Empathic Environment

aka: Pathetic Fallacy

The moon had been rising late, but the stars touched the snow with a fairy light, and all the world seemed somehow bathed in a gentle blue-white glow. It was, of all nights, among the closest to perfect Garion had ever seen, and all of nature seemed to be holding its breath.

— The Belgariad: The Seeress of Kell

If a character needs to look pensive and tragic, there will be a hair-whipping wind... even inside. If there's an important funeral being held, there will be rain, or at least the dimming of the sun. If characters are feeling blue, we often see them exposed to Gray Rain of Depression. The Mother of All expresses her sympathy for the strife of an epic battle with violent thunderstorms, chasms spontaneously opening in the earth — even horrifying holes ripping the very fabric of reality!

And, when it's all over, the Empathic Environment responds with calm. The air stills and the clouds part...at the same time. The sun shines down as the people turn their faces up, and the rain stops just as the tears of joy start to flow. On a larger scale, the ill character's case often worsens in the autumn as the leaves start to fall, and spring brings about courtship not only among birds but among humans.

Almost always this phenomenon is caused by The Law of Conservation of Detail. After all, if the scene you're describing (or showing) doesn't fit the mood of the moment, why do you describe it in first place?

When done linguistically, this is known in literary criticism as the pathetic fallacy, and is well-explained by this strip of Dinosaur Comics.

Supertrope to Cue the Sun, Dramatic Wind and Grave Clouds.

See also Fisher King, which is when the environment reacts to the mood of a specific person, and Fisher Kingdom, which is when the people change to match the environment, and Environmental Symbolism. For a living, even sapient environment see Genius Loci. Similar to, but not the same as, Weather Saves the Day, in which the weather facilitates the plot of the story; in this trope the weather augments the mood of the story. For weather that responds to holiday celebrations, see Holiday-Appropriate Weather.

Contrast Scenery Dissonance.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Assassination Classroom: Inside of AI-girl Ritsu's world, it rains when she cries.
• Boys Run the Riot: After Itsuka finds his treasured camera broken and blames Ryo and Jin for causing him to be targetted, he walks home in the rain without an umbrella.
• 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.
• At the end of episode 8 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, it starts raining in response to Kamina's death. It rains continuously for seven days, then stops the very moment Simon meets Nia.
• Averted yet invoked in Fullmetal Alchemist with Maes Hughes' funeral. It takes place on a bright, sunny day, yet Mustang tells Hawkeye, "It's a terrible day for rain." When Hawkeye remarks on the contrary weather, Mustang insists, and that's when she realizes that he's crying and attempting to hide it; she then relents and says that yes, it's raining.
• In Hajiotsu, when Himari admits to Kai that she was only dating him to overcome her shyness around guys, the sunny day begins to cloud up and it starts to rain when Himari breaks out in tears.
• The Naruto-verse is pretty much an empathic universe. Its 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.
• In School Rumble, it tends to rain whenever a character is feeling the blues. Most notably Eri Sawachika, when her father has to cancel their dinner for a meeting out of country.
• Bleach is practically made of this trope. So much so that rain has become an integral part of the fandom.
• In Haré+Guu, it starts raining whenever Hare has a breakdown.
• .hack//SIGN has one of these which 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.
• In Fist of the North Star, hail suddenly appears during the climax of Kenshiro's battle against Souther. Raoh notes that "the heavens are agitated" as they both take their stance.
• The Dear Brother anime invokes this via the very frequent rainstorms that take place at the start of the series, coinciding with some of the worst parts of Nanako's Break the Cutie days and with several of Rei's Ophelia incidents.
• Played for all the drama it worth in Yaoi Manga Ameagari no 10 nenme where there is always rain when Hanajima and Kurose still facing troubles and hardships. But when they finally overcome it and confirm their left, their "ten years" rain finally stops and the sun shines for them.

Arts

• The Fighting Temeraire: The calm, misty, beautiful weather creates a melancholic mood for the painting. Of things coming to an end and people (the sailors) having to part ways.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: Subverted. In Season 7 episode 51, the Supermen are not happy to be told to leave Planet Xing. Smart S. notices that there dark clouds gathering in the sky and thinks that even the heavens are reacting to the scene, only to realize a few seconds later that it's actually smoke coming from yet another one of Sweet S.'s poorly-cooked dishes.

Comic Books

• During the "Brief Lives" story arc, The Sandman (1989) 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 Merv Pumpkinhead when he says "And here comes the rain, right on cue."
• Storm from 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.
• The best way to tell if things are getting dramatic in Sin City is if it begins to rain.
• In Scott Pilgrim, it rains the whole time that Envy is in Toronto, and the rain ends the moment she gets on the cab to the airport.
• Lampshaded aversion in an early issue of The Walking Dead. A character comments that up to that point, the weather was always sunny with blue skies, largely unfitting with the whole Zombie Apocalypse scenario.
• Invoked by "The Literals", a Fables spinoff, which has an Anthropomorphic Personification of this trope named Pathetic Fallacy (an alternate title of this trope — naming him Empathic Environment would have had less zing somewhat...).
• The climax of the Astro City story "The Dark Age" has the city — the source of the dark energy gripping the populace — drenched in a sudden rainstorm, culminating with a Battle in the Rain between Charles and Royal Williams, the Silver Agent, Lord Sovereign, and the Pale Horseman. Once the villains are vanquished, the rain suddenly stops.

