History Main / CueTheSun

* The Egyptian chapter of ''VideoGame/WaxWorks'' takes place during a single night, with the sun rising over the Pyramids when you exit the secret tunnel.

* "The Day Begins", the opening poem of ''Days of Future Passed'', the first ConceptAlbum by Music/TheMoodyBlues, ends with the narrator calling for the sun (by way of invoking its [[Myth/GreekMythology ancient personification]]):

* ''Film/MishimaALifeInFourChapters'' begins and ends with a sunrise as well as having a plane break through dense clouds during the eponymous characters WorldOfCardboardSpeech moment.

Alternatively, [[PartlyCloudyWithAChanceOfDeath the sun disappearing on cue]] can have the opposite effect, [[DarkIsEvil as the will of heaven is suddenly snatched away]].

* ''Film/BladeRunner''
** In an incidental SpecialEffectsFailure which turned into a moment of awesome, Roy Batty releases his dove and it flies into the sunny sky, giving some hope to Deckard the future would be brighter.
*** Averted in the Final Cut of the film; they fixed the shot so that the dove now flies up into the rainy night sky.

* Convenient sunbeams illumine Pride Rock in ''Disney/TheLionKing'' when a new monarch (lion cub) is presented. When Simba regains his throne, the clouds part to reveal the starry sky where the former kings are said to reside.

* The final shot of ''Disney/{{Fantasia}}'', set to Franz Schubert's ''Ave Maria'', no less.
* The sun rises when the ''{{WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague}}'' defeats the Justice Lords.

The sun can be used for all sorts of funky symbolism. A sunrise on the beginning of a journey is pretty self-explanatory. Perhaps one of the more common variations is the sun, on cue, breaking through the thick, overcast clouds, shining rays of light down onto the Earth. For heroes, this is often [[LightIsGood an encouraging sign, even something of an omen]]. Expect things to turn toward the hero's side quickly.

See also HeavenAbove, NaturalSpotlight, RaysFromHeaven, RidingIntoTheSunset (when a character is shown driving towards the sun at the end of a story), AgainstTheSettingSun, WatchingTheSunset, FirstTimeInTheSun and SuicideBySunlight. Contrast MelancholyMoon and CueTheRain, which are [[InvertedTrope inverses]]. Connected to RedSkyTakeWarning. Subverted with DaylightHorror.

* In the end of the manga version of ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'', [[TheHero Rosette]] looks out at the sun rising through the clouds, spreads her arms, and says "Come on, let's go. There's plenty for us to do!"

* [[JustifiedTrope More than symbolic]] in ''Manga/{{Pluto}}'': the robot Epsilon is solar powered, so the appearance of the sun in the middle of a fight signals a shift in his favour.

** After the defeat of Grimoire Heart's [[BigBad leader]], Hades, the sun rises, signifying the titular guild's victory over the dark guild. [[spoiler:This is only a temporary victory however, as later Acnologia shows up...]]

* ''Fanfic/ACrownOfStars'': In chapter 25 Shinji and Asuka finally open up and talk about their feelings. At the end of that chapter the Sun rose, and it is explicitly stated that it symbolized the beginning of something new.

* In the movie ''Film/{{Westworld}}'', the technicians watch for sunrise, and cue all the robots to start up at the instant where the sun rises above the horizon. A western town is frozen in mid movement, then everything starts up when the sun rises.

* The entire story of ''Film/{{Collateral}}'' takes place at night. At the end, when [[spoiler:Max has killed Vincent and gets away with the girl]] we see the sun coming up, showing us that night's finally over and order's restored.

* ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'': "Nice dissolve!" They go on to be rescued by the Dinks, and meet Yogurt later that day.

* At the end of ''Film/JurassicWorld'', the ''TyrannosaurusRex'' roars victoriously as the sun rises over the now abandoned park.

* The second to last scene in ''Film/KeyLargo'' is Nora opening the blinds to let the sun in after the hurricane has passed.

* ''Film/LemonTreePassage'' ends with [[spoiler:Jordan and Maya]] walking along the road out of the bush with the sun rising behind them. This signifies that the night, and the nightmare they have been battling, is over. This is further cemented when they find their car and it starts first time.

** At the end of the War of the Ring, Aragorn and the rest's HeroicSacrifice at the gates of Mordor is averted, when the successful destruction of The One Ring causes the perpetual cloud-cover to dissipate, letting the sun break through -- and sending the bad guys fleeing in panic.

