Basic Trope: The faithful (Christian) followers of God are taken up to Heaven and spared the tribulation to come as a reward for their faith.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are out and about, when a holy light comes upon them, and gently lifts them out of their clothes and into the sky.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob go to Fluffy Cloud Heaven when they are taken up by the light.
- Downplayed: One by one, people gradually start vanishing and are never seen again, and the only identifiable link between them is their religious faith. The end of the world proceeds from a seemingly mundane cause, like climate change.
- Justified: Certain people are being spared the horrors of The End of the World as We Know It because God loves them, and wants to reward them for their religion, their merits, etc.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob are out and about, and fall through a trap door to Hell at the start of the Apocalypse.
- Alice and Bob are, although not Christian, good people, and thus taken up to Heaven.
- Alice and Bob are taken up to heaven as conscripts to fight the Legions of Hell and prevent them from starting the apocalypse on earth.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob don't get into Heaven right away; they have to go through Purgatory first, because as decent, but flawed, humans, Alice and Bob are not "pure" enough for full admission to Heaven.
- Instead of God, it's aliens that engage in a mass abduction of humans.
- Alice and Bob are taken up into heaven. It turns out that the locations of heaven and hell are the opposite of what people think.
- Alice and Bob find that Heaven is a Crapsaccharine World. The 'reward' is being placed in God's throne room to sing praises to him... the same songs... over and over again... forever.
- Double Subverted:
- But, after their purification is finished, Alice and Bob are warmly welcomed into Heaven.
- The aliens, are (in this setting, anyway) an extreme form of Our Angels Are Different.
- Parodied:
- Jesus is seen wielding a vacuum hose, vacuuming up His followers with it.
- The abductees are Bound and Gagged to chairs by God, while Jesus negotiates their ransom on the phone.
- Zig Zagged: Some people are taken to Heaven, others are left to face the Apocalypse.
- Averted:
- No one is taken to Heaven before the Apocalypse, either because Humans Are Bastards and no one is "good enough," or because God doesn't play favorites.
- There is no God in the first place.
- The Rapture is an incorrect doctrine, and the good Christians have to survive the tribulation along with the sinners.
- Enforced: A program to be shown in a Sunday School class, in a denomination that believes in The Rapture.
- Lampshaded: "So, we've been left behind..."
- Invoked: The Doomsday Alarm Clock (tm) goes off in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, and God takes up His faithful.
- Exploited: Satan tricked God into doing this so that Earth is easier for his demonic army to conquer.
- Defied:
- God doesn't want to "play favorites," and doesn't do this.
- Satan does something to prevent God from rapturing the faithful to safety.
- Discussed: "So...that's what happens to the faithful?"
- Conversed: "Yeah. Or at least the ones God likes".
- Deconstructed:
- Not everyone gets into Heaven, either right away or at all. Those who do not ascend to Heaven are left on Earth, and things go downhill from there. Alice and Bob and others who made it are (naturally) concerned about their friends and relatives that (for whatever reason(s)) didn't get taken up with them.
- The sudden disappearance of so many members of society leads to rapid economic and social collapse. By the time The Antichrist makes his presence known, he has a hard time uniting even part of the world due to the fact that world conquest is now beyond the means of any single army due to their lack of resources to accomplish such a task.
- Reconstructed:
- Except for those few people that are completely irredeemable, those left on Earth repent for their sins, possibly even have a Heel–Faith Turn, and survive Hell on Earth. They are rewarded by being admitted to Heaven to join their family and friends.
- Humans adapt to the sudden disappearences, arm themselves against God and his angels, then kill him and rescue the kidnapped humans.
- Played For Drama: Those left on Earth try to get it right this time, and earn passage into Heaven.
Back to Caught Up in the Rapture
