King in the Mountain: Difference between revisions

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* [[King Arthur]] in Avalon, and Merlin in the oak. Said to come back when England is in its hour of most need. Still hasn't shown up, despite the threats of the Spanish Armada, Napoleon and [[Those Wacky Nazis]].

** Not to speak of the successful invasions by the Angles and Saxons, and later by Danish and finally by the Normans.

* Played with in ''[[The Five Star Stories]]''. The legendary warrior king Colus III really is dead, but his [[Humongous Mecha]] and [[Artificial Human]] partner Clotho are sealed away waiting for a worthy descendant of the king to use them in his nation's time of need.

 

* [[Captain America (comics)|Captain America]], who slept for X<ref>Sliding timescale means that X=the amount of time between 1945 and about ten to fifteen years ago</ref> years until our greatest need...

* In a [[Iron Man]] story featuring [[Doctor Doom]] and [[Time Travel]], Stark and Doom find themselves in a future England (this was a sequel to a earlier storyline that had seen the same two characters go back to Arthurian times). Merlin is back, as is Arthur. Only due to genetic engineering and such Arthur was literally reborn to two Yuppie Britons and so is a spoiled young brat. So guess who has to take his place?

== [[Eastern Animation]] ==

* ''[[Suur Toll]]'', being an animation of the myth of Toell The Great, has his decapitated head announce that he will one day return to protect Saaremaa, but without those troublesome kids mucking it up.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In the director's cut of ''[[Evil Dead|Army of Darkness]]'', Ash does this, complete with his car and boomstick, but wakes up 1000 years later than planned and misses humanity's demise.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* The Koryfonic Empire from ''[[The Magids|Deep Secret]]'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]] has this as a plot point; the emperor in question disappeared rather than being buried under a mountain, and reappears at the end of the book. [[Diana Wynne Jones]] also uses this trope in ''[[A Tale of Time City]]'' with the sleeping Faber John inside Time City.

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''Orion Shall Rise'', the line "Orion shall rise" is used by many citizens of a subjugated land. This trope is invoked to explain their superstition. {{spoiler|In reality, they're talking about the restarting of a secret program codenamed "Orion". This was to ensure that any leaks would be attributed to the superstition, helping cover up the program. Given [[wikipedia:Orion (nuclear propulsion)|what the Orion Project is]], the secrecy is understandable.}}

* In the ''[[Robin Hobb|Farseer Trilogy]]'', legends state that King Wisdom awakened the Elderlings to defend the Six Dutchies. He vanished afterwards, but will return again to save the land. After King Verity does the same to end the Red Ship war, the same legends form around him.

** ''[[That Hideous Strength]]'': the fact that Merlin is resting beneath Bragdon Wood is a major plot point, and both factions wish to recruit the reawakened wizard to their side.

** ''[[The Silver Chair]]'': we meet the Giant Time, who is lying asleep underground. This one's a subversion, though, as when he wakes up in ''[[The Last Battle]]'' it's a sign of the end of the world. "When he slept he was called Time. Now he is awake he will have another name." Presumably, "Eternity."

* One of the ''[[Retief]]'' stories did a twist on this: the sleeping "kings" were all over their home planet, in plain sight, looking like heroic statues, '''and''' all the planet's less-brawny natives knew it, and knew how to awaken them. It just took a few whiffs of a natural resource that'd become rare long ago, a particular gas, and their '''immortal''' metabolisms would "start ticking over" enough for them to be consulted on various matters. Then hostile aliens attacked ... but it turned out the invaders '''exhaled''' plenty of that special gas. They accidentally revived a horde of [[Badass]]es who proceeded to carry the invaders around as life-support systems. "Your invasion is a great success ... but this time the invadees are the winners."

 

* In ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', there's a legend like this surrounding the Klingon imperial founder Kahless. In an attempted power grab, a group of monks make a clone of him and claim that he's returned.

* Subverted in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial ''Battlefield'': it's implied that the King Arthur of a parallel universe is doing this on the main Whoniverse Earth, but {{spoiler|it turns out he was dead all along and the story that he would return was just propaganda}}.

* In ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' Duncan became this in his hometown after his first fight as an immortal where he [[Not Quite Dead|"killed"]] the immortal Kanwulf who was attacking his clan. These events started a legend that Duncan Macleod would return whenever his hometown, Glenfinnan was in trouble. When Kanwulf returned some time later, Duncan [[Killed Off for Real|Kills him off for real.]]

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

*** During the Eurowars in 2032, a German mercenary officer named Friedrich von Stauffen led the defense against an Islamic invasion, first made himself known and hired his first soldiers at Bad Frankenhausen near Frederick's tomb.

*** A group of Neo-Nazis was waiting for Frederick's return near his tomb. One day the door opened and a troll (variant metahuman) walked out. The Neo-Nazis killed him for not being a normal human. Apparently in life Barbarossa had the metagene that would make him a troll but it only expressed itself (due to the return of magic) after his resurrection.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* After stopping the Xen Invasion, [[Half Life|Gordon Freeman]] spends 20 years floating in space-time limbo courtesy of the G-Man, and as a result misses out on the subjugation of Earth by the Combine Empire. In the meantime, word of this [[Meaningful Name|Free Man]]'s deeds [[Shrouded in Myth|have grown to mythic proportions]], to the point that news of his return is enough to spark humanity's uprising against the Combine.

* ''[[Breath of Fire 4]]'' subverted it to the point of deconstruction with Fou-lu. He was meant to be this trope if things goes as planned, if the Fou Empire (which he founded) wasn't corrupted to the point of wanting him ''dead''. Instead, Fou-lu's ''entire'' storyline in the game can be best described as "What Happens When A Country's Government Sees The Return Of Its King in the Mountain As An [[Unwanted Revival]]". [[It Got Worse|It goes poorly for all involved]].

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[The Dreamland Chronicles]]'': Keeping [[King Arthur]] alive but out of the way is [https://web.archive.org/web/20120729144322/http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/the-dreamland-chronicles/chapter-15/page-1048/ crucial to Nicodemus].

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In ''[[X-Men: Evolution]]'''s take on [[Captain America (comics)]]'s origin, his role as a King in the Mountain is made even more explicit. Instead of being accidentally frozen in an iceberg and presumed dead for years, he's intentionally placed in cryogenic sleep when it turns out that the super-soldier serum is slowly killing him. The implication is that he will be revived to fight again when S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists find a way to cure him.

* In ''[[The Boondocks]]'', Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is revealed to be this, awakening from a coma 40-odd years after being shot. In a pretty dark subversion of the trope, he turns out to be pretty disappointed with the direction that African-American culture has gone in his absence.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Royalty and Nobility Tropes]]

[[Category:Death Tropes]]

[[Category:Sealed Index in A Can]]

[[Category:Older Than Print]]