Line #75 Main/TheGreatFlood


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7	[[quoteright:248:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/deluge.jpg]]
8	[[caption-width-right:248:[[Series/LookAroundYou Water, water, what hast thou donest?]]]]
9
10	->''"And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die."''
11	-->-- '''[[Literature/BookOfGenesis Genesis 6:17]]''', ''Literature/TheBible'' (King James Version)
12
13	What happens when {{God}} (or [[OurGodsAreDifferent the gods]]) decides to KillItWithWater. ''[[AllOfThem All of it]]''.
14
15	[[OlderThanDirt Older than the book itself]], this is a trope that's nearly ubiquitous in mythology, and with good reason: it may have had a basis in reality [[note]](generally thought to have been either a hypothesized late Pleistocene/Early Holocene global or near-global scale flooding event such as a tsunami from a [[ColonyDrop small asteroid impact]], a large island volcano eruption, or simply the submerging of several large tracts of previously-inhabited land by the melting and receding of the ice caps and glaciers of the last Ice Age, or various more localized flooding events that occurred along the rivers that irrigated early human civilizations like the Nile or the Tigris-Euphrates)[[/note]], but as a kind of cultural memory it forms the backbone of many origin mythologies, from the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime to the biblical Book of Genesis. Usually the moral of the story is [[GodIsDispleased "don't piss off the gods"]], but sometimes the flooding is part of the process of (re)creating a world, often as a literal way of washing away the corruption of the previous one before a new one can be born.
16
17	Many scholars posit that real historical events in the distant past are what inspired all of these similar "deluge myths", with opinions divided as to whether it was some kind of global flooding event affecting everyone on the planet or several more localized events in each respective region these tales are found. Some scientists argue that the prevalence of the Great Flood in Eastern Mediterranean myth in particular derives from the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory Black Sea floods]] in about 5600 BCE and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption Thera eruption]] in about 1600 BCE, both of which would've sent "megatsunamis" across the sea and caused apocalyptic destruction for ancient peoples. Various other localized events are posited for other parts of the world, including the [[ColonyDrop meteor impact]] that left the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burckle_Crater Burckle Crater]] in the Indian Ocean around 2900 BCE and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods Missoula floods]] that rolled across western North America roughly around 10,000 BCE.
18
19	Some of various religious persuasions believe that the prevalence of the Great Flood myth derives from an actual worldwide great flood caused by their deity of choice (although a global flood [[http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#flood as described particularly by Abrahamic religions isn't seen as plausible by most scientists]].[[note]]The first and probably most important issue is that, even if the polar caps melted, there's much less water in the surface and the atmosphere than the amount needed to submerge Earth's surface to the levels mentioned on the Bible. If one resorts to the [[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25723-massive-ocean-discovered-towards-earths-core.html#.VNjTj_nF_uN subsurface one]], new issues pop up, not the least of which being that it's encased in solid rock. Obviously, however, the miraculous creation -- and later removal -- of enough water to flood the world wouldn't be outside the power of most religions' understanding of God/the gods[[/note]]).
20
21	This may sometimes be tied to a GreenAesop, chiefly when the flooding is caused by runaway global warming causing the global ice sheets to melt.
22
23	The waters will ''usually'' recede after a while, at which point some focus will be given to the survivors recovering and rebuilding, but sometimes they will stay, and the affected world will be permanently turned into a FloodedFutureWorld.
24
25	Expect a GiantWallOfWateryDoom or a NoahsStoryArc.
26	----
27	!!Examples:
28	[[foldercontrol]]
29
30	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
31	* A ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'' short titled "The Sinking World" have Nobita seeing the world flooded in the future while using Doraemon's gadget, "Future Eyes" (basically, mechanical eyes that sees into the future). After trying (and failing) to convince his parents and friends about the upcoming disaster, Nobita decide to get Doraemon's help to build his own Ark and prepare for the worst. [[spoiler:The disaster did happen alright, but like the first time it turns out to be AllJustADream from Nobita wetting himself, which leads to him dreaming about a Biblical flood]].
32	* ''Manga/DragonKnights'': The demon fish Varawoo sunk the world before it was sealed away.
33	* In ''Anime/FatePrototype'', Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasm, "Enki: Sword of the End", summons a flood in reference to the one mentioned in his story.
