History Main / BeneaththeEarth

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': The Fraggles live in an elaborate world of caverns, with the entrance in Doc's workshop. Or beneath the lighthouse, in the UK version. In both cases, exactly where the Gorgs' garden is in relation to the human world is completely unexplored, although the events of [[Recap/FraggleRockS4E5UncleMattsDiscovery "Uncle Matt's Discovery"]] and [[Recap/FraggleRockS4E12RedsBlueDragon "Red's Blue Dragon"]] strongly imply through some otherwise improbable tunnels to places like Australia and a world with a dragon guarding golden apples that holes to Fraggle Rock lead through and to alternate dimensions with no surface-related logic, and the Gorgs probably live in a different dimension from us. It's possible that Fraggle Rock isn't even physically located under Doc's workshop or the Captain's lighthouse, but that the hole is simply another portal.

In mythology, folklore, and fantasy, this is typically where you'll find TheUnderworld. (Or [[{{Hell}} that other place.]]) In ScienceFiction and pulp settings, this will often be home to the MoleMen or dinosaurs in a Lost World. In fantasy, expect instead to find [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarves]], [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblins]], [[OurElvesAreDifferent dark elves]] and BatPeople making their homes down here. In either case, BigCreepyCrawlies are a common part of the local fauna. Subterranean civilizations armed with giant {{Robeast}}s are a common SuperRobotGenre antagonist. The KingInTheMountain can also be found here, resting until his hour of need comes again.

Go a few kilometers deeper, and the Earth's crust is filled with spacious caverns. The really lucky underground dwellers will have a LostWorld thing going, with flora and fauna in abundance (although occasionally with monsters like dinosaurs). If this subterranean landscape is so vast and habitable that it effectively has ''a sky'', it qualifies as a HollowWorld.

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': The Fraggles live in an elaborate world of caverns, with the entrance in Doc's workshop. Or beneath the lighthouse, in the UK version. In both cases, exactly where the Gorgs' garden is in relation to the human world is completely unexplored, although the events of [[Recap/FraggleRockS4E5UncleMattsDiscovery "Uncle Matt's Discovery"]] and [[Recap/FraggleRockS4E12RedsBlueDragon "Red's Blue Dragon"]] strongly imply through some otherwise improbable tunnels to places like Australia and a world with a dragon and golden apples that holes to Fraggle Rock lead through and to alternate dimensions with no surface-related logic, and the Gorgs probably live in a different dimension from us. It's possible that Fraggle Rock isn't even physically located under Doc's workshop or the Captain's lighthouse, but that the hole in is simply another portal.

-->-- '''Music/TomWaits''', "Underground" -- ''Music/{{Swordfishtrombones}}''

Those who live Beneath the Earth are often exiles from the World Above. They fled either to create a new home for themselves, or to harbor their grudge for revenge (depending on how well they did). Alternately, they may have fled to escape [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt The End Of Their World As They Knew It.]] If they had better technology or more resources, they might have built an ElaborateUndergroundBase or even an UndergroundCity; but if they don't they have to make do with simple caves and tunnels.

* Creator/RichardSharpeShaver's mythos revolved around an underground civilization of "deros" -- [[{{Morlocks}} degenerate leftovers]] of an ancient civilization [[{{Precursors}} that once settled the Earth]]. Using the technology of their forebears, the deros [[ForTheEvulz cruelly]] torment us on the surface, and [[PeeveGoblins are responsible for more or less every catastrophe that's ever happened]].

** ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'': The underworld is called Khyber after the primordial dragon-god from whose body it was purportedly created. In some early material, Khyber was a world of pitch blackness, ruled by {{Eldritch Abomination}}s from Xoriat, the realm of madness, where cults of surface-dwellers worshipped the mutagenic energies that emanate from its black crystals. Later changes have reworked it so that while there ''is'' a "mundane" underworld, where you find subterranean monsters and kobold settlements, that's mostly the least terrible part of the area, unless you're in the Mror Holds (where those subterranean areas are actively occupied by swarms of aberrations); the ''real'' trouble in Khyber comes when you start breaking through into the demiplanes, which allow you to find monstrous forests full of soul-absorbing fruit, citadels of flesh or eyes ruled by {{Humanoid Abomination}}s, the heart-realms of imprisoned [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils Overlords]], VideoGame/{{Fallout}} vaults full of goblins maintaining the culture of an empire that fell thousands of years ago and other fascinating and/or awful experiences for your adventuring party. Notably, these don't touch the world in predictable ways; Belashyrra's prison-realm can be accessed from both the Shadow Marches and Xen'drik, not because it's that big but because both areas host portals to it.

** Thousands of years earlier in the same verse, artificial underground cities called kaers provided shelter for ''TabletopGame/{{Earthdawn}}'''s inhabitants during the time of the Horrors.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Underworld|2000}}'' has a setting and flavor similar to that of ''Literature/{{Neverwhere}}'', but set under New York City instead of London.
* A major part of the UrbanFantasy OSR game, ''Esoteric Enterprises'' is that just about every city has an Undercity, usually a mix of expanded sewer systems, natural caverns and other underground facilities. The Undercity is inhabited by various criminal and occult factions vying for power, and is a perfect way to justify a modern-day dungeon crawl for the player characters

* ''TabletopGame/LamentationsOfTheFlamePrincess'': The expansion ''Veins of the Earth'' features an endless labyrinth miles below the earth. Treasure is plenty down there, but food and light are worth their weight in gold.

* ''TabletopGame/Space1889'': The World Beneath the World is a complex system of caverns and tunnels running beneath the global jungles of {{Venus|IsWet}}. It's formed from the constant growth of planet's vegetation burying older layers of the jungles and swamps beneath newer growth and rotting humus, forming a spongelike system of subterranean cavities supported by the petrified remains of ancient trees. This underworld is home to a complex ecology supported by the constant percolation of organic materials form above, mostly consisting of [[BigCreepyCrawlies oversized arthropods]], tangled fungal growths and sundry bioluminescent organisms. It's also home to the Gri, eyeless, albino relatives of the Venusian LizardFolk who have been eking out an existence in the caves for generations and have only sparse contact with their surface relatives and the human colonists. The World Beneath the World does not form a single world-spanning network; most of it consists of solitary caverns and small cave systems, and although complexes as large as Australia exist these are not extremely common. However, some speculate that even deeper caves exist and connect the shallower cave systems to form a titanic underworld, chiefly due to the uniform nature of the various cave systems' fauna.

* ''WebOriginal/CodexInversus'': The Principality of Dis is built atop the ruins of Tartarus, one of the primary areas of Hell before the Collapse. In the World Before, it was a cosmic prison of labyrinthine, shifting tunnels that held dangerous rebels against the cosmic order; in the modern day, its ruin is a sprawling, mostly unmapped cave system prone to shifts as new passages open and older ones collapse. Its depths are home to groves of giant fungi, bizarre ecosystems supported by natural concentrations of mana, treasure troves of pre-Collapse wealth, and the remains of ancient giants, demigods and sinners, all of which draw explorers to plumb the abysses -- but, just as often, terrible monsters emerge from the unknown depths of Tartarus to ravage the surface world.

* ''Veins of the Earth'' is a sourcebook for ''TabletopGame/LamentationsOfTheFlamePrincess'' devoted to this. The titular Veins are a subterranean region so deep that light has never touched it and is full of things that defy explanation. Light is the most valuable resource for characters. Its needed to advance at all and is often used as a de-facto currency (ex: trading lamp fuel).