Solid Clouds

20% more comfy than a bed.

Mii 1: Look, [Mii 2]!
We're above the clouds!
The clouds are so fluffy!
Mii 2: Yeah, so light and soft!
Mii 1: Yay!
Mii 2: Wahoo!

— Miitopia

In fiction, people can sometimes treat clouds as solid platforms to walk and stand on. It might be an intrinsic property of the clouds themselves, and so they're solid for everyone; other times, it's a special ability of the cloud-walker himself that somehow allows him to treat these floating bunches of water droplets as if they were hard rock, semi-solid ice that can be skated on, or a soft squishy waterbed, though the majority of works depicting solid clouds have them as soft fluffy pillows varying in size from large enough for one person to stand on to one the size of a terrestrial continent floating in the sky. Some works even depict clouds as being bouncy like trampolines for anyone on these clouds.

They might be used simply as transport or platforms to get high up. Sometimes people or gods and blessed souls live on them, removed from man's sight. Others use them as Cool Airships.

It's not difficult to see how this trope might have gotten started — clouds certainly look nice and solid from the ground level, like big fluffy pillows (or big grey rocks, weather depending). You need to get quite close to them to see the only difference between clouds and fog is altitude.

See also Level in the Clouds, Fluffy Cloud Heaven, Flying on a Cloud and Cumulonemesis, as well as Bouncy Bubbles. Contrast Fake Platform.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Deserted Island Diary: In the Volume 1 story "Distress Call", when the human group lose track of Gulliver, they manage to find him lying face down... on a cloud. Coroyuki asks him how he got up there.
• The Flying Nimbus from Dragon Ball, which Goku rides around on before he learns to fly on his own, would probably apply. In a variation, its magic is such that it is solid only to the pure of heart. Impure people, like Master Roshi, fall right through.
• The sky islands in One Piece use various kinds of clouds, some of them solid (most notably the islands themselves).
• Doraemon has a gadget in his four-dimensional pocket that transforms ordinary clouds into this.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds have the gang stumbling across the titular Kingdom, a series of cities built atop solid clouds using futuristic gadgets.
• The intro of the 1974 anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps shows Heidi lying on a cloud and gazing at the landscape below.
• An original animation short based on Tamagotchi called "Mametchi's Picture Diary" primarily features Mametchi and his friends having fun at an amusement park, but later on they jump from cloud to cloud in the sky as well. Once they jump high enough into the sky, they catch sight of the Flying Library and board it, leading to them getting a neat view of Tamagotchi Planet.
• In the third-to-last episode of Smile PreCure!, Joker traps Cure March and her Bad End counterpart in a Pocket Dimension where beanstalk-like arches rise out of a ground made of solid clouds. Although some fog is kicked up when Bad End March stomps Cure March into the cloudy ground, the clouds themselves never actually break up from the impact.
• We see Oboro Shirakumo using the clouds his quirk could make to transport civilians out of a collapsed building in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: Throughout Season 6 episode 39, which is about Happy S. meeting a cloud-eating creature, we see Happy S. standing and walking on clouds.
• Motu Patlu: In "Ghaseetaram the Cloud Man", Motu and Patlu ride on a solid cloud made by Dr. Jhatka.
• In the first episode of Nana Moon, Keke lands on some clouds as she plummets towards the surface of the moon.
• In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: The Earth Carnival episode 7, the goats learn about the five layers of the atmosphere. When they visit the first three layers of the atmosphere, they walk around on a bunch of clouds gathered below them.

Comic Books

• In the Disney comic "Zio Paperone e i 'quattro passi' tra le nuvole", Uncle Scrooge seeks to heal his sore feet by learning the art of cloud-walking from a hermit master living in the world's tallest mountains. He actually succeeds at this, at first with special training shoes and finally without, and hereafter takes up regular walks in the clouds.

