Skyscraper Messages

Skyscrapers are very tall and covered in windows. This makes them a useful canvas for a creative person to turn into a message an entire city (or the world) can see.

Skyscraper Messages come from lighting specifically chosen windows in otherwise dark buildings to make recognizable images or words. The trope, of course, only occurs at night.

A poor man's version of Rushmore Refacement or Deface of the Moon if a villain is behind it.

This trope is easily doable in Real Life, but limited to special occasions because it's otherwise disruptive to the people who may be living or working inside the building(s). In the movies, the trope is often assisted by computer animation; it's easier than getting the permits/paying the money to use the building, etc.

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Examples:

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• One Chik-Fil-A ad has cows wandering through an office building, turning lights on and off (while late-working folk look up in wary confusion). At the end, the lights spell "Eat Mor Chikin" on the side of the building.

Anime & Manga

• On Case Closed, the Suspect Of the Week uses such a window lighting event to give himself an alibi to murder his victim.
• In City Hunter at one point, the lights formed the katakana version of the woman's name and "daisuki" (I like you a lot/love you.)
• Gunbuster and DieBuster, where the entire planet is shut down then lit up to give our heroines a warm welcome back after ten thousand years.
• In Magic Kaito, Kaitou arranged for a pair of skyscrapers to display a birthday message to Aoko once.
• Done heartbreakingly in RahXephon, when Hiroko is trying to write a love letter to Ayato while the RahXephon is fighting a Dolem in a city. A Dolem that she is synchronized to. The words of her letter start appearing on the windows of the nearby buildings, but Ayato doesn't notice until after he's destroyed the Dolem, killing Hiroko in the process.
• One chapter of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is about getting dragged into other people's drama. Itoshiki-sensei is staying at a hotel whose manager wants to write a message for some holiday or other and his room has to be dark.

Comic Books

• Dennis The Menace: The cover of one (UK version) album has Dennis and Gnasher being chased out of a building after doing this.
• Green Lantern: A variant occurs in Sinestro Corps War. The residents of Coast City tint all their lights green to show support for the Green Lanterns.
• Spider-Man:
  • In The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #151, Shocker does this by blacking out various electrical grids to spell out his name as part of a scheme to extort one million dollars from New York City.
  • Spider-Island has a variation at the end where J. Jonah Jameson (now the mayor of New York City) has the windows of the Empire State Building lit up in red and blue as a "thank you" to Spider-Man for saving the city.

Comic Strips

• The cover of one Deniis The Menace UK album has Dennis and Gnasher being chased out of a building after doing this.

Film — Live-Action

• At the end of Ghostbusters (2016), the entire New York skyline is lit up with "We ♥ GB" and similar messages, thanking the Ghostbusters for saving the city.
• In Hackers, the finale has Crash having rigged windows visible from their Rooftop Swimming Pool to read "Crash + Burn", which really impresses Burn that much more.
• Now You See Me sees J. Daniel Atlas do a Seven of Diamonds on the John Hancock Center.
• The finale of Sleepless in Seattle puts a giant red heart shape on the four sides of the Empire State Building.
• Right before the credits of Sharknado 2: The Second One, a skyscraper with the word "Fin" on it is seen.

Live-Action TV

• An episode of Art Attack had Neil do this with the skyscrapers in New York City for the "Big Art Attack."
• One episode of Barney Miller has a call about a man on a ledge. It's quickly followed by a report that the man is writing on the windows. Barney asks "It's not a jumper?" Wojo replies "Unless it's a suicide note."
• An episode of the UK satire show Bremner Bird And Fortune had a parody of "Feed the World" talking about everything wrong with modern (mid nineties) Britain. At one point the screen shows a dark skyscraper while the lyrics go "Where traffic moves real slow/While Railtrack's profits grow", and then on the following four chords, successive rows of windows light up to form a "£" sign.
• An episode of CSI had a business do this to try and win back his former fiance. He rejected her in favour of his boss' daughter. Then changed his mind and invoked this trope. She turned him down (albeit quite gently) but his boss (who was watching from that very building) killed him for rejecting his daughter.
• In Furuhata Ninzaburou, such a window lighting event breaks the suspect's alibi—the hotel where he was staying was spelling out its name in lights, and if he was in the room with the drapes open, then it would have ruined the character.
• In the TV special Kamen Rider G, the eponymous hero's Transformation Sequence ends with an awesomely flashy example of this trope, where the windows of the skyscraper behind Goro explode to form a giant letter G.

Music

• The music video for The Black Eyed Peas's "Where Is The Love?" has lights spell out a question mark.

Video Games

• A hotel in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City will, in typical Rockstar North fashion, light up at night in the form of an erect penis◊. In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, the same hotel shows the same thing, ejaculating.
• In The Secret World, John does this on Orochi Tower in order to signal the player, using his powers to spell out "Come On In, Chuck" in words visible from the other side of Kaidan.

Web Original

• The original "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" video had one.

Western Animation

• In The Batman, the Riddler hijacks the skyscraper lighting in order to display his green question mark symbol across the city. After Riddler is defeated, Detective Yin changes the question marks into Batman's logo.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold ("Mayhem of the Music Meister!"), during the song "The World Is Mine", two skyscrapers behind The Music Meister spell out the name of the villain.
• The Critic did a parody of the Sleepless In Seattle thing, with Siskel And Ebert. They Lampshaded it.
• In the episode of Danny Phantom where Danny is dating Valerie, the two of them see building lights writing out "D+V" while riding a Ferris wheel. This was all set up by Technus as part of a plan.
• Merrie Melodies: I "Rebel Rabbit", Bugs rewires the lights at Times Square to read "Bugs Bunny Was Here".

Real Life

• Actually done at MIT with the Green Building. They've played Tetris by altering its lights.
  • Brown sees your Green Building, MIT, and raises you "La Bastille" (the aforementioned Tetris on the side of a building).
• Many office buildings light up windows to shape stars or Christmas trees during the holidays.
  • Taken to the next level by the Lotte World Tower in Seoul when they decided to show a Santa made out of LEDs◊.
• Done for real in the city of Chicago for various events; most recently, as a countdown for the Olympic committee selecting who would be hosting the Summer Olympics in 2016. Regrettably, Chicago did not win.
• Taipei 101 does this for most holidays. e.g. A heart for Valentine's day, E=MC2 for Einstein's birthday, an upside down "Spring" character for Chinese New Year^note The New Year is traditionally considered the start of spring. As it happens, the Chinese word for "arrive" is a homophone for "upside-down", etc.
• An archive of some of the ones Chicago has done over the years is here.
• P.I.W.O. Light Show.
• Improv Everywhere did this for one of their mass pranks, found here.
• A broadly similar thing was done by comedian William Rushton. when filling in his football pools coupon, where crosses have to be made in a long, deep, narrow rectangular grid according to the possibility of various fixtures winning, losing or drawing, he filled in the form creatively. So that the permutation spelled out the vertical words OH SHIT!!!. Looking at the completed form afterwards, he was struck by the similarity of the grid to the windows of a tall skyscraper, and wondered if it might not be possible to achieve the same result at night using lit and darkened windows...
• The University of Texas at Austin displays a "1" in the windows of the Main Building Tower to celebrate national championships. Other numbers are displayed to honor graduation and other events. (The University's page describing various lighting configurations is here.)
• One broadcast of the Emmy Awards began with a helicopter shot of the famous Century Plaza Towers. The windows on one of the buildings spelled out "The __th Emmy Awards", and the other displayed a silhouette of the famous statuette.

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