffer [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|for a reason]].
* In [[Simon R. Green]]'s ''[[Blue Moon Rising]]'', the titular [[Bad Moon Rising|evil moon]] also brings with it a side order of eternal night.
* The ultimate goal of the vampire bats in ''Sunwing'' is to free their god from imprisonment and bring about eternal night.
* [[The Night Land]]: Millions of years in the future, the sun has burned out and all of the other stars in the universe are dead as well. The last few million humans still alive stay warm by means of the the "Earth Current," or geothermal heat.
* Garth Nix's [[The Seventh Tower]] series: unusually, done by the good guys in backstory to wipe out a [[Living Shadow|race of evil shadows]]; without light, there are no shadows. The villains want to ''restore'' the sun, and the heroes have to stop them.
* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Have Space Suit - Will Travel]]'', the intergalactic security council decides to punish a race by sending the race's planet to a separate universe...without their sun. Earth {{spoiler|avoids this fate only by the hero's [[Patrick Stewart Speech]] and actions}}.
* In ''[[Stationery Voyagers]]'', Varikton plans to do this...''[[Large Ham|muellexically]]''!
** And in ''Ciem Tomorrow'', follow-up to the [[Ciem Webcomic Series]], the Meethlites actually succeed at creating an eternal night in Gerosha.
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*** The first time he knocked down the Two Lamps, which [[Colony Drop|alters the ''geography'']]. The [[Fantasy Pantheon|Ainur]] are the only sapients existent then (This was before the Awakenings of Elves and Men), and they end up moving to a different continent.
*** Later, after the Awakening of the Elves, he kills the the Two Trees, the new light sources, and [[Eldritch Abomination|Ungoliant]] spreads clouds of "Unlight" which hide the stars. The effects probably wouldn't have been quite so bad if Morgorth hadn't previously been sowing dissent among the Noldor, and/or hadn't {{spoiler|stolen the Silmarils.}} During the period of darkness following that, we have, in short order: the Oath of Fëanor, the (first) Kinslaying, the Declaration of the Doom of the Noldor, the Burning of the Ships at Losgar, and the Crossing of the Grinding Ice (after which [[Weird Moon|the moon rises for the first time]]).
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', a character tells about the [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|Long Night]] back in the [[Age Of Myths]], which lasted a generation when [[Eldritch Abomination|The Others]] almost overran all of Westeros. And now, they're rising again...
* An old folk story, adapted as ''The Moon in Swampland'' by M.P. Robertson, reverses the trope to have the Moon vanish, but with a similar effect. The Moon visits a swamp out of curiosity about the world below, where she's quickly captured, chained up and thrown into a sealed well by the bogies. Once her light's gone, they completely rule the night; every sunset ushers in hours of horror for the miserable humans, until a hero returns the world to normal by finding and freeing her.
* Let's not forget the classic: ''Darkness'' by [[Lord Byron]]. Long story short, society collapses as all people panic and [[Kill'Em All|unsuccessfully]] try to save themselves. Biblical imagery is repeatedly introduced, but any related tropes are deconstructed, and the overall tone is one of cynicism.
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* [[Robin Jarvis]]' ''The Deptford Mice'': {{spoiler|Jupiter intends to put out the sun and cause eternal winter}}.
* In Fritz Leiber's story "A Pail Of Air", Earth has frozen over after being pulled out of its orbit and cast into deep space.
* Where [[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]] mentions [[Total Eclipse of the Plot|an anomalous eclipse]] following the crucifixion, ''[[The Book of Mormon (Literaturenovel)|The Book of Mormon]]'' goes it one better and drops the American continents into three days of darkness ([[Foreshadowing|as was previously prophecied]] by [[Heel Face Turn|Samuel the Lamanite]]).
* In '[[The Sword of Shannara]]' the [[Big Bad|Warlock Lord]] turns the Northland into this.
* ''Nightfall'' by [[Isaac Asimov]] depicts a world with several suns, where normal night never falls and people are completely unaccustomed to darkness. Which is why, when every two thousand years total solar eclipse occurs, the ensuing darkness drives everybody insane and makes them burn down their cities in a desperate craving for light. How long the eclipse actually lasts is unknown, but apparently everybody decides, that [[The Night That Never Ends]] has fallen.
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== Live [[Action TV]] ==
* In ''[[Angel (TV)|Angel]]'', The Beast blocked out the sun over Los Angeles, giving vampires and other demons a chance to come out and play without worrying about their curfew. After a few days or weeks of this, L.A. begins to look distinctly [[After the End]][[Buffy-Speak|ish]]. If not for [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|Angelus]], the block would have spread all over the world.
