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"Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."
— Alfred Hitchcock
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 White Shirt Of Death and 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
- In the 2006 version of Kanon, this trope is so prevalent that it's hard to pick out which examples fit it the best. The lyrics of the opening theme
 ("Last Regrets") practically announce it. Yuuichi's repressed memories are first hinted at in how much he hates snow. When Makoto dies, the illusion of a green field fades to show that the surroundings were covered in snow. Snow is practically a central theme for Yuuichi's meetings and conversations with Shiori, who is terminally ill. Snow is arguably the cause of the subverted Look Both Ways incident when Akiko's hit by a car that appears to be skidding out of control, and the imagery of the red strawberries thrown into the snow where it happened is painfully evocative. The same symbolism is made brutally real shortly after, when Yuuichi finally remembers what happened to Ayu years ago. Unable to take any more, Yuuichi runs out into a snowstorm calling for Ayu; he runs past the place where they used to play without recognizing it because it's covered in snow. With the snow now falling furiously all around him (just as the deaths seem to be), he lays down and waits to die. The upbeat ending theme about someone trying to find their way home seems to contradict the trope, showing Ayu happily running through the snow - until you find out where she's been all along.
- Speaking of Key Visual Arts, Clannad features this as well, with Nagisa's near death experience happening on a snowy night when she was young, a foreshadowing of events that will happen years later on a similar snowy night in After Story, eventually culminating with the deaths of Ushio and Tomoya moments after it starts snowing in the penultimate regular episode of After Story.
- 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.
- And then there's Reinforce's last moments. Also snow.
- The first Gundam Wing intro. A city in ruins and an Empathy Doll Shot, all covered in a sheet of falling snow. The Movie Endless Waltz actually shows how it happened (Heero accidentally blew up an apartment building); as the realization sinks in, snow starts to fall.
- The Death Note anime has this one. It starts snowing just as Naomi lets down her guard enough to reveal her real name to Light, who sentences her to suicide. The snow continues as she walks to her fate.
- In Naruto, the deaths of Zabuza and Haku are marked with the falling of snow.
- The first Suzaku Seishi to die in Fushigi Yuugi—and by extension the Seiryuu Seishi he did the death-battle with—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 Rurouni 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.
- The last episode of Welcome To The NHK combines this with Snow Means Love; for various reasons, Sato and Misaki both attempt to commit suicide at a snow-covered jetty and realise they love each other.
- At the end of Cicada In Winter, the doomed lovers commit seppuku in the snow.
- In Wolfs Rain there's a scene where Quent, thinking Blue is dead, lays down in the snow to die. It's a subversion because Toboe saves him by sharing his body warmth. In the final two episodes they and others end up dead anyway, and snow covers their bodies before the titular rain finally shows up.
- Gamble Fish: The death of Tsukiyono's brother.
- The tear-jerking scene which scarred many 5-8 year old Latin American children (including this tropper back then) of Remi (Ie Naki Ko), when the performing monkey dies of pneumonia after forcing itself to perform one last time on the snowy streets.
- It soon gets worse, since the terminally ill Vitalis also dies in the snow, in an Heroic Sacrifice to save Remi and Cappi (the only survivor out of the animals) from perishing with him.
- The mentioned book is an originally french novel called "Sans famille" by author Hector Malot.
- Stella's burial in Gundam SEED Destiny.
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.
- Bruce Willis' John shoots himself in a snowy field.
- In Dead Poets Society, the boys are seen in a snowy feild after learning of Neil's death. The sense of hopelessness that scene brings the rest of the film really is incredible.
- A less obvious but more literal Snow Means Death moment in DPS is that you see through the window that it's snowing just before Neil shoots himself.
- Used somewhat more literally in Mulan. She uses a cannon to start an avalanche and wipe out the Hun army. Mostly.
- White Fang, in the film, after getting wounded in a skirmish between her pack and a group of humans, White Fang's mother limps to her den before collapsing in the entrance, her pup goes out and she gives a farewell lick to him, then it starts snowing.
- Definitely not a straight example but on Titanic many people, including Jack, freeze to death in the ocean, they even show having frost on their hair and face before dying.
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."
- In Discworld, the dark pagan origins of the Hogfather (the local expy of Santa Claus) explain the choice of colours in his clothing: red and white from blood on the snow, ultimately coming from druidic human sacrifices in midwinter to make the sun come back.
- Raptor Red and her pack encounter a whip-tailed sauropod on a snowy mountain near the end of the book. It doesn't end well.
- The death of Snowden obviously had quite the impact on the narrator of Catch-22, so much so that the first page of the book asks the random question: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" Snowden's last words are, "It's cold." Considering everyone else's name is symbolic, it's fair to see this as an example of this trope.
- Harry Potter visits his parents' graves for the first time in Deathly Hallows, accompanied by Hermione. It so happens that they do this in December, and the graveyard is covered in snow. Harry, of course, cannot help but cry (and neither can many readers).
Live Action TV
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
- Several levels throughout the Hitman series take place in snow-covered terrain.
- One Man Army Max Payne goes on his killing rampage while snow constantly falls down around him.
- 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.
- White Len, the "evil" counterpart to Len in Melty Blood specifically makes her zone snow with her dream powers.
- The prologue of Katawa Shoujo initially appears to be Snow Means Love. The main character meets his High School Sweetheart on a snowy day for a confession of love. Unknown to anyone, he has cardiac arrythmia and the excitement brings on a heart attack. He survives, but his old life is over.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- In the Rankin-Bass Stop Motion special Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, the title character's mother dies after covering him with her body and keeping him warm for all night during a blizzard.
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.
- The Question in 52. Renee Montoya drags him through the snow, leaving a question-mark-shaped trail.
- The final chapters of Watchmen, for the big reveal on Laurie's past, and the final fate of one of the mains.
- Sin City. That Yellow Bastard.
- Elf Quest had a bloody elf-troll battle in the frozen north.
Music
- The song "Tuonela," by Amorphis, deals with this theme.
Real Life
- Captain Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition.
- Similarly, the various brave idiots looking for the Northwest Passage, most famously Sir John Franklin.
- The day following the Halifax Explosion brought a huge blizzard that only helped to add to the the death toll.
- Every time someone invades Russia.
- Or Russia invades Finland
- In Finland, mentioning a drunken person and snow in the same sentence is almost always interpreted as "froze to death", and it is regularly used as an example when explaining to teens why drinking is a Really Bad Thing.
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