History Main / UndergroundCity

* ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' has several underground cities. The Dwarvern city of Keldagrim and the cave goblin city of Dorgesh-Kaan are the inhuman type occupied primarily by their respective species. The city of Senntisten was the former capital of the Zarosian Empire until it was buried during the god wars.

* ''Script/C0DA'', written by former ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series writer/designer Creator/MichaelKirkbride, takes place in the far distant future of ''TES'' universe. Numidium, the [[RealityWarper Reality Warping]] HumongousMecha of [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Dwemer]] construction, presumed destroyed following the events of ''VideoGame/{{Daggerfall}}'', returns after having been caught in a time warp. It continues its war on the [[AntiHumanAlliance Aldmeri Dominion]], led by the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName fascistic Thalmor]], leading to an apocalyptic event known as "Landfall", which has forced the remaining inhabitants of Nirn to take refuge on the moon Masser. There, they have built the city of Ald Sotha in a series of connected caverns under the surface. It serves as the setting for most of the story.

* ''Film/DemolitionMan'': The part of the Los Angeles population that doesn't accept Doctor Cocteau's rule lives in an underground city below the city's streets. They survive by eating stolen food and rats.

* The Franchise/MarvelUniverse has several subterranean civilizations, including The Mole Men, The Lava Men, The Deviants and even a sunken Atlantean city whose inhabitants age instantly when exposed to the surface's atmosphere for some reason.

* Xenoarchaeologists in ''ComicBook/StarWarsMarvel1977'''s "World of Fire" find an underground city under their dig site and decide to break through the still-functioning energy barrier put around it. This stirs up the xenophobic, paranoid security system, which kills them all, then people landing on the world to investigate, then ships flying in orbit overhead...

* The troll caverns in ''ComicBook/ElfQuest'' probably qualify. They're certainly big enough. Blue Mountain probably counts as well if you count the mountainside as ground, even though it's obviously above the ''surrounding'' ground.

* In the "Shadows of the Bat" storyline in ''ComicBook/DetectiveComics'', the Party Crashers, a gang with Joker tech, are based in an underground city beneath Gotham.
* In ''ComicBook/BlakeAndMortimer'', the people from Atlantis have moved their whole empire underground after their continent was sunk. They are installed in a set of gargantuan caves, large enough to contain their capital city, a sea (complete with storms), and various outposts.

* Invoked in ''Film/DoctorStrangelove'' by the title character, who claims that mines could be turned into giant underground shelters where chosen survivors of humanity could wait out the half-life of radiation from the [[DoomsdayDevice Doomsday Machine]]. The novel version implies that this fails.
* The Krell city in ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'' is so large it's a veritable BigDumbObject. Standing in one of the huge ventilation shafts, Dr. Morbius says that the platform they're standing on runs for twenty miles in either direction, and there's 7800 levels above them. And there's 400 other shafts like it. The entire city is self-repairing and has been running without outside intervention for thousands of years.
* In ''Film/BeneathThePlanetOfTheApes'', there is a society of mutated [[CargoCult bomb-worshiping]] humans with PsychicPowers living in the buried ruins of New York City. We learn a bit more about their history in the later ''Film/BattleForThePlanetOfTheApes''.
* ''Film/TheMolePeople'' is a 1956 adventure movie where two {{Adventure Archaeologist}}s and one [[TheLoad Load]] discover a buried Sumerian city where the people have mutated into albinos. The mole people themselves are a SlaveRace of [[BeastMan Beast Men]] who serve the Sumerians.

** Padmasa's capitol is also mostly subterranean, with the Master's chambers deep below ground.

* ''Series/TheAvengers1960s'': The villain in "The Living Dead" has an army in a city built inside an abandoned mine, to seize control of Britain after the country has been obliterated by a nuclear strike from an [[HammerAndSickleRemovedForYourProtection unnamed enemy]].

* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' had the sewer dwelling Nosferatu. If enough of them made their home in a given city's sewers they would eventually begin to burrow and carve out an actual underground home for themselves away from the prying eyes of mortals and vampires. They did this not just to hide their {{Masquerade}} breaking RedRightHand, but to [[spoiler:escape the notice of the Nictuku, their cannibalistic "older brothers".]] In an odd inversion, they didn't dig deep ''[[DugTooDeep enough]]''.

** There is also an abandoned temple of Amaunator with its last followers dwelling there, which can be reached from a passage in the same area where the cult hideout is.

** ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' also has [[spoiler:the Institute, a [[RaygunGothic shining]], [[EverythingIsAnIPodInTheFuture futuristic]] scientific utopia located beneath the old Commonwealth Institute of Technology. It's also a [[CrapsaccharineWorld slave society]] that has no qualms about kidnapping wastelanders, conducting horribly unethical experiments ForScience, and terrorizing the Commonwealth with their synth spies.]]

* The Underground in ''Webcomic/SamAndFuzzy'' is made up of several of these, with several US towns and cities having 'sub-' cities built directly underneath or nearby underneath. Amongst the major ones are Retropolis (located underneath rural Pennsylvania), Sub-Newport (underneath [[AliensInCardiff Newport, Oregon]]) and Megalopolis (underneath Los Angeles, California).

** Back when it was [[ValuesDissonance still fashionable to use nuclear explosions for the civil engineering]], the Soviet Union conducted several of them in Kazakhstan, ostensibly to improve the productivity of the local oil fields (a kind of the fracking writ large, so to speak). The rumor mill, however, has always insisted that at least one of the explosions, that reportedly produced a cavity about a mile in diameter several miles underground, was conducted to construct [[ElaborateUndergroundBase an enormous bunker in case of a nuclear war]].
*** Given the fact that the cavity would have remained radioactive for decades, this seems a little counterproductive.

* In ''Literature/{{Mermaids}}'', Morva takes Rani GeneHunting to a vast underground network of caverns beneath the seafloor that only merfolk with magic powers can enter. Morva thinks Rani's surviving family lives somewhere in the city in the caverns.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': The Vaults enabled humanity to survive nuclear war in America, but just barely. And they were intended as proof-of-concept models for a GenerationShip that wasn't built in time, hence the various experimental (and often sadistic) situations manufactured. Some weren't even finished, like Boston's Vaults 88 and 114. ''VideoGame/Fallout4'''s "Vault-Tec Workshop" allows The Sole Survivor to build Vault 88 into a functioning settlement, as well as ignore the Overseer's pointlessly cruel experiments.

* The MarvelUniverse has several subterranean civilizations, including The Mole Men, The Lava Men, The Deviants and even a sunken Atlantean city whose inhabitants age instantly when exposed to the surface's atmosphere for some reason.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' ''Fantasy'':
** The Dwarfs live in enormous, masterfully carved and decorated fortress cities beneath the World's Edge Mountains, as well as in several lesser mountain ranges across the Old World. These generally start out as mining settlements, growing with time into massive, self-sufficient underground redoubts, home to vast numbers of Dwarfs.
** The [[RatMen Skaven]] live in an underground empire, vast with tunnels that connect their countless underground cities across the known world, from the jungles of [[TheSavageSouth Lustria]], to the [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy Old World]], to [[{{Wutai}} Nippon]]. Their capital city, Skavenblight, acts as the very center of their underground tunnel network.

* Non-Karma Society members in ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga2'' live in an underground city, because the blackened sun turns people to stone. Karma Society members live under a glass dome.

'''Belu-be:''' Hmph! More like an ants' nest.