34	%%* ''Manga/NowAndThenHereAndThere'': Don't piss off Lala Ru.
35	* ''Manga/SaintSeiya'': The god Poseidon, wishing to wash away the filth of mankind, raises the oceans to destroy all of civilization. In the anime, this is compounded by the [[BarrierMaiden priestess]] Hilda praying to [[CrossoverCosmology Odin]] to keep the ice in the GrimUpNorth eternally frozen; her absence causes it to melt and contribute to the flooding.
36	[[/folder]]
37
38	[[folder:Arts]]
39	* Art/SistineChapel: The eighth fresco on the ceiling shows people climbing the mountains escape the flood and board arks that are all turned over by the rising water. In the background, Noah's ark is shown floating unperturbed as those left behind desperately attempt to survive the flood.
40	[[/folder]]
41
42	[[folder:Comic Books]]
43	* ''ComicBook/AdventureTimeGraphicNovels'': A massive flood affects the area around the Candy Kingdom, and nearly dissolves it, due to the cloud bikers.
44	* ''ComicBook/CerebusTheAardvark'': During Cerebus' time with the Judge on the moon, the Judge mentions a prior civilization of sapient redwood trees that accidentally set off a climate catastrophe that causes a worldwide flooding event every 12,000 years. The civilizations in existence when it happens call it "the Great Flood", while the redwoods that are around call it "oh no, not ''this'' again".
45	* ''ComicBook/TheEternals'': Ikaris describes the Biblical events as taking place when the Deviants fired on the Celestials' Second Host. This combined with the Deviant domination of the planet at that time drove the space deities to cause the Flood, sinking Atlantis and Lemuria, and causing a younger Ikaris to direct and guide the builders and passengers of TheArk.
46	* ''ComicBook/TheScrameustache'': Because of Atlantis meddling with Earth's second moon's orbit, an asteroid collided with it, causing massive meteor showers that destroyed Atlantis and flooded the Earth. A second flood was due to happen in the future, past the 21st century, but our heroes prevented it.
47	* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'': In ''ComicBook/TheKryptonChronicles'', a flooding event inundated the continent of Urrika several thousand years ago. Thanks to prophet Jaf-El -- who foretold the flood -- and his brother Tio -- a beastmaster who provided riding beasts for everyone -- many people survived by fleeing to the mountains, but the flood destroyed the first great Kryptonian civilization. As learning about Jaf-El's history, Superman and ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} cannot help but comparing it with Noah's tale.
48	* ''ComicBook/SuskeEnWiske'': The titular characters search for Noah's arc in "De Adelijke Ark".
49	[[/folder]]
50
51	[[folder:Comic Strips]]
52	* ''ComicStrip/{{Nero}}'': In "De Ark van Nero" Nero builds an ark to survive a giant flood.
53	[[/folder]]
54
55	[[folder:Fairy Tales]]
56	* "Literature/TheNixInTheMillPond": The titular water spirit vengefully floods the whole countryside when the lead female frees her husband from the Nixie's grasp.
57	* "Literature/{{Reygoch}}" features two villages which hate each other. One village decides to destroy the enemy village by piercing the dyke damming up the River Banewater and starting a flood, expecting their own houses will not overflowed because they are built on a hill. However, the flood becomes way worse than they thought, burying both villages and flooding the whole valley.
58	[[/folder]]
59
60	[[folder:Fan Works]]
61	* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5304252/3/I-shall-endure-to-the-end I Shall Endure to the End!]]'': The angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley are ordered by their respective Managements to assist and advise a boat-builder called Noah and his family, ensuring the Ark is built on schedule and that Noah's energy and enthusiasm do not flag.
62	** What happens next more-or-less follows, but embellishes, the biblical account. It also establishes that this was the same flood experienced by Deucalion, Dardanus of Arcadia and Emperor Yao, [[PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs that did in the dinosaurs]] and the Minoan civilization, and that destroyed Atlantis, Lemuria and Hy-Brasil.