* In ''[[Tin Man (TV series)|Tin Man]]'' the [[Wicked Witch]] planned on locking the suns behind the moon during a solar eclipse.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has used this trope a couple of times:
** The Doctor, Martha, and Jack travel to the end of the universe in "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S3 E11 Utopia|Utopia]]". All the stars have burned out by then.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade (Tabletop Game)|Vampire: The Masquerade]]'''s "Crucible of God" Gehenna scenario features {{spoiler|the Antediluvian/ancestor of the Clan Lasombra blanketing the Earth in darkness for three weeks while it consumes its childer/descendants. No explanation is given as to how or why the darkness abates}}.
** During The Week Of Nightmares, Kuei-Jin elders created a supernatural storm to shield them from the sun to battle Ravana, the Antediluvian ancestor of the Clan Ravnos -- who was practically a vampire-god at this point. Then the Technocracy bombed them all, killing everyone who joined the battle; werewolves, Kuei-Jin and their ''own'' Agents. After storm dissipated, they scorched Ravana with orbital mirrors, a [[Fantastic Nuke|spirit nuke]] and then some more end-world scenario weapons. The battle damaged the reality so much that it started the events that nearly ended the world. Perhaps letting the night from never ending was the better idea in the long run?
* In ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'':
** The dual plane of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor switches between the two settings every few decades. Lorwyn never gets darker than dusk, while Shadowmoor never quite sees dawn. It's also very unpleasant, since most of the creatures that were nice in Lorwyn are monstrous in Shadowmoor.
** The plane of Diraden (inspired in part by Shadowmoor) in ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering (Tabletop Game)/The Purifying Fire|The Purifying Fire]]'' was put under a curse of eternal night by the evil vampire [[Evil Overlord|Prince Velrav]].
 
 
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* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: [[The Wind Waker]]'', Ganondorf casts a curse onto the Great Sea that [http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Endless_Night prevents dawn from ever coming.] Fortunately, this does Link more good than bad, as it ensures that Link will always get Nayru's Pearl first due to the pirates taking time off at Windfall Island until morning. This same curse is also used in a more-localized fashion in the Forsaken Fortress, Ganondorf's base of operations. {{spoiler|When Ganondorf abandons the joint to go after Zelda, however, the curse is lifted there, as well.}}
* ''[[Touhou Project|Imperishable Night]]'' sees the fugitive Lunarians in Gensokyo using powerful magic to seal the land from their home world, with a false moon placed in the artifical sky created as part of the spell. This causes lots of problems for humans and youkai alike, which in turn requires the heroines to help solve the problem.
** Subverted big time; The Night That Never Ends is ''[[What the Hell, Hero?|caused by your heroines]]'' to buy time. The false moon only appears at night, and if you fail to reach the source of the problem and fix it before the supposed time for dawn, [[Nonstandard Game Over|the game ends]]. Also, Keine Kamishirasawa (who defends the humans) and either one of Reimu Hakurei (who enforces law) or Marisa Kirisame (who is pissed off with your unnatural magic) will fight you to stop your heroines' madman scheme. [[Let's You and Him Fight|Let's You And Him Fight]], definitely. [[All There in the Manual|Supplemental material]] even indicates that most people in the land were completely unaware of the true threat and just assume the heroines actually solved the problem of the unending night.
** In fact, during the True Final Battle, once you defeat [[Big Bad|Kaguya]], she uses her power over "eternity" to tear apart your spell causing the imperishable night. Every time you die to a section of her final spell card, the time advances 30 minutes. If it reaches 5:00 during that time, the sun rises and the game ends. That doesn't cause a bad end, but losing all your lives during her stage will speed time all the way to 5:00 in one go and triggers the bad end, presumably due to her power. [[Cue the Sun]] is subverted big-time here.
** Let's not forget the original Windows Touhou game, ''Embodiment of Scarlet Devil'', where [[Big Bad]] Remilia Scarlet's scheme was to block out the sun with a thick red mist, just so she could go outside whenever she wanted (she's a vampire).
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* This has already happened in ''[[Nintendo Wars|Advance Wars: Days of Ruin]]'': the meteorite impact kicked up a ton of dust which blotted out the sun.
* [[Master of Magic]] has a spell that does this. Yes, you can cast it. It's not as dramatic as it sounds though...
* In ''[[Final Fantasy III (Video Game)|Final Fantasy III]]'', Xande sinks most of the world into perpetual darkness and suspended animation because he does not wish to die after being [[Blessed Withwith Suck|blessed with mortality]].
