History Main / JourneyToTheSky

* In ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'', as Amaterasu and Issun explore the islands of West Ryoshima Coast, they eventually reach one in which the fabled Catcall Tower was erected. As they try to figure out the origin of the meows (audible even in the surroundings of the island), they proceed to climb it thanks to the luminous golden marks left by Kabegami, the god of walls and one of the 13 brush gods. It's a very tall tower divided into eight levels (the number is not a coincidence), its top is shrouded into the clouds and has a large cat statue. Reaching there and feeding the nearby cat (the one who is meowing) summons Kabegami, who proceeds to grant Amaterasu the Catwalk ability; this skill proves useful later for the location of the Dragon Palace, the homeland of the now-enraged Water Dragon.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'': The last level of World 6 has Mario and his friends climb a series of tall beanstalks that take them well above the usual ShiftingSandLand of that world, and reach a pyramid in the sky where the boss (Tryclyde) awaits. This part of the game is not only important for the conclusion of the world, but also because it leads to the next world, set in BubblyClouds, as it's there where BigBad Wart lies.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rupert}}'': In Episode 6 of Season 3 ("Rupert And The Cloud Pirates"), Rupert and Bill are greeted by a friendly, sentient cloud (Dewey) who needs to return to the rainy sky. When this cloud takes them above the stormy cumulus, they come aboard a skyship (led by Captain Peebles) that has been stranding since the disappearance of the Four Winds that regulate weather. It's later revealed that the Four Winds were abducted by cloud pirate Captain Schubbs, so the characters aim to rescue them from the villain to restore the weather before it's too late.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Rupert}}'': In Episode 6 of Season 3 ("Rupert And The Cloud Pirates"), Rupert and Bill are greeted by a friendly, sentient cloud (Dewey) who needs to return to the rainy sky. When this cloud takes them above the stormy cumulus, they come aboard a skyship (led by Captain Peebles) that has been stranding since the disappearance of the Four Winds that regulate wheather. It's later revealed that the Four Winds were abducted by cloud pirate Captain Schubbs, so the characters aim to rescue them from the villain to restore the wheather before it's too late.

*** Guld, the leader of the Mogma tribe, tells Link during the last arc of the game that he's tired of the usual lifestyle of digging underground through Eldin Volcano in search of treasure, and wishes to spend his retirement time living in a very high place to enjoy the scenic view of the sky. Link fulfills his wish by taking him (with the help of Scrapper) to Pumpkin Landing, one of the floating islands in the sky. Once there, Kina entrusts him the job of plowing the pumpkins' field (which is why Link looked for him in the first place), but he's very happy with this. When Link returns to Eldin Volcano and is asked by another Mogma what happened to Guld, he responds by saying that Guld is in the sky; the Mogma is saddened to hear that because he thinks Guld died and didn't realize that Link was talking in a literal sense.

At one point during a work's story, either as part of its central plot or as a StoryArc, a character wishes to reach to the sky. Not in a spiritual sense when the character dies (that would be TheJourneyThroughDeath), but in a physical sense while the character is still alive. They wish to reach there for a specific purpose, be it to find a PlotCoupon, to find something or someone who might help them in the adventure, or it's mere curiosity. So the story shows the character undetaking a trip to the sky. They may do it by climbing a ladder or beanstalk, or reaching the highest floor of a building or tower (in this case, the clouds have to be seen around or beneath the floor's height, to ensure it is within the domain of the sky). As a last resort, the character might need to build something (such as a tower or a vehicle). The objective is the same regardless of the means.

* ''WesternAnimation/PussInBoots'' spoofs the plot of the fairy tale ''Jack and the Beanstalk''. Puss, with the help of old friend Humpty Dumpty, steals the magic beans from Jack (who's an outlaw here) so they can plant them and climb to a castle in the sky where a goose laying golden eggs is said to live.

