A work or series that starts out with many more ties to the real world than it later has. This is especially jarring if it is set in another world or universe. As the series goes on, re-viewing/reading/playing the oldest installments becomes disconcerting (if the reader is more familiar with the more recent installments) as a result of similarities to the real world being more frequent. Usually happens as a result of the work's mythology not being fully defined, or a Schrödinger's Gun that left a few traces of the original plan.
May not necessarily require the real-world references being in older works. This trope can still apply when you find a real-world reference in a newer installment and find it odd.
Related to Fantasy Creep, which is when more grounded and realistic settings slowly become more fantastical as time goes on. One does not imply the other, but in some cases, these two tropes may happen together.
A Sub-Trope of Early-Installment Weirdness and typically a result of Continuity Drift. Related to Art Evolution and Characterization Marches On. It may also be quite deliberate, as an aversion of Reed Richards Is Useless. Will sometimes invoke the Celebrity Paradox, which is when the popular culture of our world does not exist in the fictional world (because that world is itself part of our pop culture). Contrast Fictional Earth, when a world remains identified as Earth, but is otherwise very different. See also Doing in the Scientist, which is when a previously "realistic" work becomes fantasy-based.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- An interesting case happens with Attack on Titan, where it's played straight and inverted. Initially, it was generally assumed that the setting is more or less like our world, presumed to take place somewhere likely in Central Europe given the Germanic flavor. Although the setting uses a fictional calendar, the connection was supported with some vague references to our world's past. However, it is later revealed that humanity is not extinct outside of the walls, and subsequently the story shifts towards the long-standing conflict between the nations of Eldia and Marley, and the latter's conquest of the world. It is revealed that the world's geography is quite different from our own, mostly resembling our Earth but vertically mirrored, the entire story prior to that taking place on an island resembling Madagascar. However, at the same time we also start seeing people of different ethnicities and cultures that strikingly resemble those from our world in the early 20th century, and one panel showing the Rumbling even features a city that highly resembles London.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon: The Original Series:
- "The School of Hard Knocks", among its bevy of Early-Installment Weirdness moments, has Misty mentioning Paris. There would eventually be a Pokémon equivalent to France in the form of the Kalos region in Pokémon X and Y, but its Paris equivalent would be called Lumiose City.
- Performing on Broadway is mentioned as the character of the day's dream in "The March of the Exeggutor Squad". In international versions, it's changed to Las Vegas, since Broadway isn't known for magic shows.
- Played with in "Go West, Young Meowth", where the characters go see a premiere of a movie filmed in the previous episode. When they get their invitations, Ash's mom specifically states it's being held in Hollywood; however, it's a different Hollywood located within Kanto itself. The series would eventually get a Hollywood equivalent in Pokéstar Studios, though it is located in Unova, the region based on the New York City metro area (specifically, its location is analogous to northern New Jersey, possibly as a reference to where America's first film studio was located).
- A few episodes have references to Christianity, such as James' parents' supposed coffins bearing crosses, Misty holding up a cross to ward off a ghost, and Brock referencing the Biblical story of Noah. Since then, the video games would establish that the Pokémon world has its own belief structures, though the anime would avoid talk of even these fictional religions almost entirely.
- Some episodes feature the characters partaking in Japanese holidays and celebrations such as Princess Day, while Santa Claus has appeared in a number of winter-themed episodes and shorts. Outside a You Mean "Xmas" gift-giving festival involving the Coumarine Gym tree in Pokémon the Series: XY, there have not been any references to real-world holidays after Johto.
- The anime originally used kanji with the occasional bits of English for their in-series text. However, 4Kids Entertainment edited it out with a fictional language. The Japanese anime and most Pokémon spin-offs in general would eventually begin using this alphabet when depicting the Pokémon world, followed by the games themselves in starting with Pokémon X and Y.
- In an overlap with No Cartoon Fish, in early episodes regular fish are seen alongside Pokemon fish, like Magicarp, implying that there's regular fauna (or at least Fish) that isn't Pokémon or Human. Other animals also appear, like regular earthworms and even a mongoose. Earlier episodes set in Kanto also have the cast eating meat and explicit mentions of meat, implying the existence of regular animals who are harvested for their meat (as Pokémon being sentient it'd be weird for the main cast to eat them). As the show moved from Kanto, meat-related words are phased out leaving any on screen meat of ambiguous origin. Correspondingly, references to non-Pokemon fauna and the appearance of such became rarer and rarer.
- Pokémon: The First Movie:
- Like in the games, Mew is explicitly said to have been found in the rainforests of Guyana. Ash also mentions the U.S. state of Minnesota as part of a one-off gag about the Minnesota Vikings in the English dub. Naturally, both of these references are excluded from the 2019 remake, Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution.
- Jessie's Missing Mom Miyamoto is explicitly have mentioned to have gotten lost in the Andes mountains according to The Birth Of Mewtwo audio drama.
- Inverted in the Alternate Continuity anime film Pokémon: The Power of Us, which similarly to the games around this time, re-established the existence of real-world fruits.
- Pokémon: The Original Series:
Comic Books
- Batman: The early comics were set in New York before changing it to the fictional Gotham City.
- Disney Mouse and Duck Comics: Oddly enough, Disney Comics followed a sort of cycle with it. They started following closely on the Silly Symphonies cartoons' footsteps and took place in a childish fairy tale land. Then, when the more grounded adventure of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse became prevalent, it was established that they lived in a world Like Reality, Unless Noted (the main noted feature being the existence of anthropomorphic animals as a legitimate species alongside humans). This was never repealed as such, but over the decades, so many things (from magical elements to fictional foreign countries to Disneyfied history to phasing out humans in favor of Dogfaces) had changed that the Duckverse only superficially resembled the real world anymore. (This started with Donald's home being relocated from Burbank to the fictional Duckburg.) In the 1990's, some writers like Don Rosa tried to undo part of this by reintroducing carefully-researched elements of real-life history and geography, which reset the counters somewhat, but no true Retcon was involved so it didn't stick.
