Always Night

Creepy!

"I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction."

— Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

A setting where it is always night. Whether this is natural or not largely depends on the setting. The night might be caused by a magical curse, geological reasons, or maybe time has inconveniently stopped while it was dark out. A Tidally Locked Planet would usually be this on one side.

Haunted settings are most likely to be used in this environment. Places such as Big Boo's Haunt, Hell Hotel, Haunted Castle, Haunted House, Überwald, and Halloweentown may never see the light of day, which suits their undead inhabitants just fine. Because Evil Is Not Well-Lit, Mordor can be this, often caused by choking sulfuric clouds or pollution. If this is caused deliberately (such as by a villain) during the story, as opposed to having always been the case, that is The Night That Never Ends.

Can be paired with Dramatic Thunder, Grave Clouds, Nocturnal Crime, Frequently Full Moon, and Weird Moon. Cue the Sun may be used as a way of ending works with this trope. Compare City Noir, Neon City, and Punk Punk settings, which aren't literally always night, but are almost never shown in the daytime. The Inverted Trope is Endless Daytime.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ergo Proxy: The Post-Apocalyptic wasteland outside the dome cities is constantly covered by a thick layer of clouds, creating an artificial nighttime.
• In its full three series, Gregory Horror Show, it is never day. In the video game, you could go outside at 3:00 PM and it would look the same as night, and in the sub-series The Bloody Karte, which featured some periods of twilight.
• This is a sign of Cephiro's deterioration in Magic Knight Rayearth. Initially the land is pleasant and sunny, but as time goes on the weather becomes increasingly turbulent. By the time the girls have recovered the third Mashin, the sky is perpetually black and stormy.
• Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee: The Earth's natural sun has long since expired, and so a small man-made sun was created. The capital "Akatsuki" enjoys simulated daylight. The middle-class region, "Yuusari", is in a state of perpetual twilight. In the impoverished region "Yodaka", the artificial sun is no brighter than a full moon.
• Underworld Academy Overload!!: The Underworld doesn't have a concept of a daytime, as it's always night.

Art

• Hieronymus Bosch is best known for his colorful and grotesque depictions of Hell, all of which depict Hell at night.

Comic Books

• In Invincible, Darkwing operates in "Midnight City" which takes the dark look of Gotham to the extreme — due to a spell, it's always midnight in that particular city.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992): The sun never rises in the Dark World.
• In Legion of Super-Heroes, Kathoon is a planet whose sun is perpetually eclipsed. Kathoon resident Lydda "Night Girl" Jath was given superhuman strength by her scientist father, only to learn once she left her homeworld that her strength fades when exposed to light.
• In White Sand, due to Taldain being a Tidally Locked Planet, there's always night on the aptly-named Darkside.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Vol 1 presents Pluto as a place of constant night...and an atmosphere breathable by humans though the place is so cold ending up there is a death sentence for humans anyway.
  • Vol 2 gives Ares his own domain called the Areopagus where night never ends.

Comic Strips

• The Wacky Adventures of Pedro has one storyline that sends Pedro to the Far End of the Universe, landing him in a city lit only by a few stars.

Fan Works

• Fate Revelation Online: The 25th floor is a single flat plain of mud and grass with no natural light, exactly one type of monster (which spawns in the darkness in response to light), and bosses that can cancel player lights. Oh, and there's some effect on maps that makes it very easy to get lost. Players with the ether element have dousing and can easily find their way back to the capital, but everyone else has a lot more trouble.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Long Eventide takes place in the titular city-state of Eventide, which is under an illusion of eternal night called the Shroud, originally placed by Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago.

Films — Animated

• In the movie adaptation of Coraline, the Other World is always at night, no matter when in the real-world day Coraline enters it.
• In Wreck-It Ralph the "home" game of Fix-It Felix Jr. uses a night-time background because it's supposed to be an older game, where it was easier to just not light up that part of the screen.