* In ''Literature/TheHobbit'', Bilbo is caught by three trolls, and the dwarves are captured in their turn when they arrive to find out what has become of him. While Bilbo escapes to hide in a bush during the fight with the dwarves, he can do nothing but listen helplessly while the trolls argue about how to cook them; but Gandalf, unseen, keeps re-igniting the argument until sun-up, when he shouts, "Dawn take you all!" and they turn to stone in the sunlight.

* In the climactic FinalBattle of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', the morning sun rises while Harry and Voldemort are talking to each other,and it's the cue they use to attack for the last time. It was a long night after all...

* Rand al'Thor in ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' books is apparently the prophesied leader of every diverse group of people in the world. Sucks for them that he's destined to destroy them as a result. Anyway, one of said groups, the Aiel, know him as (among other things) "He Who Comes with the Dawn." After journeying to an ancient city to prove his identity to them, he returns, successful (though battered) at, you guessed it, sunrise.

** In ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'', the sun rises just as Susan saves the Hogfather's life. [[spoiler:This is important, because if the Hogfather hadn't been saved the sun wouldn't have risen. Had she failed, [[NoManOfWomanBorn a mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world]].]] The again, given the Literature/{{Discworld}}'s dependence on [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Narrative Causality]], the difference between the two is probably more than semantic.

* [[Literature/BookOfTheNewSun The Urth of the New Sun]]: Severian stands to be executed over a misunderstanding, until an apparent miracle makes it appear that he both delayed and caused the sunrise.

** Another Inversion, an example of the sun ''not'' coming out being interpreted as a good sign. During an unusual heat wave around Christmas, on Christmas eve Angel ([[TakeOurWordForIt for complicated reasons]]) decides to kill himself by standing on a hill as the sun comes up, claiming that the world doesn't want him in it. After an argument with Buffy who is trying to talk him out of it, the sun doesn't rise. Instead it starts snowing. This is treated as a miracle as it saves Angels life but [[FridgeLogic doesn't this mean that Buffy will have to work overtime?]]

* Done for TearJerker effect in ''Series/BabylonFive'' in the final episode where [[TheHero John Sheridan]], knowing he is going to die very, very soon, rises early to watch his final sunrise, accidently waking Delenn ([[InterspeciesRomance his wife]]). It becomes truly heartbreaking at the end, where we find that Delenn would get up early every day, for the rest of her life, to watch the sun rising as her way of keeping John alive in her memories.

* ''Series/TheWarOfTheWorlds''. Experiments with typhoid bacteria have shown that Earth diseases can kill off the [[AlienKudzu red weed]]. In an act of despair Amy smashes the cloches they have set up to protect the experiment, only to find a [[HopeSproutsEternal green Earth plant growing]] among the dead Martian weed. Amy then looks up as a hole in the clouds lets the sun through, [[RayOfHopeEnding and the series ends]].

[[folder:Role Playing Games]]

* In ''Theatre/TheMagicFlute'', the Queen of the Night is defeated when Sarastro, Tamino and Pamina arrive along with the sun.

* The final boss of ''VideoGame/KirbyTripleDeluxe'' is fought high in the sky, with a gigantic moon in the background. In the end, Kirby is grabbed and hopeless until Dedede comes to bring him his EleventhHourSuperpower. From that point on, [[CurbStompBattle the battle definitely turns to Kirby's advantage]] and the rest of it is fought in front of a glorious sunrise.

* This is one of your powers in ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}''. Of course, you are playing the incarnation of the sun goddess. Very early in the game you summon the Sun just to dry somebody's laundry...
** A more textbook example is in the fight with Orochi, when you dramatically summon the moon to match the legend of Orochi's original defeat. [[spoiler:Later you're sent back in time to the first fight with Orochi, and do the dramatic moon-summoning that makes its way into the legend.]]

*** Made even more powerful by the fact that ''she never lost it''. Even when [[spoiler:Yami destroyed all the other brush spirits, the other gods who surrendered themselves to Amaterasu, who became part of her by returning to where they came from, he didn't destroy her. The reason Amaterasu had that power to begin with is because she ''is'' the Sun God, and unless Yami destroyed her, he could not destroy that power. As the trope description reminds us, cuing the sun is a way to signal that victory is near, that the darkness has passed and that it's time for the light to shine. It's the ultimate way of giving people hope, and ''Amaterasu had it all along''.]]