Fan Works

• Aftergore: The weather on the Surface when Nex makes it out of the Underground differs between Aftergore variations to reflect the overall mood of the Underground, with the names of the various "Respite" equivalent tracks likewise having different names and sound effects to tie into the weather.
  • I's Respite is called "A Beautiful Day" and has birdsong audible, mirroring how it's the happiest possible ending that still has the monsters trapped after Frisk left.
  • II's Respite has a rainstorm accompanying the song and is called "It's Raining", reflecting how the loss of Mettaton has dampened the Underground's spirit. It also refers to Sans stepping up to try filling the void Mettaton left, as one of the tracks associated with him in Undertale is called "It's Raining Somewhere Else".
• Averted in A Triangle in the Stars, particularly and seemingly with the dark, ugly storm that occurs much later in the story. It doesn't go away after Bill and Steven settle their issues in Chapter Forty-Four, and is actually lampshaded by the narrative.
  • It finally passes in Chapter Fifty-One. It actually turned out to be empathetic, because it didn't go away until Wendy and Connie began to fully trust Bill and see the good that lay within. But, unfortunately for Bill, it signals possible doom...
• In Dungeon Keeper Ami, Empathic Environment is both a power all keepers posses, and a side-effect of dungeon hearts. Keepers can bend it to useful applications, like Mercury's corruption-storm-powered wind generators, and the vampire-emperor Zarekos' perpetual night.
• The sudden thunderstorm at the tail end of the Siege of Crassus, the first rain in a decade.
• To establish the goffik tone of the story, every time the weather is mentioned in My Immortal, it is snowing and raining. At the same time.
• In the Pony POV Series, Dark World!Twilight, who just went through a Vision Quest to realign her soul, awakens to find her room overgrown by the plants Discord turned her parents into (who are wrapped around her as if hugging her), the roof torn through to allow the sky to be visible, and birds singing outside the window.
• Played with in A Posse Ad Esse; rather than the whole environment, Dolly's superpower involves only the air or ground in a select radius around her changing to fit her mood. Played conventionally straight in Chapter 8 when Kroko is alone, when the sky is beset by rainclouds just minutes after he had an aquaphobic scare.
• In the Touhou Project fan doujin The Flower That Follows The Sun, Marisa can tell when Yuuka's upset, even when Yuuka is denying it - the sunflowers in the Garden of the Sun are drooping.
• In Restoring Lost Honour, the weather is dark and cloudy when Thomas is about to leave Sodor. When the Fat Controller apologises for his previous horrible attitude and convinces Thomas not to go, the sun comes out and the rays of the sunset shine on Thomas.
• In O Mother, Where Art Thou?, the final battle with Diesel 10 takes place on a cloudy, misty night. When Diesel 10 is defeated, the clouds part, the moon comes out and a strong wind starts blowing.
• In the Thomas & Friends fanfic The Brother's Grimm, it's an extremely grey cloudy afternoon when Bernard reveals that he was the Stirling Single who accidentally killed Seymour Murphy's father, which lead to both Murphy's hatred for Stirlings and his team-up with Sailor John.
• Sand from Bruno's room has a weird habit of winding up all over the house in Through the crack in the wall, this being a clue that he never actually left.

Films — Animated

• Brave: The climax of the movie where Mor'du is faced once and for all (and Merida works to break the spell on her mother) takes place during a violent, fairly frightening thunderstorm, which ends after he is killed, just in time for the (fateful) sunrise.
• Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie: The carnival scene starts out bright and sunny, but as George and Harold realize how many carnival games involve water and have to keep switching Mr. Krupp back into Captain Underpants, who keeps causing more and more chaos, there are dark clouds starting to move in. And as they try to keep Captain Underpants out of harm's way, the blue sky gets covered with more clouds, that is until the carnival gets train-wrecked, the sky is completely covered and it starts to rain, symbolizing the boys' situation going From Bad to Worse, with the whole scene ending as a Tear Jerker.
• Inside Out: Inside Riley's mindscape, the sky changes depending on Riley's activity at the moment. It's daytime when she's awake, but when she goes to sleep, it's nighttime. Then when she becomes apathetic and is running away, the sky becomes grey, foggy and dark.
• In Kung Fu Panda, when Shifu faces Tai Lung, it's all dark and gloomy and there are storm clouds as far as the eye can see. When Po shows up two minutes later the clouds and lightning are gone, replaced by a warm ambient glow and the usual bright and cheery colors of the rest of the movie.
• In Kung Fu Panda 2, when we are shown the Kung Fu Council training, it is a normal warm sunset outside. Then Lord Shen walks in, and the sky near-instantly turns blood-red, like it is prone to be around him in general.
• Disney often does this in their animated canon:
  • Justified in Frozen (2013), where the sudden outburst of snowy weather in the middle of summer is explicitly caused by Elsa's fear of her own powers leading to Power Incontinence. The worse Elsa's fear gets, the worse the weather gets. Thankfully, it also works the other way around; when Elsa learns that despite all that's happened between them her sister Anna still loves her, she realizes "love will thaw" and is able to fully control her powers and reverse the curse of endless winter.
  • Similarly Justified in Hercules - since Zeus controls the weather, his anger causes a massive thunderstorm.
  • And also in The Little Mermaid (1989), since Triton is the king of the sea. The movie starts with the the sea still, as he is about to enjoy a concert in his honor, but a violent thunderstorm erupts at night after he dresses down Ariel for missing her performance and going to the surface.
    Sailor: A fine, strong wind and a following sea. King Triton must be in a friendly-type mood.
  • in The Lion King (1994) this is so prominent it's essentially a plot point, as Scar coming to power seems to have caused a drought due to disrupting the natural balance abstractly, which is causing him all sorts of problems Mufasa didn't have to deal with. Naturally the moment Scar is removed from power, it immediately starts to rain again. It's so extreme it borders on Genius Loci and Sentient Cosmic Force given how much the story emphasizes the rightful "Circle of Life".
  • In Tangled: When Rapunzel is introduced in her tower, it is a beautiful sunny day, and the inside of the tower is bright and full of color. When she returns after seeing the lanterns, it is very cloudy and dark, and the tower is dull and darkly colored, to show she no longer sees it as "amazing" and leading up to her big confrontation with Gothel.
• In Sing, the Moon Theatre's signature prop in its prime was a full moon but by the time Buster purchased the theatre, it was changed to a crescent moon, which was handily kicked down, misused and destroyed over the course of the movie. While Buster was able to repair it, Meena's performance caused the prop to give way again ... only to be replaced by a real full moon overlooking the stage. Meena's performance is what ultimately saved the theatre from being sold out. It is as if nature itself has given consent for the Moon Theatre to flourish once again.