Fan Works

• Fallout: Equestria: Following My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, only pegasi and other flying creatures can touch clouds. The Grand Pegasus Enclave uses clouds as building materials and security; it's impossible for Littlepip to hack Enclave maneframes or pick Enclave locks because they're all made of clouds. Since the vast majority of pegasi belong to the Enclave, that's a big advantage. Later, it's mentioned that since the Enclave never comes down from the clouds they have very little building material besides clouds. Their massive battleships turn out to be Glass Cannons because most of the important parts are clouds.

Films — Animation

• "Mickey and the Beanstalk", a segment of the Disney film Fun and Fancy Free. The giant's castle rests on a solid cloud.
• In Dumbo, the Delivery Stork carrying Dumbo sits on a cloud to rest and get his bearings. The bundle with Dumbo inside is a little too heavy, though, and the stork has to keep stopping it from falling through.
• The cupids from the "Pastoral Symphony" segment of Fantasia sleep on clouds. Also, Zeus and Vulcan are seen working on them. After Zeus has some lightning-chucking fun, he wraps himself up in a cloud and takes a nap.
• The DreamWorks Animation Logo Joke for Kung Fu Panda has a leopard jump onto the clouds in order to climb onto the moon and take the place of the fishing boy.

Films — Live-Action

• The first shots of Mary Poppins feature Mary sitting on a cloud in the sky of London. There she powders her nose, puts her bag in place and re-pitches her umbrella on the cloud.
• Interstellar. Mann's planet is so cold that even the clouds have turned to ice. Although the movie generally tries to keep the science plausible, this is one of the more Artistic License – Physics examples. It is scientifically possible for ice mountains to form like that, but it's unlikely that they would take the shape of clouds in the process. Their existence was principally for the benefit of a visual gag.

Folklore

• The Jewish folk hero Hershel of Ostropol once told a story in which he climbed a bee's rib bone to Fluffy Cloud Heaven, stopping to sleep on solid clouds along the way (he also got rainwater to drink and ate parts of the cloud when he got hungry). Of course, this particular Nested Story was him trying to win a bet by telling a story so ridiculous that nobody could believe it.

Literature

• Jack and the Beanstalk: The giant's castle that Jack visits via the beanstalk is in the clouds.
• Clouds in Xanth; there's also at least one castle up there.
• During astral travel, people sometimes walk on clouds in Nation of the Third Eye by K.K. Savage.
• James and the Giant Peach: As James and the insects fly over the Atlantic Ocean, they come across the Cloud-Men, humanoids who live in a civilization high up in the clouds, where they make the weather.
• "Fairest of All": The clouds below Siofra's tower range from hard as stone to soft as water; most of them are somewhere in between, making them the ideal habitat for the otters who live there.
• The clouds in Fluffy Cloud Heaven in Der Münchner im Himmel are solid enough to carry a whole number of angels. Or, if they're smaller, an angel and a somewhat regular-sized harp.

Live-Action TV

• Handwaved in "The Snowmen" Christmas special of Doctor Who. They can stand on the cloud because it's specially made of "super-dense water vapor".

Music Videos

• Preschool Popstars:
  • In "Bounce", the dark-skinned girl jumps off a few clouds.
  • In "Before I Go to Sleep", the Asian girl falls asleep on a cloud.

Puppet Shows

• The French puppet TV series from the '80s Le Village dans les nuages ("The Village in the Clouds") has for setting small village on solid clouds, inhabited by two old Frenchmen and two families of extraterrestrials (although the village existed before the aliens landed on it).