* Subverted, played straight, and possibly reversed in ''VideoGame/SuikodenV'', where the plot centers around a set of runes related to various times of day - and which can be used to call down the fearsome power of the sun itself upon your foes! And since the runes end up on both sides of the central conflict, 'cuing the sun' in ''Suikoden V'' is synonymous with wholesale destruction for one side or the other. It even serves as the pre-battle wipe every time you have a RandomEncounter...

** ''Subterranean Animism'' uses a different kind of subversion: When you see the subterranean sun in all it's fiery glory, you are about to face [[ILoveNuclearPower the final boss of the game]]. [[ThePowerOfTheSun Who then goes on to create some more]], which she hurls at you.

* Seeing this happen is the entire point of [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Fight 'Til Dawn]] mode from ''VideoGame/AlanWake's American Nightmare''. Each round starts ten minutes before dawn, and ends at sunrise (when the light kills every Taken on the field). Also, in the story mode you kill [[BigBad Mr. Scratch]] by [[spoiler:luring him in front of a film projector and playing a movie of Alan and Alice watching the sun rise.]]

** The above and this trope is referenced in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'' when Shanoa is about to storm Dracula's castle.

* ''VideoGame/{{DragonFable}}'' inverts this at the end of it's first chapter, with the sun being eaten by a giant skeletal dragon.

* ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'' first pulls a subversion, then plays it straight in it's finale. [[spoiler:Due to a string of events, the black sun has begun absorbing the data of the Earth into itself meaning that the heroes has to fix it before sunrise or else everyone will be erased by it. They manage to pull it of leading to it being played straight when the people left behind see the sun rising over the horizon, now back to normal]].

--> '''Narrator''': ''Suddenly, it is very quiet. A beautiful light seems to fill the cavern. "The morning sun" you say to yourself. "It is over..."''

* In the biomancer story in ''Webcomic/TalesOfTheQuestor'', the biomancer trying to create a plant that can extract the bauxite contamination from a polluted region. While he's able to breed a plant that can thrive in such conditions, it isn't producing a berry to contain the mineral, meaning that the plant is not a perennial, which makes planting them en masse impractical. Furthermore, the authorities then confront him about the questionable regulatory chicanery he pulled to start the project, and vow to come back with a legal writ to have the "useless and dangerous" crop destroyed. On the morning of day that would have happened, the biomancer is awakened by a glaring light coming from the window facing the field. When the biomancer opens the window, he is confronted with a whole field plants with metallic berries glittering in the morning sun, which means his project has become a complete success, creating the raw materials for this medieval society to create aluminum... and some experimental breeds he was growing as a subproject were producing ''rubies and sapphires''! Translated, he and his fiancée are now rich beyond their wildest dreams.

* Used in the the ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' episode "Long Way to Morning": Hudson has spent all night protecting a hurt Goliath from Demona, buying time until the sun can restore the gargoyle leader's health. Thus, the sun, which usually leaves the gargoyles helpless, is in this case their savior.

* Odd case in ''{{WesternAnimation/ReBoot}}''. When Hexadecimal infects the system paint program the first thing we see her do with it is to paint a sun into Mainframe's sky. Since Mainframe never had a sun before (since it's inside a computer) this confuses everyone until Phong alerts Bob about the paint program. After that the painted sun is completely ignored.

* In the second episode of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', the sun rises immediately following Nightmare Moon's defeat. It's [[JustifiedTrope justified]], because Nightmare Moon was keeping Princess Celestia, [[IDyeGrass who is responsible for raising and lowering the sun]], imprisoned; that's right, the sun literally ''wasn't allowed to rise until the big bad was defeated''.

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': after being forced to flee from the intergalactic government and search for an earth-like planet out of the government's reach to live in refuge on, they finally decide on one. The Smith family gathers together to watch the sunrise, and it comes up - accompanied by the sound of it screaming. Yes, the sun. They decide to find another planet.

* Some accounts of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration speech in 1865, just as the American Civil War was in its ending phases and by then the North knew they were going to win, has the final moments of the speech be illuminated by the sunlight shining through the clouds and onto the President's platform. To the audience it seemed like hope was shining down on America for the first time in several years.

* Entries in the ''Franchise/{{Lunar}}'' series have a penchant for filing the sky with [[AStormIsComing ominous clouds]] (or even [[DarkIsEvil blotting out the sun]]) as the finale approaches.

