There Will Come Soft Rains/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Fridge Logic: If the family falls out of bed first thing in the morning, how long has it been since the bomb hit?
    • Presumably the makers of the short film decided that we saw it the day after the bomb went off, while they were sleeping. But that just raises further questions.
    • Also from the short: Why does the robot send them to work on New Year's Eve?
    • It doesn't. The part where it sends them to work is in the beginning, in August. The New Year's scene was to show that even after a few months, the robot was still performing it's duties.
    • If they were close enough to the blast to be reduced to ashes in the animated short, how were other things like the doll, blanket, and watch not scorched as well? Additionally, the EMP pulse from the blast should have severely messed with the house-bot, if not destroyed it entirely.
  • Fridge Horror: The family's silhouettes show them in the garden, working, playing- they had no idea about the bomb.
  • Nightmare Fuel: All that is left of the children is their silhouettes against the wall. That actually happened in Hiroshima.
    • The animated adaptation takes a different turn. The family, having been reduced to ashes by nuclear radiation, is poured out of their beds by the house going through its morning routine. This is especially creepy in the children's room, where the little girl's doll is buried by the growing pile of her ashes.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: If you support nuclear weapons after reading this story, you have a will of iron.
  • Tear Jerker
    • There are no humans left. The children, mothers, fathers, every human is gone because of a nuclear bomb. All that's left is the house and the dog. The dog is covered in sores and is reduced to nothing but rotting flesh, but is still barely alive as it runs frenzied around the house until it lays down and dies.
      • And then it goes into the incinerator.
    • At the end of the animated short, the bird is desperately trying to fly through the fake window. There's nowhere else for it to go.