Films — Live-Action

• It seems to be always dusk in the magical realm of the Dark Woods in Beyond Sherwood Forest. Robin even wonders how the trees can grow in a place without sunlight.
• Every single scene of Dark City (1998) until late in the film takes place during the dead of night. It is eventually revealed that this isn't just our perspective: It actually is always night in the city, yet nobody had noticed! Except for John Murdoch. That is why he's so dangerous to the Strangers.
• All of the scenes of Fallen Angels take place at night.
• While filming for an episode of Grave Encounters, Lance notes that it's dark outside at 8:30 AM when it should have been bright by 7:45. Later on, Lance checks the time again — it's 1PM, it's still pitch black. Even later again, the time is 8PM and there has been no sign of sunlight. It's also implied the hospital has its own dimension.
• Highlander II: The Quickening takes place in 2024, when Connor has become a wealthy man by parlaying The Prize (the ability to read the minds of all the world's mortals at once) into building a vast planetary force field to repair the ozone layer; the downside is that the entire planet is now permanently dark. "No sun, no stars, only heat and humidity."
• Johnny Mnemonic is a cyberpunk film taking place in the future, where the smog and rain make it too overcast to see the sun. The only time daylight is ever seen is in the brief glimpses of flashbacks to Johnny's childhood.
• The Matrix: As Neo is told by Morpheus, humanity "scorched the sky" to cut off the machines' access to solar energy. Unfortunately, the machines came up with an alternative... This applies only to the real world, while it's averted within the Matrix, which was designed to simulate a pre-war environment.
• All scenes of the film version of Sin City play out at night.
• The Grid in TRON: Legacy is lit entirely by artificial lighting with only stormy clouds above. Quorra, having lived her entire life inside the Grid, longs to experience a real-world sunrise.
• The Bad Future of X-Men: Days of Future Past is shown to be perpetually night-time, despite scenes being spread across multiple days and continents. Apparently the future is so bleak that the sun just stopped shining.
• Skinamarink has a variant of this: the setting is a house where the windows and doors to the outside have vanished and been replaced with more wall, thus preventing all outside light from coming in and forcing those inside to rely on their flashlights or other ambient light sources to see. The film does begin in what's presumably the dead of night, but eventually enough time passes for them to infer that it should logically be morning, but nothing about the situation changes.

Literature

• John C. Wright's Awake in the Night Land is set in the same universe as The Night Land, where the Sun has burnt out and the only light is from residual vulcanism.
• Bone Song by John Meaney is set in Tristopolis, an Urban Fantasy City Noir which has never seen the light of the Sun.
• The City in the Middle of the Night is set on a Tidally Locked Planet called January. The habitable cities are in a sort of perpetual twilight.
• In Lord Byron's Darkness, the narrator has a prophecy that the sun will go out, bringing about the End of the World as We Know It as earth is left in eternal night causing both the collapse of civilization and the extinction of all life.
• In Discworld book Thud!, it's established that it always night (and raining) in the city of Sam Vimes' consciousness, when the Summoning Dark attempts to make him its champion. It even has its own Watchman.
• From Doctor Who's Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, The Janus Conjunction, takes place on Janus Prime, which is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse, blocking enough sunlight that the planet is always in darkness.
• In Dune, the planet Giedi Prime is fouled with pollution, preventing sunlight from piercing the cloud cover.
• In The Iron Tower, by Dennis L. McKiernan, the Dimmendark blots out the sun (creating endless night and endless winter) so that all of the evil creatures banished (and destroyed) by the sun can further the Big Bad's plan to conquer the world.
• In Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows, the world does not turn on its axis and is divided into a fantasy Nightside and a high-tech Dayside; this ends when Jack breaks the compact and the machine at the heart of the Nightside world, causing morning to come and releasing Lucifer.
• The Lord of the Rings: The land of Mordor is the stronghold of Sauron, the major villain of the series. Its sky is filled with gloomy clouds of smoke from Mount Doom, causing it to be as dark as night even during the day...at least in the plateau of Gorgoroth were Barad-Dur and Mount Doom are located. The larger part of Morder, located around the inland sea of Nurnen was an aversion of the trope, since it is described as a fertile region farmed by Sauron's slaves to feed his vast armies.
• William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. In the far future, the Sun has gone out and the only light is from residual vulcanism. The Last Redoubt of humanity is surrounded by terrible monsters waiting for its protective power source to fail.
• Nostramo, the home world for Night Lords, is perpetually dark because the dying sun it circles cannot penetrate the pollution-clogged atmosphere. The world is barely better lit at noon than at midnight, keeping the planet swathed in dull greys and deep blacks.
• Simon R Green's Nightside series takes place in a (presumably) fictional part of London where it's perpetually three o'clock in the morning (hence the name).
• In The Nekropolis Archives, Nekropolis is located in the Null Plains, a realm of darkness. The main source of light is Umbriel, the shadowsun, which creates a permanent twilight.
• The Fourth Trumpet of Judgment causes the sun to vanish for several days in Brian Caldwell's We All Fall Down.