63	** Interestingly, a global flood didn't actually happen, as such -- there simply wasn’t enough water in existence for Heaven (not God, as these are two separate things in the ''Literature/GoodOmens'' mythos) to flood the Earth completely: rather, it was a collection of floods in the cradles of civilization in China, the Americas and the greater Middle East, combined with the sinking of Atlantis and Lemuria (and the resulting tidal waves on every coastline on Earth) and the flooding of the modern-day Black Sea, which all together gave bronze-age mankind the definite impression that the whole world had in fact flooded.
64	* ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'': The MadScientist plans to use his Tesla doomsday device to erupt every volcano in Antarctica, inundating Earth's coastal cities, with the additional benefit of destroying the MasterComputer that controls Earth, buried under the South Pole.
65	* ''Fanfic/UnderTheNorthernLights'': This is given as one of the possible dangers of waking Luna and Celestia's "auntie". She is currently sleeping soundly in the form of the great Everfrost Glacier; if she were to wake up, the process of going from stillness to activity would also turn this ice into water, flooding Tarandroland and much of the world in the process.
66	[[/folder]]
67
68	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
69	* ''Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon'':
70	** ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'': The Biblical flood was caused by the Atlantis' weapons research and the city was sunk to ''save'' it from destruction.
71	** ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'': The "Rite of Spring" segment ends with the entire Earth being flooded by a massive tidal wave caused by a solar eclipse.
72	** ''WesternAnimation/Fantasia2000'': Retold in the re-imagined "Noah's Ark" adaptation of ''Pomp and Circumstance''.
73	* ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheKingdomOfClouds'' has the heroes trying to ''prevent'' one, with the Kingdom of Clouds deciding to execute "Project Noah", a massive flood, in order to save the earth's environment and prevent humans from doing any further damage to the world. At one point Nobita and Doraemon accidentally enters a BadFuture where they failed, and sees Tokyo getting utterly destroyed by an unstoppable typhoon.
74	* ''WesternAnimation/Epic1984'' opens with a great flooding caused by the Spirit of Evil, the narrator in the original version implies it to be ''the'' Biblical Flood.
75	[[/folder]]
76
77	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
78	* ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'': The trope namer is the end result, to which the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are merely a prelude.
79	%%* ''Film/{{Deluge}}'', mainly known through StockFootage of the destruction of New York until an Italian dubbed version was rediscovered in the 1980s.%%What about it?
80	* ''Film/EvanAlmighty'': Parodied when [[spoiler:a poorly-built dam]] winds up causing the deluge that God ordered Evan to build an ark for.
81	%%* ''Film/{{Noah}}''
82	* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'': The melting of the polar ice sheets completely flooded the Earth in the distant past, and in this scenario the water does not appear to be going away anytime soon.
83	[[/folder]]
84
85	[[folder:Literature]]
86	* ''Literature/Area51'': It's revealed to have occurred as a result of Atlantis's long-ago destruction by aliens. However, it wasn't global, but still a substantial enough event to inspire myths around the world.
87	* ''Literature/TheCalfOfTheNovemberCloud'': Konyek, his calf, and a couple of elephants become trapped in a large hill during a heavy rain which lasts several weeks and floods the whole valley.
88	* ''Literature/TheFallOfNumenor'': Sauron convinced the Númenoreans to worship [[BigBad Morgoth]], which led them to commit human sacrifices. [[{{God}} Eru]] objected and created a tidal wave that destroyed the island and everyone on it, besides turning a previously flat Earth into a round one. It is rumored, though, that the Meneltarma later resurfaced above the waters and stands as a tall, lonely island in the middle of the ocean.
89	* ''Literature/{{Flood}}'' and its sequel ''Ark'' center heavily around [[FloodedFutureWorld the transformation of the Earth into an ocean planet]] due to the release of massive reservoirs of water from within the Earth's mantle. Unlike most examples, this is a slow process -- the waters take decades to rise, starting to cover low-lying islands in the late 2010s and eventually closing over Mount Everest in 2052, leaving plenty of time for gradual social collapse. Humanity on Earth survives mostly on massive rafts and ships [[spoiler:and in a single underwater city]], although in ''Ark'' there's talk of genetically engineering an aquatic human species.
90	* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
91	** One of the two founding myths of Ankh-Morpork involves a boat that was built to withstand a great flood, containing two of every animal. The accumulated waste products of all the animals was tipped over the side, and they called it Ankh-Morpork.
