History Main / TheWestern

* ''Series/{{EighteenEightyThree}}''

* ''Series/{{1883}}''

* ''VideoGame/WestOfLoathing,'' The Western plus ComedicFantasy (the classes are a Cowpuncher who really punches cows, a gun-slinging SnakeOilSalesman, or a wizard whose powers come from beans).

* ''VideoGame/WestOfLoathing''

In terms of time, the genre's heyday (as stated above) is [[BrieferThanTheyThink a 25-year span in the 19th century]], but there are [[DawnOfTheWildWest examples set earlier]] (''Film/DrumsAlongTheMohawk'' takes place during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution when upstate New York was frontier country) and [[TwilightOfTheOldWest later into the early 20th century]] (Creator/SamPeckinpah's ''Film/TheBalladOfCableHogue'' ends with the title character ''getting hit by a car'', and his ''Film/TheWildBunch'' ends with a gunfight dominated by a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI-era machine gun. Likewise, ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' features early automobiles, machine guns, oil rigs, and a World War I-era US Army. An increasingly common period for the genre is the 1850's or thereabouts, because it allows for stories dealing with the evils of slavery ''(Film/DjangoUnchained).'' Of course, any work dealing with the [[UsefulNotes/{{Texas}} Texas Revolution]] will be set in the 1830s. For series that use Western tropes but are set in the modern day, see NewOldWest.

In terms of time, the genre's heyday (as stated above) is [[BrieferThanTheyThink a 25-year span in the 19th century]], but there are [[DawnOfTheWildWest examples set earlier]] (''Film/DrumsAlongTheMohawk'' takes place during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution when upstate New York was frontier country) and [[TwilightOfTheOldWest later into the early 20th century]] (Creator/SamPeckinpah's ''Film/TheBalladOfCableHogue'' ends with the title character ''getting hit by a car'', and his ''Film/TheWildBunch'' ends with a gunfight dominated by a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI-era machine gun. Likewise, ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' features early automobiles, machine guns, oil rigs, and a World War I-era US Army). An increasingly common period for the genre is the 1850's or thereabouts, because it allows for stories dealing with the evils of slavery ''(Film/DjangoUnchained).'' Of course, any work dealing with the [[UsefulNotes/{{Texas}} Texas Revolution]] will be set in the 1830s. For series that use Western tropes but are set in the modern day, see NewOldWest.

* Again, Disney's ''[[Franchise/{{Zorro}} Zorro]]'' probably counts, despite being set in old ''Spanish'' California, before the Mexican War.

* ''ComicBook/AllStarWestern''.

* ''Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman''

* ''The Six Shooter''

[[folder:Comedy]]
* German comedian Otto Waalkes alluding to the genre in four words: "Westwärts, westwärts...bis Scharbeutz!" [[note]]The explaining note has to be a tad longer. A faithful translation might be "Westward Ho...until Gouldsboro!", since [[ArtisticLicenseGeography Scharbeutz is a one-horse town about as eastward you could get in pre-unification Germany]]. Also, this is only the prelude to a raunchy sketch about two horny prairie bulls, accompanied by a version of [[Film/PaintYourWagon "I Was Born Under A Wandering Star".]][[/note]]

In terms of time, the genre's heyday (as stated above) is [[BrieferThanTheyThink a 25-year span in the 19th century]], but there are [[DawnOfTheWildWest examples set earlier]] (''Film/DrumsAlongTheMohawk'' takes place during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution when upstate New York was frontier country) and [[TwilightOfTheOldWest later into the early 20th century]] (Creator/SamPeckinpah's ''Film/TheBalladOfCableHogue'' ends with the title character ''getting hit by a car'', and his ''Film/TheWildBunch'' ends with a gunfight dominated by a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI-era machine gun. Likewise, ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' features early automobiles, machine guns, oil rigs, and a World War I-era US Army). An increasingly common period for the genre is the 1850's or thereabouts, because it allows for stories dealing with the evils of slavery ''(Film/DjangoUnchained).'' Of course, any work dealing with the [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texas Revolution]] will be set in the 1830's. For series that use Western tropes but are set in the modern day, see NewOldWest.