* In ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'', the sun rises just as Susan saves the Hogfather's life. [[spoiler:This is important, because if the Hogfather hadn't been saved the sun wouldn't have risen. Had she failed, [[NoManOfWomanBorn a mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world]].]] The again, given the Literature/{{Discworld}}'s dependence on [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Narrative Causality]], the difference between the two is probably more than semantic.
** The final line of ''Discworld/NightWatch'' is "And the world turned toward morning."
** At the end of ''Discworld/{{Pyramids}}'', [[spoiler:Pteppic]] causes the sun to rise, which brings Djelibeybi back into contact with the outside world.

* In the Patrick Bergin/Creator/UmaThurman [[Film/RobinHood1991 1991 film version]] of ''RobinHood'', the sun doesn't shine until the Norman/Saxon rift begins to heal with the marriage of Robin and Marian.
* In Tim Burton's ''Film/SleepyHollow'', the shots of Ichabod Crane heading for Sleepy hollow are dark and gloomy, and the sunlight is NEVER seen in Sleepy Hollow itself, but only when those same shots are repeated as Ichabod [[spoiler:and Katrina]] are heading back for New York City.

* Used as a BaitAndSwitch moment in the climax of ''Film/MissionImpossibleFallout''. The film gives the impression that [[spoiler: Walker's bombs went off, but it turns out to be the glare from the sun shining over the skies of Kashmir.]]

** In ''The Two Towers'', when Gandalf and the Rohirrim arrive to save the day. They ride down the hill, bearing down on the Uruk-Hai army, who form lines with spears out, but just before the two groups clash...'''SUNRISE!''' and it is so sudden and so fast that the light from the sun ''blinds the spear-wielding Uruk-Hai on the front line,'' making them turn away, thus enabling the Rohirrim to crash through what is normally a cavalry-charge-breaking defensive tactic. The cinematic effects make it look as if Gandalf helped it along quite a bit, too. Which matches the magic he used for his dramatic reveal earlier. (And to bring the symbolism full-circle, remember that he identified himself as a "wielder of the flame of Anor" to the Balrog. ''Anor'' is the Sindarin name for the sun.)

** Also done in "The Return of the King" during the Ride of the Rohirrim. As the Rohirrim shout "DEATH!" for the third time, the camera pans out from them, revealing the entire army with the sunrise gloriously shining from behind them (from the wrong direction, but whatever), as music swells up triumphantly.

* Used at the end of ''Disney/TheBlackCauldron'', after [[spoiler:Gurgi comes back to life for no particular reason.]]

* In the extremely famous scene from "Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden" episode of ''Franchise/Pokemon'' anime series, just as it seems Team Rocket might gonna be successful, the sun rises. Cue the epic guitar theme, and Bulbasaur charging its Solarbeam.

* In the extremely famous scene from "Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden" episode of ''Anime/Pokemon'' series, just as it seems Team Rocket might gonna be successful, the sun rises. Cue the epic guitar theme, and Bulbasaur charging its Solarbeam.

* The eponymous Sea Temple of ''Anime/PokemonRangerAndTheTempleOfTheSea'' rises above the water at the same time as the sunrise.

* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', All Might tells Izuku that he can be a hero just as the sun is beginning the set, turning the sky orange with the sun shining brightly down on the two of them.

* ''Series/TheWarOfTheWorlds''. Experiments with typhoid bacteria have shown that Earth diseases can kill off the [[AlienKudzu red weed]]. In an act of despair Amy smashes a couple of the glass domes they have set up to protect the experiment, only to find a green Earth plant growing among the dead Martian weed. Amy then looks up as a hole in the clouds lets the sun through, [[RayOfHopeEnding and the series ends]].

* In the animated cartoon version of ''Disney/{{Mulan}}'', this happens at the climax of "Make a Man out of You". Ping/Mulan fails the whole training regimen and Shang pretty much tells him/her to go home. She then sees the arrow at the pole and decides to give it one last try. As she does, the sun rises and the other men start cheering her on. She succeeds and throws the arrow down to Shang's feet for emphasis, proving she ''can'' pull her own weight around.

* Odd case in ''ReBoot''. When Hexadecimal infects the system paint program the first thing we see her do with it is to paint a sun into Mainframe's sky. Since Mainframe never had a sun before (since it's inside a computer) this confuses everyone until Phong alerts Bob about the paint program. After that the painted sun is completely ignored.

** Later on in Season 5, Prince Lotor finally manages to kill his insane, dictatorial father Zarkon. After his father's lights go out for sure, he turns up toward the sun.