- Judge Dredd: The first story was set in New York, as opposed to Mega City One. Then again, the first story also included regular police within the justice department.
- Marvel Universe: Marvel Comics originally claimed that their stories were taking place in the real world, with the only difference being the existence of superheroes. This quickly disappeared as soon as they ventured outside of the USA and fictional countries a plenty started appearing. Now the Marvel Universe bears only a passing resemblance to the real world.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Inverted, as originally the series had no ties to Earth but, this was later retconned. Mobius is actually Earth thousands of years in the future. Aliens forced animals to evolve into Funny Animals while most humans "de-evolved" into four-fingered Overlanders.
- The Spirit: The comic was originally set in New York City, but the location soon became Central City (ironically, at about the same time the less realistic objects like flying cars were removed).
- Superman: The earliest stories had him living in Cleveland, Ohio (the hometown of his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster). This disappeared within a few stories, and later stories had him resident in Metropolis ever since he came of age.
- Usagi Yojimbo: Inverted, as though the setting is obviously Japan and Japanese folklore, the comic carefully refrained from mentioning any real places until one story brought in the Battle of Dan-no-Ura as backstory.
- Dynamite Entertainment's reboot of Jungle Jim made it a spin-off of their Flash Gordon series by changing the setting from Earth to the planet Mongo's moon, Arboria.
Comic Strips
- Despite being a basically realistic police procedural in its early run, Dick Tracy began introducing more and more devices out of Speculative Fiction after World War II ended, starting with the two-way wrist radio. Eventually, the strip got so far into science fiction that an Audience-Alienating Era ensued, and it was later brought back to Earth. Many of the gadgets stayed ahead of real-world technology, though with the heroes having miniature, internet-capable wrist computers decades before Blackberries and iPhones became commonplace.
- Doonesbury originally was set at Yale, but this was moved to the fictional Walden College shortly into the run.
- Garfield was originally a very "contemporary" comic strip, with liberal references to late 1970s/early 1980s pop culture: disco dancing, punk rock, even a mention of John Travolta (in his first wave of fame, before declining and coming back after Pulp Fiction in 1994). When Jim Davis retooled the strip in the late '80s to make it more "whimsical" and kid-oriented, the "relevant" references abruptly dropped off and the tone of the strip became more surreal...sometimes much more surreal. The one main exception to this real-world avoidance is the frequent Continuity Nods to Jon Arbuckle's former love affair with disco music, which everyone except Jon now considers an Old Shame.
Films — Animation
- The teaser trailer for Cars 1 actually showed Mater accidentally running over a bumblebee. Not a car colored to resemble a bumblebee, an actual bumblebee. In the final film, all animals in the Cars universe (except birds, for some reason) are also portrayed as vehicles.
- In the original Ice Age, the animals lived in a very realistic world. Humans (Neanderthals) were present, and the animals were just animals to Neanderthal eyes. The entire plot involved a trio of animals saving a baby human named Roshan from a pack of hungry smilodons and returning him to his family (one of the trio being a smilodon himself, attempting to lure the other two and the baby to his pack). The second film does not contain humans, and the animals are a little more humany. By the time of the third film, animals use weapons, wear some degree of clothes, and are the main inhabitants of the world. However, a modern human appears in the Christmas special.
Films — Live-Action
- Pitch Black mentions Earth a lot, but follow-up movies The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) and Riddick don't mention the planet. If you hadn't seen the first movie, you would think it was an A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... setting.
- Star Wars:
- For those who have only seen the special editions, it's weird seeing English writing on things like the tractor beam instead of the Aurebesh that later replaced it. It's also a little weird hearing Han Solo say things like "I'll See You in Hell" in The Empire Strikes Back without the "nine Corellian hells" backstory. Of course, you can file such things under Translation Convention. The later Hyperspace Article "The Written Word" explains that English is the High Galactic Alphabet, meaning it exists in-canon. As for use of the Greek alphabet, that is also justified as the Tionese writing system.
- Even in the remastered versions, A New Hope still contains standard numerals on screen as the Death Star nears Yavin IV. Although they don't match up with the numbers the characters are saying. (Just pretend you're imagining them.)
- The original Star Wars (Marvel 1977) tie-in comic run had many of these, with mentions of "Sunday school" by Han Solo, Jaxxon talking about "space carrots" (implying that there are places not considered to be from space — which would be assumed to be Earth), and so on.
- The Ewok Adventure live-action TV movies has real-world horses and animals. This is explained as humans not being the only species from Earth in the Star Wars galaxy. It's even mentioned that the human family's homeworld is called "Earth".
- The Star Wars Holiday Special (which didn't directly reference Christmas, unlike the non-canon Christmas in the Stars album) had many examples of 20th-century Earth technology, ranging from eyeglasses, which are usually a rarity in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, to what appears to be a commercially available personal computer from the late 1970s. The eponymous holiday, Life Day, is itself a secular equivalent to Christmas, which later material has actually retained as canon.
- In the original A New Hope novelization (written before the movie was released), Obi-Wan explains to Luke why he needs to be trained in the Force, saying "Even a duck has to learn how to swim." In this case, however, this trope is subverted when Luke, puzzled, asks "What's a duck?" The Phantom Menace later establishes ducks to be native to Naboo, where Obi-Wan has been, but Luke obviously hasn't — and for that matter, being aquatic animals, they're not something you'd see on a wholly desert planet. Some of them are pretty weird-looking "ducks", though, with four legs called Quadducks but others look like normal ducks. The same novel also mentions a dog Luke had once owned. In this case, however, it's eventually confirmed (though no longer canon) that yes, it was a normal dog.