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Some cloud giants live on magical cloud islands.
  • In early editions, there was a potion that could make clouds it was poured onto solid.
  • Module WG7 Castle Greyhawk, Level 4 "There's No Place Like Up". If the PCs climb up a magical rope, they can walk on solid clouds floating high in the air.
  • Deities And Demigods Cyclopedia: Several deities are depicted as riding around on clouds.
    • The Chinese mythos deity Chih Sung-Tzu rides a storm cloud that can support up to ten beings of any size.
    • The Japanese mythos deity Susanowo can often be found riding a storm cloud.
    • In the Sumerian mythos, all of the deities have clouds that they can ride on. The clouds can teleport to any place that has clouds in the sky, are immune to all attacks and can carry anything the controlling deity wishes.
  • The Epic Level Handbook lets characters use the Balance skill to walk on clouds, at the ludicrously high Difficulty Class of 120 (compared to 40 for a feat that's merely "nearly impossible").
  • Silver dragons have the innate supernatural ability to walk on clouds as though on solid ground whenever they so choose. They lose this ability in 5th Edition, where they're instead able to make clouds and fog as solid as stone for anyone walking on them with a few days' work.
  • There is also the wizard spell solid fog, which not only impairs vision but slows those caught within.
• Magi-Nation: Arderial is a nation built on solid clouds. The Arderians can all fly; many have wings.
• Pathfinder:
  • Silver dragons, much like in D&D, can walk on clouds as if they were solid ground.
  • One of the hierophant abilities introduced in Mythic Origins, Pilgrim of the Sky, allows characters to walk upon the clouds and to ignore issues such as altitude sickness or oxygen deficiency.

Toys

• Angel Bunny: Going with the Fluffy Cloud Heaven trope, the decals on the toys often depict this, with Angel Bunny and her friends playing among the clouds.

