It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

"Here's the World-Famous Novelist launching his latest bestseller..."

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (opening line)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was three remarkable things. For one, he was an author. For two, he is the inventor of such catchy cliches as "the pen is mightier than the sword", "the great unwashed" and "the pursuit of the almighty dollar". However, he is not remembered for either of these. Instead, his legacy is being the man who started a book with "It was a dark and stormy night..." that keeps him alive as a multimedia sensation beyond anything he could possibly have imagined — the ur-touchstone for convoluted Purple Prose and campfire Ghost Stories.

The phrase, which opens Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford, has been so thoroughly mocked and re-used it should be a Dead Horse Trope if it were not an Undead Horse Trope: it's just too much fun. In fact, not one, but two annual writing contests are held (and named) in Bulwer-Lytton's honor.

A Sub-Trope of Weather Report Opening. Not to be confused with Hostile Weather or Stop Motion Lighting. Thanks to the power of lightning, of course, opening on a stormy night scene or at least featuring one has been a Horror trope since Universal's Frankenstein and before. Often used in a Scarily Specific Story if you're telling the story on a dark, stormy night.

Not to be confused with the Larry Blamire film Dark and Stormy Night or the anime film One Stormy Night.

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It was a Dark and Stormy Night. Suddenly... an example rang out!^note 
My plot is thickening!:

Advertising

• Snoopy writes his novel during a dark and stormy night in one of the Metropolitan Life commercials starring him.

Anime and Manga

• Spoofed by Junpei in the English dub of Digimon Frontier, when the heroes were exploring the Dark Continent:
  "It was a dark and stormy night. Luckily there was this really great guy here to save you!"
• The official English version of Negima! Magister Negi Magi translated the title of chapter 68 into a pun based on this: "It Was a Dark and Stormy Visitor". And yes, it does take place during a dark and stormy night.
• The 4Kids dub of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! titles the episode with Kracko 'A Dark and Stormy Knight'.
• The whole plot of One Stormy Night starts with Mei the goat and Gabu the wolf bonding in an abandoned barn while hiding from a storm. "One stormy night" serves as Mei and Gabu's secret phrase.

Comic Books

• Detective Comics #500 turns Snoopy's short novel (see Newspaper Comics below) into a Batman story!
• Chantal, a character in The Sandman (1989), has a dream which is a loop of a sailor telling a story that begins with "It was a dark and stormy night."
• One issue of Wonder Woman has a supporting character narrating his meeting with Batman, beginning with: "He was a dark and stormy knight."

Comic Strips

• Peanuts: Mocking this phrase perhaps began with, and was certainly popularized by, Snoopy's incarnation as World-Famous Novelist, with his typewriter set atop his doghouse. He eventually managed to string together an entire 'novel' out of banal dramatic clichés, including the oft-heard opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night... Suddenly, a shot rang out!"
  
  The first "dark and stormy night" Snoopy strip was in 1965, and according to Word of God, the original joke was that you have a dog doing something incredible like using a typewriter, only to type such a notorious cliché. From there Charles Schulz built it into a Running Gag. The full opening of Snoopy's perennial novel was:
  
  It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up. Part 2: A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery.
  
  After which he fears that he may have written himself into a corner. He does manage to weave this together: the intern finds a comatose patient has awoken — the sister of the boy from Kansas, who loves the girl with the tattered shawl, the daughter of the maid who escaped the pirates. Then Linus asks "But what about the king?" and gets a typewriter to the head.
  