** ''VideoGame/PaperMario'':
*** ''VideoGame/PaperMario64'': Since the villainous Huff N. Puff is clouding the sky with his Puff Puff machine during Chapter 6, sunlight isn't reaching the plants. Mario aims to reach the sky to challenge Huff N. Puff and revert the situation, but to do so he needs to gather some items first: a Miracle Bean that can grow into a tall beanstalk, a Fertile Soil to plant the bean onto, and some Miracle Water to make it grow. With the items gathered and the beanstalk grown, Mario climbs it to reach the Cloudy Climb and look for the boss. At the end of the ordeal, he frees the sixth Star Spirit and continues on his adventure.
*** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheOrigamiKing'': The Great Sea segment focuses chiefly on Mario completing a series of puzzles needed to unlock the Sea Tower, followed by ascending it in order to reach Shangri-Spa, an earthly paradise/spa resort mix floating high up in the sky.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'': One of the Divine Beasts corrupted by Calamity Ganon is Vah Medoh, which has since begun to fly across the northwestern skies and terrorize the Rito tribe. When Link reaches Rito Village, he is tasked by the Rito chieftain (Kaneli) to find a way to free the Beast, for which he has to find Teba and ask him to travel to the sky in order to reach Vah Medoh. After Link earns Teba's trust (by passing a target test), the two embark on the travel and reach their destination; however, they'll also need to disable the Beast's protective barrier by destroying its energy sources with Bomb Arrows while avoiding the Beast's ballistic attacks. Once that is done, Link is able to enter the Beast and start looking for a way to save it.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap'', Link has to climb to the top of the Veil Falls to find a tornado that takes him to the Cloud Tops. There, he has to traverse through a maze-like area (and hovering from one part to another with mini-tornadoes in the process) to find another big tornado and reach the Palace of Winds, where the last PlotCoupon (the Wind Element) can be found.
** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the Mirror of Twilight is shattered into four fragments, and the last such piece lies in the City in the Sky, homeland of the Oocca. To reach it, Link has to travel across Hyrule to find some ancient statues and move them with the Dominion Rod (which in turn needs to have its power restored by completing a prior task) to acquire the characters in sky language written beneath them. Doing this will complete a text that, once read by Shad in the basement of Renado's sanctuary, allows a nearby statue to be moved with the Rod and reveal a Sky Cannon. Unfortunately, the Cannon is broken, so Link and Midna have to transport it to Lake Hylia and pay 300 Rupees to Fyer so he repair it. Only then can the young hero use it to launch himself skyward and reach the City in the Sky.

* ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonRescueTeam'': TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon is Sky Tower which, as the name implies, is a tower floating in the sky and is made up of clouds. It has a total of 34 floors, of which the last nine comprise the Sky Tower Summit. The heroes need to head there and reach the highest floor to [[spoiler:request help from Rayquaza, one of the OlympusMons, in stopping a meteor from destroying the planet, for which they have to defeat it in battle]]. The first arrival can be done with the Teleport Gem, but in the postame the object is damaged so the tower can only be reached with the Fly ability (this is no longer necessary in the game's remake).

** In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' while searching for the sixth Star Piece, Mario and his team are sent to Bean Valley, at the end of which is a series of beanstalks that leads to Nimbus Land, a city in in the clouds where Mallow was born.
** In ''VideoGame/PaperMario64'', since the villainous Huff N. Puff is clouding the sky with his Puff Puff machine during Chapter 6, sunlight isn't reaching the plants. Mario aims to reach the sky to challenge Huff N. Puff and revert the situation, but to do so he needs to gather some items first: A Miracle Bean that can grow into a tall beanstalk, a Fertile Soil to plant the bean onto, and some Miracle Water to make it grow. With the items gathered and the beanstalk grown, Mario climbs it to reach the Cloudy Climb and look for the boss. At the end of the ordeal, he frees the sixth Star Spirit and continues on his adventure.
** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheOrigamiKing'': The Great Sea segment focuses chiefly on Mario completing a series of puzzles needed to unlock the Sea Tower, followed by ascending it in order to reach Shangri-Spa, an earthly paradise/spa resort mix floating high up in the sky.
** In the fanmade ''VideoGame/NewerSuperMarioBrosWii'', World 7 is divided into two parts: The first is Sky Mountain, in whose last level (Beanstalk Ascent) Mario has to climb a series of beanstalks to reach outer space. This is revealed to be the setting of the world's second half, Starry Skies, and it's there where one of Bowser's Koopalings (Ludwig von Koopa) awaits.

[[quoteright:242:[[Manga/DragonBall https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goku_climbs_korin_tower.jpg]]]]

Compare ClimbingClimax. SisterTrope to TheJourneyThroughDeath (for cases when the character dies and manifests themself afterwards as a soul aiming to reach the angelic sky) and StairwayToHeaven (when the character's soul walks upstairs to reach the spirit realm); both of them, especially the latter, are often combined with EndingByAscending.

At one point during a work's story, either as part of its central plot or as a StoryArc, a character wishes to reach to the sky. Not in a spiritual sense when the character dies (that would be StairwayToHeaven), but in a physical sense while the character is still alive. They wish to reach there for a specific purpose, be it to find a PlotCoupon, to find something or someone who might help them in the adventure, or it's mere curiosity. So the story shows the character undetaking a trip to the sky. They may do it by climbing a ladder or beanstalk, or reaching the highest floor of a building or tower (in this case, the clouds have to be seen around or beneath the floor's height, to ensure it is within the domain of the sky). As a last resort, the character might need to build something (such as a tower or a vehicle). The objective is the same regardless of the means.