Films — Live-Action

• April Showers: When Sean finds out April died in the school shooting, the next scene shows that it has started raining.
• Roy Batty's famous death scene in Blade Runner. For most of the movie, it's always night time in Los Angeles of 2019, the city is appropriately dark, grimy and rainy for a Cyberpunk setting. However, after Roy Batty's moving death speech, the clouds break open overhead and the rain stops, and the dove flies up into sunlight.
• Body Heat: The film takes place during an especially hot Florida summer, setting the perfect scenery for a plot centered around sexual desire for a woman leading a man to his doom.
• It's pouring in Casablanca when Rick receives Ilsa's letter telling him that she will never see him again.
• In the Nicholas Sparks film The Choice, the heroine awakens from a coma the morning after a hurricane strikes, her recovery coinciding with the storm abating and the sun coming out.
• In The Crow, the rain in Detroit only abated after Eric finally takes Top Dollar down and returns to his grave.
• In Death Becomes Her, when Madeleine just got dumped by her secret lover, Dakota, rain immediately pours down.
• Inverted with Doctor Zhivago. All the scenes of war and despair are shot in beautiful light and scenery (for example, the scene where they shoot soldiers who turn out to be teenage students at a military school) while the love scenes are shot in really depressing settings.
• In The Fall of the House of Usher, an epic thunderstorm arrives at the Usher mansion on the night that Buried Alive Madeline rises from her tomb.
• When Kotpun's mother dies in The Flower Girl, the heavens let loose with a thunderstorm.
• In silent film A Fool There Was, right after Schuyler leaves the house for his fateful trip that eventually lead to a very foolish affair that will utterly destroy him, the sky darkens and a thunderstorm breaks out.
  "Storm and darkness! Is it an omen?
• In Heart and Souls, it immediately starts to rain on Julia and Thomas when she discovers her long-lost fiancé John died years before her arrival.
• 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.
• In The Incredible Hulk (with Ed Norton), right as Betty gets knocked out by a helicopter crash, it starts raining.
• The infamous sex scene of Jason's Lyric. When the titular characters start having sex in the bayou, they roll over on a grassy ground. As they're getting intense, the ground magically turns into a flower field; reflecting their blooming love and unbridled passion (before it turns back to grassy again, despite they keep going until the sun sets).
• Key Largo: Dnager happens during a stormy night.
• Long Weekend: As Peter and Marcia's efforts to salvage their marriage implode (leading them to take out their frustrations on nearby flora and fauna), their environmental surroundings become more hostile and inhospitable as well.
• In the film Master and Commander, as soon as Captain Aubrey finishes the ceremony to bury Driven to Suicide Midshipman Hollom at sea, which concludes with asking both God and Hollom for forgiveness, the wind picks up and the ship can finally get going again.
• Justified in The Matrix, where the final fight takes place in the Matrix taken over by Agent Smith, under a torrential, green-filtered thunderstorm. Once Agent Smith is destroyed, cue the Mega City awakening in a shiny, colorful dawn, painted by one of the resident "free programs".
• Literally in Men in Black II when K is giving The Reveal to the female lead.
  Agent K: [Ever notice] when you get sad it always seems to rain.
  Laura: Lots of people get sad when it rains!
  Agent K: It rains because you're sad, baby.
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). We're shown in a flashback how the protagonists first fell in love. Thunder sounds when things start heating up between the protagonists during their Mating Dance.
• Throughout The Others (2001), the weather is gray, cloudy and incredibly foggy. At the conclusion, it's bright and sunny. While this is mostly because we're now seeing things from the living person's point of view (the foggy weather represented the land of the dead), it's also possible that it represents the ghostly characters' acceptance of their situation.
• In Pacific Rim, the weather is grey and nasty through the entire film and gets worse as things look worse for mankind, but once the good guys score a decisive victory, the next time we get a look up, the sky is blue.
• 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!
• 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. Lampshaded when a character observes "have you noticed on top of everything else, it's raining?"
• When the bandits start going too far in Purgatory, there are rainstorms and tremors.
• The films in the Pusher trilogy start in light settings, usually in the morning, when the protagonist still has a relatively bright life to live. They then end in the dead of night, with the climax of the film usually in a place with little lighting and deep shadows, when everything has gone to hell.
• The Hitchcock film Rear Window takes place during a heat wave that is only broken at the end, when the murderer is caught and presumably made to pay for his crimes.
• In Shane, during the confrontation between Shane and Star is a perfect example of this trope — and all done without any special effects.
• The lights in the Facebook office in The Social Network began to go out when Mark found out about Sean's arrest.
• Some Came Running: When Dave takes Gwen into a passionate embrace in a cabin, the lighting goes dark for no reason at all.
• Spectre: Bond and Madeline meet in cold, snowy, Austria, and she's equally cold and frosty to him. The relationship begins to improve as they head to warm and sunny Tangiers, with them finally consummating it on a train in the middle of the desert.
• In Super Mario Bros. (1993), after Koopa's defeat, the fungus recedes and water floods the streets of Dinohattan, symbolically showing the city's on the road to recovery.
• Vertigo:
  • As Pop Liebel tells the story of Carlotta at the Argosy Book Shop, it gets noticeably darker both inside and outside the store.
  • When Judy leaves the bathroom after getting her hair done in Madeleine's style, there is an intense fog around her as though Madeleine has "come back from the dead." Which she technically has.
  • When Scottie and Madeleine kiss for the first time on a beach, a huge wave hits the shore at the exact same moment underlining the culmination of their feelings.
• The Whale takes place on a series of stormy nights as the protagonist's life is spiraling towards death.