Live-Action TV

• The majority of scenes in Arrow take place at night in comparison to its sister shows The Flash (2014), Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl (2015) which routinely have scenes set during bright, sunny days. This is sometimes lampshaded in the series with characters remarking that Star City, where Arrow takes place, is a much darker place than Central City, home of the Flash, or National City, home of Supergirl.
  • Even The Flash (2014) isn't safe from this. As the series goes on, more and more of the action scenes very rarely take place in daylight, and the climax of the episode almost always happens at night. Any daytime scenes are usually indoors, so it's hard to tell what time of day it really is.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Nightmares" has a cemetery suddenly appearing near Sunnydale High. It is night there, even if it is day everywhere else.
• In Charmed when the cosmic balance is thrown off, the main universe becomes too good, and the evil universe becomes too bad. One of things that is now off in the bad universe is that is now always night.
• In Frank Herbert's Dune, the planet Giedi Prime is always shown dark. Presumably following the book's explanation that the planet is fouled with pollution.
• During the Neverland story-arc in Season 3 of Once Upon a Time, during the entire time the main characters are on the island the sun never once rises. It is implied that this is Peter Pan's will, as flashbacks show that the island used to have daytime.
• The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Rogue Planet" takes place on, well, a Rogue Planet. Since said planet doesn't orbit a star, there's no daylight.

Music

• Abigail is a horror story-album, featuring a hunted mansion. In "Arrival," the hill the mansion sits atop is said to cover the entire surrounding area in heavy darkness (which has only gotten worse as the story progresses). By the ending during "Black Horsemen," the moon itself has actually gone out.
• Closing Time is an album with 12 songs, all of which have a midnight atmosphere, especially "Midnight Lullaby" and "Grapefruit Moon".
• GWAR: According to the song "Metal Metal Land", the titular planet and rock-and-roll paradise is in a state of perpetual night. Except when it's day, but even then, it's still dark.
• According to "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, once "man's reign is through," there will be "eternal night." What those two things have to do with each other is never explained.

Tabletop Games

• Blades in the Dark: As a result of the cataclysm, the sun almost went out, appearing as a tiny ember in the sky only briefly at dawn and dusk and leaving the rest of the day mostly dark. Interestingly, the moon still shines as brightly as before the cataclysm, and it may be getting larger, or possibly closer.
• In Don't Rest Your Head, the Sun never rises on the Mad City; you can still get sunlight if you get back to the City Slumbering.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Module Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits: One of the alternate worlds accessible from Lolth's Web was the Nightworld of Vlad Tolenkov, a land of perpetual night. Its heat and plant life were sustained by ancient magic, with undead roaming the land.
  • Lunia, the first layer of Mount Celestia, is a pristine beach by a freshwater sea of holy water under a sky filled with bright stars.
  • The third layer of the Beastlands, Karasuthra, is a wild forest in continual night, lit by a single moon and home to plane's most dangerous beasts. Karasuthra's magic actively enforces its darkness, preventing nonmagical lights and fires from being lit and drastically dimming magical ones. The second layer, Brux, is in eternal dusk instead, with a sunset at one end of the sky and a silver moon at the other, and is home to crepuscular creatures that in most worlds only enjoy brief forays between true day and night. The topmost layer has Endless Daytime instead.
  • Dungeon magazine #31, adventure "Beyond the Glittering Veil": The world of Topaline has no sun and five small moons. It has a starry night sky overhead at all times.
  • In the Eberron setting, the main layer of Thelanis, the plane of the fae, is known as the Moonlit Vale because it's always night there, with the light provided by the moon Rhaan, which is always full.
• Magic: The Gathering: The plane Shadowmoor is shrouded in an eternal night prowled by terrible things, while its foil Lorwyn is always noon. They're actually the same world, just on different sides of a reeeeeealllly long day-night cycle, but the change also warps the inhabitants' personalities and the environment.
• In Pathfinder, the lowest layer of Hell is Nessus, domain of Asmodeus the God of Evil: a barren expanse of vast, incomplete temples, lonely beneath a sky that's forever black except for the light of three red stars.
• Vampire: The Masquerade and its spiritual successor Vampire: The Requiem are more or less this inherently this due to the central premise of the games. Technically, daylight exists, but as it's either physically impossible for the player to go outside or physically impossible for them to wake up when the sun is in the sky under almost all conditions, this trope governs all "on screen" activity.
• According to the sourcebook of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game (at least, the pre-WoW one), the lands of the night elves are said to be in a perpetual night.
• Referenced a few times in Warhammer 40,000, especially where Chaos magic is prevalent and especially on some worlds in the Eye of Terror. Out in the physical universe there is/was Nostramo, a world caught in eternal darkness. The people there evolved to not have irises, only pupils, and it was so demoralizing to the populace that the major source of population control wasn't disease, war or neglect, but SUICIDE. That is, until it was subject to Exterminatus.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Ulgu, the Realm of Shadow, does technically have "day" but it'd be more accurate to say there are times when the pitch-black darkness lifts to mere gloom. Its twin, Hysh, the Realm of Light, is the opposite, locked in Endless Daytime that dims to a sort of twilight. The two are locked in orbit to each other, circling the other six Mortal Realms, providing them with normal day-night cycles.