In terms of time, the genre's heyday (as stated above) is [[BrieferThanTheyThink a 25-year span in the 19th century]], but there are [[DawnOfTheWildWest examples set earlier]] (''Film/DrumsAlongTheMohawk'' takes place during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution when upstate New York was frontier country) and [[TwilightOfTheOldWest later into the early 20th century]] (Creator/SamPeckinpah's ''Film/TheBalladOfCableHogue'' ends with the title character ''getting hit by a car'', and his ''Film/TheWildBunch'' ends with a gunfight dominated by a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI-era machine gun. Likewise, ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' features early automobiles, machine guns, oil rigs, and a World War I-era US Army). An increasingly common period for the genre is the 1850's or thereabouts, because it allows for stories dealing with the evils of slavery ''(Film/BlazingSaddles, Film/DjangoUnchained).'' Of course, any work dealing with the [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texas Revolution]] will be set in the 1830's. For series that use Western tropes but are set in the modern day, see NewOldWest.

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* [[/index]]''[[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Werewolf: The Wild West]]''[[index]]

* [[/index]]''TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'' supplement ''Western Hero''[[index]]
* [[/index]]''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Old West''[[index]]

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For instance, you can't get much more "classic" in a Western movie than ''Film/{{Stagecoach}}'' (1939), but that already was an attempt by Creator/JohnFord to [[UnbuiltTrope turn as many of the then-existing conventions on their ear as possible]] and to go as far as he would be allowed to under the constraints of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode. It did not help to make the distinction any clearer that every decade some new Western will be promoted as "finally a realistic portrayal" of life in the Old West or among Native Americans, usually by implicitly or explicitly badmouthing all previous movies as "unrealistic" and "romanticized". For instance, one of the most famous modern examples of the {{Deconstruction}} of the genre is ''Film/LittleBigMan'' about a man adapted by a Native American tribe who are apparently the only "civilized" people depicted in the West with the European colonizer population a bunch of violent idiots, with General George Custer being the worst of the murderous bunch. In fact, one of the major blows to the genre being taken seriously was the blockbuster success of Creator/MelBrooks' celebrated comedy, ''Film/BlazingSaddles'': not only did it mercilessly poke fun at the genre's conventions, but also spotlighted the historical elements of the period that most westerns chose to ignore like minority groups, systemic racial oppression and its brutalities. After that kind of hilarious ribbing allowing the exposure of historical truths to make its point easily, any attempt to produce a western without any mention of the latter risked coming off as ridiculous and blinkered.

In recent decades the genre has become increasingly rare on TV, though it has never entirely vanished from public view: TheSeventies had ''Series/TheLifeAndTimesOfGrizzlyAdams'' and ''Series/LittleHouseOnThePrairie''; TheNineties brought ''Series/DrQuinnMedicineWoman''; ''Series/{{Deadwood}}'' was a critical success in the TurnOfTheMillennium; and TheNewTens have seen such efforts as ''Series/{{Godless}}'', ''Series/HellOnWheels'', and HBO's ''Series/{{Westworld}}''.

* ''Webcomic/NextTownOver'', a steampunk western published on the web and in print.

* See WesternSeries.

* Johnston [=McCully's=] ''Franchise/{{Zorro}}'' stories probably qualify, although they're set back when California still belonged to Spain.

* Almost everything by Creator/WaltCoburn

* See also WesternSeries.

* Franchise/TheDarkTower novels by Stephen King, most notably ''Literature/TheGunslinger, Literature/WolvesOfTheCalla'' and Roland's backstory in ''Literature/WizardAndGlass'', borrow extensively from this genre. The latter story even lampshades this when the other members of his ''[[TrueCompanions ka-tet]]'' ask if the tale he's going to tell is a Western. A puzzled Roland replies that it does, indeed, take place in the Western Baronies...

* Creator/{{Herge}} had a lifelong fascination with the North American Plains Tribes, so it was no surprise that in ''Recap/TintinTintinInAmerica'', a story that pits Tintin against Al Capone, the hero somehow [[CowboyEpisode ends up on an Indian Reservation]]. In the 1930s Hergé also did the ephemeral series called ''Popol et Virginie au Far-West'', a funny-animal Western.