  Snoopy's responses to Lucy's feedback:
  • Lucy, having read a draft of the aforementioned novel, tells Snoopy that his writing lacks subtlety. His new draft commences with: "It was a kind of dark and sort of stormy night..."
  • Lucy tells him he has to focus on the characters more, and create an iconic hero protagonist. So he changes it to "He was a dark and stormy knight..."
  • Lucy complains that he's never tried to write anything romantic, Snoopy changes "Suddenly, a shot rang out" to "Suddenly, a kiss rang out". This is punnier in German, where "Plötzlich hallte ein Schuss!" becomes "Plötzlich hallte ein Kuss!" Perhaps not a coincidence since the author knew a little German.
  • Lucy wonders if "suddenly" is the right word in this instance. Snoopy changes it to "Gradually, a shot rang out."
  • Snoopy attempted to write a sequel to Gone with the Wind, focusing more on Rhett and Scarlett's relationship. He got as far as "It was a dark and stormy marriage" before deciding it was a bad idea.
  • Lucy tells Snoopy that all good novels begin with "Once Upon a Time". Snoopy promptly reboots: "Once upon a time, it was a dark and stormy night..."
  • Lucy complains that all Snoopy's novels begin with that line. Snoopy, Comically Missing the Point, promptly changes it to "It was a stormy and dark night..."
  • Lucy again complains that all Snoopy's novels begin the same. Snoopy writes "It was a dark and stormy noon..."
  • Lucy says that Snoopy should write a Christmas story. He starts with "It was a dark and stormy Christmas night..."
  • Speaking of holidays, she also suggests he write a Thanksgiving story. Snoopy gets as far as "It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a turkey rang out!"
  • Lucy suggests he write a political novel, and he comes up with, "It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a vote rang out!"
  • He tried to change it once without Lucy, writing, "It may have been dark. It may have been stormy. But one thing was certain, it was night." Then, after rereading it, he thought, "I think that could be shortened somehow..."
  • Another strip, Snoopy is typing a letter to his mother to wish her a happy Mother's Day, which includes, in part, "I remember the night I was born. It was a dark and stormy night..."
• In Prickly City, Winslow starts a book like this (while sitting on a doghouse) but rejects as too doggish.
• A Zits strip where the punchline was the character Pierce perched on top of Snoopy's doghouse in the final panel, texting "It Wz a Drk N Strmy Nite" or something along those lines.
• The titular character of Big Nate submitted one his Social studies paper that begins with "It was a dark and stormy night in the morning..." Mrs. Godfrey immediately gave him an F.

Fan Works

• When Kyon realizes that Haruhi might end the world in Kyon: Big Damn Hero, he starts cursing the weather for not being dark and stormy.
• In The Ollivander Children 's sequel, The Ollivanders at War, Calliope Ollivander notes at the start of one chapter that it should be a dark and stormy night, but she can't quite tell, being trapped underground.
• Lampshaded in The Gloves Are Off — "It was a dark and stormy night- except that it was mid afternoon and partly cloudy."
• Used in chapter 1 of All-American Girl (Shinzakura), where it is referred to as an old cliché.
• The original first chapter of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Reflecting Balance begins with a lampshaded instance of this line. In the revised version of the chapter, this was changed.
• The Palaververse: The End of the Day: The long and short versions of the story description starts this way:
  On a dark and stormy night, centuries in the past, Celestia and Luna walked into a bar.
  
  On a dark and stormy night, two perfectly normal ponies walk into a bar and alter the whole future of Equestria.
• In The Story to End All Stories, this trope is invoked by Rimmer when thunder is heard outside Boddy Mansion.
• Triptych Continuum: It's defied by the use of pegasine weather manipulation in Barnyard Barge-Ins:
  What everypony else has written concerning the Riot has taken the form of a story. I have spoken to the ponies who were there. I know what truly happened and so you, as a student of the Riot, will gain that knowledge.
  It was a dark and storm-free night.
  It had taken just about all of his remaining pull with the Weather Bureau to get that storm postponed. But if ponies were going to be waiting, then they were going to be waiting in the dry.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: The story Crisis on Two Equestrias begins with this line, followed by Trixie grumbling at herself for actually thinking it. Though it actually is dark and stormy - she's just messed up a teleporting spell and is completely lost.
• Heart of Fire, the first part of The Heart Trilogy, starts with Kathryn spending her evening inside her cottage as a storm rages outside. Gandalf the Grey then knocks on her door to ask for shelter and question about her history with the dragon Smaug.