Theme Parks

• Due to being mostly indoors, this is the case for virtually all haunted house attractions at places like Halloween Horror Nights and Howl-O-Scream.
• Knockturn Alley at Universal Studios is always set at nighttime, an effect pulled off by having the entire alley be indoors.

Pinball

• It is nighttime in the Haunted House for rather obvious reasons.

Roleplay

• Day hasn't been seen yet in Crystal Rave, just the night sky. The sun might rise at some point, but we still don't know if it will.

Video Games

• 1080° Snowboarding: Usually, a stage's time will change depending on the difficulty level. But Dragon Cave remains set during nighttime in both Hard (which usually puts all stages during afternoon, except Golden Forest which is set during morning as it was already afternoon in Normal) and Expert difficulties.^note It's absent altogether on Normal, as that mode ends with Mountain Village The only difference in the latter is that the background is a bit brighter due to the snowy mist, and transitions into a full snowstorm near the end. The stage is also set during nighttime in Time Attack and Trick Attack, with the default weather being clear like in Match Race during Hard difficulty.
• Akanesasu Sekai de Kimi to Utau is an Always Dusk and Night version. It still has daytime, but since the god of the sun has mysteriously disappeared, the sun cannot rise above the horizon, so "daytime" is a permanent dusk.
• Alice (2022): The game is about navigating a haunted construction site at night while avoiding the hostile spirit haunting it.
• Each and every single level of Aliens: Extermination takes place at night.
• Ambridge Mansion takes place in a haunted mansion in its own alternate dimension. Everywhere outside of the house is blackness, giving the appearance that it is always night, although there is no real day or night there.
• ANNO: Mutationem: The town of Margaritia, Noctis City, and Harbor Town are set in the nighttime. Skopp City and Freeway 42 are primarily in daytime.
• In Arx Fatalis, the sun has apparently collapsed and the world is plunged into freezing darkness. All the inhabitants had to move underground in order to survive, and so the entire game is set in caves. Trying to open the door to the surface actually results in a gust of ultra-cold wind instantly freezing your character and anyone around them to death.
• The sky in Back in 1995 is always pitch black.
• The Backyard Sports series has Backyard Baseball, where the playoffs and All-Star Game are always at night.
• Baldur's Gate III: The Shadow-Cursed Lands in Act 2 are this trope.
• Rather than just a black background for Balloon Fight, there are actually stars indicating it's night for the entire game.
• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • The first game has the creepy Mad Monster Mansion and the cheery Freezeezy Peak, both set entirely at night. It's also justified, because the former is themed around Halloween (in fact, Mumbo's spell of choice is to transform Banjo into a pumpkin), and the latter is a level with a Christmas theme.
  • In Banjo-Tooie, Witchyworld mostly takes place at night. However, the Crazy Castle Stockade area, despite being within the same level, appears to take set in broad daylight. Whether this is due to an illusion or magic is never explained.
• Binky Show takes place on a rainy night.
• The BioShock series, for a few games in Rapture:
  • Because it takes place at the bottom of the ocean, it's unclear whether the exterior light in BioShock is trickling down from the surface or light pollution from the other buildings (needless to say, no one knows what an entire city's worth of light pollution would look like underwater). Either way, though, the lights inside seem to be set to simulate evening lighting at the time the player arrives—which is, initially, at night. It doesn't help that many of the lights are just plain not working due to the state of severe disrepair the city is in.
  • BioShock 2 continues the tradition, with even less ambient light outside, and even mentions the effect that a complete lack of sunlight has on the inhabitants' mental state.
• The Blackpine Outbreak seems to take place when the sun is about to rise. The sky is light blue, and the landscape is shown in darkness.
• In Bloodborne, the city of Yharnam is always at night forever, not because of not being able to implement some kind of day/night system, but because the sky was shrouded by Rom the Vacuous Spider to keep people away from the Paleblood Moon brought by the School of Mensis.
• The village of Bleak in Breath of Fire I has the Dark Key of the Goddesses, which means their entire town is held in perpetual nighttime. Not that the thieves of Bleak seem to mind at all. In fact, once the Dark Key is taken from the Light Keep and the sun can once again rise on the village, the thieves all seem kind of depressed.
• Burger & Frights: The sky above you is always shown as being nighttime dark, with a full moon up in the sky.
• As is said in Card City Nights 2's materials, "it's always night in space".
• In Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Walter had used cursed artifacts to force his castle and the immediately surrounding area to be cloaked in eternal night, as Rinaldo explains. The night breaks when Leon defeats Walter and the castle crumbles.
• Champions Online has an entire zone dedicated to an eternal night - Vibora Bay. In a downplayed example, whenever the "Bloodmoon" events occur, it turns to night for the three day or so period, as well.
