History Main / AFoggyDayInLondonTown

->''"A foggy day in London Town\\
Had me low and had me down\\
I viewed the morning with alarm\\
The British Museum had lost its charm\\
How long, I wondered, could this thing last?\\
But the age of miracles hadn't passed,\\
For, suddenly, I saw you there\\
And through foggy London Town\\
The sun was shining everywhere."''
-->--"A Foggy Day in London Town" by Music/GeorgeGershwin

Since then the infamous thick and toxic ''London fog'' has disappeared in RealLife (although London's air quality is still rather poor even in 2017) and both in popular culture too, making this a DeadHorseTrope. Still, in older stories, comics, films and novels it can occasionally turn up, as well in tales set in VictorianLondon, especially ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' and UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper and JackTheRipOff variants, or even during TheEdwardianEra, where the fog is pretty much an aesthetic necessity.

* Bonneton in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'' is heavily based on England and has very thick smog all over the place.

* ''Series/TheCrown2016'' episode "Act of God" depicts the Great Smog.

TruthInTelevision for many decades. London fog was often so thick it was nicknamed ''pea soup'', because of the greenish tinge. If you could see 10 feet in front of you in those days you were lucky; there are even reports of people falling into the Thames as a result, and sometimes the air and smell was so bad that people wore mouth masks. As you might expect, this wasn't really true "fog" (which, as [[Creator/EddieIzzard an Englishman in San Francisco]] once commented, while it can ''move'' quickly, but is rarely actually ''that'' bad for visibility or smell), but rather a product of both fog and air pollution--that is to say, smog (="smoke"+"fog"). London, lying as it does in a river valley by a big river and very close to where it turns into an estuary, is rather humid and susceptible to actual fog, but the real concern comes when the smoke from all the coal fires in London up until the middle of the 20th century mixes with the fog, you get a new substance that you can't see through and smells vile. Domestic coal fires were the major contributory factor; Londoners had burned coal to heat their homes and businesses since at least the 17th century (there are plenty of reports from that time of how horrid the London air is from all the smoke), but the problem got especially bad after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, when all the good quality coal was being sold for export to try and pay off the war debt, leaving Britons to burn the low quality, sulphurous coal sold cheaply onto the domestic market. Another reason for the fog's existence were the factory smokes, which provided an awful smell too. The toxicity of this fog only came to light in 1952, when 4,000 people inhaled the fumes, got sick afterwards and died as a result. From that moment on the British government ordered restrictions to be made in the ''Clean Air Act 1956'', so that the amount of factory fog would be drastically reduced. (See also here for more info:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog ) It took some time for this to fully take hold; another "Great Smog" came along in 1957 (nowhere near as bad as 1952, but still horrible).

* ''Series/TheCrown'' episode "Act of God" depicts the Great Smog.

* The trope is namechecked by the [[http://members.aon.at/~ehesch1/fl/fl.htm "Foggy London"]] utility, which displays the internal state of the ZXSpectrum game ''Sherlock'' while a game is played.

A subtrope of BritishWeather.

!Examples:

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* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}''. In ''Recap/AsterixInBritain'' Asterix travels to Great Britain, where they are suddenly (as in, in between saying "the fog falls" and "fast") caught up in fog and can't see anybody or anything. Anticlimax says it is a natural phenomenon in his country.

* Played for laughs in ComicStrip/NickKnatterton's London adventure ''Ein Kopf fällt in die Themse'' ("A head falls into the Thames"), where Nick's investigations are intermittently hampered by the fog. In one scene, he visits a suspect at her home, and when the conversation is finished he leaves. Opening the front door he asks in puzzlement: "Why is there a curtain in front of the door?" -- "That's not a curtain, that's the fog."

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Since then the infamous thick and toxic ''London fog'' has disappeared in RealLife and both in popular culture too, making this a DeadHorseTrope. Still, in older stories, comics, films and novels it can occasionally turn up, as well in tales set in VictorianLondon, especially ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' and UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper and JackTheRipOff variants, or even during TheEdwardianEra, where the fog is pretty much an aesthetic necessity.

* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}''. In ''Recap/AsterixInBritain'' Asterix travels to Great Britain, where they are suddenly caught up in fog and can't see anybody or anything. Anticlimax says it is a natural phenomenon in his country.

* In ''AudioPlay/ThePrincessThieves, After robbing the Marquis of Cheswick, Robin and Oberon loose the watchmen by disappearing into the thick, London fog.

* The trope is namechecked by the "[[http://members.aon.at/~ehesch1/fl/fl.htm Foggy London]]" utility, which displays the internal state of the ZXSpectrum game ''Sherlock'' while a game is played.

TruthInTelevision for many decades. London fog was often so thick it was nicknamed ''pea soup'', because of the greenish tinge. If you could see 10 feet in front of you in those days you were lucky; there are even reports of people falling into the Thames as a result, and sometimes the air and smell was so bad that people wore mouth masks. As you might expect, this wasn't really true "fog" (which, as [[Creator/EddieIzzard an Englishman in San Francisco]] once commented, while it can ''move'' quickly, but is rarely actually ''that'' bad for visibility or smell), but rather a product of both fog and air pollution--that is to say, smog (="smoke"+"fog"). London, lying as it does in a river valley by a big river and very close to where it turns into an estuary, is rather humid and susceptible to actual fog, but the real concern comes when the smoke from all the coal fires in London up until the middle of the 20th century mixes with the fog, you get a new substance that you can't see through and smells vile. Domestic coal fires were the major contributory factor; Londoners had burned coal to heat their homes and businesses since at least the 17th century (there are plenty of reports from that time of how horrid the London air is from all the smoke), but the problem got especially bad after WorldWarTwo, when all the good quality coal was being sold for export to try and pay off the war debt, leaving Britons to burn the low quality, sulphurous coal sold cheaply onto the domestic market. Another reason for the fog's existence were the factory smokes, which provided an awful smell too. The toxicity of this fog only came to light in 1952, when 4,000 people inhaled the fumes, got sick afterwards and died as a result. From that moment on the British government ordered restrictions to be made in the ''Clean Air Act 1956'', so that the amount of factory fog would be drastically reduced. (See also here for more info:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog ) It took some time for this to fully take hold; another "Great Smog" came along in 1957 (nowhere near as bad as 1952, but still horrible).

* Lampshaded by one of the detectives in ''Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets'' by DavidSimon, when they're sent to investigate a murder during a foggy Baltimore morning, "just like Sherlock Holmes".

* In the short-lived UK crime series ''Jericho'', set in London during TheFifties, a PSA at the cinema is warning the public to "breathe through your nose" because of the smog. Later while searching for the murderer of that particular episode, Jericho's car has to be navigated through the smog by a detective standing on the bumper, wearing a gas mask and waving a torch.

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* In the short-lived UK crime series ''Jericho'', set in London during TheFifties, a PSA at the cinema is warning the public to "breathe through your nose" because of the smog. Later while searching for the murderer of that particular episode, Jericho's car has to be navigated through the smog by a detective standing on the bumper, wearing a gas mask and waving a torch.

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* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'': London sprawl is commonly referred to as "The Smoke". It lives up to that name thanks to the pollution.