Literature

• It is a trope essential to Gothic literature and the Romantic movement. You can find it in all sorts of works, from Caspar David Friedrich's bleak, moody landscapes to Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher".
• Even O. Henry got in on the trope with the short story "The Last Leaf" ... but if you're familiar with O. Henry, you know there's a surprise in The Stinger.
• 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 Überwald is noted for this. Experienced residents pause before saying portentious words to give thunder time to roll or wolves to howl mournfully.
  • 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 swore off the sticky stuff and now much prefers a mug of cocoa and a singsong, my vord yes.) mourns this fact — he always makes dramatic pauses, used to Uberwald's environment, but Ankh-Morpork does not care. When it does, however, he uses it whilst it lasts and is overjoyed.
    Otto: Vat a big... ''castle.'' *rumble* Yes! Vunce more mit feelink!
  • 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 Carpe Jugulum, a patch of magically-altered land in the Lancre mountains which actually changes its appearance to match the mood of visitors. A person who's nervous or angry will see the small field as a brambly moor, the stone over a brook as a flimsy stone bridge over a deep canyon, and the hollow in the side of the mountains as a system of deep caves, while someone in love will see it completely differently, such as the field as a meadow filled with flowers.
• 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.
  • The plague in The Willow Pattern.
  • The fire in The Siamese Twin Mystery.
  • Older Than Radio: The St Petersburg heat wave in Crime and Punishment.
• Averted and lampshaded in the Warcraft Expanded Universe novel Rise of the Horde, in which the protagonist Durotan, who is about to take an old friend as a hostage, contemplates on how the weather is all sunny and the land is so lush when it so utterly fails to reflect his inner conflict and sadness.
• 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 wonders aloud why these things can't be allowed to happen when it's nice out.
• In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, the dying Solomon Demeter watches the sun setting and explicitly feels as if the world was marking his passing.
• As the ten characters are whittled down by the murderer in 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.
• In the Shadowleague books, the weather in Callisoria mirrors the state of the Curtain Walls, which the heroes are trying to save. Hence, it ends up mirroring their moods almost exactly.
• In John C. Wright's The Phoenix Exultant, Daphne is in a Red Manorial room when her Laser-Guided Amnesia is revoked. It is specifically designed to do this. The entire room goes dark with her misery, flowers wilting. When she manages to turn off the feedback loops that exaggerate her woe, she ends up with a Tearful Smile because she, and it, look so ridiculous.
• In the Star Shards Chronicles, this is applied rather literally: Michael's superpower is that he can actually control the weather based on his emotions.
• Used frequently in Raymond Chandler's works. (The rain in The Big Sleep, the wind in "Red Wind", etc.)
• 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 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: in The Grey King, 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 War.
• In Jane Austen's Emma, the protagonist is experiencing a major crisis while there is a very severe and very long summer storm near the climax of the novel. When the storm is over and lovely summer weather is restored, she is determined to know herself better and behave accordingly, and moments later she is reconciled with her friend as well. Though such a beautiful use of this trope seems tailor-made for film, only the 1996 ITV telefilm utilizes it in adaptation.
• At the end of the book Mortal Coil of the Skulduggery Pleasant series, the assassin Tesseract is finally killed after the Skeleton Detective hunts him down and accidentally leads him into a surprise attack by the recently resurrected Lord Vile and is mortally wounded. The assassin, who was centuries years old and only kept alive by a mask that continuously pumped a sort of preservative/anti-toxin into his body, asks the normally pragmatic detective to bring him outside so that he could see the sunrise before he dies. He dies trying to smile as the two watch it together.
• Inverted in The Edge Chronicles, where the weather is known to actually change people's moods.
• Played straight twice in Melusine, the first book in Doctrine of Labyrinths series. Meeting a blood witch in a cemetery? Surrounded by millenia-old ghosts who need your insane brother to put them to rest? You're about to get drenched.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire rather than reveal a tough character is weeping, George R. R. Martin has the rain flowing over their face instead.
• In Salvage the Bones, Hurricane Katrina hits as the Batistes' private dramas come to a climax.
• Inverted in Seeds of Yesterday as Christopher Dollanganger is buried on a beautiful, sunny day. Cathy wonders how they can be having on a funeral on a day meant for picnics and sailing.
• The Divine Comedy: When Pope Boniface VIII is discussed in Heaven, the sky turns dark and reddish, as if the whole cosmos is ashamed of how he has perverted the true religion.
• The Neverending Story: The Swamps of Sadness make people feel sorrowful, apathetic, hopeless and even borderline suicidal. The two fan theories about it are if Morla has gotten as selfish and cynical as she is from living there for so long, or if her selfishness and cynicism has caused the Swamps to become such a dangerously morbid place.
• The events of The Go-Between unfold during a record-breaking heatwave, which is broken by a violent thunderstorm at the moment of climax.
• In Book III of The Faerie Queene, even the hills and mountains start to cry as they watch a sea nymph mourn her fallen son.
• Chrysanthemum: When Chrysanthemum finally starts to love her name again after some encouragement from her music teacher, the background is filled with a beautiful rainbow.