- A canceled novel trilogy was to explain how humans ended up in the Star Wars galaxy. Some characters who were descendants of the characters from American Graffiti and THX 1138 somehow travel to another galaxy and back in time to become the first humans in the galaxy.
- Timothy Zahn's The Thrawn Trilogy has two instances of Luke drinking a hot beverage that Lando introduced to him. It's called "hot chocolate". The second instance is with "mint".
- Also, as xkcd once pointed out,
the Millenium Falcon is the only ship in the franchise to be somehow named after a real animal which exists on real Earth, but which has never been seen as existing in-universe.
- The sequels also reference snakes, such as Rey calling Kylo Ren a "murderous snake" and Rose calling DJ "you lying snake." It should be noted that snakes do live on Dagobah.
Literature
- Discworld: Inverted. The series started out as a parody of fantasy tropes, its only direct connection to Earth being a throwaway scene in The Colour of Magic. However, later books introduced Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of many real-life nations, establishing the Disc as a satire of our own world. The Science of Discworld makes the links even more explicit, making the Disc's wizards responsible for the creation of Earth.
- Inverted in many Eternal Champion novels by Michael Moorcock. Usually the first novel of a subseries starts in a rather exotic setting, which quickly drifts toward your bog-standard Medieval European Fantasy, with exotic details not getting a second glance or being written out (e.g., giant bats won't wake due to falling level of chaos). The process may take from a few chapters to a couple of novels.
- The first Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber took place on Earth, before the world of Nehwon was written into the series, with the result that when collected, some lines had to be added explaining why they were on Earth.
- The original version of The Gunslinger (Stephen King) contains numerous hints that the book is set on Earth After the End, but later books in The Dark Tower series established that Roland's world was distinct from ours, and most of these hints were removed in the revised edition.
- The first two books in the Kushiel's Legacy series are basically political thrillers with a bunch of Historical In Jokes and bondage sex. Gods are an acknowledged presence throughout, but until the third book, they aren't much more than flavor to the Backstory. This escalates, however, through the second trilogy, culminating with the heroes of that trilogy founding a university to study magic, and the heroine of the third trilogy being quite explicitly magical.
- Happens over the course of The Laundry Files as a consequence of literal Earth drift — the planet's path through the galaxy is taking it through a region of space where normal rules don’t necessarily apply. As a result, the first couple of novels are mostly like the Earth we know, but with some hushed up supernatural elements. Over the course of the series, however, there are increasing mass casualty incidents, followed by alien invasions and people openly developing superhuman powers, then horrors from beyond space manifesting in person and claiming territory.
- The first Redwall book has horses, dogs, references to most likely human harbors, a church, and Portugal. All of those are gone in the subsequent books, in favor of a world inhabited only by Talking Animals.
- As the series' character page demonstrates well, even the animals' names quickly drift from human-sounding — at least, in the case of the mice and other 'good' characters — to an entirely invented idiom. Those in the first book include Matthias, Mortimer, Methusaleh, Constance, Jess, Basil Stag Hare (who also, uniquely, seems to have his species as a 'surname'), and the legend of the great mouse hero Martin the Warrior (son of Luke) is introduced. Half a dozen books later, when the Warrior's own backstory is finally explored the name Martin now stands out incongruously amid the likes of Laterose, Grumm Trencher, Brome, Felldoh, Keyla, Druwp, Pallum and Ballaw de Quincewold.
- The Space Trilogy: Outside of all the aliens, the history of Earth is basically the same as any Christian would expect, angels and demons included. That Hideous Strength delves straight into fantasy and mythology by confirming that the pagan gods all existed,note Merlin was a true wizard who began a millennia long-legacy of Arthurian successors, and that a transhumanist conspiracy controlled the course of post-war Britain only to be covered-up by the media.
- J. R. R. Tolkien:
- Early drafts and editions of The Hobbit included references to policemen, lampposts, and China, which were eventually removed. The Hobbit still, however, includes a clock on Bilbo's mantlepiece; clockwork seems increasingly out of place as The Lord of the Rings progresses.note Golf, at least, is given an explanation: at the Battle of Greenfields, Bullroarer Took killed the goblin leader Golfimbul by using a club to send his head flying off and down a rabbit hole.
- As late as the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf's firework-dragon is compared to an express train.
- Technically, the series isn't an example of Earth Drift so much as Earth Time Drift. The early editions of the Hobbit did mention the contemporary world, but as Tolkien developed the setting he kept pushing the time period back until he reached pre-Christian Europe. The elves and dwarves of the story are the alleged inspiration for Germanic Mythology. Hence all the references to Hobbits hiding from humans and real Earth languages by the narrator of the books; he's literally Tolkien, presenting his world to the reader as if it were a historical document he translated.
- Tolkien's writings on his wider legendarium also go back and forth on this over time. The original framing device was grounded in real-world history: an Anglo-Saxon sailor named Aelfwine finds his way to the elvish island of Tol Eresea (which may or may not be Britain!) and records what he learns from them. As he wrote the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien dropped this idea, instead using Bilbo's and Frodo's own writings and works as the source material for the Red Book of Westmarch, a copy of which survived unmodified into the modern age for Tolkien to "translate". On the other hand, late in his life he attempted to remove some of the most obviously fantastic conceits in order to make it fit with the real world better. Most famously, he dropped the idea that the world was originally flat and lit by lamps and trees, with the sun and moon later orbiting around it. This involved a complete rework of his legends, and never came close to being completed to his satisfaction — the published Silmarillion sticks with Tolkien's original idea that the world was flat, but was made round by Eru when Numenor invaded Valinor.