92	** An ancient civilisation on the Disc had the most embarrassing Great Flood ever; it took the best part of a century and the people were able to paddle or wade.
93	** ''Literature/CarpeJugulum'': One of the things that worries the Slightly Reverend Mightily Oats about Omnian dogma is that ''every'' Discly culture has a flood myth, similar but different to the one in the Book of Om.
94	* ''Literature/EveOfMan'': London is submerged in an unexplained flood.
95	* In ''Ice'' by Lora Johnson, an astronaut appears to travel back in time and helps in the building of a vast granary that floats when hit by a GiantWallOfWateryDoom. On waking up in the present, he realises he witnessed the Biblical flood destroying a society of AdvancedAncientHumans.
96	* ''Literature/{{Kine}}'': Played with. The flood in question is a perfectly ordinary localised inundation of low-lying flat land by heavy rainfall, but it is presented as a seemingly global event from the point of view of the protagonists -- who are weasels, whose point of view is only half an inch above the water.
97	* In ''Literature/KonoSuba'', Aqua's [[GiantWallOfWateryDoom Sacred Create Water]] invokes this. The problem is, it's massively destructive, even moreso than Megumin's [[FantasticNuke Explosion]], so it's only used when the GodzillaThreshold is crossed.
98	* ''Literature/PastwatchTheRedemptionOfChristopherColumbus'': Referenced. The origin of the myth is tracked back to the flooding of the Red Sea.
99	* ''Literature/RaptorRed'': A flood of the sort that only comes every thousand years strikes Raptor Red and her family around the middle of the story.
100	* ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'': One occurred in the setting's distant past, causing Syren Island to sink beneath the sea.
101	* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': According to ''Literature/TheWorldOfIceAndFire'', Westeros was originally connected to Essos by a land bridge thousands of years ago. When the continent was invaded by the First Men, the Children of the Forest (an elf-like race who were the original inhabitants of Westeros) called in "the Hammer of the Waters", which submerged most of the land bridge with the exception of a couple of islands, the modern-day Stepstones.
102	* ''Literature/TrailOfLightning'': The Big Water flooded much of the planet and transitioned it to the Sixth World according to the Diné. Ma'ii claims that great floods have marked the change between each previous world as well.
103	* The myth version is told in ''Literature/WatershipDown''. Rather than GodIsDispleased (which happens in the rabbit CreationMyth), [[GodOfLight Frith]] has to leave on a journey leaving the world covered in rain, but a human builds a giant floating hutch for all the animals until Frith returns and lets them out.
104	* ''Literature/{{Wicked}}'': An early pagan CreationMyth stated that the goddess Lurline peed a flood that caused animals to become the sapient, {{Talking Animal}}s. The later Unionist revision changed it to a flood of tears.
105	[[/folder]]
106
107	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
108	* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': Gaius Baltar mentions the story of the Flood as explained in the Book of Pythia to Roslin, comparing his role in the destruction of the Colonies to that of the Flood. While no actual Flood is seen, the story is clearly a reference to the biblical story and [[spoiler: may even have been its origin]].
109	* ''Series/{{Dominion}}'': [[BigBad Gabriel]] explains that the Flood story was metaphor for what really happened, since it was easier for humans to understand than the truth. Said truth being that [[spoiler: the "flood" was [[DarkAndTroubledPast Michael]], who believed that humanity had to be punished for daring to worship angels instead of God. The "ark" in turn was actually a bunker Noah built to try and save some people from the slaughter.]]
110	* ''Series/GoodOmens2019'': The Biblical flood is mentioned. Despite its supernatural origins, it is tied closely with the real-life historical flood. God didn't flood the whole world, just "the local area;" the Chinese, Native Americans, and Australians are all explicitly spared. [[EvenEvilHasStandards Crowley finds the whole thing horrifying]], [[WouldNotHurtAChild especially the part where the kids get killed]]. Aziraphale is clearly uncomfortable, but insists he doesn't have any say in policy decisions. Oh, and the reason there are no {{unicorn}}s any more is because one of the pair Noah got for the Ark wandered off.
111	[[/folder]]
112
113	[[folder:Music]]
114	* Music/TheClash describes how London drowns in ''Music/LondonCalling''.
