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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarthAllAlong A hybridization of Earth All Along, the Adam And Eve Plot, and an anti-Earth All Along occurs in the '70s BBC Radio Drama Earthsearch: The crew of the colony-ship Challenger tries to return to their home planet, Earth, to find it missing, and finally decides to settle on the new planet Paradise. Paradise is a lot like Earth, but it has saltwater oceans, and a heavily cratered moon. They eventually start referring to the planet as "their" Earth. There are a number of clues and red herrings - the other planets in Earth's solar system have different names, but we're told that the planets were renamed centuries earlier, for example. Just in case you didn't work out the original "Earth" wasn't Earth at all, the sequel begins with a global flood.
The prequel, Earthsearch: Mindwarp has as sort of a Planet Of The Apes First Act, in that it takes place in an underground complex thought to be surrounded by rock infinitely in all directions, but when the main characters escape they find themselves on the original "Earth", but this happens early on.
. . .
The Roleplaying Game Earthdawn has a metagame aspect of this trope: the setting takes place A Long Time Ago on Earth, but there is no time travel, and the inhabitants naturally aren't affected by this. However, the clues were few (with only very small maps available), so most players actually never figured it out.
Note, by the way, that the RPG Shadowrun is in contrast one of the most successful RPGs on the market, while being the same universe as Earthdawn, just Twenty Minutes into the Future rather than a long time ago.
. . .
This is reversed in Dawn of Time. At first it appears to take place in the past, with the addition of the cavegirl-alongside-dinosaurs Flintstones device. However, as more of the world is shown through the story it's revealed that there are large cities, more advanced technology, and trading routes, showing that the world is more of an alternate universe. It's just Dawn who's incredibly primitive and possibly not even human.
. . .
Pandorum: The audience is led to believe ( the spaceship has been drifting in space, but it is revealed at the very end that they had crash landed on the destination planet hundreds of years ago. If they had ejected themselves and the rest of the passengers at the beginning, they would have been saved.)
. . .
A Time Team story from 3-2-1 Contact appears to be set in the distant past, but at the end bulldozers show up the Time Team realizes that they are actually in the present, in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest.
. . .
Squaresoft loved to hint at this trope during their later SNES to early Playstation years. Secret Of Mana has a scene late in the game when the heroes find recordings of their world from its And Man Grew Proud days, before the Mana Beast destroyed civilization and brought about the return of magic. The recordings include country music, an episode of Jeopardy, news channel debates on the dangers of mana energy, and then a final broadcast of the Mana Beast attacking a city and then turning on the news crew that's filming the destruction. The implication is that the world of Secret of Mana is really Earth's distant future.
Then in Final Fantasy VII, we have an archeological dig that's uncovered what appears the ancient remains of a recognizable, real-world fighter jet. Fans debated the implications of that scene for years, though after the release of Final Fantasy X-2, Word Of God has half-jokingly said that, rather than our world, the game actually takes place in Spira's far future.
And in Xenogears, the heroes find an underground city near the end of the game that looks like a modern metropolis and, within it, they find ancient newspapers making references to everything from Elvis Presley to the Wimbledon Cup (not to mention that the origins of the Ancient Conspiracy fueling the game's story bears a What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? resemblance to the book of Genesis). Word Of God later stepped in again to say that it's not Earth, but another planet far in Earth's future (though Earth does play an important, if unseen, role in that planet's backstory).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedLandmark In G Gundam, the new Statue of Liberty found on the Neo-American space colony is actually a Wave Motion Gun. The blast fires from the torch, naturally.
The old Statue of Liberty (or what was left of it) was destroyed in one of Domon's Dynamic Entries.
The Sphinx is also a giant Gundam now.
. . .
Getter Robo Hein uses the Statue of Liberty as a giant cannon/jet piloted by a Humongous Mecha.
The Primevals in GaoGaiGar end up possessing and transforming the Great Wall of China, the Sphinx and several moai to do battle with the heroes. Later on, we see Weaponized Planetoids when they possess the moons of Jupiter.
. . .
n Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Decepticons' sun-destroying Doomsday Device is hidden inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
. . .
n Percy Jackson And The Olympians, all of the statues around Manhattan Island are actually automota built by Daedalus - just in case.
. . .
Stonehenge is a Forgotten Superweapon that detonates Pyramids all over the world for.. some reason, in Stonehenge Apocalypse.
. . .