Live-Action TV

• In Season One of Altered Carbon, every building above the cloudline is shown in brilliant sunlight to contrast with the Wretched Hive below. But in the penultimate episode when Vernon pilots a Flying Car towards the airborne high-class brothel Head in the Clouds, it's night-time with menacing dark clouds to give it more of the atmosphere of a Supervillain Lair.
• Princess Agents: The weather is calm before Bai Sheng's suicide. Afterwards, on the other hand, cue the thunder, lightning, and rain.
• In Smallville, at the end of the episode appropriately named Turbulence, heavy rain pours as Davis Rage Against the Heavens, Jimmy sinks into drug abuse, and Chloe sobbing alone after Jimmy says marrying her is the biggest mistake of his life.
• A standard Soap Opera trope. Bad weather frequently coincides with major events in the characters' lives:
  • All My Children had a tornado occurring on a day when about six major storylines either came to a climax or kicked off.
  • In February 1999, at the same time ABC Primetime premiered the miniseries Storm of the Century, ABC Daytime started its own "storm" hype by having a massive blizzard strike all four ABC soaps. This was easy to do, as all four soaps set in the Northeast, which frequently experiences this type of weather. Two—Port Charles and General Hospital were set in the same town in upstate New York (the former was a Spinoff of the latter), while the other two—All My Children and One Life to Live—were in set in suburban Pennsylvania and presumably in close proximity to each other). With this, several front-burner storylines were kicked into high gear.
• Doctor Who: The Downer Ending of "The Pandorica Opens" takes place at night, with no visible stars above. Stars are, however, clearly visible during the Stonehenge speech, in spite of all the spaceships whizzing about.
• 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, anklet or no, the weather promptly turns gorgeous again.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid probably uses Gray Rain of Depression more than any other series, usually to accompany someone's impeding death. Examples without rain include:
  • Taiga loses a fight and is lethally wounded just as the sun sets. He undergoes a complicated operation through the night and the sun rises just as he is confirmed to be alive in the ICU.
  • Explained and exploited by Cronus, who uses his time powers to turn night into day and the other way around depending on what currently suits his sense for drama.
  • In an inversion of the above, Kuroto's rampage and his no less brutal murder all happen in broad daylight on nice spring day.
  • Parado's last fight and subsequent murder mirror Kuroto's murder in many ways by being just as sudden, brutal and also happening in broad daylight on nice summer day.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "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", 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. 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.
• Justified in an episode of Stargate SG-1. While the team, having recently lost Daniel (again) stand around looking pensive and sad, an odd, comforting wind blows past. They're inside. They all agree that it must have been a malfunctioning air vent, but we (and O'Neill) know better...
• The X-Files: "The Rain King" has Mulder and Scully investigating a swindler who claims to be able to make it rain (and sold this skill to drought-struck communities). Soon enough, they discover that the man's ex-fiancée believes that she has a sort of antagonistic version of this trope in effect (the sky seemed to cry on her first wedding day, and the clouds laughed at her when she got divorced) and that is behind her ex-fiancée's apparent abilities. In fact, 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 Spartacus: Blood and Sand, as Spartacus, known in the arena as the Bringer of Rain breathes his last, a gentle rain begins to fall.
• Frasier:
  • Sometimes jokingly discussed regarding either Lilith or Bebe.
    Niles: Strange, I usually get some sign when Lilith is in town - dogs forming into packs, blood weeping down the wall.
  • Done in an episode featuring Lilith's brother:
    Frasier: The Beast is among us!
• In Wolf Hall, the morning of Anne Boleyn's execution is grey and windy. After the deed is done, there is a rumble of thunder and the rain begins. But the day has become incongruously sunny by the time Thomas Cromwell is back in Whitehall, slowly making his way through the corridors to see Henry VIII's joyful smile upon being informed that Cromwell has successfully ended his marriage by killing his wife.
• In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Ye Who Enter Here", when Coulson and his team arrive in Puerto Rico, it's bright and sunny, but as they prepare to enter the lost Kree city, a storm is brewing.
• NCIS: It is pouring throughout much of "Kill Ari, Part 1" and "Part 2", the episodes immediately following Caitlin Todd's murder and the team's efforts to find her killer, but sunny on the day of her funeral, as the team finally makes its peace with her death and moves on.
• The Barrier: A storm breaks out right around the time a group of revolutionaries that includes the protagonists gains access to the enclave for the elites and start marching towards the building in which the dictatorship's President resides.

Music

• The jazz standard "Stormy Weather":
  Since my man and I ain't together
  Keeps raining all the time
• Inverted in the Wendy Matthews song "The Day You Went Away": the refrain is about the fact that the weather isn't providing suitable accompaniment:
  There's not a cloud in the sky
  It's as blue as your goodbye
  And I thought that it would rain on a day like today
• Pretty much the entirety of Conjure One's "Tears From the Moon". After the singer's partner dumps her, it starts raining:
  I feel something falling from the sky
  I'm so sad, I made the angels cry
  Tears from the moon
  fall down like rain.
• Enya's enigmatic B-side "I May Not Awaken" features a massively empathic environment. It's a dark, snowy, cloudy night, and the wind is howling...small wonder that the narrator proves to be homesick, hopelessly wishing on the few visible stars, running out of options, and, as if that wasn't enough suicidal. It's implied that she goes through with it too.

Mythology and Religion

• Invoked in The Bible by the prophet Samuel, who calls for a storm at Saul’s inauguration as a sign that God is unhappy that Israel has chosen a human king over their heavenly King.
  "'Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the LORD will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest today? I will call upon the LORD, that He may send thunder and rain. And you shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the LORD, in asking for yourselves a king.' So Samuel called upon the LORD, and the LORD sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel."

  — 1 Samuel 12:16-18, English Standard Version
• This is how the Ancient Greeks explained the seasons: when Persephone went missing, abducted by Hades, her mother Demeter was obviously distraught. The problem is that Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and her depression affected crop harvests, threatening the world with famine. This was used to convince Hades to let Persephone go back to her mother, but she had already eaten some food of the Underworld—which normally forbids anyone from leaving Hades' realm—so she spends half the year with Demeter and half the year with Hades as his wife, and the time she's apart from Demeter are when crops stop growing—it's usually said to be winter, but in the Ancient Greek context it was summer. The point is that Demeter is sad for the half of the year that Persephone is in the Underworld and won't let anything grow.

News and Journalism

• After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, several news channels reported that rainbows were seen above Buckingham Palace, implying that the weather itself was commemorating the event.

