History Main / Undercity

* ''ComicBook/BatmanBeyond Neo-Gothic'': The first issue reveals that underneath Neo Gotham lies "Lower Gotham" or "The Gotham Deep", the decaying remains of the original Gotham City that Neo Gotham was built on top of after Bruce Wayne lost control of his company. The only residents shown to remain in this portion of Gotham are poor folk, mutants, gangs, and Killer Croc.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Diabolik}}'' Clerville has vast catacombs, parts of which seem to have been on the surface in the past. It's inhabited by many homeless people, parts of whom have organized themselves in the People of the Shadows, and Diabolik frequently uses it for his heists and was taught how to get around by the People of the Shadows during a brief alliance.

* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'':
** When ComicBook/{{Venom}} had his own comic released, he spent the first story arc in a section of San Francisco that was buried and contained 1800s-era architecture (the city had simply built over it for some reason). Sadly, this was all mostly forgotten by the next miniseries.
** A Spider-Man title in the New Tens introduces "Under York", a subterranean duplicate of New York City populated by [[AmazingTechnicolorPopulation orange-skinned humans]] with a vague steampunk aesthetic. Apparently it has a long-standing truce with New York's government, which is threatened when Spider-Man ends up in the middle of a dispute with the ruling family.

* ''ComicBook/BatmanBeyond Neo-Gothic'': The first issue reveals that underneath Neo Gotham lies "Lower Gotham" or "The Gotham Deep", the decaying remains of the original Gotham City that Neo Gotham was built on top of after Bruce Wayne lost control of his company. The only residents shown to remain in this portion of Gotham are poor folk, mutants, gangs, and a giant Killer Croc.

* Ralph stumbles across the lower, abandoned areas of the Internet in ''WesternAnimation/RalphBreaksTheInternet'', where long-forgotten websites like Website/GeoCities are located. The only inhabitants left are black market dealers and malware programmers.

* Western Guatemala City is built on top of the old Mayan city of Kaminaljuy&uacute.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' has [[CityPlanet Coruscant]], where the ground is always buried under at least five layers -- often more -- of ancient skyscrapers. The [[CityPlanet global city]] has been growing upwards for millennia, steadily burying its older layers and districts under each new accretion of urban growth. This also results in the mother of all {{Layered Metropolis}}es, with districts growing increasingly unsafe and sparsely settled as one heads further down until the ruins of Coruscant's earliest cities are reached at the almost mythical ground level.

->''"Welcome to the underworld. My world. Here, there are worlds above worlds above worlds, going farther up than you can imagine. The trash of each one flows down to the one below, until it all ends up here."''

* In ''ComicBook/{{Diabolik}}'' Clerville has vast catacombs, parts of which seem to have been on the surface in the past. It's inhabited by many homeless people, parts of which have organized themselves in the People of the Shadows, and Diabolik frequently uses it for his heists and was taught how to get around by the People of the Shadows during a brief alliance.

** When ComicBook/{{Venom}} had his own comic released, he spent the first storyarc in a section of San Francisco that was buried and contained 1800s-era architecture (the city had simply built over it for some reason). Sadly, this was all mostly forgotten by the next miniseries.
** A Spider-Man title in the New Tens introduces "Under York", a subterranean duplicate of New York City populated by [[AmazingTechnicolorPopulation orange skinned humans]] with a vaguely steampunk aesthetic. Apparently it has a long-standing truce with New York's government, which is threatened when Spider-Man ends up in the middle of a dispute of the ruling family.

* ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds'': Emerald City has the Undercity, created a hundred years ago when the city just built over flooded buildings, and rediscovered in the sixties by a hippie who now offers tours of the safer areas. Since then, other parts of it have become occupied by the homeless, low level metacriminals trying to lie low, the occasional cryptid, and there's even connections to [[BeneathTheEarth Sub Terra]].

* ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'': Taris has four levels -- the decaying (but still pretty decent) Upper City where the wealthy live, the Middle City (where the working and middle class live), the Lower City (a slum controlled by gangs and the local crime boss), and the Undercity -- a wasteland crawling with [[PlagueZombie rakghouls]] and a small settlement comprised of exiled criminals, political prisoners, and their descendants. While there is a HopeSpot brought about if the player completes a quest with the light-sided option, the [[VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic sequel]] reveals that [[ShootTheShaggyDog those who survived the initial bombardment survived a couple generations before succumbing to disease, toxic waste, and rakghoul attacks.]]

* ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'' has an Undercity area, notable for its high density population of undead.
* New City in ''[[VideoGame/{{Wizardry}} Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant]]'' was built on top of the long abandoned Old City.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arcane}}'': The Undercity of Piltover (which will one day become the city of Zaun) is a classic inhabited example. Its horribly polluted with fissures poisoning the air and [[WretchedHive rife with crime and poverty]].

* Moscow has a lot of Soviet-era underground works, partly civilian (Metro) but mostly of Cold War era Soviet military origin. Urban legends tell about a whole system of special Metro for the government and underground vault-cities in case of a nuclear war, for generals and officers.[[note]]Given the Soviet Unions's general resource allocation and priorities, particularly under Stalin and Brezhnev, not to mention declassified equivalent US projects, this probably has at least some basis in actual fact. Perhaps not underground cities, but it wouldn't be unexpected to find more than a few subterranean office parks and military operations centers[[/note]] Also included are older Tsarist era ruins and basements.
* Underground Seattle. This was a part of the late 19th century Seattle business district that was buried when the streets were regraded to between 12ft and 30 ft (3.6m to 9.1m) above their former height after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. The areas formerly constituting sidewalks and alleys were left unfilled or were later excavated, and connecting tunnels were created under the roads- some intentionally to create maintenance tunnels and pedestrian bypasses for busy streets, and others during the TheEdwardianEra and TheRoaringTwenties to ease the transport of contraband and allow the former street level to serve as a literally underground combination RedLightDistrict and [[TheCityNarrows City Narrows]]. This created an eerie network of tunnels lined by 19th century storefronts, many now serving as basements to the buildings above, though a few remain in use as bars or other establishments seeking to play off of the history.

* Western Guatemala City is built on top of the old Mayan city of Kaminaljuyú.

** Ancient Rome often used a practice of burying larger buildings and building on top of them rather than demolishing them. The Palatine hill is covered with ruin on top of ruin and has an impressive network of caves and tunnels under all of it.

[[quoteright:326:[[Franchise/StarWars https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/e1d1c5a59680acb66653b940ce522618.png]]]]

* Old New York in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' is the original New York City that was leveled by an alien invasion [[spoiler:actually the Swedish Air Force battling Bender and his fleet of spaceships after he stole the Nobel Peace Prize]]. Eventually, the city of New New York was simply built on top of the ruins, which had the sewers rerouted through them. In the 31st century, the remnants of Old New York are still standing, derelict, beneath New New York, home only to the sewer mutants.

This part of the city used to be part of a sprawling metropolis, or maybe it was a whole city of its own, but something happened. Maybe an earthquake or another disaster buried it, or maybe they just decided to [[LayeredMetropolis build a new city on top of it]] and, in time, forgot the old one. Maybe the burying was gradual, as people built higher and higher and gradually abandoned the older, lower parts of the city. Whatever the cause, what we have now is this trope: an older, often abandoned city that exists underground and directly underneath a megacity.

* ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds: Emerald City has the Undercity, created a hundred years ago when the city just built over flooded buildings, and rediscovered in the sixties by a hippie who now offers tours of the safer areas. Since then, other parts of it have become occupied by the homeless, low level metacriminals trying to lie low, the occasional cryptid, and there's even connections to [[BeneathTheEarth Sub Terra]].