Basic Trope: When spring arrives late (or, if you want to be technical, the beginning of spring still feels like winter), something is horribly wrong.
- Straight: It's the beginning of spring, or should be, but there's still snow and there are no flowers blooming. It turns out that dark magic has stopped the seasons.
- Exaggerated: Any snow still on the ground past the midnight of the first of March/September triggers an apocalypse.
- Downplayed: The cold weather is the result of dark magic, but it's a mostly harmless spell that just slows the seasons down a little.
- Justified: Global warming is starting to take its toll on the Global Conveyor Belt.
- Inverted:
- The fact that there's still snow is seen as a good omen.
- Dark magic stops the seasons during spring, so when summer is meant to come, it doesn't heat up.
- It still feels like summer despite the fact that it should be autumn. As it turns out, dark magic has stopped the seasons.
- (Of Exaggerated): If there's still no snow around past the midnight of the first March/September, it triggers an apocalypse.
- Subverted:
- There's still snow even though it should be spring, and then the protagonists run into Alice, who seems to be creating the snow. As it turns out, though, she's either just controlling the snow that's already there via telekinesis, or she created some of the snow but isn't responsible for the seasonal behaviour.
- Bob initially assumes that the seasons are stopped with dark magic, but Carol tells him that it's actually normal for the beginning of spring to still have snow.
- Bob's calendar is fast.
- Double Subverted:
- It was actually Alice's evil brother, Dave, who's stopped the seasons.
- ...But in this instance it is dark magic.
- … but not that fast.
- Parodied:
- Zigzagged: The flowers aren't blooming and there's still snow, but it's hard to tell if it's just normal weather irregularity, dark magic, aliens, or what.
- Averted: The seasons work normally.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "Why must any deviation from the normal seasonal pattern spell doom?"
- Invoked:
- Exploited: The reason the evil wizard stopped spring is because he has hayfever or a low tolerance for heat.
- Defied: The good sorcerers make a more powerful spell to prevent the season-stopping ones.
- Implied: Dave the wizard is seen with an evil grin, while Bob and Carol wonder why it's so cold.
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama: An animal had babies, and if the weather doesn't warm up soon, those baby animals may die.
- Played for Horror: The winter is not only deliberately endless, but the first stage to a horrifying apocalypse.
Back to Spring Is Late.