Tabletop Games

• In the Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 Manual of the Planes, one of the Dream Lands described in the appendix is literally this way. Its occupant is an eternally youthful child, and the land responds to her desires, turning bright and sunny when she is happy, stormy when she is angry, windy and wet when she is sad, etc. The only other permanent resident is a large dragon who knows the truth: the girl was the last survivor of a doomed space colonization effort. Her ship crashed, and her stasis pod is left running on the surface of some unknown, airless, alien world forever. Or at least until the power fails.
• Downplayed in Changeling: The Lost, where the Eldritch Location of the Hedge between the mundane world and Arcadia responds subtly to the Changelings and fae creatures within it. Weaker beings only get minor cosmetic effects like flowers blooming near them, while those with a powerful Wyrd can actually weaponize the environmental effects.

Theater

• 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 the jurors decide on a not guilty verdict.
• Lampshaded in The Drowsy Chaperone, when the Man in the Chair says that "[Janet] is bathed in the blue light of a sympathetic moon, which is ridiculous because it's the middle of the day.".
• The script of Little Shop of Horrors calls for a dramatic sunset to add "Wagnerian splendor" to the scene in which 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.
• The Minutes, which takes place during the weekly meeting of the town council of Big Cherry:
  • Played Straight for the majority of the play with drumming rain, rumbling thunder, and intermittent power brownouts caused by the storm make the already fraught council meeting seem more menacing.
  • Inverted during the flashback to the meeting the week prior, when Mr. Carp revealed the dark truth behind the founding of Big Cherry — the lighting design on stage indicates that the sun is shining brightly outside the council room.
• It's raining for all of the revolution in Les Misérables, despite the fact that it takes place in June. This is especially noticeable in the aptly-named "Little Fail of Rain", when Eponine is dying, and in "Javert's suicide", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• At the end of the first act of The Phantom of the Opera, as the phantom vows revenge on Christine and Raoul, lightening flashes across the sky to emphasize how angry he is at her betrayal.
• In Spamalot, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" takes place in a dark and very expensive forest to show how distraught Arthur is at his defeat at the hands of the French Taunters. The trope is neatly subverted for the rest of the song, as it starts to rain despite Arthur and Patsy being noticeably happier with the situation.