Film — Live-Action

• Throw Momma from the Train begins with Larry Donner having massive writer's block, unable to get past "The night was..." He discards such lame words as "foggy", "hot", even "moist". Hilarity Ensues later when he finds out one of his literature students used the same phrase he did ("The night was humid"). Later, Momma picks the perfect word ("The night was sultry", itself a Shout-Out to A Tale of Two Cities) which presses Larry's Berserk Button and causes him to declare quietly to Owen that he's getting up "to kill the bitch".
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
  It seemed a fairly ordinary night when Brad Majors ^note Asshole! and his fiancee Janet Weiss ^note Slut!, two young, ordinary healthy kids left Denton that late November evening^note It was August!, to visit a Dr. Everett Scott^note Kiss-ass!, ex-tutor, now friend to both of them. ^note Is it true that you fuck sheep? It’s true, there were dark storm clouds. ^note Describe your balls! heavy, black, and pendulous, toward which they were driving. ^note Is it also true you fuck goats? It’s true also, that the spare tire they were carrying was badly in need of some air ^note Like your neck! but they being normal kids and on a night out, well they weren’t going to let a storm spoil the events of their evening.^note Where were they? On a night out… ^note It was a Days Inn! …it was a night out… …they were going to remember ^note For how long? for a very long time.
• The horror short Suckablood takes place over a dark, thunder-ridden night. According to the opening and closing couplets, these kind of nights are the monster's preferred stalking times.
• 7 Men from Now starts on a stormy night, with Stride finding shelter in a cave with two men already there. Turns out he's been tracking them down to kill them.