- Zig-zagged in the Tortall Universe: The Song of the Lioness books introduce a pretty simple Low Fantasy universe where people mostly have names like George and Roger, chess is played, and there's a desert city that just happens to be called Persepolis. Starting from The Immortals, made-up names become the rule (and made-up terms for real things become more common), the world-building is a lot more elaborate, and you get the general sense that the author would retcon out some of that Early-Installment Weirdness if she could. However, Protector of the Small, while broadly following the same trend, also introduces a very close Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Japan that unabashedly uses words like "kimono", and the Trickster's Duet and Beka Cooper draw so heavily on Spy Fiction and Police Procedurals that it's hard not to see constant parallels to the real world.
- Tamora Pierce's other fantasy universe, the Circleverse, originally rejected the kind of active and meddling Fantasy Pantheon used in the Tortall books in favor of a system where religion plays pretty much the same role as in real life — i.e., there are lots of separate, very different religions and no particular reason to believe any of them is any truer than the others. But in Battle Magic, one culture's gods suddenly get in on the plot.
- Inverted with Shannara. Per Word of God, Terry Brooks was initially rather wishy-washy if the post-apocalyptic countries of the plot were on earth or not. By the time of The Genesis of Shannara, the planet definitely is earth. This detail is mostly relegated to the prequels, as by the centuries that pass between them and The Sword of Shannara, most signs of the planet that would be recognizable to the reader have long since faded from memory.
Live-Action TV
- Smallville;
- Early seasons implied that Earth was realistic before alien baby Clark landed in a shower of Magic Meteors, barring an America having a few fictional towns like Smallville and Metropolis.
- A newspaper headline in "Asylum" says "Themyscirian Queen Addresses the Vatican" meaning that the hidden island of Amazon women that Wonder Woman comes from is a known country.
- "Absolute Justice" shows that Justice Society of America Super Team was active in the 1970s.
- Star Trek started out based on Real Life history, but The Original Series made some predictions about the then-future which did not come to pass (for one, human spaceflight hasn't advanced nearly as far as expected, but neither was there a nuclear holocaust killing over 600 million, so it's probably for the best). While the series continues to be Like Reality, Unless Noted, further divergences from real history have unavoidably grown over the franchise's history. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally came up with a canon explanation by calling back to the Temporal Cold War from Star Trek: Enterprise, saying that multiple competing factions have thrown Earth's history out of whack.
- Early episodes of What We Do in the Shadows (2019) are considered to take place in a world like our own, except for the existence of vampires, who make sure to stay hidden. As the series progresses, it starts adding more supernatural elements, and having them interact with regular humans — a human necromancer shows up, Nandor's fictional home country of Al-Qolinar gains more prominence as being a historically important thing, and Lazlo's shown to have had contact with the supernatural before being turned into a vampire, thanks to his father's experiments.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The game borrows plenty of monsters from across mythology. The 1st Edition Monster Manual mentions some of these with more direct ties to Earth than later editions. The giant rat was listed as Rat (Giant Sumatran), doubling as a Shout-Out to Sherlock Holmes. The Ogre Mage was subtitled "Japanese Ogre" - a tip of that hat to the Oni which inspired it. And the Rakshasa entry explicitly said that the monsters were "known first in India".
- Up to 2nd Edition, the Player's Handbook references items and vehicles in relation to the real world frequently, for instance explaining that the knarr (a type of ship) was used by the Vikings. Later games remove these mentions.
- St. Cuthbert, a deity from Greyhawk, was strongly implied to be the real life St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. Here, he didn't die of illness, but instead was brought to Oerth by the good gods, and eventually attained godhood. One early adventure even involved the characters crossing dimensions to recover his mace from a London museum. (His logic was that the best place to hide it was in a realm with no magic, where it'd never be suspected as anything other than a piece of history.) While this was never retconned, it has rarely been mentioned at all outside of some vague mentions of St. Cuthbert's origins being from another world, noting he has no cultural ties to any other human on Oerth.
- Forgotten Realms was originally called that because the concept was that Earth and Abeir-Toril (The world the setting is based on) were once much more closely connected, but the connections have long since been forgotten. This was meant as a nice Hand Wave to justify why so much of the setting seems directly inspired by real world cultures. While never directly retconned, this connection has been deprecated as the years went on, and the history of the Forgotten Realms expanded massively into the past, beyond the need for any connection to Earth.
- Exalted was originally the prehistory of the Old World of Darkness. Second Edition suggested it was the prehistory of our world.
- Magic: The Gathering currently has a defined multiverse setting, but it originally didn't. The first sets took place in Dominaria, but then there was an Arabian Nights-themed set, which was later retconned as taking place on the world of Rabiah. Also, older cards were more likely to have quotes from real-world sources such as William Shakespeare for their flavor text. Later this was only done in core sets, which didn't have a storyline of their own. With the discontinuation of core sets, this practice has died out entirely.
- The Dark has a card called Frankenstein's Monster. When Magic took on Gothic horror tropes in Innistrad block nearly two decades later, they had similar creatures, but did not explicitly refer to Frankenstein.
- The Dark has a card called Frankenstein's Monster
Video Games
- The early Bomberman games are set on Earth, complete with humans being the dominant species and a real world setting with fantasy elements. However, when Bomberman '94 was released in 1993, Planet Bomber was established as the main setting. While Super Bomberman 2 and Panic Bomber W would revert the setting to Earthnote , by 1997 the setting would permanently become Planet Bomber with humans no longer being the dominant species. The Continuity Reboot Super Bomberman R would take this even further as all of the characters are now Bombermen, with Buggler being the sole human in the cast.