115	* Music/FrancoDeVita: The theme of "Lluvia" (Rain). It tells about a city that is being ravaged by an intense downpour, causing not only an irreversible material loss but also many deaths; at one point, a kid who is struggling to survive tries to check if the ceiling of his house is still in its place.
116	* "When the Levee Breaks" by Kansas Joe Mccoy and Memphis Minnie is another blues record about the local floods in the South and was famously covered by Music/LedZeppelin on ''Music/LedZeppelinIV''.
117	* Charlie Patton, a 1930s blues singer had a song named "High Water Everywhere" about the Mississippi floods.
118	* Music/TearsForFears: If taken literally, the first stanza in "Closest Thing to Heaven" describes a cataclysmic global flood.
119	-->''28 days of rain\
120	Flashfloods in February\
121	Back in our boats again\
122	While all the world is sinking''
123	[[/folder]]
124
125	[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
126	* In Abrahamic religions:
127	** ''Literature/TheTorah'', and by extension ''Literature/TheBible'', features the global Flood sent by God to cleanse the Earth of an unbearably wicked mankind, after tasking Noah with building the Ark to save himself, his family and pairs of every animal (seven pairs each of every clean beast and every bird, and one pair each of everything else). Noah lives.
128	** Averted in ''Literature/TheQuran'', in which the flood is merely local and destroys only one civilization.
129	** UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}}: Noah constructed the ark according to the instruction of the malevolent Demiurge, but it was burned down with magical fire by Eve's daughter Norea in a fit of supernatural rage. He built a second ark, which turned out to be useless because they were just transferred temporarily into Heaven for the length of the flood.
130	* ''Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh'': The earliest recorded example. At one point, Gilgamesh comes across Utnapishtim, who had been made immortal by the gods in reward for building a giant reed boat to save his family, his village's craftsmen, and a number of baby animals from a world-destroying flood. After running aground, he even sent out a dove and raven to check if the water had receded, although the order's reversed from the biblical account -- the dove found nothing, the raven found land and did not come back, so Utnapishtim and his crew disembarked.
131	* Myth/AztecMythology: The Aztecs believed that the Earth had been created and destroyed four times before the present age, and the end of the last age was a watery one.
132	* Myth/ClassicalMythology has ''three'', most notably Deucalion's.
133	* According to Creator/{{Plato}}, {{Atlantis}} was destroyed by earthquakes and floods.
134	* Myth/NorseMythology:
135	** ''Literature/ProseEdda'' ("Gylfaginning"): When Odin and his brothers kill Ymir (the primordial giant whose corpse is the entire Earth), all the frost-giants drown in the blood flowing from Ymir's wounds, except for the giant Bergelmir and his wife who save themselves on an ark (i.e. a wooden chest). A little later it is said that Ymir's blood turned into the sea and the lakes of the world.
136	** Eventually, after Ragnarök, the world will sink.
137	* Myth/HinduMythology:
138	** A demon threw the earth into the sea and Vishnu, as his boar Avatar Varaha, went down and brought it back to the surface, killing the demon.
139	** There's also the story of Manu. The main difference is that Vishnu appears to Manu as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsya Matsya,]] [[SeaMonster the]] [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent fish]] [[GodInHumanForm avatar]].
140	* Myth/ChineseMythology, but instead of the flood wiping out humanity, Yu the Engineer directed the construction of great canals and redirected rivers to control the flood and provide better irrigation for farming. Yu learned his lesson after Emperor Yao executed his father, Gun, whose attempt to control the flood by damming the rivers and seas with gargantuan dykes only made the floods worse when the dykes inevitably broke. Instead of being a story about the sin of man, the Chinese flood myth is a Taoist parable about cooperating with nature instead of futilely fighting against it.
141	* In Guatuso mythology, the main God, He of the Nharíne Headwaters punishes humanity's disobedience with a global flood, but, he does it against His will, and only because His wife compromised Herself to create all life again, howewer, [[EvilIsSterile she didn't know how to do it]], everything she managed to create were useless and venomous species of plants and animals. In the end, it was up to Him to reintroduce all the good species of plants and animals, as well as the human genre which he brought forth from a cave.