Literature

• The phrase actually predates Bulwer-Lytton, appearing in Washington Irving's satirical 1809 book A History of New-York:
  It was a dark and stormy night when the good Anthony arrived at the famous creek (sagely denominated Haerlem river) which separates the island of Manna-hatta from the main land.
• Edgar Allan Poe uses the phrase in "The Bargain Lost", a 1832 short story (set in Venice) about a wannabe philosopher meeting the Devil. Poe later rewrote this tale into "Bon-Bon" (1835), in which the phrase does no longer appear verbatim, but has been replaced by an equally flowery paraphrase. In either case this seems to be satire, as throughout either "The Bargain Lost" or "Bon-Bon" Poe affects an overly ornate, flowery and long-winded style that signals that the story is not to be taken seriously.
  It was a dark and stormy night. The rain fell in cataracts; and drowsy citizens started, from dreams of the deluge, to gaze upon the boisterous sea, which foamed and bellowed for admittance into the proud towers and marble palaces.
• Played straight in the The Raven (also by Edgar Allen Poe).
  Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary...
• Frankenstein: Before Frankenstein became a full-fledged novel, Mary Shelley began with 'It was a dreary night of November', which later became the opening of chapter 6 as the Creature is awakened.
• Appears in some English translations of The Three Musketeers at the beginning of chapter 65, in which the musketeers and their friends try Milady de Winter for her crimes. The original: "C'etait une nuit orageuse et sombre." Literally, "It was a stormy and dark night" (the primary meaning of orage is "thunderstorm"), but a translator could hardly be blamed for changing it just a little bit to match the cliché.
• One chapter of A Tale of Two Cities starts, "The night was so very sultry..."
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle is a popular and critically acclaimed novel known for starting with the line. To her endless frustration, the UK publishers revised it to read "It was a dark and stormy night in a small village in the United States."
• The opening narration to Animorphs #2 chapter 16 reads as follows:
  It was a dark and stormy night.
  Sorry, I've always wanted to write that. But it really was a dark and stormy night.
• The only way that the 1980s horror-pastiche that was the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook House of Hell could begin on...
• The prologue of Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) begins "It was a nice day. All the days had been nice." Then, after quickly covering Man's Fall from Eden, the short chapter ends with "It was going to be a dark and stormy night." It then proceeds to shamelessly mock the phrase during the first chapter, with the following quote:
  "It wasn't a dark and stormy night.
  It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime."
• Children's author duo Janet and Allan Alberg have a truly excellent picture book that is titled for this trope and deliberately uses it. It's about Talking the Monster to Death.
• Bunnicula, a series of Affectionate Parody horror novels about, well, a vampire bunny who vampirizes fruits and vegetables, begins its third story thus:
  "IT WAS NOT a dark and stormy night. Indeed, there was nothing in the elements to foreshadow the events that lay ahead."
• Ray Bradbury's detective novel Let's All Kill Constance begins with the unnamed narrator giving this line, then apologizing to the reader and giving a more original and detailed description of the truthfully dark and stormy night.
  • There are no doubt many stories that start with original and detailed descriptions of dark and stormy nights, but just for starters here's one by Patrick O'Brian:
    The night was old, black, and full of driving cold rain; the moon and the stars had already passed over the sky. But anyhow they had been hidden since midnight by the low, racing, torn cloud and the flying wetness of small rain and sea-foam and the whipped-off top of standing water. Dawn was still far away: from the dark east the mounting wind blew in gusts; it bore more rain flatlings from the sea.
• The opening of Julian May's Jack the Bodiless is: "It was a dark and stormy night, as so many nights were on Denali, where topography and climate conspired to produce some of the Galaxy's worst weather."
• Castle Murders by John DeChancie opens on a college campus, with the Spoonerism "It was a stark and dormy night..." He uses the line "It was a dark night of Sturm und Drang."
• One of Stephen Leacock's early-20th-century parodies of Bronte-style romantic literature, the short story Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen, begins with a parody of this opening:
  It was a wild and stormy night on the West Coast of Scotland. This, however, is immaterial to the present story, as the scene is not laid in the West of Scotland. For the matter of that the weather was just as bad on the East Coast of Ireland.
  But the scene of this narrative is laid in the South of England ...
• Time Pressure by Spider Robinson begins with this sentence, then has a paragraph about how yes, it really was a dark and stormy night, and he's saying it even if it's cliche. He then returns to his sentence: "It was a dark and stormy night—when suddenly the snot ran out . . ."
• Roald Dahl's short story The Great Automatic Grammatizator features Adolph Knipe, a computer engineer and aspiring writer. One of his short stories start with this phrase. Due to his failure as a writer, Knipe constructs a computer that writes successful fiction.