Video Games

• The Cushy Cloud level in Kirby: Squeak Squad has a few stages with cloud clumps that can be destroyed with fire abilities, including with a flaming sword.
• In The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, in one of the later dungeons, there are clouds you can walk on. Also, there are such clouds you need to explore in order to get to the dungeon in the first place, and you obtain a special set of shovel-like claws to dig through some of them.
• Common in the Super Mario series, where clouds can serve as platforms and even modes of transportation in the case of Lakitus.
  • Cloudy Climb in Paper Mario 64 is the home of Huff N. Puff, a giant Ruff Puff terrorizing Flower Fields and guarding the sixth Star Spirit, Klevar.
  • Double subverted as well as invoked, at least as far as playable characters are concerned, in Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. Mario and Luigi can't stand on clouds without first acquiring a Bee Mushroom or Cloud Flower, but once they have either of the two, they can stand on clouds like platforms. The latter power-up also lets them spawn their own temporary clouds to be used as platforms.
  • In Super Mario Sunshine, when Mario sprays a cloud with FLUDD's water, its volume will increase.
  • Justified in Super Mario Odyssey: The cloud platforms (and other solid clouds) in the Mushroom World aren't made out of water vapor, but rather a type of solid material similar in behavior to real clouds.
  • Super Mario Party: The minigame Air to a Fortune takes place atop a series of nine clouds floating up in the sky, with each player standing on one of the clouds in the four cardinal directions. In each round, players can jump to one of the clouds adjacent to theirs to collect the coins on it by pressing the button in the direction they want to jump, but if multiple players try to jump to the same cloud, they will bump into each other, and none of them will get to claim the coins.
  • In Bowser's Fury, Mario can skate atop the semi-solid cloud platforms.
  • WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: One of the boss microgames has the player jump between cloud platforms in the high skies to reach a goal (a small pool of water) without falling down. The clouds do vanish after being landed on once each, and some of them move either up and down or sideways, so the player needs to time their jumps wisely.
• In Sky Sanctuary in Sonic & Knuckles, solid clouds serve as trampolines in order to reach higher areas. This is carried over into its appearance in Sonic Generations.
• In Mega Man 2, there are solid clouds in Air Man's stage. Subverted because you can blatantly see a propeller under it and there is a solid platform one layer behind the cloud. Mega Man 7 has similar platforms that will freeze and then shatter when hit by the Freeze Cracker, revealing the hovering platform underneath.
• Some, but not all clouds in Secret Agent. Other times, you need to find goggles that let you "see invisible platforms" so that platforms appear under the clouds and allow you to walk on them.
• Clouds are solid in Eversion, but only on the third layer. They're decorative on all other layers.
• Atlantis no Nazo has boots that let you walk on clouds.
• Averted in Glider PRO, where clouds aren't normally solid objects (though, in practice, they are often paired with invisible vents), since having them be actually solid would be a bad thing in Glider.
• Might and Magic: World of Xeen has a downplayed version on the top of every tower on both sides: The clouds aren't actually solid — you'll fall down and take a lot of damage if you just try to walk out on them — but they do count as ground for the purposes of the Levitate spell.
• The cult-founded town of Meriloft from Broken Age is situated on an assortment of clouds, but several characters do mention the important of maintaining a large surface area while staying light, at least.
• In the Dizzy series of computer games by CodeMasters, Dizzy can walk on clouds, but he sinks into them right away.
• The Floating Islands in Terraria are made of clouds that you can walk on and mine into Cloud Blocks.
• The Trader of Stories features clouds that are not only solid (they can be caught in nets and broken apart and sewn back together), they're used as a food source by the Cloud Eater (an elephant/giraffe/brachiosaur ...thing) and have sleep-inducing properties. This is due to them being the dreams of a gigantic oak tree worshipped as a god.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has clouds that form around Zol, a solid mineral that floats when exposed to Jupiter Psynergy. With a big Psynergy injection, they allow the player to cross a mountain range.
• Moshi Monsters has an entire village made of clouds, which can be visited and lived in no problem.
• In Grow Ornament a Onky can go on a cloud which make it move and snow, it's used to cover the ground and a forest of pine trees in snow.
• The level in Cuphead where you fight Grim Matchstick has clouds that serve as platforms.
• Some levels in the Rocket Trip area of Baba is You consist of cloud blocks. Often, these cloud blocks are set to "Stop," rendering them solid. However, the attributes can be modified by pushing or pulling appropriate text blocks around, which render clouds as anything as the rules state, even being controllable.
• Civilization II: Test of Time has a fantasy world set in the sky inhabited by the bird-like Buteo people complete with solid clouds.
• In Faria, one quest has you exploring the Sky World in search of a path to find a Magic Rope to use for mountain climbing. You can easily walk on the clouds there, but falling off the edge will send you back to the surface.
• Celeste has two platforms that are made of clouds that are primarily present in Chapter 4. White ones that are a little extra bouncy and pink ones that are super bouncy, but dissipate for a few seconds after a single bounce.
• Miitopia has Nimbus, a land made of walkable clouds with futuristic towers in the background. Some of its areas have an Eternal Engine flavour.
• Lizard: The clouds in the game can be used as platforms.
• In Noita, Cloud is technically a gas but while stationary is solid enough to walk on. Fighting in the cloud-themed areas is complicated by the fact that liquids and solid objects will fall through and displace Cloud.
• Pikuniku features several platforming areas where you can jump around on fluffy white clouds, or zoom around on them. Piku even nestles down adorably into them, like big fluffy cushions.
• Kid Icarus (1986): Later levels in the game have clouds that are Directionally Solid Platforms.
• An early section of Terramex allows you to walk around on the clouds.
• The red gem path in Native Fortress from Crash Bandicoot (1996) has the only instance of this trope in the whole franchise.

Web Original

• In Phaeton with the right powers you can not only make clouds solid, you could make air solid, but this generally doesn't last longer than a second or two.
• SCP Foundation, SCP-1784 ("Skywriter Sloths"). The sloths can fart out clouds. They can subsequently interact with the clouds as if they were solid objects, including forming them into forests and nests.
• Dreamscape: Anjren can create a cloud to ride around on.
• Cloud, an animated short, has the titular character who is essentially a cloud who can transform and brings joy to a human girl. The cloud girl at one point created a bouncy castle made from clouds for the human girl and the cloud girl to bounce on.