• Cleaning Redville: The game is about cleaning the titular town at night, so of course the sky is always pitch black.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day has the last three chapters: Spooky, It's War and Heist. They're set in nighttime due to Conker having fallen unconscious at the (true) end of the Windy chapter (which, like the other early chapters, takes place during day).
• The Convenience Store: The Player Character works the night shift at the convenience store, so the sky is always pitch black.
• Dead County happens over the course of a single night.
• All the stages of Daemon Summoner takes place at night. Justified, since you're a Vampire Hunter and the undead wouldn't be active by daytime.
• The premise of Darker; in Delphi, it is Always Night, while in the Halon empire it is Endless Daytime.
• Dark Souls: Darkroot Forest is always at night, because the creators wanted to implement some kind of day/night system into the game but were unable to do with with the engine at the time (partially because the game was rushed), so they simply made it so that it's daytime in the Undead Burg/Parish and night in Darkroot to simulate the feeling of time passing. The sequels stick to a similar system, with Huntsman's Copse and Drangleic Castle in Dark Souls II and Irithyll of the Boreal Valley in Dark Souls III being set at night; the Drangleic Castle approach throws in some rain to add a bit of atmosphere, and Irithyll of the Boreal Valley exults in the improved graphics options III has access to by making the sky really pretty.
• Upper Heng Sha in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is in perpetual twilight. Although knowing the story, it might as well be more of a Light Is Not Good situation. Panchea as well, though ironically this is when the storyline takes a sharp turn towards Survival Horror.
• Diacrisis is set on a dark night with a raging snowstorm.
• Disney's Hide & Sneak begins at around evening time, but the rest of the game after Mickey/Minnie gets taken away by Lu-Lu takes place entirely at night.
• In Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, Cinderella's world is stuck in time just before midnight.
• Creepy Castle and Frantic Factory in Donkey Kong 64 are played during the night.
• Driver: The third act of the first game. The New York, Miami and San Francisco maps have missions that take place at any time of day, but when you're in Los Angeles every mission happens after sunset.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, Evergloam, Nocturnal's realm of Oblivion, is said to be in a state of "perpetual twilight". Very fitting for the Daedric Prince of Darkness and the Night.
• Elsword: The entirety of Feita is set at night.
• Every single stage of Exit Limbo: Opening takes place in the dark, after sunset. Early on you fall unconscious and awakes two days later, and it's night again when you regained bearings.
• Fatal Frame II's setting has been cursed to relive the night of its destruction over and over.
• Final Fantasy
  • Ultimecia's Castle in the Time Compression world at the end of Final Fantasy VIII is in the midst of an eternal night. As is Delling City, apparently.
  • Treno in Final Fantasy IX. It's lampshaded before you travel there for the first time:
    "Nightfall comes early around these parts."
  • Northern Thanalan, in Final Fantasy XIV, seems to be under an eternal dusk, possibly due to the constant smog that the ceruleum processing plant produces.
  • The areas in space for Final Fantasy: Endless Nova always appear to be set at night, with the street-lamps always on. Apparently the asteroids always have their bases turned away from the sun.
• Forewarned: Whenever you're out in the field, the area outside the Mejai tomb is shown at night.
• Every level in The Forest Quartet, in a dark and gloomy forest for good measure. Justified as you're a ghost and could only move around after sunset.
• The whole journey of Ghostrunner takes place inside a giant walled-off city where the only light sources are artificially generated. There's one time you can see a blue sky, but no sunlight pierces through.
• Hanako: The game is set at night in a school building.
• In the second Hatoful Boyfriend, Holiday Star is always set at night, despite time passing. Midnight leads to predawn, which leads to midnight again, then dusk, and midnight again... The new day, and change, never comes.
• Heidelberg 1693 have each and every stage set at night, to complete that Gothic Horror atmosphere.
• When Hype visits Torras and its surroundings during the Era of Taskan II in Hype: The Time Quest, it is always nighttime.
• In Silence: The forest the game is set in is shrouded in perpetual darkness.
• Inunaki Tunnel occurs over the course of a single night.
• Played with in Jet Set Radio. Shibuya-cho, the business district, is always seen in daylight. Benten-cho, the entertainment district, is always at night. Kogane-cho, the residential district, has a permanent sunset.
• Joe's Diner has you working a night shift at the titular diner. So, of course, the sun is never out.
• Karen Sees: The game is set at night, and has Bob tasked with collecting all a Karen's complaints before morning, while said Karen chases him with a knife.
• Kick Man has you as a clown on a unicycle kicking balloons into the air and popping them all while it is nighttime.
• Kingdom Hearts features several worlds always set at night:
  • The second world visited, Traverse Town, always has a clear starry sky and streetlamps and windows are always glowing.
  • Halloween Town and The World That Never Was are both eternally nighttime in any game they appear in.