The board game Easter Island is entirely based on the idea of the Moai being built as beam weapons by powerful wizards.
. . .
In Metal Wolf Chaos, Alcatraz Island houses a gigantic electromagnetic cannon, and the White House is encased in armour and weapons to make it the "Fight House".
How could anyone forget the weaponised Moai in the Gradius series?
. . .
The French sentai homage Yushi Sentai France Five revolves around the idea that the Eiffel Tower is a shamanic totem holding the evil galactic empire at bay. Given the popularity of the series in Japan, and the destruction of the tower in the fourth episode, you can hope that the fifth and last episode will revolve around the Tokyo Tower...
. . .
An episode of The Real Ghostbusters revealed that the Eiffel Tower was actually a Steam Punk ecto-containment grid.
Revisited in the Ghostbusters comic book series Ghostbusters: Displaced Aggression
In the Transformers Beast Wars cartoon, Stonehenge (or an Expy thereof) is an alien signaling probe and containment device.
And while it's technically not a monument per se, the second moon is actually a planet-heating Ray Gun.
Averted in Jackie Chan Adventures, where Stonehenge isn't the weapon of mass destruction the cultists in London claim it to be.
It was a UFO landing site, however.
. . .
Battery parks, inverted in that they started as bunches of really powerful weapons, then the ground that they were on/in later became landmarked parks. ((The Moon in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Tokyo Tower in Magic Knight Rayearth and Makai Toushi SaGa. Mars in Invader Zim.))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokyoTower The web comic Okashina Okashi ("Strange Candy") does a major Lampshade Hanging of this in its opening episodes by doing an Everyone Meets Everyone where six different groups from six different alternate universes all get sucked into an interdimensional vortex from their own universe's version of Tokyo Tower.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonumentalBattle In Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die!, a cybernetically-animated version of the Lincoln Monument runs for president; the player must get Max to run against it, and win, to advance the story.
The final battle in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls" involves trying to foil a demonic Summoning Ritual taking place at the very top of the Statue of Liberty. This is quite possibly the coolest thing that has ever happened.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon?from=Main.VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon You might think the final levels of The Subspace Emissary in Super Smash Bros. Brawl take place in Subspace. And you'd be right... mostly. Actually the final dungeon of Brawl is The Great Maze, which is a literal maze made out of previous levels, where you have to fight off every character you've unlocked, and every boss you've faced so far in order to open the final door to Tabuu. Needless to say, it does feel very definitely final, and even looks final. A big grapeshaped cluster of worlds floating in darkness, with an ominous staircase leading to it and everything.
The prequel, Earthsearch: Mindwarp has as sort of a Planet Of The Apes First Act, in that it takes place in an underground complex thought to be surrounded by rock infinitely in all directions, but when the main characters escape they find themselves on the original "Earth", but this happens early on.
. . .
The Roleplaying Game Earthdawn has a metagame aspect of this trope: the setting takes place A Long Time Ago on Earth, but there is no time travel, and the inhabitants naturally aren't affected by this. However, the clues were few (with only very small maps available), so most players actually never figured it out.
Note, by the way, that the RPG Shadowrun is in contrast one of the most successful RPGs on the market, while being the same universe as Earthdawn, just Twenty Minutes into the Future rather than a long time ago.
. . .
This is reversed in Dawn of Time. At first it appears to take place in the past, with the addition of the cavegirl-alongside-dinosaurs Flintstones device. However, as more of the world is shown through the story it's revealed that there are large cities, more advanced technology, and trading routes, showing that the world is more of an alternate universe. It's just Dawn who's incredibly primitive and possibly not even human.
. . .
Pandorum: The audience is led to believe ( the spaceship has been drifting in space, but it is revealed at the very end that they had crash landed on the destination planet hundreds of years ago. If they had ejected themselves and the rest of the passengers at the beginning, they would have been saved.)
. . .
A Time Team story from 3-2-1 Contact appears to be set in the distant past, but at the end bulldozers show up the Time Team realizes that they are actually in the present, in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest.
. . .
Squaresoft loved to hint at this trope during their later SNES to early Playstation years. Secret Of Mana has a scene late in the game when the heroes find recordings of their world from its And Man Grew Proud days, before the Mana Beast destroyed civilization and brought about the return of magic. The recordings include country music, an episode of Jeopardy, news channel debates on the dangers of mana energy, and then a final broadcast of the Mana Beast attacking a city and then turning on the news crew that's filming the destruction. The implication is that the world of Secret of Mana is really Earth's distant future.