- Crusader Kings 2 games tend to end up like this as a result of Emergent Narrative. Since you can start your game at any point in time between 769 and 1337, everything will be pretty much historically accurate for about the first year (to the point where the majority of characters have links to their wikipedia pages in their profiles), after which you enter a sort of alternate continuity where England is absorbed into Scandinavia, the Holy Roman Empire disbands about six centuries too early, Jerusalem has become part of Ireland, and there's inexplicably been 26 popes in a row called Pascal.
- In fact, this tends to happen in pretty much any of Paradox Interactive's Grand Strategy games can easily end up like this; both Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron are notorious for having players Take Over the World with improbable nations (a resurgent Byzantine empire seems to be a favorite).
- The Elder Scrolls series has this as a Cyclic Trope. To note:
- Arena and Daggerfall are basically standard Medieval European Fantasy RPGs set in the developer's homebrew Dungeons & Dragons world, with a few quirks.
- Morrowind then swings to a very unconventional and alien setting. The wildlife has few real-life analogues and the land itself is primarily blasted ashlands, lava scathes, disease-ridden swamps, and tons of small islands.
- Oblivion swings back to the standard "medieval Europe" setting, with realistic deer and wolves bounding across meadows filled with real-world plants.
- Skyrim splits the difference between its two predecessors, being a "Northern Medieval European Fantasy" setting with plenty of familiar Earth elements, but still feeling otherworldly with the rampaging dragons, giants and mammoths walking the tundra, and ancient monolithic structures dotting the landscape.
- Grand Theft Auto.
- The "3D Universe" of the series — Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories, and Vice City Stories — saw this happen slowly over the course of its run. III had a reference to the city of Miami and to the then-newly elected president George W. Bush, while later installments swapped Miami out for Vice City, its No Communities Were Harmed parody, and had almost no real life persons (barring historical figures like Ronald Reagan that are intrinsically tied to the setting, and Phil Collins' cameo in Vice City Stories). Liberty City also started out in III as being based on any number of cities in the Northeastern US, New York just one among them, but by Liberty City Stories it was clearly meant to be the GTA universe's version of the Big Applesauce. It's especially jarring in San Andreas, where a radio song and its host explicitly mention New York City in a setting in which it was already replaced with Liberty City.
- Grand Theft Auto IV marks the beginning of an Alternate Continuity called the "HD Universe", where the Earth Drift continued. The FBI is replaced with the FIB, SWAT is replaced with NOOSE (which is also based on the Department of Homeland Security), all guns are A.K.A.-47s now, and the president in 2008 was Joe Lawton, who is stated to be a buffoon whose father was also president several decades prior. Grand Theft Auto V states that Lawton is still in office circa 2013 instead of being replaced by a Barack Obama expy, indicating that America in the GTA universe either never passed term limits for Presidents,note abolished them by Lawton's time, or has elections run on a different schedule from our own (as in The West Wing, where Presidential elections are in 2002 and 2006). Grand Theft Auto VI continues this by replacing Florida with its fictional counterpart Leonida, even though Florida had been mentioned not only in the 3D Universe but also in GTA IV.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- In the original The Legend of Zelda I and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Link has a cross on his shield, which according to Word of God was added because the series was originally going to be based on Christianity rather than the three goddesses in later games. A Christian-esque sanctuary appears in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the NES original features the Bible ("Book Of Magic" in the English translation) as an obtainable item, and a cross appears as a magical artifact in Zelda II. And as late as A Link to the Past, there is artwork of Link bowing down before a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary (especially weird because that's the game that introduced the Golden Goddesses in the first place).
- Though such real world links were generally done away with by the time The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came around (barring a few loose archetypal parallels), that game still features one notable example: the use of the star and crescent as the symbol of the desert-based Gerudo. Both newer versions of Ocarina of Time and subsequent games replaced the symbol with an original one that resembles Japanese dogū.
- This was mildly and briefly reversed with the Ancient Cistern dungeon of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where the big central statue is very clearly modeled on Buddha (though it is never identified as such). The part of the dungeon where Link must climb a spider thread to escape from the crypt-like lower level with its undead Bokoblins is also based directly on a short story that featured Buddha.
- Mega Man Battle Network: In the first game the WWW lab has a screen◊ of the world map that indicates the series takes place basically on Earth (in keeping with its connections to the Classic series). Electopia's name in the Japanese version of each game is also just "Japan." Battle Network 2 shows a world map◊ that looks nothing like Earth, but it's only in one scene. When other countries start being introduced, they're all Fantasy Counterpart Cultures based on real places instead of actually being said places (e.g. Netopia is a combination of North America and Western Europe), though languages like English and Spanish are explicitly mentioned by name even if their associated countries likely don't exist. Battle Network 4 burns that bridge with a vengeance by introducing an all-new globe◊, bringing the series into Fictional Earth.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon Red and Blue:
- Several real-world locations are mentioned, such as the United States of America (Lt. Surge is the "Lighting American" and you can visit a museum that has an exhibit dedicated to the July 20, 1969 moon landing), Russia (a Silph scientist mentions being transferred to a branch in Tiksi as his reason for defecting to Team Rocket), and the jungles of Guyana. While many of these would remain in the GBA remakes FireRed and LeafGreen, they would finally be excised entirely in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!: the spaceship is replaced with a model of an Aerodactyl, Lt. Surge's title is changed to the "Lightning Lieutenant", "the Guyana jungle" is abridged to just "the jungle", and Tiksi is replaced with "the boondocks".
