Snow Means Death - Television Tropes & Idioms

There are many ideas associated with snow: Tranquility, purity, cleanliness, beauty...

So naturally, many people are shown dramatically dying in the snow. It may have something to do with how red blood contrasts so sharply with white snow, especially when gentle snowflakes are falling around a scene of carnage. It may have something to do with the way the snow seems to try and wash away the unclean corpses and ruins. It may have something to do with how it looks like a beautiful and peaceful way to die, just letting the cold embrace you as you fall to sleep.

And then there's the symbolism.

As beautiful as snow is, it also signifies winter, associated with the death of the year (in the northern hemisphere at least), the death of crops, and the death of the sun. Snow also covers the world with a blanket of white, and in Eastern cultures, white is the color of death.

Whatever the reason, using snow is a great way to portray a character on the verge of dying or a place torn by war in a very artful manner.

A sub-trope of Empathic Environment. For a different interpretation of snow, see Snow Means Love. See Blood Splattered Wedding Dress for a similar trope, only applied to clothing instead.

As this is one of the Death Tropes, expect spoilers.

Examples

Anime and Manga

The 2006 version of Kanon has Yuuichi searching for Ayu in a raging blizzard, then giving up and waiting for death. There's also the Look Both Ways incident, which was made more dramatic with the scene of red mixed in the snow. And when Makoto dies, a previously completely green area was instantly covered in snow. Interesting because Kanon is the ultimate Snow Means Love series and one of the few works of Key Visual Arts with a happy ending.
The incident in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha where Nanoha was unprepared for a sudden ambush. There was so much blood on her white Barrier Jacket and the snow-covered terrain, while Vita tried to keep her awake in the gently falling snow.
The first Gundam Wing intro. A city in ruins and an Empathy Doll Shot, all covered in a sheet of falling snow.
The Death Note anime has this one. It starts snowing just as Naomi lets down her guard enough for Light to kill her.
In Naruto, the deaths of Zabuza and Haku are marked with the falling of snow.
The first Suzaku Seishi to die in Fushigi Yuugi does so after a bloody battle in a field of snow.
Snow falling in summer is taken as an omen of Happosai's impending death in Ranma 1/2. (He recovers, though.)
The happy flashback to Sara meeting her brother in the snow in Soukou No Strain appears just before they prepare to fight to the death in the present.
In the fourth Ruroni Kenshin OVA, Tomoe dies in the snow.
In Full Moon O Sagashite, it's snowing once Mitsuki has learned of Eichi's death.
Episode 13 of Cowboy Bebop, as Gren's ship crashes in a snowy field. He doesn't die there, but he starts coughing up blood and is clearly a goner.
At the end of the Galaxian Wars arc of Saint Seiya, it starts to snow in the mountains where Phoenix Ikki has just been defeated by the other Bronze Saints. While Seiya and the others hold off Docrates' forces, preventing them from stealing the Sagittarius Gold Cloth, a dying Ikki regards the snow as a symbol of his purification... and then gets up and brings down the mountain on himself and Docrates to save the Saints' lives, burying everything and everyone in rock and snow. Then again, he IS the Phoenix Saint.
The winter scenes in Milennium Actress portend doom: when she first meets and falls in love with the artist he's bleeding; later during WWII she's imprisoned for helping him and he gets captured and executed; during the 50s she tries to find him in the snow fields of Hokkaido and nearly dies. During her actual death it's raining - close enough.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, the destruction of Negi's hometown occurred over the course of one snowy night.

Film

In the movie Three Days of the Condor, the protagonist, Joseph Turner (a.k.a. Condor), notices that Kathy Hale photographs and displays only scenes of winter (bare trees, lifeless snow). He comments to her that she is focusing on death, which she confirms.
Not a straight example, but the snow globe in Citizen Kane should get an honorable mention.
The Chinese movie Raise The Red Lantern has the servant Yan'er kneel outdoors in winter until she dies from the cold, while snow flakes fall around her.
O-Ren in Kill Bill also enjoys picturesque death on the snow.
- Although few consider getting the top of one's head lopped off anywhere near picturesque...
The end of House Of Flying Daggers went from brightly sunlit to a blizzard, just in time for the dramatic death scene.
Moulin Rouge! ends with the defeated Duke walking through a snowfall, leaving the theater in which the heroine Satine has just died
Fargo, where several people die before a snowy background.
Subverted in The Shining. Jack does freeze to death, but his expression is anything but peaceful!
Played straight and subverted in The Day After Tomorrow. The first time, some survivors have fallen asleep and froze to death while sleeping. They look peaceful. The second time is the naysaying policeman, whose frozen expression is rather pained. But that's what you get for ignoring The Jor El.
One segment of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams features the story of a mountain climber who, trapped in a blizzard and suffering from frostbite, either hallucinates or experiences a visit from a yuki-onna - a snow demon who takes the form of a beautiful woman.
- A yuki-onna figures in one of the stories in Kwaidan, an anthology film adapting several Japanese folk tales.
In the 1989 film of Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont gets stabbed to death in a midwinter duel. This is pretty much entirely so the director can have a cool shot of his blood splattered across the snow.
The Ice Storm is the cinematic tribute to this trope.
The Sweet Hereafter depicts children in a horrific bus accident, caused and contrasted by the peacefulness of the snow around them. Snow and cold are used throughout the movie to symbolize the original serenity in the town.

Literature

To Build A Fire by Jack London
The Little Match Girl, which makes dying from cold and starvation lovely, glorious, and filled with so much Glurge.
- Deconstructed in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, where Death (who's filling in for the local equivalent of Santa Claus) saves the archetypal Little Match Girl, dismissing her death as needlessly cruel, in the midst of his deconstructing a number of Christmastime tropes.
James Joyce's The Dead may end with the definitive example of this trope. As the protagonist slowly drifts to sleep, thinking of the dead man his wife once loved, snow covers his window and his thoughts. The closing line: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Live Action TV

Jonathan Kent's funeral in Smallville.
Inverted by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which Angel's First Evil-inspired attempt to kill himself is foiled by an inexplicable snowstorm in southern California.
Joss later played it straight in Firefly, with Tracey's funeral.
Brian's Dad's funeral in Queer As Folk.
The Cybermen gatecrash a funeral in the snow in Doctor Who The Next Doctor. There is a little bit of death involved.

Myth And Legend

Japanese legend speaks of the Yuki-onna, a female snow spirit that appears during the snow storm and leads travellers astray to die of exposure.

Video Games

In Tales Of Symphonia, Zelos gives a detailed account of his childhood, culminating in him witnessing his mother's murder in the snow. You get a really clear mental picture from it.
Elise Deauxnim, best known as Misty Fey, Mia and Maya's mother, in the fifth case of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations.
- The series has a few cases set in the snowbound winter, and since Phoenix's cases are Always Murder...
Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid.
The snowy fog used in the Silent Hill games might be a use of this trope.
The Undead Scourge of Warcraft make their base in the frozen north. Heck,just watch the new cinematic for the expansion that focuses on it
In Kana: Little Sister, In one of the many endings that feature her death, Kana tells her brother that she will make it snow when she dies. And of course, the moment it starts to snow she's dead.

ComicBooks

The most famous example of this trope in Argentina is Hector German Osterheld's magnum opus, El Eternauta. There, the first sign of the alien invasion of the Manos and the Ellos is glowing snow that kills within contact with the skin, forcing the protagonist, his friends and family to don radiation suits in order to survive.

Real Life