Then in Final Fantasy VII, we have an archeological dig that's uncovered what appears the ancient remains of a recognizable, real-world fighter jet. Fans debated the implications of that scene for years, though after the release of Final Fantasy X-2, Word Of God has half-jokingly said that, rather than our world, the game actually takes place in Spira's far future.
And in Xenogears, the heroes find an underground city near the end of the game that looks like a modern metropolis and, within it, they find ancient newspapers making references to everything from Elvis Presley to the Wimbledon Cup (not to mention that the origins of the Ancient Conspiracy fueling the game's story bears a What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? resemblance to the book of Genesis). Word Of God later stepped in again to say that it's not Earth, but another planet far in Earth's future (though Earth does play an important, if unseen, role in that planet's backstory).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedLandmark In G Gundam, the new Statue of Liberty found on the Neo-American space colony is actually a Wave Motion Gun. The blast fires from the torch, naturally.
The old Statue of Liberty (or what was left of it) was destroyed in one of Domon's Dynamic Entries.
The Sphinx is also a giant Gundam now.
. . .
Getter Robo Hein uses the Statue of Liberty as a giant cannon/jet piloted by a Humongous Mecha.
The Primevals in GaoGaiGar end up possessing and transforming the Great Wall of China, the Sphinx and several moai to do battle with the heroes. Later on, we see Weaponized Planetoids when they possess the moons of Jupiter.
. . .
n Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Decepticons' sun-destroying Doomsday Device is hidden inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
. . .
n Percy Jackson And The Olympians, all of the statues around Manhattan Island are actually automota built by Daedalus - just in case.
. . .
Stonehenge is a Forgotten Superweapon that detonates Pyramids all over the world for.. some reason, in Stonehenge Apocalypse.
. . .
The board game Easter Island is entirely based on the idea of the Moai being built as beam weapons by powerful wizards.
. . .
In Metal Wolf Chaos, Alcatraz Island houses a gigantic electromagnetic cannon, and the White House is encased in armour and weapons to make it the "Fight House".
How could anyone forget the weaponised Moai in the Gradius series?
. . .
The French sentai homage Yushi Sentai France Five revolves around the idea that the Eiffel Tower is a shamanic totem holding the evil galactic empire at bay. Given the popularity of the series in Japan, and the destruction of the tower in the fourth episode, you can hope that the fifth and last episode will revolve around the Tokyo Tower...
. . .
An episode of The Real Ghostbusters revealed that the Eiffel Tower was actually a Steam Punk ecto-containment grid.
Revisited in the Ghostbusters comic book series Ghostbusters: Displaced Aggression
In the Transformers Beast Wars cartoon, Stonehenge (or an Expy thereof) is an alien signaling probe and containment device.
And while it's technically not a monument per se, the second moon is actually a planet-heating Ray Gun.
Averted in Jackie Chan Adventures, where Stonehenge isn't the weapon of mass destruction the cultists in London claim it to be.
It was a UFO landing site, however.
. . .
Battery parks, inverted in that they started as bunches of really powerful weapons, then the ground that they were on/in later became landmarked parks. ((The Moon in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Tokyo Tower in Magic Knight Rayearth and Makai Toushi SaGa. Mars in Invader Zim.))
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TokyoTower The web comic Okashina Okashi ("Strange Candy") does a major Lampshade Hanging of this in its opening episodes by doing an Everyone Meets Everyone where six different groups from six different alternate universes all get sucked into an interdimensional vortex from their own universe's version of Tokyo Tower.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonumentalBattle In Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die!, a cybernetically-animated version of the Lincoln Monument runs for president; the player must get Max to run against it, and win, to advance the story.
The final battle in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls" involves trying to foil a demonic Summoning Ritual taking place at the very top of the Statue of Liberty. This is quite possibly the coolest thing that has ever happened.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon?from=Main.VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon You might think the final levels of The Subspace Emissary in Super Smash Bros. Brawl take place in Subspace. And you'd be right... mostly. Actually the final dungeon of Brawl is The Great Maze, which is a literal maze made out of previous levels, where you have to fight off every character you've unlocked, and every boss you've faced so far in order to open the final door to Tabuu. Needless to say, it does feel very definitely final, and even looks final. A big grapeshaped cluster of worlds floating in darkness, with an ominous staircase leading to it and everything.