  • Kingdom Hearts II: Port Royal is always set at night so that "the moonlight shows us for what we really are" is in effect for the cursed crew.
  • Castle of Dreams in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is nighttime.
  • Agrabah is always day in the city and ruins, and always nighttime by the Cave of Wonders.
• KOJOUJI: The game happens in one night.
• With the exception of Cross Street, all stages in Last Bronx take place at night.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Whenever Link sails near the Forsaken Fortress in The Wind Waker, it suddenly becomes night (until somewhere halfway through the game when the Big Bad ceases to use it as a base of operations).
  • The Royal Valley graveyard in The Minish Cap is the only place in the game that's night, while the rest of Hyrule is always in bright sunlight.
  • Typhlo Ruins in Breath of the Wild is perpetually dark; the only way to find your way through to the Shrine is by lighting stationary torches and getting the necessary item off a Hynox. Even if you fail to light enough torches to make out the Hynox's body, its eye will still provide a conveniently bright target.
• Loch Ness: The titular loch upon which the game is set is shrouded in perpetual nighttime.
• Due to the paraSOL, Lunar Knights starts out in darkness. Daybreak starts to spread from the Hunting Mansion and Acuna once Lucian purifies Margrave Rymer.
• To better convey the darker mood of Maldita Castilla, as well as the retraux flavor, the background is set at nighttime for the entire game.
• New Lumos, in Miitopia, is a rainy cyberpunk city where it is constantly nighttime. It makes the multicoloured neons very prominent.
• Minecraft has the End; a World in the Sky where it is always night, the terrain is flat save for huge towers of obsidian, and the only inhabitants are Endermen and a giant, nigh-unstoppable dragon.
• Missing Children: The game is set at night, so the sky is always in dark colors.
• Monkey Island:
  • Lampshaded by Guybrush while in Mêlée Island in The Secret of Monkey Island, when he notes that the clock is always at 10 pm.
  • Scabb Island in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge interestingly always remains night even though you can travel to two islands near it and come back as many times as you want; the other two are always daytime.
  • Exaggerated in Escape from Monkey Island where pleasant tourist trap Jambalaya Island is always in full sunshine, while its islet, the dismal pirate reservation Nuttin Atoll, is always around midnight. The two even share the same overworld map, with one side being brightly lit and the other side dark.
• The Need for Speed games are particularly famous for this, especially the Underground series. Said games often go from post-dusk to pre-dawn, but then skip over any daylight and go straight back to post-dusk again. It justifies the low amount of traffic and complete lack of pedestrians in the game, and it showcases the wet environment.
• The demonic plane of Stygia in Nexus Clash is forever shrouded in endless night, making it the favored hiding spot not just for demons but sun-wary vampires as well. Its Good Counterpart, the angelic plane of Elysium, experiences Endless Daytime instead.
• Night Delivery: The game happens over the course of one night.
• The Night Way Home: The game takes place at night.
• The NES game Nightshade (1992) takes place in Metro City, a hard-boiled setting where it's always night.
• City of Goldpaw and its surroundings in Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom.
• Ōkami - Regardless of what time of day it is, you're forced into Night and can't force it to go into the next day during the festival where Orochi reawakens and picks Kushina to be his next victim. Also, by late game, the sky will always show the impending total eclipse regardless of what time of day it is.
• In the adventure game The Omega Stone, it's always nighttime when you visit the tower by the marsh, even though it's bright daylight at the nearby mansion and other game locations.
• Onryo (2020) has you exploring a Haunted House an battling spirits with a Magical Camera at night.
• PsyCard: In Neo Ludo City, it's almost always the middle of the night, to the point where Blunda just says "good morning" at any time she wakes up.
  Bees: Some sunlight broke through a few days ago, at least.
  Z: That scared the hell out of me! I thought the world was ending!
• Psych 2021: The game is only ever set at nighttime.
• In Puyo Puyo Chronicle, the town Purplune represents the purple Puyo color, and in order to fit the color, it's "shrouded in eternal night", as Ally words it.
• Quest for Glory IV: Shrouding the world in perpetual night is the ultimate goal of the game's Big Bad, who is a vampire and resents having to spend half the time hiding from daylight in a coffin. Too bad her intented method of achieving this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of an Eldrich Abomination's powers and intentions, and would destroy the whole world before granting her wish.
• The Radio Station: The game takes place at night, with no indication of time ever passing.
• Raptor Valley is set in the nighttime in the middle of the valley.
• Raw Footage: At least one of the forests you explore is shrouded in a perpetual nighttime.
• Remorse: The List is set entirely at dusk.
• Richman has three maps that are set entirely at night: Las Vegas in 8, Sleepless Town and Mountain City in 11.
• Several levels from the Sega Superstars games always take place at night. Examples include the Curien Mansion tennis court and courses and Chilly Castle.