- Early lore for the franchise (much of it relegated to Japanese side material like An Illustrated Book of POCKET MONSTERS) treated the emergence of Pokémon as a relatively recent phenomenon that goes back only a few centuries, with regular animals still existing. Hence Pokédex entries for Raichu and Gastly in the Japanese Red and Green, as well as the remakes FireRed and LeafGreen, stating that they can knock out an Indian elephant. While Pokédex entries would continue to categorize Pokémon with designations like turtle, mouse, or fox, it would soon be established that Pokémon completely take the place of real-world animals. Case in point, later Pokédex entries for these two Mons remove references to the animal and instead mention that they can knock out foes several times their size, though Raichu's entry in Pokémon Legends: Arceus would have a Mythology Gag wherein Professor Laventon comments that can knock out a Copperajah, a Pokémon from Galar that is based on Indian elephants.
- The Kanto region itself is named after the actual Kanto region of Japan, with implication that it's just an alternate version of Kanto with fictional cities. The Spaceworld 1997 beta of Pokémon Gold and Silver had a map based on the entirety of Japan, with the first game's Kanto region shrunken down to fit where the real-world Kanto region is, but later on in development, this was changed into a fictional region based loosely on the Kansai region of Japan instead. Later regions are still based on real areas of Japan, the United States, and Europe, but with major creative liberties taken; Pokémon X and Y onward would give these regions share the same languages and general cultural trappings as their inspirations, but they remain clear Fantasy Counterpart Cultures boasting their own made-up names, histories, cultural practices, and several changes to their geography (like having different orientations and more diverse biomes).
- In Pokémon Gold and Silver and their remakes, a Team Rocket grunt in Azalea Town refers to herself as a Good Samaritan; later games would establish that the Pokémon world has its own religions and Pokémon deities, in addition to better emphasizing the cultural difference between their world and ours via Pokémon-related puns/sayings and changing the context of fictional works (for example, Beauty and the Beast is about a man who turned into a Pokémon, not a random monster).
- Zig-Zagged in regards to food, especially fruits/vegetables. Regular fruit was common until Gen III introduced Berries (fruits with special medicinal and battle properties like health recovery or reducing damage from super-effective attacks). For several years, Berries fully took the place of real-world fruits and veggies, with games like Pokémon Sun and Moon featuring lemonade and ketchup made of berries instead of lemons and tomatoes.note Pokémon Sword and Shield onward would establish that these all co-exist by featuring vegetables such as potatoes and even introducing an entire evolution line — the Applin line — whose entire design is based around them living in apples and eventually fusing with their fruit home. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet would go further by having animal meat like ham and pork as sandwich ingredients, without any mention of what creature they were sourced from.
- Pokémon Red and Blue:
- In Ratchet & Clank, Captain Qwark becomes a bizarre holdover, being the only human-like character in any of the games.
- RuneScape: King Arthur and other characters from his legend appear in the game and were said to be hanging out in Gielinor until the day Britain needs them again. Humanity is said to have been brought to the world of Gielinor by the god Guthix from another world. For a long time, it was assumed that the home world of humans was Earth, but it eventually was revealed that humanity actually came from a world called Teragard which is very different than Earth. Sometime after this, King Arthur and the rest were retconned to have come from Teragard, with all references to Britain and England being removed from the game.
- The Sims: The first game, The Sims 1, is far more grounded in our reality than the later ones, even if it still featured aliens and later, magic. Many in-game items' descriptions would make references to our world rather than exclusively featuring made-up locations, even making references to real-life history and trends throughout the decades (which makes things even more confusing, as The Sims 3 is a Cosmetically Advanced Prequel set 25 years earlier).
- For the longest time, the Sonic the Hedgehog games were maddeningly inconsistent with their setting. Some games explicitly did take place on Earth, and other games were ambiguous as to whether they took place on Earth or not.
- The classic games never clarified the setting in-story, but supplementary Japanese sources regularly establish it as Earth. South Island (the first game's setting) was stated to be in the Pacific, Sonic's birthplace is given as Christmas Island (a real life location), and humans besides Dr. Eggman were seen infrequently, but some classic games established things like a miniature and magical planetoid annually flying within close viewing distance of the inhabitants of the setting's Earth, which is obviously different from the Earth of reality. Meanwhile, western sources had a totally different setting, describing Sonic's world as a distant planet named Mobius where Dr. Robotnik is one of the only humans for some unexplained reason. Other western adaptations took this lore as their basis, resulting in a disparate continuity used in cartoons like Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and the Sonic comics by Archie and Fleetway.
- By the time of the two Adventure games, the franchise underwent a Soft Reboot to homogenize the separate continuities. While this wasn't much different from a Japanese perspective, from a western lens, it was a drastic departure from the previous games. Suddenly they were on Earth, and the setting now featured realistic cities and humans other than Eggman. Then in Heroes, they're suddenly back to the fantastic-looking world of the classic games, with Continuity Nods to the Adventure games but no other humans or realistic cities in sight. It then goes back to what is definitely Earth in Shadow, '06 and Unleashed, and then back again to the fantastic world starting with Colors, where the games remained through Sonic Forces. Forces notably goes out of its way not to use the term "Earth", instead referring to the setting as a generic "world".
- Around the release of Sonic Colors, Sonic Team declared that the human-populated Earth and the anthropomorphic-animal-populated "Sonic's World" are two different worlds, which the plot sometimes moves between. This was further clarified (with a potential Retcon) in an official YouTube series, TailsTube; Tails explains that humans and animals live on the same planet, but humans live on the large continents visible from orbit, while animals live on small islands dotted around those continents. Following this, Sonic × Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings, a canonical web series made to tie in to Shadow Generations, has Shadow and Maria calling the planet "Earth" after a long period where the series avoided calling the planet by name.