* Partly used in ''[[Okami]]'' {{spoiler|during the 'Day of Darkness', when the monsters get stronger}}. [[Big Badass Wolf|Amaterasu]] being the [[Physical God|sun]], may also have something to do with it.
* In ''[[Quest for Glory IV]]'', the vampire [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] want to release [[Eldritch Abomination|Avoozl the Dark One]] in order to permanently cloak the world in the [[Title Drop|eponymous]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|Shadows of Darkness]].
* The Crows in ''[[Billy Hatcher and Thethe Giant Egg]]'' have already succeeded in bringing eternal night to Morning Land. Billy's job is to bring the day back.
* A neverending winter night is the setting of ''[[Arx Fatalis]]''. Luckily, sun was slowly dimming for five years, giving the population enough time to move underground. In the end, it's revealed that {{spoiler|sun is obscured by a giant space dust cloud and is barely visible even out of the atmosphere}}.
* In ''[[Ninety -Nine Nights]]'', the King of Ninety-Nine Nights is so named because during his last reign he caused darkness to fall for ninety-nine straight days.
* ''[[The Legend of Spyro]]: The Eternal Night''. It's right there in the title.
* In ''[[Dark Souls]]'', the First Flame that originally brought forth life is slowly dying, and sunlight is dying with it. There are already regions of the world that are covered in permanent darkness {{spoiler|such as Anor Londo, which only looks sunlit thanks to an illusion.}} While the ostensible goal of the Chosen Undead is to rekindle the First Flame, {{spoiler|the Primordial Serpent Darkstalker Kaathe}} claims that The Night That Never Ends [[Dark Is Not Evil|won't necessarily be a bad thing for everyone in the long run.]]
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== Web Original ==
* The dark future in [[Spes Phthisica (Literature)|Spes Phthisica]]: "a carmine ember that could once have been a sun burns coldly in the sky, giving scarcely any light or warmth."
* [[Terramirum]] Starts with the sun imploding and the moon getting blown away, and works from there.
 
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[My Little Pony]]'': The [[Trope Namer]]. Causing neverending night was the plan of the bad guy in the very first My Little Pony animated adaption, a television special from 1984. Said bad guy, an demonic-looking centaur, quotes the Trope name word by word.
** This is also the plot of the [[Big Bad]] in the pilot episode of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' (a clear shout out to the 1984 special:
{{quote| '''Nightmare Moon''': Remember this day, little ponies, for it was your last. From this moment forth, THE NIGHT. WILL LAST. '''FOREVER'''!!!}}
*** Because of the [[Painting the Frost Onon Windows|hands-on nature]] of... well, nature in this series, some fans have grossly underestimated the threat level of this. [[Word of God]] has made clear, however, that this ''would'' cause the death of every living thing in Equestria, by starvation if nothing else.
*** The Fandom has taken this to new, terrifying extremes of terror and [[Fridge Logic]]. The Pony Psychology series has an entire chapter of [[What the Hell, Hero?]] dedicated to Luna confronting Celestia over this, and Celestia painting the horror for her. In addition, several webcomics portray in gruesome detail just what a slow death eternal night would be.
* When ''[[The Emperor's New Groove (Disney)|The Emperor's New Groove]]'' was in its conceptual stages and called ''The Kingdom of the Sun'', Yzma's original plan involved summoning an [[Eldritch Abomination]] to snuff out the sun and plunge the kingdom into eternal darkness.
** She even got [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374xW4zZbZA a great song] about it.
* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls (Animation)|The Powerpuff Girls]]'', "Boogie Frights": the Boogie Man blocks the sun with a giant mirror ball so that monsters can stay outside forever.
* ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'' two-part season cliffhanger ''Who Shot Mr Burns?'' had Mr Burns funding the construction of a sun-blocking device in order to force increased energy consumption by the town... just one of the many reasons people had to shoot him.
* Happens in ''[[Rock -a -Doodle]]''... sort of?
** Not exactly night, but the sun does go into hiding, and the weather is perpetually gray, rainy and miserable, resulting in dangerous flooding and other nastiness.
* Thanks to ''[[TMNTTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003|TMNT: Fast Forward]]'' [[Big Bad]] Sh'Okanabo and his progeny's [[Weaksauce Weakness|weaksauce]] aversion to Earth's sun, part of his ultimate plan for world domination involved preventing the sun from reaching Earth via a series of satellites. It worked, too...for a few minutes.
* Samhain attempts to bring this about (along with eternal Halloween) in an episode of ''[[The Real Ghostbusters (Animation)|The Real Ghostbusters]]''.
 
 
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