Video Games

• The sky is dark and overcast for the last few missions of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, which looks odd because it's supposed to be about noon. Of course, this being a flight simulator, and the first mission of said sequence pitting you against an elite squadron, it's possible and almost expected for the player to fly above the clouds and witness a beautiful blue sky once more, right before you have to fly underground.
• In Black Mesa, a remake of the original Half-Life, the level of light in the mission "Surface Tension" corresponds to how much control the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit has over the titular facility. Capping this off is the final surface sequence of the game in "Forget About Freeman!", where the HECU forces make their final retreat from the facility, leaving several marines stranded. This battle happens at sundown, symbolically representing the defeat of mankind and the coming days where humanity and Earth will be at the mercy of the Xenians and, later on, The Combine.
• In Crash Tag Team Racing, during Tyrannosaurus Wrecks, there is an activated glacier at the snow part of T Wrecks.
• In stealth game Dishonored the final level's forecast depends on how much chaos you've caused during the game. High chaos equals a stormy, overcast cast while low chaos creates a calm, clear day (which makes it slightly anti-climatic).
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series and in the lore, the realms of the Daedric Princes in Oblivion are part this trope, part Genius Loci, and part Eldritch Location. The Princes rule their own realms as Dimension Lords, inside of which they possess almost absolute power to create, change, and alter at will. Anything that causes one of the Princes to change, however, be it a Hijacking Cthulhu situation or through their own actions, also affects their realm. For example, in the 4th Era when Clavicus Vile was separated from his external conscience, Barbas, his realm of is said to have literally shrunk.
  • In Morrowind, a vicious Blight Storm has been raging all around Red Mountain ever since Dagoth Ur's return several centuries prior to the start of the game. When he is defeated at the end, the storm dissipates and clear skies are seen over Red Mountain for the first time in centuries.
  • In Oblivion, areas around Oblivion Gates see the skies become cloudy and ruddy. Closing the gate will cause the environment to return to normal.
• Kind of justified on several occasions in Final Fantasy IX. Burmecia is introduced as the "Realm of Eternal Rain" which wouldn't fit as an example were you not only visiting it after it's totally devastated and almost all of its population killed. You have Freya in your party who laments the fate of her home, and the city stays in the same condition till the end of the game. Similarly but to a lesser extent Treno which is forever shrouded in darkness (apparently, being geographically located this way) and is all about night life of nobles and thieves.
• Ghost of Tsushima uses this trope liberally: fighting honorably (engaging enemies head-on, fighting only using your katana) makes the weather mild and pleasant, while using "Ghost" tactics (backstabs, using Ghost weapons) causes the weather to turn cloudy, rainy, and eventually, stormy.
• In God of War (PS4), when Atreus falls critically ill, the sky darkens and a thunderstorm kicks up suddenly. The world is reacting to Atreus aka Loki being near death and a nod to the old games of the effects caused by the death of a Greek God.
• The sky in inFAMOUS takes color depending on your karmic path. Good gives you a nice sunny day, evil results in Red Sky, Take Warning.
• In Jak 3: Wastelander it rains during the last mission in Haven City, combined with occasional flashes of thunder (which barely ever happens in-game). At the end of it, Damas dies.
• In Katamari Damacy, all of the cutaway scenes when you haven't made a big enough katamari feature rain and thunder coming down as the dejected prince kneels before the King Of All Cosmos. Justified because, well, he's the King Of All Cosmos, and in one of these sequences he even mentions that he's making it rain to make his speech about how disappointed he is in you more dramatic.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Radiant Garden is usually set during a clear day in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. When Aqua heads there for her confrontation against Terra-Xehanort, the sky is cloudy grey.
  • Kingdom Hearts III: The environment in Keyblade Graveyard reflects the urgency of the battle between the Guardians of Light and the True Organization XIII. The sky is bright and sunny during the fights against Dark Riku, Larxene, Luxord, Marluxia, and Xigbar, then suddenly turns twilight orange as you face Saïx, Terra-Xehanort, Vanitas, and Xion, and finally nighttime for your confrontation with Ansem, Xemnas, and Young Xehanort. After Master Xehanort is defeated, the sky reverts back to bright and sunny again.
• Kingdom of Loathing opens a boss battle with this as part of the narration:
  "Very well, then," he says. "It'll be a fight to the death for control of the island. But don't you think the weather's a little inappropriate for a climactic battle royale?" He gestures as if to encompass the bright, clear day, chirping birds, and humming insects.
  "Oh, yeah, man, you're right," Wisniewski says. He glances at a nearby Elder Shaman who isn't quite dead yet. She closes her eyes and chants.
  Storm clouds fill the sky, roiling and churning. The landscape grows dark, illuminated only by near-constant flashes of lightning, as rain pours from the sky in improbably quantities.
  "Much better," the Man says. "All right, you little commie, let's get to it."
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:
    • When Link first sets out, it is literally a dark and stormy night. After stalling Agahnim by hiding Zelda, the weather becomes much clearer.
    • The Lost Woods is covered in some sort of mysterious fog (a recent phenomenon according to two nearby lumberjacks), but that fog immediately breaks after Link claims the Master Sword.
    • The Swamp of Evil is overcast, stormy and ominous when Link first arrives there. However, after using the Ether Medallion (which calls down lightning from the sky) to open Misery Mire, the weather is much more amicable. This is justified according to a nearby NPC, who states that the endless rain is the result of magic clouds, and only a stronger weather magic (i.e. the Ether Medallion) can blow them away.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time it only tends to get cloudy and rainy when you visit a locale that's in a bad way, such as "Ingo" Ranch, Kakariko Village when the ghost from the well is loose, and the ruined Castle Town. Go anywhere near Ganondorf's Castle and it goes a step further by becoming permanently locked at midnight until you leave.
• LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 and 5-7 each have a specific weather pattern for each year, matching their tone.
• Your final decision at the end of Mass Effect 2 will influence the giant glowing globe behind the Illusive Man's office. If you choose Paragon, it's blue; if you choose Renegade, it's red.
• The action of 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.
• When you summon a Wither In Minecraft, the sky darkens and turns to a redder shade.
• 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 which is even more violent, with 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!
• In No More Heroes III, this is used as foreshadowing, when Santa Destroy becomes completely covered with fog prior to the tragic title defense battle against Henry.
• 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.
• In The Saboteur, districts under Nazi control are cloudy/overcast with a black and white color tone. After Sean destroys the Nazi installments in the district, the color tone will turn into a colorful one and the weather will become sunny.
• Saints Row 4 has a pair of justified examples as they are set in a simulation, so one can assume the simulation could have been tweaked to set the weather to match a given mood.
  • While a Warden is around, the sky turns orange and (harmless) fire begins to rain from the sky.
  • The sky changes after certain missions are completed, starting as a blood-red permanent night and gradually becoming lighter and bluer the further in to the game, representing the President's progress against Zinyak.
• In Shadow of the Colossus the final colossus is fought dramatically during a raging storm, complete with infernal tornadoes in the background marking where you killed the other colossi. It's jarring as it starts and stops as you walk in and out of the colossus's stadium. Justified in-universe as it references the fact that the Forbidden Land is awakening from its timeless phase, thanks to the completion of the ritual.
• Spiritfarer: When Stella first arrives at Overbook, it's raining and the background music is gloomy to reflect how desolate the hospital is, but as she helps improve its living conditions, the rain stops and the music becomes more cheerful.
• Shing kicks off the second half (the actual plot) of Tales of Hearts with a somewhat justified Heroic BSoD, which only deepens when he meets the next Mr. Exposition. The outside world is still fairly bright and sunny, but after Kohak snaps him out of it, another character tries to shoot him (long story). Shing uses his sword to deflect the projectile, and with a flash, it flies into the distance, and right there, the game's heroic theme starts up, and the clouds part, revealing the sun.
• Played with in Touhou Project Fighting Game Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, where characters begin manifesting localized weather that represents a poetic interpretation of their personality as a result of the incident.
• The Witness: The items in the central lake will change and develop when certain tasks are completed, like turning on a laser or opening one of the vault doors.
• World in Conflict multiplayer maps have a sort of Empathic Environment: if the match goes for too long (and especially after the teams exchanged a few nukes), all colors become dull and grayish, the clouds gather and the sunlight dims slightly.

Visual Novels

• In Code:Realize, clouds gather and rain falls when the group goes to the graveyard where Isaac Beckford's hidden laboratory is located. It is at this place where Finis reveals to Cardia that she is actually not human and is a homunculus created by Isaac.
  • In Saint Germain's route, the group goes there again to find out the truth about Saint Germain and Idea and why they want to kill Cardia and once again, it's raining. It's lampshaded by Victor and Impey that the rain is fitting for a dreary place like that.
• Yanagi's route in Collar × Malice is strangely the only route that has changes in the weather, despite all the routes happening during the wintertime. It begins to rain right after the confrontation with the Big Bad. It later starts to snow when Yanagi confesses to return Ichika's feelings.
• In Fleuret Blanc a torrential thunderstorm occurs during Kant's dismissal and the final evening, both of which are climactic and dramatic points in the story.
• During a "dream" in Hatoful Boyfriend, the more upset one character gets the more it rains, which risks washing away Mount Pudding.
• Constantly used in Little Busters!, where the weather will change on a coin flip; when someone's Dark and Troubled Past catches up with them, it starts to pour even when it was sunny seconds ago. In one route, the weather is a plot point, snowing in late spring when the world and the heroine of said route are both getting messed up. Turns out it's all intentional. The setting was a dream world made from memories and data from the Akashic Records, where the titular baseball team has to form bonds and get past their many, varied traumas, so everything, including the weather, reacts to their emotional states.
• In Slay the Princess, when you restart the story in Chapter 2, the cabin changes to reflect the previous ending you received. It also affects which version of the Princess you will encounter, as she's changed her form depending on what you did. For instance, if you sided with the Princess no matter what, she turns into a Princess Classic Damsel in Distress, with the cabin and its basement changed to be suitably regal and suitable for a royal captive. But if you betrayed the Princess or showed her no sympathy, it turns into an Eldritch Location with floating rocks, planks of wood, and a dark veil over everything, with the Princess herself as an Eldritch Abomination that seeks to punish you for what you've done.