Web Comic

• Cirrus of Wake of the Clash has a power that allows her to create solid cloud-forms that she uses to ride around in the sky, or even as a prosthetic limb when in hero-mode.
• The Whiteboard: The fog at Red's field gets so thick that Doc is able to cut it with his claws.

Western Animation

• Clouds in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic are a strange example. The only ponies who can interact with them as if they are solid are pegasi, whose job as a race is to manage the weather, although griffons and flying animals can sit on clouds as well. Clouds also serve as an Empathic Environment for flying creatures, e.g. parting to allow ducks to hide in them or a pegasus to swim through them as though they were a pool of water, and a white cloud may become a Personal Raincloud if landed on by a depressed pegasus. For most other ponies, clouds act as they would in real life without magical assistance. The ability to interact with clouds as if they were solid objects is specifically part of the pegasi's inherent magic, and that other ponies cannot do this without outside magic being cast such as a cloud-walking spell that allows other species to do it as well, if only temporarily. Many pegasi are shown to make their homes directly in the clouds, ranging from individual floating cloudhouses like Rainbow Dash's to entire cloud cities such as Cloudsdale.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: During the song number of “Calling All Jazzberries”, the Jazzberries (who due to having accidentally flooded the House Of Jam are giving a rooftop performance) are somehow able to stand on a small cloud that inexplicably appeared, and even ride it to (almost) the next rooftop over.
• Care-A-Lot, home of the Care Bears, is a land of clouds that are solid enough to stand on, but soft enough to poke one's head through to observe the world below. It helps that they are ursine beings not native to Earth.
• The Avatarverse:
  • Discussed in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Water Bending Scroll": Katara mentions that she would love to walk on the clouds passing by. Aang tests this by using airbending to fly up into the sky, concluding that "Clouds are made of water."
  • In The Legend of Korra, ancient airbenders apparently were capable of standing on clouds and flying around on them, in a clear reference to chinese traditional art. Also invoked when Zaheer first flies. After falling from a cliff, he is seen standing on clouds, which Lin and her sister assume to be solid terrain, before he ascends upwards...
• 1973/74 Superfriends episode "Menace of the White Dwarf". The villain Raven has his aerial base on a solid cloud.
• On Animaniacs, when the Warners try to persuade the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk to try gold eggs and meat:
  Yakko: Eat them, eat them, on a cloud.
  Giant: Oh, all right, for crying out loud! [eats it] Mmm! Gold eggs and meat I do not hate.
  Yakko: But now that cloud won't hold your weight [Giant falls through cloud]
• The Pixar short "Partly Cloudy" features not only solid, but sentient clouds, capable of holding (and creating) the new-born creatures they produce, and all manner of other objects.
• The Ready Jet Go! episode "Fact or Fiction?" has Jet, Lillian, and Mindy all believe that clouds are made of cotton candy, although at first Jet thought that clouds were made of cotton balls and wanted to take a nap on them. However, a trip to the clouds proves that they aren't solid.
• Mamemo: In one episode, Mamemo falls from space towards the Earth and lands on a cloud, which gives her a soft landing upon impact.
• Discussed in Ninjago when the ninja visit the Cloud Kingdom. When wondering how they can stand on clouds, it is explained that different realms have different rules.
• Toopy and Binoo:
  • In "Toopy's Bed", one of the beds Toopy tries out is a cloud in the sky. It's after he settles down on the cloud that he realizes he misses his old bed and goes back to it.
  • In "On and Off", one of Toopy's hiding places is inside a cloud. Binoo and the furniture happen to be on another cloud floating towards the one Toopy is hiding in.
• Let's Go Luna!: In "Windy Washi", Luna stands on some clouds when she goes to ask Fuujin to give them some wind so that they can fly their Circo Fabuloso kite.
• Rankin Bass' Jack Frost: Jack and his fellow Winter Sprites live in the clouds where they make weather for the mortal world below.
• Angels of Jarm: The angels are seen standing, if not walking on clouds in the intro and end credits.

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