• Shade: Wrath of Angels, being set in the netherworld of demons, where each and every stage from a haunted church to a monster-infested swamp is set in dusk.
• Shounen Kininden Tsumuji: The festival island is always in night and is illuminated by bright colored decorations.
• Shut Eye is set during the nights a girl is away from home, and her parents.
• The Shutokou Battle series of Driving Games always takes place at night, since (illegal) street racing is done mostly at night to avoid heavy traffic and to reduce chances of police encounters. What makes this game "always night" is that the games have in-game clocks that typically correspond to your system's internal clock. The clock is used for in-game events (for example, some opponents can only be challenged at a certain hour), but while the in-game clock could say noon, the sky still looks like midnight.
• Skies of Arcadia: Most of the continent of Valua is shrouded in eternal darkness. That's because it's located under the Yellow Moon, which causes constant thunderstorms, permanently blocking out the sun.
• Silent Hill games have the Otherside, which is always night and full of vicious monsters.
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3: Downplayed example. Daylight certainly exists in this game, but most missions start at midnight and finish before dawn. This makes sense for a stealth-focused game, but it lacks an explicit mechanic for hiding in the dark.
• Stigmatized Property is set on a single night.
• The Super Mario Bros. games have many levels/stages set at night:
  • Worlds 3 and 6 from Super Mario Bros. are both set at night.
  • World 5 in Super Mario Bros. 2 is the only one set at night, although the caverns are very dark.
  • Super Mario Bros. 3's final world was the aptly-named "Dark Land", where every level seems nocturnal.
  • The ghost house levels in New Super Mario Bros. show you it's night for about five seconds in the outdoors parts at the very end of the levels.
  • The ghost house levels in New Super Mario Bros. Wii show you it's night for about five seconds in the outdoors parts at the very end of the levels.
  • Paper Mario 64 has Boo's Mansion and the neighboring Forever Forest. The sky will suddenly turn dark as you approach either of these areas, and revert back to day upon leaving.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has Twilight Town and the Creepy Steeple.
  • Wario:
    • The East map in Wario Land 3 is always nighttime regardless of the game's day/night cycle until you get the two sun fragment treasures.
    • Crescent Moon Village and Arabian Night in Wario Land 4.
    • Horror Manor from Wario World.
    • Blowhole Castle from Wario: Master of Disguise.
    • Bad Manor, Boogie Mansion, and the Shakedown Schooner (the Shake King's pirate ship), in Wario Land: Shake It!.
  • Mario Kart has several nighttime rack tracks: Luigi's Mansion (twice), Banshee Boardwalk, Boo Lake/Broken Pier, Ghost Valley 1-3 (which just have a void for the background, pure blackness), Twilight House, etc.
  • Mario Party 8 has King Boo's Haunted Hideaway. Not only is it set permanently at night, but it's also so dark that players can only see a few spaces ahead of them, even when looking at the board's map.
• Savage Halloween is set during a Halloween Night that never ends until you defeat Dracula in the last stage.
• Sydney Hunter and the Shrines of Peril: The sky is always shown as a dark blue night sky.
• Tales of Xillia brings us the city of Fenmont where the use of spirits has created a 'night clime' which results in the city and its surrounding area to exist in an endless night where the sun never rises.
• Almost all the action in the Tex Murphy games takes place at night, in true Film Noir fashion. It is revealed in the third game that this is because of the post-apocalyptic nature of the setting; following the events of World War III, the ozone layer is basically shot and it's become downright dangerous to be out for long in the day, so the day-night cycle has been inverted (i.e., everyone sleeps during the day and conduct business at night).
• Thief (2014) is perpetually dark; justified in-universe by the spread of the Gloom. Sunrise finally comes in the final scene.
• Donald's Dreamland from Toontown Online is always immersed in nighttime. Makes sense; as the central theme of the neighborhood revolves around sleeping.
• Trials of Mana: The Moonreading Tower keeps the beast kingdom in perpetual night, so that all of the beastmen are locked into werewolf mode.
• Twin Caliber is set entirely in a single night, with you shooting zombies and monsters the entire game. Though the sun starts shining the morning after, in the game's last cutscene.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is set in a Dark World version of Los Angeles where the sun never rises. As the daytime is mentioned in dialogue, it's not a setting element, but a gameplay concession so the vampire Player Character doesn't have to spend half the time in hiding.
• A Walk in the Woods takes place over the course of one night.
• Warcraft III: Some underground levels are set to permanent night to simulate reduced light.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Tirisfal Glades and Duskwood are always set at nighttime.
  • Storm Peaks has a perpetual starry sky to play up its status as being the highest point in Northrend. Icecrown meanwhile is perpetually overcast and gloomy.
  • The Draenor version of Shadowmoon Valley has a perpetual night sky. This was done due to concept art of the zone at night being well-received.