- Sonic Battle offhandedly mentions that Earth's "Fourth Great Civilization" created the robot Gizoid. In the Japanese text, this line was "one of the Four Great Civilizations", as in the real-life "Four Great Ancient Civilizations" of Earth (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China), a concept largely exclusive to Japanese and Chinese histography. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, developed outside of Japan, depicted an entirely fictionalized Fourth Great Civilization; this specific portrayal is non-canon, but the general idea remained. Even within the current canon that the Sonic series takes place on Earth, the Four Great Civilizations are now fictionalized: the Ancients from Sonic Frontiers and the Gaians from Sonic Unleashed have been labeled the First and Second Great Civilizations.
- Soul Series: The first game Soul Edge took place quite firmly in Eurasia in the 16th Century. Then gradually more and more fantasy elements were introduced, including divine intervention and ultimately alchemy and supernatural powers. By V you have characters like Z.W.E.I and Viola being introduced and they're straight-up fantasy characters with no basis in real history. It even becomes a plot point later, where Badass Normal Seong Mi-na (who as good a fighter she is, is just a Korean chick with a spear) loses in a Curb-Stomp Battle against Ivy, a woman who has a magic Whip Sword with a life of its own, because she previously had no idea a weapon like that could exist, nevermind how to defend against it.
- One of Falco's angry quips to friendly fire in Star Fox 64 was "Hey Einstein, I'm on your side!". The 3DS remake changes this to "Hey genius, I'm on your side!"
- Super Mario Bros.
- The series ended up losing many connections to Earth or Earth-like locations as the series went on. Note the 'realistic in comparison' settings of the original arcade Donkey Kong (1981) and Mario Bros. games, then those of the later platform game series; then note how, after Yoshi's Island established Mario was born in the Mushroom Kingdom, the whole cartoon/manual-led Brooklyn thing got slowly pushed into obscurity and almost entirely ignored until The Super Mario Bros. Movie brought it back.
- Super Mario RPG: The original SNES release mentioned Bruce Lee by name and had the hints to the Sunken Ship's password be written by famous explorers. It would not be long after this before the franchise settled more on its worldbuilding and dropped many of the real-world elements. By the 2020s, the idea of Bruce Lee or anyone else from Real Life existing within the main Mario continuity would be almost unthinkable.
- Super Mario Odyssey sets the series on a Fictional Earth, by establishing the Mushroom Kingdom as one of many kingdoms, some of which are inspired by Mexico, Japan, London, and France among others, and Retcons the New York-styled city where Donkey Kong and such took place as one of these kingdoms.
- Mario Kart Tour: Inverted, after the Mario franchise has been playing the trope straight since the days of Mario Bros. Befitting its World Tour concept, the game includes real-world cities (Paris, New York, Tokyo, etc.) among the usual racing venues.
- Downplayed with Team Fortress 2. Around the time of release, promotional materials implied that the game was set in a realistic (albeit retro and stylised) world. Everybody came from a real-world country and the game's absurdist leanings came exclusively from its eccentric characters. However, as time went on, a series of in-game updates, animated shorts and tie-in comics would expand the world substantially, developing it into an utterly insane alternate history. This is a downplayed variation since the new information doesn't actively contradict much of what was established before and later material continued to liberally reference real figures, events and places, but the exact details began differing from real life in conspicuous (and absurd) ways. For instance, on this version of Earth, Australia is a hyper-advanced nation populated by superhumans, New Zealand is a sunken landmass with a lost civilization conspicuously similar to Krypton, supernatural beings wreak havoc every October, the entire world is controlled by two competing corporations secretly overseen by the same person and Abraham Lincoln was an arsonist who invented stairs.
- The original WarCraft: Orcs & Humans made numerous Christian references in regards to the spells of the Human Clerics. The Map Reveal spell was said to be seeing as God (with a capital G) does, and healing was said to be spreading the injury across all humanity, comparing it to the act of bearing the cross of another. The Church building that let you recruit clerics had an obvious crucifix on it. Several orcish spells also mentioned summoning demons from hell. Later games have retconned this monotheism into being "the Light" and "the Twisting Nether".
- The company Working Designs is notorious for this regarding its translated dialogue for Japanese RPGs and RTS games like Lunar: Silver Star Story and Dragon Force. Lunar contains a thinly disguised attempt to lampshade this; during Nash's betrayal, Nall says that "this is starting to feel like a Dr. Jones adventure. Dragon Force contains references to Christie Love and The Lollard League.
- The first game in the Zork trilogy features such things as Poseidon's trident and the coffin of Ramses II. Later installments in the Zork 'verse are plainly in a different reality to our own.
- In Dragon Age II, drakestone was pretty clearly supposed to be sulfur with a fancy name, called that simply to disguise the fact that Anders is building a bomb, and that's one of the ingredients. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's an entirely different type of stone, red and crystalline and found in the mountains, that can be made into armor. (Incidentally, using sulfur in armor is a terrible idea, as it makes steel brittle in large quantities.)
- The manual for Heretic states many times that the game is set on Earth. Heretic II later retconned the setting into a world called Parthoris.
- Story of Seasons: In Harvest Moon 3, the local Harvest Goddess-worshipping priest Cain wore a cross. Starting with Alisa and Nathan from Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness,the equivalent to a rosary has been a yellow medallion with a red symbol.
- Ace Combat: In Air Combat, the vague location could have been on Earth (as evidenced by the later-separated arcade version, with the only changes relating to this trope being the removal of United Nations in the PS1 version). By Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies it was established that the series had taken place entirely on a fictional continent of Usea (which stood for "United States of Euro-Asia" in Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, but wasn't used afterwards), which based on an image from an official guidebook, was located in the North Pacific on an Earth with distorted versions of real-life continents. Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War and onwards establishes the Strangereal setting, an Earth-like planet with landmasses of hardly any resemblance to the real world's.note There are definite cultural and sociopolitical analogues to real-world nations, but you wind up with the USA's analogue on the same continent as a cross between Britain and Germany. Some spinoff games take place in the real world.
