History Main / GiantWallOfWateryDoom

* In ''Film/DeepImpact'', this provides an ObiWanMoment for several main characters.

* The 1933 disaster movie ''Deluge'' has a model of New York City crumbling in an earthquake and then swamped by the subsequent 'tidal wave'. Thanks to Creator/RepublicPictures buying the rights to the film so they could use it as StockFootage, the scene reappears in ''S.O.S. Tidal Wave'' and ''Film/KingOfTheRocketMen''.

* In ''The Eve of April 20'', a neo-Nazi organisation holds a rally beneath a dam as a suitably imposing backdrop before launching a coup, which is foiled when the protagonist blows not the dam, but the cliffs of the lake behind it, causing water to displace over the dam and wash away the DayOfTheJackboot before it happens.

** In another infamous example, the RMS ''Queen Mary'', during a 1942 troop carrying mission for World War 2, was struck by a 92-foot-tall rogue wave causing it to roll 52 degrees before righting itself, with it later being calulated that if the ship had rolled only three more degrees, it would have capsized completely. This incident would go on to inspire ''Literature/ThePoseidonAdventure'' and its [[Film/ThePoseidonAdventure film]] [[Film/Poseidon adaptations]].

* In another infamous example, the RMS ''Queen Mary'', during a 1942 troop carrying mission for World War 2, was struck by a 92-foot-tall rogue wave causing it to roll 52 degrees before righting itself, with it later being calulated that if the ship had rolled only three more degrees, it would have capsized completely. This incident would go on to inspire ''Literature/ThePoseidonAdventure'' and its [[Film/ThePoseidonAdventure three]] [[Film/ThePoseidonAdventure2005 film]] [[Film/Poseidon adaptations]].

* Between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago were the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods Missoula Floods]]. [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_Lake_Missoula Glacial Lake Missoula]], in what is now Montana, was held back by an ice dam—and it was the largest known ice-dammed lake. Towards the end of the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period Last Glacial Period]], with all the pressure from the growing amount of water putting cracks in said dam, [[BigDamPlot it broke]] and released ninety times as much energy as the Tsar Bomba. And then the dam reformed, and did that about ''forty more times''. Over 2,000 cubic kilometers of water were discharged, creating water marks 280 to 300 meters high and ripple marks as large as 15 meters (49 feet).
** The floods had a big part in shaping the geography of Idaho, Washington, and Montana. All in all, 210 cubic kilometres (50 cubic mi) of earth was displaced, forming features such as [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokane_Valley%E2%80%93Rathdrum_Prairie_Aquifer the primary source of water for half a million people in the Spokane region]] and [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands scraping the soil out of a 1,500 to 2,000 square miles (3,900 and 5,200 sq km) area]]. Not to mention that some of the soil was carried out to the Pacific Ocean, some 700 kilometers (430 miles) away.
** Just to get an idea of how big this lake was: its maximum length was 320 kilometers (200 mi), its maximum depth was 610 meters (2000 ft), and it held half as much water as Lake Michigan. It’s gone now.

* At the end of the most recent glaciation, several areas of the world (most notably the part of the Pacific Northwest with the impossibly cool name of ''the Scablands'') experienced glacial lake outburst megafloods which almost certainly presented themselves this way, with an added ominous rumbling audible long before their arrival.

* During the end of the last ice age, an immense ice dam in what is now Washington state collapsed under the weight of the water behind it, causing a series of devastating floods across the eastern part of the state -- the most powerful of these generated the equivalent of 4500 megatons of TNT.

* At the end of ''Film/TakeShelter'' the main character looks out towards the ocean and sees a large tsunami coming towards the Mrytle Beach beachhouse he and his family have rented. [[spoiler:The fact that his wife can see the giant wave as well suggests its not another creation of his damaged mind, which may mean the other strange things he experienced earlier in the movie may have been real as well...or, perhaps the whole thing, including the wave and his wife's reaction, is another hallucination as well, signifying his final break with reality. Which is true is left for the viewer to decide, as this is the last scene in the movie.]]

%% ZCE * ''Film/TheLastWave'''s last wave.

* The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was caused by an earthquake that uplifted a 100 mile long section of sea floor, releasing a titanic amount of energy. It is also one of the deadliest natural disasters in history with over 220,000 people casualties, since most of the affected countries had never experienced a tsunami of this scale.