• The tongue-in-cheek opening sentence of Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil reads: "It was a dark and stormy afternoon on the high moors of Northumberland." Of course, at the time Lori is driving en route to an Old, Dark House in Hostile Weather...
• The first line of the Mercedes Lackey novel Oathbreakers is this line running through Tarma's head. Her telepathic companion gripes at her for thinking in cliches, whereupon Tarma retorts that it is night, there's a terrific storm going on, and it's so dark they can barely see.
• The opening of the short story "'The Five Barley Grains" in The Legionary from Londinium & Other Mini Mysteries starts out the way. Caroline Lawrence said that like Snoopy, she always wanted to start a story with that stock phrase.
• The first book of the Knight and Rogue Series begins with "To say it was a dark and stormy night would be a gross understatement." The character narrating that chapter goes on to exaggerate the weather for the rest of the paragraph before settling into his regular snarky tone.
• In the Goosebumps novel The Blob That Ate Everyone, the protagonist acquires a typewriter that alters reality. So when he types "It was a dark and stormy night", it actually becomes one. In fact, the storm literally comes out of nowhere, surprising even the adults.
• 1634: The Galileo Affair references the famous line regarding the stormy evening at the start of the fifth chapter.
  The autumn night that Don Francisco Nasi was musing on was a filthy one, slapping its rain and wind against the glass. It was the kind of night on which bad novels began.
• The first line of the sixth book in the Septimus Heap series, Darke, is "It is a Darke and stormy night."
• In Write This Book: A Do-It-Yourself Mystery, Pseudonymous Bosch begins Chapter 5 of the gothic version of The Case of the Missing Author with "It was a dark and stormy night," only to recall that it had already been established that it was morning at that point in the story, so it would have to begin another way.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog and the Silicon Warriors, after the intro, the first sentence is this word for word. Of course the setting is also taking part during a storm as the Mad Doctor performs his latest experiment.
• Following on from the above book Sonic the Hedgehog in Castle Robotnik; for the second book in a row the story starts of with this line, but this wasn't enough for the author as the second chapter starts off with "It was another dark and stormy night. In fact, it was even darker and stormier than the first dark and stormy night." And it happens yet again with the fifth chapter, by now the author is really poking fun at himself "It was yet another dark and stormy night; blimey, everyone was thinking, but Mobius has had a real run of bad weather lately."
• This is used as the opening lines of Judy Moody: Girl Detective. Also, in Judy Moody: Mood Martian, after Judy writes a story that begins with this and only gets worse from there, it convinces her that writing isn't the thing to do to improve her mood.
• The schoolyard rhyme compliation Far Out, Brussel Sprout! and its sequels include a few parodies. For example:
  It was a dark and stormy night
  The dunny^note Australian Slang for an outdoor toilet light was dim
  I heard a crash and then a splash
  "My god! He's fallen in!
• "Talma Gordon": After the initial setup and introductions, the plot kicks off with a storm that arrives in the middle of the night. Within Thornton's story, it's the second scene.
• The Zachary Nixon Johnson novel The Doomsday Brunette opens with "It was a dark and stormy night..." as the first sentence.
• Marie Corelli was very fond of this. Her great novel Ardath starts out with a dark and stormy night over huge forbidding mountains as her Byronic Hero climbs to a remote monastery in search of... a cure for Writer's Block. It Makes Sense in Context though.
• Literature historians have theorized that Mark Twain was specifically mocking Bulwer-Lytton's infamous line with the hilarious prologue to his novel The American Claimant in which he insists that there will, in fact, be NO weather in his entire book (although he will include a convenient appendix at the end, detailing a variety of weather that the reader may apply to the book as desired). Being Mark Twain, he cheekily fulfills both promises, to the letter.
  No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood.
  Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.
  Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience. That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant poor-quality, amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article of it. The present author can do only a few trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good. So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and recognized experts—giving credit, of course. This weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help himself from time to time as he goes along.
• In A World Less Visible, Diana asks Zeke to tell his story. He laughs for a moment before replying.
  Hope you’ll forgive me for not being able to resist, but uh, it really did begin on a dark and stormy night
• Nina Tanleven: “A Dark and Stormy Night” is the highly accurate name of the first chapter of The Ghost Let Go.
• At the start of The Big Kill Mickey Spillane puts his own spin on the line, as his Anti-Hero Mike Hammer waits out a rainstorm in a dive bar.
  It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world.