Compare ClimbingClimax. SisterTrope to StairwayToHeaven (when the character dies and their soul walks upstairs to reach the spirit realm, this is often combined with EndingByAscending).

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ninjago}}'': In the fifth episode of Season 5, "Peak-a-Boo", the Ninja use their mechs to climb the tallest mountain in Ninjago, the Wailing Alps, to reach the "Blind Man's Eye", a storm cyclone which is one of the only ways to travel to the alternate realm known as the "Cloud Kingdom".

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': In Episode 12 of Season 6 ("A Ladder To Heaven"), the boys (Stan, Kyle and Cartman) decide to build a ladder so they can meet Kenny (who died at the end of Season 5 and, for the longest time, hadn't done his usual revival, making everybody believe he died for real). They want to see him so they can retrieve a ticket he won alongside them in a contest, but since the adults are unaware of this intent they think the boys are still sorely missing Kenny and build the ladder to to see him again, which moves them emotionally. This becomes international news, to the point the Japanese plan to build their own ladder while the US military soldiers believe the soul of Saddam Hussein is building a chemical warfare plant in Heaven. At the end of the episode, and upon Cartman discovering that Kenny had placed the ticket in his house before dying (he learned this by reliving Kenny's memories due to having eaten his cremated remains), they decide to suspend the ladder's building. The adults, still unaware of ''why'' they wanted to build the ladder in the first place, interpret this as the boys having accepted Kenny's death and moved on, so the whole international story ends. Unbeknownst to the soldiers, it turns out Saddam's soul ''is'' building a chemical warfare plant in Heaven.

* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'': The Season 4 episode "They Call Him Mr. Ed" revolves around the Eds trying to build a tower of junk (the Sky Elevator) to reach the moon, for which they start a business known as Ed Co. and convince people from the cul-de-sac to help this cause. They actually do end up reaching the moon, but their attempts to grab it cause the tower to fall, [[GainaxEnding ending the episode with them holding on for dear life.]]

* In the manga and anime ''Manga/BattleAngelAlita'', Alita's love interest Hugo dreams of going to Tiphares (Zalem), a literal city in the sky that Hugo believes is paradise. The city is supported by orbital rings, connected to a SpaceElevator, and supplied by the Scrapyard below using Factory tubes that connect the ground to the sky. Hugo is so obsessed with reaching Tiphares that he falls for a scammer's false promises to take him there and [[OrganTheft steals spines]] trying to raise the money. He gets a bounty on his head for his crimes, and is [[SanitySlippage mentally shattered]] by the scammer's admission that he was never going to take Hugo there. When Hugo tries to climb up to Tiphares via the Factory tubes, [[spoiler:he gets torn to pieces by its security measures until he can't hold on and falls to his death]].

* The first half of the "Skypiea Saga" in ''Manga/OnePiece'' concerns itself with this kind of plot, as the protagonists are attempting to reach the aforementioned Skypiea, which is a island in the sky (floating above a dense mass of clouds). They manage to do so by sailing through a gigantic water spout that is conveniently timed to erupt just below the cloud mass where the island is.

[[folder:Film]]
* The 2019 film ''The Aeronauts'' portrays a pair of balloonists making a high-altitude flight so one of them can prove his theories that weather follows predictable patterns.

* The plot of ''WesternAnimation/PussInBoots'' spoofs that of the fairy tale ''Jack and the Beanstalk''. Puss, with the help of old friend Humpty Dumpty, steals the magic beans from Jack (who's an outlaw here) so they can plant them and climb to a castle in the sky where a goose laying golden eggs is said to live.

* ''Literature/TheBible'' has a unified, single-language civilization attempt to build a tower in Shinar, the TowerOfBabel, in order to reach Heaven and meet God. God Himself does not approve of this, so He makes it so the builders end up speaking different languages to make communication impossible, thus rendering them unable to proceed with the tower's construction.

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap The Minish Cap]]'', Link has to climb to the top of the Veil Falls to find a tornado that takes him to the Cloud Tops. There, he has to traverse through a maze-like area (and hovering from one part to another with mini-tornadoes in the process) to find another big tornado and reach the Palace of Winds, where the last PlotCoupon (the Wind Element) can be found.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'', the Mirror of Twilight is shattered into four fragments, and the last such piece lies in the City in the Sky, homeland of the Oocca. To reach it, Link has to travel across Hyrule to find some ancient statues and move them with the Dominion Rod (which in turn needs to have its power restored by completing a prior task) to acquire the characters in sky language written beneath them. Doing this will complete a text that, once read by Shad in the basement of Renado's sanctuary, allows a nearby statue to be moved with the Rod and reveal a Sky Cannon. Unfortunately, the Cannon is broken, so Link and Midna have to transport it to Lake Hylia and pay 300 Rupees to Fyer so he repair it. Only then can the young hero use it to launch himself skyward and reach the City in the Sky.