Web Animation

• Shrapnel: A long time ago, the earth stopped spinning, leaving half the planet in permanent moonlight.

Webcomics

• In Lore Olympus, the Underworld always has a starry sky. Hades explains that it's always dark there because he dislikes Apollo and doesn't want the sun god in his territory.

Web Original

• Carnage Carnival OCT begins with The Night That Never Ends having already occurred at the carnival.
  The sky has become red and gray, It was permanently dark, now no longer day,
• Implied with the Quiet Place in Vox and King Beau, which is described as dark and unlit every time it's mentioned.
• The Cry of Mann only takes place at night, despite everyone being awake, active, and working in each episode. Courtney points out how it feels like it's always night, and seems confused about it, so it's implied this isn't normal.

Western Animation

• In Arthur, the In-Universe Dark Bunny is set "in a city "where it's, like, always nighttime" — parodying the tendency for Batman media to be set at night.
• ChalkZone has it both ways: there's a Day Zone where it is always light, and a Night Zone where it's always dark, split down the middle. The people in Chalk Zone go to sleep in the night side. Well, that "and the swinging night life".
• In Pixar short Day & Night, it's always nighttime in the scenes shown inside the anthropomorphic personification of Night. Conversely, it's always daytime in the scenes shown inside his opposite.
• One half of Eternia, in both He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) and its 2002 successor, is shrouded in eternal night. (The second version calls it the Dark Hemisphere and gave an explanation for it in the second season.) Naturally, it's the half where the villains live.

Real Life

• Truth in Television in areas near the North and South Poles during winter.
• An eternal night could be the product of living in the night side of a planet tidally locked to its star.
• Same goes for Rogue Planets, planets which drift through open space instead of being in the orbit of a star.
  PSO J318.5-22. Where the Nightlife Never Ends!
• This could be the effect of a nuclear war. Lots of nukes, according to some sources as few as 50, could throw so much debris and dust into the atmosphere that it would block out the sun for years, thus ensuring famines all around the globe.
• Many scientists believe that this is how the asteroid strike caused the end-Cretaceous extinction. The impact would have sent massive amounts of dust and chemicals into the air, blocking the sun, sending the world into perpetual night. No sun, no photosynthesis, no plants; even without the impact, it's the end of the world as the dinos knew it.

---