History Main / RisingWaterRisingTension

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/{{Titanic 1997}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2survive.png]]]]

* ''Film/{{Titanic 1997}}'': Almost inevitably, Jack and Rose's final escape from the doomed ship involves a race through rooms slowly filling with water (and starting to tilt at an alarming angle).

* ''Film/{{Crawl}}'': The rising water from the hurricane acts as a threat to the heroes.

* Book Two of Mervyn Peake's ''Literature/{{Gormenghast}}'' trilogy sees the usurper Steerpike rising to higher levels in the castle-state\'s hierarchy. As he makes his final bid to overthrow the Groan family and become ruler, torrential unrelenting rain begins and the castle is flooded. The action of the book happens on two levels. As the lower levels of the castle are progressively swamped by floodwaters, its inhabitants struggle for survival, moving themselves and their possessions to higher and higher levels. This adds to the claustrophobic menace of the situation. The flooding becomes a metaphor for cleansing, both of an ancient civilisation strangling in its own history, and of the need to destroy a cancer in the social body - Steerpike. The water rises to menacing levels, and the Princess Fuchsia dies a lonely death by drowning; Titus Groan, the legitimate heir to Ghormenghast, seeks out and kills Steerpike at the point where the floodwaters rise to their highest. Symbolically, after Steerpike's death, the rain stops and the flood recedes.

* ''Film/KingsmanTheSecretService'' has this when the room where Eggsy and the other candidates' bedroom begins flooding, forcing Eggsy to break the one-way mirror to allow them all to escape. This became a real-life example during as well, as the room plummeted 25 feet into the water. As Matthew Vaughn put it,

This trope happens when characters find themselves in a location that is slowly disappearing beneath rising flood waters. Expect the heroes to be in a race against time to retrieve the MacGuffin before it is lost forever beneath the water. In doing so they will face a familiar environment that has suddenly turned hostile, and run the risk of [[DrowningPit drowning]], [[ElectrifiedBathtub electrocution]] (from power cables in the water) and other unexpected forms of death.

* The ''Series/AllSaints'' episode "Hard Rain" which plays out similar to the ''ER'' episode below - up until the little girl gets suddenly washed away before Ben can rescue her, later turning up dead.

* The season 4 finale of ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'' revolves around a scientist onboard a deep-sea laboratory threatening to launch two nerve gas missiles at New York unless the world agrees to several serious changes in eco-politics, and ISIS is sent in to take him down. However, it turns out there are no missiles and the scientist has simply gone insane from isolation. However, a brief scuffle leads to the walls of the lab being breached and flooding the whole complex. Since there are only three scuba tanks for four people, Archer agrees to go without, leading to him drowning and being legally dead for a few minutes once they reach safety.

* TheVillain of ''WesternAnimation/CatsDontDance'' is filling the soundstage with water in a scheme to drown or discredit the animal performers. While her victims try to remain afloat aboard a set piece never meant to be seaworthy, poor Pudge remains tied in the control room where the rising water submerges him entirely.

* The ''wuxia'' swordplay film ''Film/TwelveDeadlyCoins'' has the two heroes, Chiao Mao and his LoveInterest Lung-erh being chained to an underground dungeon slowly filling with water as part of its climax. It was this same scene where he made an AnguisedDeclarationOfLove for her, right before they broke out of their cell.