Live-Action TV

• Used in Martin in the season one Halloween episode when the group were telling ghost stories.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • Quoth Crow T. Robot when Pod People used a lightning shot:
    "It was a dark and stormy night. I had just taken a creative writing course..."
  • Lampshaded in The Hellcats when Tom is typing up his diary during a host segment right before commercial sign.
    Servo: It was a fortnight ago, and it was... a — hey! — a dark and stormy night! Ha ha ha!
• The Prisoner (1967) episode "A, B, and C" underscores the mad-scientist dream-control experiment performed on the drugged Number Six by holding it on a dark and stormy night. And why they didn't all catch their deaths I'll never know.
• It's the opening line to the trashy novel Hotel Royale, a simulation of which traps several characters in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Picard comments on how it's usually a sign of This Is Gonna Suck when he asks the computer to read the novel to him so they can figure a way out.
  Troi: Maybe it'll get better.
  • It's worth noting that earlier in the episode, when the characters discover the diary of the simulation's previous deceased occupant, he wrote that the characters were so trite and cliche that he found himself begging for death's sweet release.
• Parodied in the Frasier episode "A Mid-Winter Night's Dream", with a title card setting up the third act.
  IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. [beat] NO, REALLY.

Music

• The Blutengel song "The Oxidizing Angel" begins on this theme.
• The band Creature Feature has the song "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night" as the first song on their album of the same name.
• The pop standard "Ridin' Around in the Rain", recorded by Bing Crosby amongst others, features these lines:
  Wait and pick a night
  A dark and stormy night
  And take her ridin' around in the rain
• Warren G's "Regulate": "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon."
• Mercedes Lackey wrote a song entitled "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" set in her Heralds of Valdemar universe. The song is a Black Comedy about a Countess — a woeful singer — who is evidently murdered by her Henpecked Husband when he can't take her "singing" anymore. Everyone else in the estate helps establish the Count's alibi, and the Heralds shrug and conclude it was accidental suicide... though they can't understand why she'd try to eat her lute.
  It was a dark and stormy night—or so the Heralds say—
  And lightning striking constantly transformed the night to day
  The thunder roared the castle round—or thusly runs the tale—
  And rising from the Northeast Tower there came a fearful wail.
• The P.D.Q. Bach song "Es war ein dark und shtormy Night."
• Tears for Fears: The play in the "Closest Thing to Heaven" music video begins exactly like this: it's nighttime with torrential rain, strong winds and lightning.
• Warren Zevon's "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" includes the lines "The deal was made in Denmark / On a dark and stormy day"
• "Doctor in Distress", a Protest Song made in response to the 1985 decision to shelve Doctor Who for eighteen months, describes the day the show premiered in 1963 as "A cold, wet night in November".

Other

• There is also a popular story/rhyme that goes: It was a dark and stormy night, and the Captain said to Antonio, 'Tell us a tale, Antonio.' And this is the tale Antonio told: 'It was a dark and stormy night...'
  • Which eventually led to a variation that ends in a subversion. After several loops to build up the tension, the Captain said to Antonio, 'Tell us a tale, Antonio.' So Antonio shot him.
• Another case of a never-ending story example: It was a dark and stormy night, and the robbers were in the den, and Bill said. 'Tell us a story.' So Ben began: 'It was a dark and stormy night...'

Pinball

• Strange Science takes place on such a night, with a Mad Scientist working out of an Old, Dark House.

Professional Wrestling

• During one WWE storyline "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry was receiving therapy from an inconveniently hot therapist for his sexual addiction. When she asked him about his first sexual experience, he said, "Well, it was a dark and stormy night, and I was real scared!" She asked why he was scared and he immediately replied, "Because I was all alone!"

Theatre

• In Once Upon a Mattress, the Minstrel sings that the Princess came to the castle "on a stormy night." He later notes, in correcting this "not quite accurate" version of the fairy tale: "That, of course, is utterly untrue. It didn't storm that night at all. In fact, it wasn't even night. And the princess only looked as though she'd come in from a storm."
• A comedy/mystery stage play written by Tim Kelly is entitled It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.
• At the beginning of the Richard Wagner opera The Valkyrie, Siegmund finds shelter from his enemies during a stormy night in the dwelling of Hunding and Sieglinde.

Tabletop Games

• Ravenloft: the night where Weathermay-Foxgrove sisters first made contact with the Shadow Fey, which was also their Dangerous 16th Birthday‎. Gennifer even mentions how such night would have been more fitting to have a fight with The Undead or evil mages.