- Mother: EarthBound Beginnings explicitly takes place in America, although all the towns and landmarks visited are fictional. EarthBound (1994) continues the Americana setting, but takes place in an ersatz nation called Eagleland, on a planet whose continental outlines generally resemble the real world's, similar to the Pokémon and Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies cases. Whether America and Eagleland are two separate countries on the same planet, or the first game's America has been retconned to have always been Eagleland, is not clarified, yet the presence of Giygas implies that the two are supposed to be in the same continuity.
- Psychonauts took place in the real world, seen with the Campster profiles of the kids setting their hometowns as real-world locations. Psychonauts 2 introduces Grulovia, a fictional Eastern European-like country. A digital map seen in the Motherlobe also shows that the geography of the Psychonauts world does not resemble our own.
Visual Novels
- In the Ace Attorney franchise, the religion practiced by the Fey Clan and associated with spirit channeling was heavily implied to be Pure Land Buddhism, complete with Buddhist nuns and the founder Ami Fey being named after Amitābha Buddha. In Japanese, this is so prevalent a sect that no explanation would have been necessary, and the English version let it be inferred, stating that it came over from Japan. Then, six games (minus spinoffs) into the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice suddenly revealed it to be "Khura'inism", an Interfaith Smoothie from not-Tibet/Nepal that worships the "Holy Mother".
Webcomics
- The original premise of DM of the Rings was that the DM was using a Dungeons & Dragons campaign to introduce The Lord of the Rings to friends who had never heard of it. This premise gradually changed to the idea that they live in a universe where Tolkien's works never existed, but somehow high fantasy and D&D do, and the DM invented the story and setting wholesale. The alternate universe angle is now considered a given in all works in the "Campaign Comic based on popular media" genre that DM of the Rings launched.
Web Original
- Minilife TV initially seemed to take place on Earth, albeit a LEGOified fantasy version of it, but starting with Season 4, the setting was retconned into a fictional planet known as Legondo.
- World's Greatest Adventures started out with the unspoken assumption that Rufus was from the real world, and all the outlandish things he raves about are fake. However, starting with Episode 4, and culminating with Gordon's Living Hat status in Episode 10, it gradually became clear that Rufus's world is a bona fide World of Weirdness — which doesn't mean Rufus doesn't make his tall tales up, but they're not as implausible as they sound in our universe.
Western Animation
- Some Masters of the Universe continuities don't bother mentioning that He-Man's mother Marlena is a stranded astronaut from Earth, like in the original series.
- The 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe never mentioned Earth, however, if you look closely, some wall monitors in Randor's castle display maps of Earth.
- The She-Ra and the Princesses of Power reboot wasn't allowed mention much from He-Man for copyright reasons so doesn't mention she and He-Man's mother or the planet Earth.
- So far Marlena is an Ambiguously Absent Parent in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021). A tie-in book does claim she is from Earth, though.
- My Little Pony: The franchise experienced an Earth Drift of sorts post-G1. While the series has never really taken place on Earth, the original G1 series contained rainbows acting as portals from Ponyland to Earth and vice-versa. The follow-up series, My Little Pony Tales, would ditch all mention of humans, but bring in real-world technology such as cars and television, while the G3 series also has an actual Christmas special, and a few other hints at real world locations and stories (Spike makes references to various Fairy Tales and Pinkie Pie mentions Paris in a Core 7 short). Earth does again exist in the G4 series, but in the context of being a mirror universe that's only seen and mentioned in the Equestria Girls side-series. Meanwhile, G5 is a Distant Sequel to G4, meaning Earth presumably does still exist there as well, but it is never depicted.
- An early episode of Friendship Is Magic has Fluttershy mention something is "French" in passing, suggesting there is a land in their universe simply called "France". In future episodes, when countries other than Equestria are mentioned and discussed, they're Fantasy Counterpart Cultures like Saddle Arabia, which is populated by more realistic-looking Arabian horses, or the Duchy of Maretonia, a Babylonian analogue.
- In one instance, this was Played With. Discord asking for "pastries from Abyssinia" in his song "A Glass of Water". Abyssinia is an old name for what is now Ethiopia. Later, however, Abyssinia was established to be to be a kingdom of Cat Folk.
- In one instance, this was Played With. Discord asking for "pastries from Abyssinia" in his song "A Glass of Water". Abyssinia is an old name for what is now Ethiopia. Later, however, Abyssinia
- An early episode of Friendship Is Magic has Fluttershy mention something is "French" in passing, suggesting there is a land in their universe simply called "France". In future episodes, when countries other than Equestria are mentioned and discussed, they're Fantasy Counterpart Cultures like Saddle Arabia, which is populated by more realistic-looking Arabian horses, or the Duchy of Maretonia, a Babylonian analogue.
- Sonic mentions Axl Rose in the pilot of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). This is a case of Early-Installment Weirdness and these are averted for the rest of the show's run. However, if the show hadn't been cancelled, it would have been revealed that Mobius is Earth All Along, thus averting the trope.
- The first season of The Raccoons had the talking animals living in secret from a human family. Season 2 onward was set in an otherwise realistic world full of anthropomorphic animals and no humans.
- Early episodes of Rick and Morty are assumed to take place on "our" Earth, with Rick's adventures being secret to everyone but his family. Later seasons portray a world that only resembles ours superficially: this Earth is victim to regular alien invasions and sci-fi monster attacks, and Rick portrayed as a public figure that's frequently contacted by the American president. Not only that, but other characters sometimes have access to sci-fi/fantasy concepts without Rick's involvement.
