The prelude is noted for its repeating A♭, which appears throughout the piece and sounds like raindrops to many listeners.

[2] In her Histoire de ma vie, or "Story of My Life", Sand related how one evening she and her son Maurice, returning from Palma in a terrible rainstorm, found a distraught Chopin who exclaimed, "Ah!

[5] Frederick Niecks says that in the middle section of the prelude there "rises before one's mind the cloistered court of the monastery of Valldemossa, and a procession of monks chanting lugubrious prayers, and carrying in the dark hours of night their departed brother to his last resting-place.

Frederick Niecks says, "This C♯ minor portion... affects one like an oppressive dream; the reentrance of the opening D♭ major, which dispels the dreadful nightmare, comes upon one with the smiling freshness of dear, familiar nature – only after these horrors of the imagination can its serene beauty be fully appreciated.

"[6] In Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990 film), the "Raindrop" prelude intermittently plays for about seven and a half minutes of the ten and a half minutes in the segment showing paintings of Vincent van Gogh in an art gallery, slightly more than halfway through the movie.

[8] It appears extensively throughout Ridley Scott's Prometheus in both its original form and as quotations in the score.

[13] The same section of the song is covered in the track "The Promise" by 1000 Eyes and Tom Schley on the Signalis Original Soundtrack for the game.