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{{trope}}
[[File:Pepper&carrot empathic environment.png|frame|link=Pepper&Carrot|For some reason, rain is almost ''never'' a good sign in any piece of media.]]
{{quote|''Woah, is it me, or does the sky look really dark and ominous? [[Lampshade Hanging|As if it's foreshadowing events which will have a negative impact on our lives.]]"''|'''Phineas''', ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]''}}
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See also [[Fisher King]] and [[Environmental Symbolism]]. For a living, even sapient environment see [[Genius Loci]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' describes the increased wind during Kenshin's fights as "the swordsman's spirit" affecting the environment. Appropriately, when Shishio gets intense, any nearby flames respond in a similar way.
* At the end of ''[[Trigun]]'', Vash's defeat of Knives seems to allow Meryl and Millie to finally strike water, resulting in a reasonable facsimile of rain.
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* The ''[[Naruto]]''-verse is pretty much an empathic universe. It's many instances of [[Dramatic Wind]] aside, if it's overcast or starts raining in the otherwise perpetually sunny Fire Country, it usually means someone we're supposed to root for is either dead or being mourned.
* [[Bleach]] is practically made of this trope. So much so that rain has become an integral part of the fandom.
* In [[
* [[.hack//Sign]] has one of these which {{spoiler|starts out as a "sanctuary" for the protagonist, and changes with his state of mind}}.
* Being set in a [[Crapsack World]], the environment of ''[[Claymore]]'' is almost always cloudy, complexions ranging from gray to even sickly gray-green.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* During the "Brief Lives" story arc, [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[The
== Comics ==▼
▲* During the "Brief Lives" story arc, [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[The Sandman|Sandman]]'' series shows the protagonist being mopey after the end of his latest romance, and his kingdom—the Dreaming—responding to his mood by raining for weeks on end. He's so entrenched in his misery that he fails to notice the flooding of his subjects' homes.
** Lampshaded by Marv the Pumpkinhead when he says "And here comes the rain, right on cue."
* Storm of the [[X-Men]] quite literally has an empathic environment; the weather shifts based off her moods due to her power over weather. In fact, she has to control her moods in order to prevent them from affecting the weather adversely.
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* In ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'', it rains the whole time that [[Femme Fatale|Envy]] is in Toronto, and the rain ends the moment she gets on the cab to the airport.
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* The [[Battle in the Rain|sudden thunderstorm]] at the tail end of the Siege of Crassus in the ''[[Halo]]'' fanfic ''[[Enemy of My Enemy (Fanfic)|
* To establish the [[Rouge Angles of Satin|goffik]] tone of the story, every time the weather is mentioned in ''[[My Immortal]]'', it is snowing and raining. [[Mind Screw|At the same time.]]▼
== [[
▲* The [[Battle in the Rain|sudden thunderstorm]] at the tail end of the [[Enemy of My Enemy (Fanfic)|Siege of Crassus]], the first rain in a decade.
▲* To establish the [[Rouge Angles of Satin|goffik]] tone of the story, every time the weather is mentioned in [[My Immortal]], it is snowing and raining. [[Mind Screw|At the same time.]]
* [[German Expressionism]], like ''[[The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]]'' '''''revel''''' in this Trope.
* [[Disney]] is notorious for this in their animated canon. It happens in every one of their films! Seriously!
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* Occurs in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: At World's End'', as a thunderstorm and maelstrom form during the battle between ''The Black Pearl'' and ''The Flying Dutchman''. Justified, because the sea-goddess Calypso had been freed from her human shell immediately beforehand, and everyone was expecting her to be angry over her imprisonment.
* Popular in the [[Western]] genre, particularly ''[[The Proposition]]''.
* ''Literally'' in ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black
{{quote|'''Agent K:''' [Ever notice] when you get sad it always seems to rain.
'''Laura:''' Lots of people get sad when it rains!
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* Played very straight in 2003's ''[[Peter Pan]]'', in which Neverland would directly correspond to Peter's moods and emotions - when he's sad, it snows, when he's happy, the aurora lights up the sky. It goes so far that when Captain Hook notices that the sun is shining after a long spell of rain, he leaps up and cries: "he's back!"
* When Rob is dumped by Charlie in the film version of ''[[High Fidelity]],'' he falls apart, and the weather matches his breakdown with heavy rain and thunder.
* The lights in the Facebook office in ''[[The Social Network]]'' began to go out when Mark
* Played for laughs in ''[[The Wizard of Speed and Time (film)|The Wizard of Speed and Time]]'': when Mike and Brian are filming the "Time" segment of the [[Show Within a Show|film-within-the-film]] in Mike's garage, all manner of things -- all the way up to an incipient earthquake -- seem to happen in response to Mike and his comments.
{{quote|'''Mike:''' It could be worse: we could be trying to film this in an earthquake.
''(The set begins to shake.)''
'''Mike:''' Or calm weather! Perfectly calm...