Video Games

• The opening of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, "It was a cold and snowy day...", is a deliberate toying with this trope: Pixy recalls the weather during his very first mission as Cypher's wingman and in the final mission, the two of them duke it out above the Avalon dam in a snowstorm, with Pixy nostalgically remarking "Here comes the snow", making it both an Ironic Echo and a Book Ends. It then becomes apparent that Pixy chose a cheesy phrase to begin his story specifically to point out the similarities between his first and last meeting with Cypher.
• Lampshaded in Animal Crossing: Wild World:
  "It was a dark and stormy night. A single figure stood alone in the downpour... Huh huh huh! It's like the opening to a really good bad movie."
• In Borderlands, Marcus beings the introduction to the Zombie Island of Doctor Ned DLC with this quote, followed by what sounds like suppressed laughter. Seeing as the entire DLC is an affectionate parody of zombies and horror, the phrase is quite fitting.
• In Corpse Party (PC-98), telling a certain horror story on a dark and stormy night actually triggers Sachiko's curse, pulling them and anyone listening to the tale into Tenjin Elementary.
• The manual introduction for Donkey Kong Country starts with this phrase. While Donkey Kong and Diddy takes turns watching the banana hoard during the storm, the Kremlings managed to sneak towards Diddy and knock him out.
• Roberto, the protagonist of Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel, is introduced driving to the titular location in the middle of a stormy night. Unsurprisingly, given the premise, St. Dinfna turns out to be a Hell Hotel infested by zombies and giant insects.
  Roberto: The rain's really coming down hard now...
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past starts off like this. Link awakens in the middle of a dark, stormy night after hearing Zelda's telepathic plea, and goes off after his uncle to investigate his doings and ultimately rescue Zelda from the castle dungeon.
  • Four Swords Adventures opens with a storm, though whether it's night or not isn't clarified. The storm itself is Played for Drama, as it's an omen that something bad is about to happen.
• The first full level of the Wii and PS3 versions of The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest begins on a rainy night in the town of Bree, where Aragorn first meets Frodo and his companions early on their quest to destroy the Ring.
• In the Commodore Amiga version of the Rogue Like Moria (which evolved into Angband) you could encounter an enemy called "A Dark and Stormy Knight". Unlike the trope this monster is no joke being fast and attacking with blinding (as it is "Dark") and lightning (as it is "Stormy") attacks as well as physically - very dangerous if you get caught by surprise by one.
• The opening of Paper Mario: Color Splash begins with Peach and her assistant bringing Mario the blank body of a Toad on a stormy night.
• Also played completely straight in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, this is both the setting and the title of the prologue.
• Realms of the Haunting starts off literally in a dark and stormy night, and in fact the weather in Heled (Earth, the mortal realm) stays that way throughout the game. It's not narrated, however.
• Despite being in a visual medium, Wild ARMs 3 opens with the words "It was a dark and stormy night," overlaid on animated storm clouds unironically.
• This is how Jill narrates her awakening after being infected with the T-virus in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
  Jill: October 1st. Night. I awoke to the sound of falling rain. I can't believe that I'm still alive.

Visual Novels

• The following sequence occurs in case 2 of My Little Investigations:
  Twilight: It was a dark and stormy night...
  Spike: It was a completely ordinary day.
  Twilight: SPIKE! Where's your sense of adventure and mystery? A good read never starts with something like that!
  Spike: I thought we were taking investigative notes and stuff. Y'know... non-fiction?
  Twilight: Well... you still have readers. And readers ought to be entertained.

Web Animation

• In Episode 6 of Season II of Inanimate Insanity, Nickel told a scary story, starting by saying, "It was a dark and stormy night," which was enough to scare Suitcase and Balloon, causing them to run away.

Webcomics

• Achewood features a pulp romance novel written by Ray: Danger at 2 1/2 Feet. The opening paragraph is shown, a complex mess of purple prose subclauses, shoehorning backstory into every word. The alt-text is It was a dark and raunchy night.
• Irregular Webcomic! - William Shakespeare begins writing a Novelization of The Lord of the Rings movies with this line, here.
• In Faux Pas, Myrtle starts a story with this line.
• Whither starts with this very line.
• DM of the Rings introduces the PCs to the story line with a combination of this and You All Meet in an Inn. The players immediately complain about the excessive cliche-ness of it all.
• In one Ozy and Millie strip, Millie has decided to write the Great American Novel, and begins "It was a dark and stormy". Ozy suggests "night", and she tells him that's a cliche. Ozy then suggests "day", but Millie goes for "inflatable narcoleptic hippo".