142	* Per Myth/TainoMythology, Yaya and his wife had a son named Yayael who grew to be rebellious. Yaya sent him to exile for months but upon return, Yaya killed Yayael. Out of remorse, Yaya put all of Yayael's bones inside a gourd he hung from the ceiling. One day, he saw that the gourd was full of an endless supply of fish, even when he and his wife ate some. Nearby, Itiba Cahubaba, mother of the earth, gave birth to four children. When Yaya was absent, they took down the gourd to eat from it too, but in their hurry to put it back, the gourd burst, and so much water and fish came out, that it became the ocean.
143	* In Talamancan mythology, the Tchõ'dawe, the third humanity created by Sibú turned out to be [[AlwaysChaoticEvil a nasty piece of work]], eventually, they [[RageBreakingPoint killed a high priest]] and Sibú killed them all with a flood.
144	[[/folder]]
145
146	[[folder:Radio]]
147	* One of several biblical themes in the [[Creator/TheBBC BBC]] Radio science fiction series ''Radio/{{Earthsearch}} II''. The evil Angel computers try to force the protagonists off the planet Paradise by using HostileTerraforming to melt the polar icecaps. The crew have to use their large shuttle (which is airtight so it can fly in outer space) as a floating ark to save some of the local flora and breeding pairs of the fauna.
148	[[/folder]]
149
150	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
151	* ''TabletopGame/CeruleanSeas'': An unknown event caused a global flood that covered most of the world in water and swallowed the cities of the drylanders, leaving the game's current setting dominated by scattered islands and vast seas.
152	* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': One of the generic SignsOfTheEndTimes described in ''Elder Evils'' is ceaseless, torrential and constantly strengthening rainfall, causing the levels of bodies of water to rise more and more with each passing day.
153	* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' calls the extremely powerful, extremely ancient founders of the clans "Antediluvians" for exactly this reason -- they predated the Great Flood, and were likely some of the only things to survive while the Earth drowned.
154	* ''TabletopGame/WitchCraft'': This is the canon reason for the destruction of Atlantis and the other Elder Kingdoms. When Ultima Thule turned to [[EldritchAbomination Leviathan]] for aid in their war with Atlantis, the Archangel Lucifer flooded the world to prevent the Mad God's corruption from infecting all of reality. It's heavily implied he allowed the other Kingdoms to be destroyed out of resentment towards humanity, as much as to remove any trace of Leviathan's influence.
155	[[/folder]]
156
157	[[folder:Theatre]]
158	* ''Theatre/TheGreenPastures'' is a re-telling of Literature/TheBible in a modern day setting. It includes the whole Noah story including the great flood.
159	[[/folder]]
160
161	[[folder:Video Games]]
162	* In ''VideoGame/Afterlife1996'', a great flood is one of the disasters that can randomly befall the planet you're supposed to be taking care of, killing off the entire population "except for a few smarty-pants who [[TheArk figured out how to build a boat]]."
163	* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
164	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'': Destroying the balance between Light and Darkness plunges the world into the latter, [[TimeStandsStill freezing the surface in time]] and then flooding it so only a temple and a priestess remain above water.
165	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'': The setting's history is defined by world-threatening events known as Calamities. The Sixth Umbral Calamity was the Great Flood, triggered by the abuse of magic rampant in the War of the Magi. The ''Shadowbringers'' expansion later centers around an AlternateUniverse called the First that, save for a small section of its version of Eorzea, has almost entirely succumbed to a more metaphorical flood of {{Light\|IsNotGood}}.
166	* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'': In the backstory, long before years began to be counted, [[spoiler:the goddess Ashunera expressed great grief over the warring of the Beorc and Laguz]], and caused the entire world to be flooded due to her grief unintentionally overlapping with her power. The only portion of the world to remain above water was the continent of Tellius, where the game takes place.
167	* ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII'': Killing Poseidon unleashes a great flood.
168	* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': While the games don't have a literal flood, they certainly have a [[ParasiteZombie metaphorical one]] (called the Flood). It was definitely successful in wiping out the [[{{Precursors}} previous galactic civilization]].
169	* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' takes place in the Adult timeline of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''; between the two games, Ganondorf broke free, but Link wasn't around to stop him, so the Goddesses [[TimeStandsStill froze Hyrule in time]] and sealed it inside a magical barrier, and then flooded the world. Unlike other flood stories, the waters did ''not'' recede, and the survivors fled to the mountaintops, which became islands the player visits during the game, and Hyrule became only a legend. [[spoiler:At the end of the game, the magical barrier is removed and Hyrule is flooded ''completely'', this time destroying it for good.]]
