History Main / EarthThatWas

* Played with in [[https://shanlonwrites.tumblr.com/post/650715142014844928/ this]] story on Website/{{Tumblr}}. The richest flee earth to settle on Mars, believing themselves to be the the best and brightest of humanity. They soon run into the realities of settling a new planet when the robots break down, no one knows how to fix them, and they spend all their time squabbling over land rights. When some of them eventually look to Earth, they find that humanity has flourished. Not quite as populous as before, but they have rediscovered sustainable farming and live in a SolarPunk utopia. Some martians try to return to earth to reclaim ownership of their land, but the new humanity just laugh them of, instead offering them a place in their civilization, as normal people equal to everyone else. The martians can't accept that a society without wealth could flourish, so they just load up on supplies, return to mars, and tell everyone that Earth is doomed.

** ''[[Series/{{BabylonFive}} Babylon Five]]'': The next-to-last episode, designed as a DistantFinale, described how Earth was repeatedly devastated, saved, and rebuilt over [[TimeAbyss the next million years]] before finally being destroyed [[spoiler: when the Sun is induced to go nova]].

* ''{{Manga/Trigun}}'' doesn't go into much detail as to why Humanity had to leave Earth, but hundreds of colony ships spent years searching for a suitable new planet to sustain them, while the great majority of humanity was suspended in frozen animation. Gunsmoke was that planet. [[spoiler: Only ONE ship actually survived Knives' attempt at destroying them all. This is only true in the anime, in the manga another ship from Earth appears near the end and it's highly likely Earth is still around.]]

* In ''Manga/KnightsOfSidonia'', the Gauna are presumed to have killed everyone on Earth a long time ago. They also apparently split the planet itself in half, so nobody bothers trying to go back.

* In ''Anime/GargantiaOnTheVerdurousPlanet'', Earth is only a legend to the Human Galactic Alliance, the civilization the protagonist Ledo hails from. Their ancestors left Earth because of an Ice Age; when [[FirstEpisodeTwist Ledo rediscovers Earth]], he learns that ice has since melted, resulting in a [[SingleBiomePlanet planet covered by a giant ocean]] instead. People ''do'' still live there, however, sailing in giant fleets.
* In ''Literature/DirtyPair'', the Earth was destroyed in a GreyGoo incident well before the current timeline.
* In ''Anime/GodzillaPlanetOfTheMonsters'', humanity was driven off earth by Godzilla. Twenty years later, they return to earth, where 20,000 years have passed and there's an ecosystem that has adapted to Godzillas presence. [[spoiler: Only in the stinger, it is revealed that there are still humans living on earth.]]
* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': Earth was abandoned by mankind after the Astral Gate incident of 2021 where an astral gate, a portal designed to allow hyperspace travel through the Solar System, exploded and destroyed most of the Moon, causing debris to rain down on the planet's surface at a near-constant rate, causing untold damage and killing 4.7 billion people. Despite this, there still some humans living on Earth fifty years later, though they are typically regarded as insane and uncivilized by the rest of the Solar System. The planet is generally ignored by humanity as a whole because, as Jet says, "nothing good ever comes from Earth."

* It's very likely that Earth will be completely engulfed by the Sun when it finally swells into a red giant 5 billion years from now. However, even if Earth ''wasn't'' engulfed, the increasing heat from the aging Sun will boil away the oceans and reduce the planet into a sterile, molten cinder that will be too hot for even bacteria to survive on.

* Earth, or Lost Jerusalem as it's called, is referred to often in ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}''. Humans had to leave it because of a mysterious space-time disturbance. Its location has been long lost. At the end of the third game [[spoiler:a chunk of the party goes off searching for it, and we're left wanting another sequel.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Gaiares}}'', pollution and radiation have turned the Earth into an uninhabitable wasteland. An alien empire is prepared to destroy the planet by blowing up the Sun to stop intergalactic terrorists who want to reclaim the toxic waste for superweapons.

* The goal of ''VideoGame/{{OPUS}}'' is to find Earth. Set in the distant future, the game has humanity spread out throughout the universe. Unfortunately, rampant genetic engineering has resulted in genome degradation. The only hope likes in the mythical planet of origin, where scientists hope to obtain an original, unmodified DNA sample to save humanity. Notably, a great many people believe that humanity didn't originate on Earth and was simply genetically engineered. Those who believe do so with a near-religious fervor (you even find an Earthology Bible at one point).

* Played with in [[https://shanlonwrites.tumblr.com/post/650715142014844928/ this]] story on ''Website/{{Tumblr}}''. The richest flee earth to settle on Mars, believing themselves to be the the best and brightest of humanity. They soon run into the realities of settling a new planet when the robots break down, no one knows how to fix them, and they spend all their time squabbling over land rights. When some of them eventually look to Earth, they find that humanity has flourished. Not quite as populous as before, but they have rediscovered sustainable farming and live in a SolarPunk utopia. Some martians try to return to earth to reclaim ownership of their land, but the new humanity just laugh them of, instead offering them a place in their civilization, as normal people equal to everyone else. The martians can't accept that a society without wealth could flourish, so they just load up on supplies, return to mars, and tell everyone that Earth is doomed.