Web Original

• Meme Cat: "It were a dark n stormie nite".
• John Scalzi's new fantasy novel The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (which is actually an April Fool's Day joke) begins with the "Shaggy Dog" Story version of this: an incredibly long sentence whose only real meaning is "it was a dark night", followed by an even longer sentence whose only real meaning is "it was a stormy night", followed by:
  Which is to say: it was a dark and stormy night.
• Parodied Trope on "Le Bastion Roliste" (a French website on Tabletop Games): How RPG gamers start a story:
  • Dungeons & Dragons: It was a dark and stormy night. A thunderbolt hit Kellak the Conqueror, but with his Ring of Resistance +5 and his shield of protection from lightning, he easily made his saving throw and was left unharmed.
  • Paranoia: It was a sunny and quiet night cycle, absolutely perfect thanks to the wisdom and vigilance of our Friend Computer. Rumors that the night was dark and stormy are treasonous. Please report any traitor spreading those rumors immediately. Thank you for your cooperation, citizen!
• In The Strangerhood, Wade invokes this in his Private Eye Monologue. He then uses it to interrupt Chalmers' Internal Monologue in a later episode.
• In SF Debris' review of The X-Files episode "Our Town" he notes:
  "Our Town" begins with a couple in a parked car, in the woods, at night, which is the "It was a dark and stormy night" for modern horror.
• Scott The Woz's The Dark Age of Nintendo series compilation video (as in, the three episodes stringed together into one big movie) retroactively sets the scene this way, adding a new opening shot of the outside of the therapist's office on a dark, stormy night.

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The opening segments to the first two seasons opened with Stock Footage of Dr. Weird's castle. (The footage for the castle exterior actually came Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures.)
  Gentlemen... BEHOLD!
• The intro to some of the Scooby-Doo cartoons. The Nintendo GameCube game Scooby Doo: Night of a Hundred Frights parodies this: Some of the upper levels of the haunted mansion are called "A Dark and Stormy Knight". Naturally, this is where Scooby encounters the Black Knight. ^note The title was also used for a cartoon episode.
• When Bloo is spinning a false tale of Uncle Pocket's "evil" in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, he begins by saying "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...", only for Mr. Herriman to protest that it was morning and quite sunny out.
• Parodied and subverted by the narrator on Spongebob Squarepants:
  ''Oh, a dark and stormy night. It's nights like these that remind me of the time Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob thought they killed the health inspector.
  It was a bright and sunny morning...''
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Look Before You Sleep", Twilight begins a ghost story about The Headless Horse with this phrase.
  • The episode "Magic Duel" literally begins on one, though it lacks narration or any kind of lampshade.
  • "The Gift of the Maud Pie" has Maud Pie start off Boulder's origin story this way.
• In an episode of ¡Mucha Lucha! The Flea told his baby sister Pulgita a scary story about The Masked Toilet He begins by saying "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...",
• The cowardly cat tells an origin tale of Mighty Mouse in "The Cat's Tale" and starts it with beginning on a "dark and stormy night."
• One episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh kicks off with a mystery novel that starts with this phrase.
• At the end of the intro to the classic Tex Avery MGM Cartoons short Who Killed Who?, the Unreliable Narrator says, "Our story opens on a dark and stormy night..."
• In the Muppet Babies episode, "Romancing the Weirdo", Gonzo attempts to write a novel. He begins with "It was a hot and steamy night... ok, so I left the shower running. Sue me."
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): "Ro-Becca" starts with Rotor working on a lab assistant robot in the middle of a thunderstorm at night.

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