170	* In ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends'', the backstory is that the world got flooded and an advanced civilization got wiped out, hence all the tropical islands and ruins in the game. ''VideoGame/MegaManZX Advent'' implies that [[spoiler:Master Thomas had something to do with it]].
171	* ''VideoGame/NoahsArk'' takes place during the flood, where the water slowly raises during gameplay.
172	* ''VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire'': The goal of Team Aqua is to unleash [[OlympusMons Kyogre]], the Legendary Pokémon that first created the seas, to flood the rest of the world. They don't have a clear reason in the original games, while the remakes reinterpret them as ecoterrorists who reason that, since oceans and wetlands are the most productive and life-rich habitats around, flooding the world will make it more suitable for natural life. What they don't realize is that the flood would be rather more drastic and rather more permanent than they had thought.
173	* ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'': The final boss fight against Perfect Chaos takes place in a city that it has just flooded.
174	* ''Videogame/{{ULTRAKILL}}:'' Hell ironically suffered a Great Flood of its own when the Machine-induced apocalypse came to pass. Going by TheFerryman's notes, humanity's billions died off in a matter of ''minutes'' and turned the River Styx into an outright ocean of writhing, struggling souls that swallowed everything else in the layer, barring some ruined dockside structures and the (upscaled) boats of the Ferrymen.
175	[[/folder]]
176
177	[[folder:Visual Novels]]
178	* ''VisualNovel/SteamPrison'' is set in a divided society which is the result of a catastrophic flood some 400 years in the story's past. The Heights were built as a shelter from the flood, but only for a select group of people; their descendents make up the current population of the Heights, while the Depths are populated by the descendents of those who survived the flood on the surface. As one may expect, there's a lot of bad blood between them: citizens of the Depths resent the people of the Heights for abandoning their ancestors, while most people of the Heights only know of the Depths as the place where criminals are sent into exile and assume the people living there are riffraff little better than animals.
179	[[/folder]]
180
181	[[folder:Web Animation]]
182	* ''WebAnimation/RatboyGenius'': The premise of the Flood section is that electrical charges from a battle in another, entwined dimension manifest as water in Little King John's dimension, covering the entire world in water.
183	[[/folder]]
184
185	[[folder:Webcomics]]
186	* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': In the Alpha timeline, when the Condescence openly takes over Earth, she floods the whole planet to make it more hospitable to an aquatic alien like herself. By the time her flood is done, humans are all but extinct and Earth is completely covered by oceans, broken only by floating prefab slums home to alien exiles and by Dirk's home on top of a ruined skyskraper.
187	* In one ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' strip, God tells some bedraggled survivors that the world was flooded to cleanse of it wicked people, [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial and certainly not because He forgot He left the tap on.]]
188	* The ''[[Webcomic/XkcdTime Time]]'' comic of ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' has this as a major plot point, as the story takes place [[spoiler:about 11,000 years in the future when tectonic movement has closed up the Strait of Gibraltar and the Western Mediterranean has dried up to much lower levels than today, with human settlements scattered about in the old basin.]] It's revealed that a massive flood [[spoiler:due to the blockage at Gibraltar failing, similar to the theorized [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood Zanclean flood over 5 million years ago]]]] will happen in just a few days, leading to the protagonists rushing to warn their friends and get them evacuated to higher ground.
189	[[/folder]]
190
191	[[folder:Web Original]]
192	* ''WebVideo/EverymanHYBRID'': The great flood seems destined to happen. Constant reference is made to floods, HazardousWater, and an [[AmbiguousSituation ambiguously defined]] "Ark". [[SpiritualSuccessor Yes, this was made after]] ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets''. Within the series' MythArc, it's implied that the Flood is in some way tied to the EternalRecurrence the characters find themselves trapped in.
193	* ''WebVideo/MarbleHornets'' frequently alludes to the concept, though such a thing never happens onscreen. Water is treated as sinister, and [[VaguenessIsComing ToTheArk]] (note name) named one of his videos Deluge. The series MythArc never really makes clear what the frequent Ark/Flood references are meant to imply, but...
