| abstract | - Nothing says "This is dramatic, ominous and/or heavy foreshadowing!" like an ionic ground-to-air charge-release -- in other words, lightning, and the accompanying thunder. Whether underlining the villain's apparent success, or the heroes' last-second arrival, you can just bet that the thunder is anything but a random result of the global weather-system. There are variants of this: 1.
* The Thunderous Underline marks a recently-spoken sentence or word as particularly important, illuminates a recently-arrived character as particularly dangerous and/or sinister, or provide appropriate mood lightning for a villainous laugh. This is frequently lampshaded, subverted, or just plain mocked, though it still gets played straight on occasion. 2.
* In The Thunderous Confrontation, a fierce thunderstorm provides an appropriately chaotic background to a battle -- of weapons or of wills. Usually, it will be the final, climactic confrontation between hero and villain, and you can just bet that the weather will clear up as soon as the hero's won. Frequently, the thunderstorm will play an active part in the battle, with lightning striking exposed targets, starting fires, causing trees to fall, or just making the Airborne Cavalry unable to come to the hero's aid. Almost always played straight. 3.
* A Storm Is Coming adds thunder as a sound effect to a dramatically brewing storm as part of the Foreshadowing. Often far off in the distance and with its lightning not visible; conversely, if lightning flashes had not had audible thunder earlier, thunder may indicate that the storm is closing in. It may also thunder with the storm clouds directly overhead but no rain yet. 4.
* Thunder Equals Downpour occurs when the thunder announces the torrential downpour, for which there is no other clue. In the past, the stock sound effect for this was "Castle Thunder", which now is only used for a retro feel. Interestingly, almost all Hollywood thunder occurs simultaneously with the lightning flash (obviously averted when said lightning is blowing up trees and power lines right in the middle of the scene). See also Lightning Reveal. This will not overlap with Gray Rain of Depression unless the person is angry as well as sad. An example of Empathic Environment. See also Thunder Shock, Fear of Thunder. Also see It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. Compare Lightning Can Do Anything, related to Stop-Motion Lighting. Examples of Thunderous Underline:
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