The origin of "Rocks fall, everyone dies!"?

[thewayne]

Could be. There's a GIF icon floating about that has a writer's blocked JK Rowling who can't figure out how to end the last Potter book, so she gets the bright idea of Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies! You then have Harry doing a WTF, then Moldyvort doing WTF, then Rowling shouting Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies!

Great icon.

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp05032002.shtml

Comments

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

Apparently "Rocks fall, everybody dies" is a gamer trope that's been around for a couple of decades; Randy Milholland was just the first (or one of the first) to use it in a wider context. Gamer tropes are like that. I knew a "Viking chant" once that I first heard on the west coast and later on I was talking to an east coast person and he regaled me with an "orc chant" that was quite clearly the parent chant. (It said pretty much the same things but with a few more articles, and the rhythm was a bit rougher.) A little over two decades and it had managed to cross the continent without ever being mainstream.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Cool! Well, aside from the icon, the cartoon was my first encounter with "rocks fall, everyone dies." I've been a gamer for (frighteningly) about 30 years now and had not previously encountered it in our groups, and that includes traveling to conventions in various parts of the country. Of course, at a convention, you're probably less likely to encounter it vs playing with an established group for a longer period of time somewhere else in the country.