194	* ''Rational Wiki'' has [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_flood several articles]] dealing with the physical impossibility of a global flood as described in the Bible. The lack of enough water in the polar caps and the atmosphere to cover the planet is the smallest problem.
195	[[/folder]]
196
197	[[folder:Western Animation]]
198	* ''WesternAnimation/TheBox'': Strongly implied to be just getting underway at the end, when the old man and his young companion wind up carrying their two animals in boxes to -- TheArk. While it's pouring rain.
199	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Chaotic}}'': The ultimate aim of the M'arrillians is to cause this: as the only Tribe that not only survives, but ''thrives'' in underwater conditions they would be left as the de facto rulers of all Perim. They almost succeed too by melting a significant portion of Glacier Plains, but [[spoiler: Tangath Toborn is able to stop it at the last second via HeroicSacrifice]].
200	* ''WesternAnimation/TheJanitor'': Noah's flood happens because God's janitor, told to wash off the earth because it is getting dirty, gets distracted and forgets to turn off the spigot.
201	* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyAndFriends'': In "The Ghost of Paradise Estate", the villainous SeaMonster Squirk seeks to flood the entirety of Dream Valley, in order to bring it back to its ancient submarine state and rule over it. In [[Recap/MyLittlePonyAndFriendsE13TheGhostOfParadiseEstate3 the episode's third part]], he obtains his old magical amulet and uses it to do just that, unleashing a flood strong enough to uproot trees and shatter hillsides, quickly filling Dream Valley's lower areas with a swiftly increasing tide of water.
202	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'': Gargamel ends up creating such a flood that covers the entire Smurf Forest by using magic beans in "Blue Eyes Returns". It took Smurfette and her pegasus friend Blue Eyes to fix the problem and restore the forest to normal.
203	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'': In ''Two by Two'', Grandpa Boris tells the babies the story of Noah's Ark. They naturally re-enact their own ship and collect small critters in their backyard before it starts to rain (which they believe to be a flood like the Biblical one). They wonder why Noah originally collected two of each animal, but conclude it's for having a friend along for the ride.
204	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In "Mom & Pop Art" Homer floods Springfield to make it into a modern artwork.
205	[[/folder]]
206
207	[[folder:Real Life]]
208	* The Netherlands have been victim of floods for centuries, due to the country being below sea level. The flood of 1953 was so disastrous that a unique project was created to built strong dykes and level the land higher: The Delta Works. It has to be read to be believed, but it actually worked!
209	** It is said that "God may have created the Heavens and the Earth, but it was the Dutch that built the Netherlands."
210	%%* The Boxing Day Tsunami.
211	%%* The 2011 Australia floods.
212	* A number of record-breaking floods throughout recorded history could be considered as these, at least in terms of regional and economic effects.
213	* Rising waters due to global warming and the end of the Ice Age could have been ''the'' Biblical Flood. The glacial melting was mostly gradual, but it's thought the melt was punctuated by three periods of rapid sea level rise that would've been disastrous to any coastal communities.
214	* There has been some evidence found of a massive flooding when the Black Sea originally formed, which possibly inspired the writings on such great Floods in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh in the first place.
215	* The prevalence of flood myths is beginning to be considered to be the result of most early human settlements being situated on or very close to a large river for fresh water, and large rivers tend to flood every ten to twenty years or so, occasionally catastrophically.
216	* The Missoula Floods. About 15,000 years ago, Glacial Lake Missoula (located over -- surprise! -- Missoula, Montana), melted through a glacier arm that was damming it, and poured out over much of eastern Washington (whose torn-up landscape now has the distilled-awesome name of [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace the Scablands]]), tore the Columbia Gorge a new one, and backflooded up the Willamette Valley eight hundred feet deep in places before draining into the Pacific. It created Dry Falls, which briefly had ten times the water flow of all the present-day rivers of Earth combined. Better yet, this is known to have happened -- though not to the same scale as the first time -- at least thirty-five times. Many other glacial lakes -- notably Lake Agassiz in central North America and Lake Altai in central Asia -- are believed to have produced similar megafloods.
217	[[/folder]]

Context Main / TheGreatFlood