Webcomics

• In 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 two tearjerker scenes (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.
  • Subverted by "Power Station". The titular experiment creates an artificial rain, and Zimmy stops suppressing her power, but the rain doesn't suppress it. "It's not workin'... it's not workin'!" By the way, Zimmy's internal world is dark and drab, but the area where Gamma waits for her is brightly colored and lit with sunshine.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: Galatea experiences her lowest emotional point and eventual redemption while caught outside in the rain at night.
• Wooden Rose: When they kiss, roses sprout from the ground and flower. Given that he's a god of the forest, probably justified.
• In El Goonish Shive there is a running gag of a crack of thunder (and lightning if the character is near a window) whenever someone says something particularly ominously as can be seen here, here and here.
• In The Cyantian Chronicles whenever Vincent feels sad (fairly often) it rains, when he found out his mother had died it poured for days. Turned out to be because he has latent weather control powers, first confirmed when he got angry and fried the Big Bad and two mooks with lightning
• Archipelago being set on an archipelago you would expect rain fairly often, but it only seems to fall when Tuff is upset and/or a large battle is taking place. Dramatic Thunder peals in the key moments of the large battle in book 8, which happens to happen on an island stated to be very rainy.

Western Animation

• A disturbing variation from Adventure Time. After it's been revealed (through an old video tape diary) that the Ice King was once a young human named Simon who was mind-raped into becoming the insane, blue-skinned sociopath he is now by a crown he acquired, the tape shows Simon sitting at a table next to a window. As he says, "My skin is beginning to turn blue," the sky outside darkens. As he says "My body temperature is lowering at a supernatural rate," snow starts to fall. And as he says "I don't know when it will end... I'm really scared," the sky darkens almost completely, and a violent snowstorm begins. Justified, as the crown also turned him into An Ice Person: he was probably subconsciously causing the snow to fall.
• Big City Greens: In "Green Christmas", the falling snow is meant to reflect how Cricket is feeling throughout the episode. Whenever the mood is serene, it is snowing, then when Cricket is feeling his usual comical (and later naughty!) self, it is not snowing. Also note once he resumes his mischievous ways when it's snowing (in the Cold Open and at the beginning of the "Good Deeds" montage), the snow abruptly stops. Then when Tilly ends up on the nice list and he starts to have mixed feelings before admitting it's his fault he got them both in this mess, the snow is falling twice as fast in a blizzard to signify his sadness. Finally in the ending zoom-out, it is snowing serenely once again, to show he now fully understands the True Meaning of Christmas.
• During the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Dueling Eds", Rolf challenges Eddy to a duel after the latter inadvertently insults Rolf's culture by tossing his sea cucumber ball to a fence earlier on. When Eddy prepares to square off with Rolf in the impending match, Rolf becomes intimidating, eliciting a sudden, ominous storm cloud, which retains during the duel, with Rolf clobbering Eddy at every hit. Once it ends with Rolf tossing Eddy over the edge of the pit, the former reverts back to his cheery, eccentric self, causing the weather to become clear and sunny again.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the episode "Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", 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.
  • In "Testing Testing 123", Rainbow Dash lands on a white fluffy cloud to mope, and the cloud immediately turns grey and starts to rain, mirroring her mood. This is assumed to be a Pegasus trait.
  • "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.
• An episode of Aladdin: The Series has the gang go to a kingdom where the land reflects the mood of its young king.
• Arguably, the containment wall from ReBoot, which always reflects the current mood of the episode: The sky is usually an optimistic, bright blue; on days when the plot gets darker, it takes on a steel gray color; and then, as the series gets progressively darker, it switches to sunset, to emphasize the changing nature of the show, then darker and cloudier before finally looking like storm clouds to symbolize the raging war against Megabyte.
• In an episode of Arthur the family goes on vacation, and just when it seems things are going horribly, sure enough a thunderstorm comes in. By the end of the episode, things have cheered up, reflected by Arthur waking up to a sunny day.
• In an episode of 2009 series of StrawberryShortcake, The Berry Best Vacation features the summer-themes, but at the final scene when Mavis wave goodbye, the girls starts cheers happily and it starting rain at the sunset.
• Kaeloo: In Episode 134, when everyone else is too busy doing their own thing to play with Stumpy, Stumpy becomes upset and then it suddenly starts raining.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: There's a snowstorm going on for most of the episode "Trespass", which ends the instant Senator Chuchi negotiates peace with Thi-Sen.
• Steven Universe:
  • In the episode "So Many Birthdays", it's sunny at first when Steven has Amethyst's birthday party on the beach, but dark clouds start rolling in during Pearl's ill-fated party. Once Steven starts Rapid Aging due to thinking he's too old to celebrate birthdays, it's overcast and foggy.
  • Over the course of the episode "Barn Mates", the sky becomes more overcast and cloudy as Peridot's attempts to make amends only serve to further annoy Lapis. The moment she starts warming up to Peridot, the sky clears up.
• Wander over Yonder:
  • In "The Hat", the water from the giant mushrooms rain down on Sylvia when she has a Despair Event Horizon.
  • In "The Heebie Jeebies", the dark forest and the area outside it are dull and grim colors to show just how scary it is. When Wander and Sylvia leave the forest in the end, it becomes bright, sunny and gold to show that they have faced their fears.

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