-->-- '''OpeningMonologue''', ''Film/{{Serenity}}''

The trope name comes from ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' and ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', in what was likely a ShoutOut to the iconic opening of ''[[WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois Once Upon a Time...]]''.

* "Earth That Was" is referenced many times in the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' series, as well the movie ''Serenity'', which provides the page quote. It's suggested that civilization on Earth simply collapsed due to overpopulation and[=/=]or ecological damage, which the original colonists of the series' star system escaped in either GenerationShips, {{Sleeper Starship}}s or a mix of both an unspecified (at least in the show proper) but seemingly very long time before the series began. In the comics, the crew with Kaylee as captain and Mal tagging along but refusing to lead anymore,flies through a portal to Earth and finds it’s inhabitable but it’s also home to post apocalyptic human tribes, humanoid killer creatures that aren’t Reavers, and giant killer robots. Of course the crew has to be BigDamnHeroes and try to help the people once they convince them they mean no harm.

* ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekDiscoveryS2E02NewEden New Eden]]" the people of Terralysium believe they are the only humans left in the universe, saved by unknown angelic beings during World War Three. But there are a few, like Jacob's family, who believe the Earth and the rest of the human race are still out there.
* Much of the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode "Twilight" takes place in an alternate timeline where Earth was destroyed by the Xindi twelve years earlier.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Voices in the Earth", humanity [[HomeworldEvacuation evacuated Earth]] 1,000 years earlier because its [[PollutedWasteland biosphere had been destroyed by centuries of pollution]]. There is no life on the planet, not even amino acids in the oceans. A ship commanded by Jacinda Carlyle is sent to Earth to strip mine its few remaining resources. Except for historians such as Professor Donald Knowles, few humans have any affection for their ancestral home. Archer notes that its name comes from one of the dead languages.

* ''WesternAnimation/WallE'': After the Earth is turned into an uninhabitable wasteland thanks to rampant consumerism, humanity relocates to ships like the ''Axiom'' until the planet has been cleaned up by WALL-E droids. The MegaCorp responsible officially stated that the clean-up would only take around five years, but it actually takes 700 years until plant life finally starts growing again.

* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': Earth was abandoned by mankind after the Astral Gate incident of 2021 where an astral gate, a portal designed to allow hyperspace travel through the Solar System, exploded and destroyed most of the Moon, causing all the debris to rain upon the planet's surface at a near-constant rate, cuasing untold damage and consting the life of near 4.7 billion people. Despite this, there still some humans living on Earth though they are typically regarded as insane and uncivillized by intergalactic society. Earth is generally ignored by humanity as a whole, as "nothing good ever comes from Earth" as Jet stated.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Naev}}'', an [[NoodleIncident ill-defined "Incident"]][[note]]the development notes ''do'' define how it happened (an accident involving an attempt to hijack the activation of the Sol hypergate to bring in an invading force right to the Empire's capital)… but the explanation is meant as fairly late campaign reveals, and so aren't in-game yet[[/note]] resulted in Sol going supernova, obliterating the entire solar system and causing {{Apocalypse How}}s on planets in a several-light-year radius.

* In ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' Old Earth was abandoned after the {{nano|machines}}disaster, because the AI that was designed to protect Earth from Grey Goo decided humanity was the greatest threat to Earth and kicked them off-planet under threat of death (it was at least considerate enough to build a fleet of starships humanity could use to get off Earth first). Granted, Old Earth is still inhabitable, it's just no one's allowed to live there anymore. Of course, after 10,000 years of interstellar expansion Sol has been all but reduced to a tourist trap, significant only in that it's the location of the original homeworld of the Terragens, merely a historical curiosity among the millions of inhabited star system. It's mentioned that by the "present day" of the setting (approx. 12,000 AD) that the AI in charge of Earth has mellowed somewhat and now allows a limited number of tourists, pilgrims and scientists to a limited number of areas on Earth. She even went through the trouble of preserving or restoring some culturally significant human sites such as Mecca or Cape Canaveral.

%%** [[spoiler: The DistantFinale to season 4 of ''Series/BabylonFive'' and the series finale say otherwise.]]
%%** WordOfGod on the Drakh Plague is that it would have [[spoiler: been cured somewhere mid-S2, allowing other plot threads to take over, most notably a conspiracy within the Earth Gov to use Shadow technology.]]

* In ''Anime/DirtyPair'', the Earth was destroyed in a GreyGoo incident well before the current timeline.

* In ''Fanfic/{{Fractures}}'', Pink Diamond returns to Earth 5000 years after her rebellion failed. Earth's colonization had been completed, meaning it was completely drained of its resources and all life on its surface had gone extinct, nothing but a lifeless hunk of rock with deep pockmarks where Kindergartens drained the life out of it.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Naev}}'', an [[NoodleIncident ill-defined "incident"]] resulted in Sol going supernova, obliterating the entire solar system and causing {{Apocalypse How}}s on planets in a several-light-year radius.