''(The shaking stops.)''}}
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* It is a trope essential to Gothic literature and the Romantic movement. You can find it in all sorts of works, from [[wikipedia:Caspar David Friedrich|Caspar David Friedrich]]'s bleak, moody landscapes to [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]]'s ''The Fall of the House of Usher''.
* Some [[Stephen King]] novels have a tendency to display fearsome weather patterns that parallel the steady build towards whatever climactic conflict will finish off the story. Examples include the cataclysmic thunderstorms of ''[[IT]]'' and ''[[Bag of Bones]]'' and the blizzard in ''[[The Shining]]''.
* The [[Discworld]] country of [[
** To balance this out, whenever Lord Vetinari wants to demonstrate the Wonders of Urban Development and other benefits of living in Ankh-Morpork, there is either thick fog blocking the view or a pissing dog, graffiti, or a drunken dwarf nearby. Apparently this man generates an anti-Emphatic Environment field—when he is being assaulted, it's either a beautiful day or merely a little cloudy.
** Also, in ''[[The Truth]]'', Otto Chriek, Vampire (but he [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampires|swore off the sticky stuff]] and now much prefers a mug of cocoa and a singsong, my vord yes.) mourns this
** Granny Weatherwax's ire is known to cause any and all natural noises to stop in their tracks and can, indeed, cause empathic weather on top of it. Even though Granny's a witch, these events seem to occur without her consciously making them so. (Being skilled in headology, that's just what she wants you to think.)
** There's also the "gnarly ground" mentioned in ''[[
* If there's a heat wave (or other unpleasant weather pattern) at the start of a crime wave, it will be relieved when the crime is solved.
** The heat waves in ''Cat of Many Tails'' and ''Cop Hater''.
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* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[A Midsummer Tempest]]'', Jennifer complains of the lack of this: when Prince Rupert observed that Parliament might order him executed, it was in a raging storm, but the next morning is a bright sunshiny day, although he is still in mortal danger.
* The final battle of [[David Eddings]]' ''[[The Belgariad]]'' took place under a storm. As the same band of [[True Companions]] approaches the climax of the sequel series, ''[[The Malloreon]]'', [[Lovable Rogue]] Silk notices the clouds gather and [[Lampshade Hanging|wonders aloud why these things can't be allowed to happen when it's nice out]].
* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s ''[[Warhammer
* As the ten characters are whittled down by the murderer in ''[[Ten Little Indians|And Then There Were None]]'', the worsening weather coincides with the worsening situation on the island.
* Used in ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'', where the climax between Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby takes places on a brutally hot day, but the chilly weather on the following day represents the end of Gatsby and Daisy's romance.
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* In the ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' series, the night sky tends to cloud over and become stormy at Gatherings when there is arguing. The cats believe that their warrior ancestors are controlling the weather and expressing their displeasure, but one medicine cat does point out that sometimes a storm is just a storm.
* In ''[[Count and Countess]]'', during one particularly harrowing but cathartic scene, it begins raining when a teenage Vlad Dracula has just escaped a grueling life as a [[Child Soldiers|child soldier]] and is on his way home for the first time in years.
* Played entirely straight for most of ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]'' series, with the rising of the Dark accompanied by blizzards and cold, a tornado, and a great deal of storms, shadow, and lightning in general. But on at least one occasion, this is subverted—the day on which the harp must be played to wake the Sleepers, when the power of the Grey King is at its height and crushing Will with his malevolence...it's the most beautiful, peaceful, sunny day you could imagine.
* The rain at the end of ''[[Someone Else's
▲== Live Action TV ==
* In ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', "Terrorform", a psi-moon that Rimmer and Kryten crash into latches onto Rimmer's personality and emotions, creating a world with frogs that croak "useless", [[I Don't Like the Sound of That Place|places that have names to run away from really fast]], beasts named after his negative attributes... not to mention a graveyard for certain of his positive attributes. {{spoiler|Rimmer's colleagues have to put him in a happy and self-confident state, which is then reflected in the environment, long enough for them all to escape -- after which they cheerfully admit that they were lying about how likeable he was.}}
* In an episode of ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' when Miley lost an anklet her mother gave her, the weather in Hawai'i promptly turned sour. When Robbie Ray gives a speech telling her how her mother is always with her, [[Magic Feather|anklet or no]], the weather promptly turns gorgeous again.
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* A classic episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'' had Mulder and Scully investigating a swindler who claimed to be able to make it rain (and sold this skill to drought-struck communities). Soon enough, they discover the man's ex-wife believes she has a sort of antagonistic version of this trope in effect (the sky seemed to cry on her wedding day, and the clouds laughed at her when she got divorced) and that is behind her ex-husband's apparent abilities. In fact, {{spoiler|she has a nerdy secret admirer who ''actually'' has this relationship with the weather, it reflected ''his'' moods when she married another man and when she finally left that guy. He had been affecting the weather for her ex's business out of guilt}}.