** The last level of World 6 in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' has Mario and his friends climb a series of tall beanstalks that take them well above the usual ShiftingSandLand of that world, and reach a pyramid in the sky where the boss (Tryclyde) awaits. This part of the game is not only important for the conclusion of the world, but also because it leads to the next world, set in BubblyClouds, as it's there where BigBad Wart lies.
** One of the invaded kingdoms in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' is located in The Sky. World 5 starts as Mario and Luigi venture through a few land-based levels and then reach a spiral tower whose top has a blue beanstalk leading to the sky portion of the world's map. The spiral tower is played as if it was a Fortress, but Boom Boom (the usual MiniBoss who would guard it) is absent.
** Space Zone in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioLand2SixGoldenCoins'' takes it further. To get there, Mario has to reach the top of a tall plateau in the overworld map and enter a level where he uses a hovering Hippo bubble to travel upward (and gather coins in the process) until he reaches outer space. This procedure has to be repeated whenever he wants to return there.

* This is actually quite easy to do in ''VideoGame/KirbyAirRide'': in City Trial mode, there are a few ramps- and a volcano- that will launch you straight to a transparent, circular object in the sky that you can climb on top of. Despite not looking much like a garden, it's referred to in-universe as "the garden in the sky". The first time you do it, you'll unlock an achievement.

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* CallOfTheWildBlueYonder: For cases when a character wishes specifically to fly through the skies and enjoy doing so, either by riding a plane or becoming a bird (namely one capable of flying.

At one point during a work's story, either as part of its central plot or as a StoryArc, a character wishes to reach to the sky. Not in a spiritual sense when the character dies (that would be StairwayToHeaven), but in a physical sense while the character is still alive. They wish to reach there for a specific purpose, be it to find a PlotCoupon, to find something or someone who might help them in the adventure, or it's mere curiosity. So the story shows the character journeying to the sky. They may do it by climbing a ladder or beanstalk, or reaching the highest floor of a building or tower (in this case, the clouds have to be seen around or beneath the floor's height, to ensure it is within the domain of the sky). As a last resort, the character might need to build something (such as a tower or a vehicle). The objective is the same regardless of the means.

* ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe'' centers around Felonius Gru, the VillainProtagonist, who wishes to buy a spacecraft in order to reach the moon and shrink it so it can be grabbed. This was derived from two experiences: His rival Vector having stolen the pyramid of Giza in a similar fashion and making him jealous, and more importantly [[FreudianExcuse his frustrated dream of becoming an astronaut and reaching the moon due to his lack of support from his mother]][[note]]he believes that succeeding at his EvilPlan will finally impress her[[/note]]. After many struggles, including stealing Vector's shrinking ray and funding the construction of a spacecraft, he succeeds, but at the cost of losing the trust of his adopted daughters (whom he promised to see during a ballet event) and the need to rescue them from a revenge-seeking Vector.

* In Myth/ClassicalMythology, Bellerophon attempted to fly to Mount Olympus on Pegasus, but his mount was stung by a gadfly, causing him to fall into a thorn bush and [[EyeScream lose his eyesight as a result]].

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap The Minish Cap]]'', Link has to climb to the top of the Veil Falls to find a tornado that takes him to the Cloud Tops. There, he has to traverse thrugh a maze-like area (and hovering from one part to another with mini-tornadoes in the process) to find another big tornado and reach the Palace of Winds, where the last PlotCoupon (the Wind Element) can be found.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': In Episode 12 of Season 6 ("A Ladder To Heaven"), the boys (Stan, Kyle and Cartman) decide to build a ladder so they can meet Kenny (who died at the end of Season 5 and, for the longest time, hadn't done his usual revival, making everybody believe he died for real). They want to see him so they can retrieve a ticket he won alongside them in a contest, but since the adults are unaware of this intent they think the boys are still sorely missing Kenny and build the ladder to to see him again, which moves them emotionally. This becomes international news, to the point the Japanese plan to build their own ladder while the US military soldiers believe the soul of Saddam Hussein is building a chemical warfare plant in Heaven. At the end of the episode, and upon Cartman discovering that Kenny had placed the ticket in his house before dying (he learned this by reliving Kenny's memories due to having eaten his cremated renmants), they decide to suspend the ladder's building. The adults, still unaware of ''why'' they wanted to build the ladder in the first place, interpret this as the boys having accepted Kenny's death and moved on, so the whole international story ends. Unbeknownst for the soldiers, it turns out Saddam's soul ''is'' building a chemical warfare plant in Heaven.
[[/folder]]
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[[caption-width-right:242:And he later has to climb beyond the tower's top to reach Kamisama's Lookout]]