* In the ''[[Dungeons
==
* The play ''[[12 Angry Men]]'' begins with all but one juror agreeing to a guilty verdict on a very hot day in a courthouse with no air conditioning. But as the show goes on the environment becomes more and more bearable finally culminating in a rainstorm when {{spoiler|the jurors decide on a not guilty verdict.}}▼
▲* In the ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons Dragons]] 3.0 ''Manual of the Planes'', one of the dream realms described in the appendix is literally this way. This permanent dream realm held a child who was eternally young, and the land responded to her desires, turning bright and sunny when she was happy, stormy when she was angry, windy and wet when she was sad, etc. The only other permanent resident was a large dragon who knew the truth: {{spoiler|the girl was the last survivor of a doomed [[Out-of-Genre Experience|space colonization effort]]. Her ship had crashed, and her stasis pod was [[Fate Worse Than Death|left running on the surface of some unknown, airless, alien world forever]]. Or at least until the power fails.}}
* The script of ''[[Little Shop of Horrors (theater)|Little Shop of Horrors]]'' calls for a dramatic sunset to add "Wagnerian splendor" to the scene in which {{spoiler|Seymour feeds Audrey's dead body to the plant}}. Further environment empathy is implied by the line "Feel the sturm und drang in the air" in the title song.▼
== [[Video Games]] ==
▲* The play [[12 Angry Men]] begins with all but one juror agreeing to a guilty verdict on a very hot day in a courthouse with no air conditioning. But as the show goes on the environment becomes more and more bearable finally culminating in a rainstorm when {{spoiler|the jurors decide on a not guilty verdict.}}
▲* The script of ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'' calls for a dramatic sunset to add "Wagnerian splendor" to the scene in which {{spoiler|Seymour feeds Audrey's dead body to the plant}}. Further environment empathy is implied by the line "Feel the sturm und drang in the air" in the title song.
▲== Video Games ==
* The sky in ''[[Infamous (video game series)|In Famous]]'' takes colour depending on your karmic path. Good gives you a nice sunny day, evil results in [[Red Sky, Take Warning]].
* The action of ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' happens during one of the worst snowstorms that New York City has ever seen, a storm that only abates after Max takes down the one behind the murder of his family.
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* ''[[Mitsumete Knight]]'' loves this trope. Going on War Battles? Welcome to an arid setting with gloomy and sinister weather! Fighting the fearsome leader of the Enemy Generals at the end of the game? You'll be met with a hurricane {{spoiler|which is even more violent, with [[Battle in the Rain|rain pouring hard]] and strong [[Dramatic Wind]], when fighting him in his unmasked version}}! Going on sinister-looking places for dates, such as the Ruins, the Catacombs, or the Sieger Cannons? Cue the lack of music and [[Dramatic Wind]]!
* At the end of ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'', {{spoiler|If you choose to destroy the collector's base, the giant glowing globe behind the Illusive Man's office will glow blue {Paragon}, but if you decide to hand it over to him, it will glow red {Renegade}.}}
* The sky is dark and overcast for the last few missions of ''[[Ace Combat Zero:
* Played with in ''[[Touhou]]'' [[Fighting Game]] ''Scarlet Weather Rhapsody'', where characters begin manifesting localized weather that represents a poetic interpretation of their personality.
* The very minute the Shadow Queen in [[Paper Mario]] The Thousand Year Door is revived the entire world instantly becomes night, even above the clouds. Same thing happens with the Dark Star in [[Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story]], ominous blue/purple storm clouds form over the castle and a creepy fog descends over the battle field.
▲== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In [https://web.archive.org/web/20130830174048/http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0058.html this strip] of ''[[Erfworld]]'', watch the color of the sky in the panels that isolate a single character.▼
▲* In [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0058.html this strip] of ''[[Erfworld]]'', watch the color of the sky in the panels that isolate a single character.
* Inverted in ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'': most of the plot occurs in a dark, drab school, but the two tearjerker scenes ({{spoiler|Annie crying over her mother's death, and Kat's final minutes with Alistair}}) occur in bright, sunlit environs.
** Going one further, the character Zimmy projects some sort of reality-warping field as a result of [[Power Incontinence]] which gives her a ghastly appearance and subjects her to constant, nightmarish hallucinations which at their worst may even supplant reality, pulling her and those around her into her personal [[Dark World]]. So, when is the one time when her power cools off, she starts to look like a normal human being, and she appears to experience genuine happiness? ''While getting soaked to the skin, standing in the pouring rain during a thunderstorm at night''.
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* In the episode "Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', Rainbow Dash is moping over being upstaged by the titular superhero by lounging around on one grey cloud in the middle of a sunny day. Justified in that moving clouds around is actually Rainbow's job, and she presumably found a raincloud and dragged it into place just to mope on.
** Another episode, "Hearth's Warming Eve", features a ''literal'' Empathic Environment - the mysterious blizzard is created by giant horse-creatures called Windigos that feed off of anger and hate.
* Parodied with Native American John Redcorn in ''[[King of the Hill]]''. Whenever he starts talking about his culture, his hair moves as if there's wind, even when he's inside.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Weather and Environment]]
[[Category:Harbinger of Asskicking]]
[[Category:Spectacle]]
[[Category:Precipitation Index]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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