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!!Films -- Animation
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Nine}}'', following a RobotWar. Seemingly all life on Earth has been wiped out by the machines' [[DeadlyGas chemical weapons]]. [[spoiler:The ending shows bacteria returning to the world inside raindrops]].
* ''WesternAnimation/BattleForTerra'' takes place after Earth, Venus, and Mars have wiped each other out, and the survivors are traveling on GenerationShip that's breaking down, looking for a new planet to settle. They find a habitable world and call it Terra. Of course, there are two problems: the air is poisonous to humans, and there are natives to consider. Another example is [[spoiler:the Terrans themselves, who used to have advanced technology but nuked themselves back to the Stone Age]].
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Dinosaur}}'' is about the extinction of the dinosaurs, explicitly showing the meteors falling.
* In ''Anime/FinalFantasyTheSpiritsWithin'', humanity is forced to live in shelters that protect them from the Phantoms, creatures that kill living beings by stealing their souls by touching them.
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueDarkApokolipsWar'': After the opening scene, the movie takes place two years after Darkseid and his force took down the Justice League and took over the planet and [[spoiler:Darkseid screw it up so badly, it neared a CosmicRetcon to wipe out the events of the universe to undo it.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/MortalKombatLegendsSnowBlind'' takes place in an [[Franchise/MortalKombat Earthrealm]] that has been devastated by a horde of revenants and left as a desolate wasteland.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie2TheSecondPart'': Bricksburg, post-DUPLO invasion. It's PlayedForLaughs considering that we see it from the perspective of Emmet, who retains his jarringly upbeat and cheerful attitude despite the fact that the world has been more-or-less destroyed.
* ''WesternAnimation/RockAndRule'' (or ''Ring of Power'' as the chopped-up kids version is called) is set in a post-nuclear world where humans are extinct and animals mutated into humanoid creatures akin to humans.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' is, in fact, AfterTheEnd for the dinosaurs, although whether or not it's their final extinction is never made clear. The too-numerous-to-count direct-to-video sequels would suggest that it's not for the universe's lack of trying, considering [[EverythingTryingToKillYou everything it's thrown at them]] so far.
%%* ''Animation/SkyBlue''
* ''WesternAnimation/TitanAE'' mostly takes place after Earth was [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt blown up by aliens]], and humans are a minority searching for a home in the vastness of space.
* ''WesternAnimation/WallE'': Humanity has left the ruined Earth to go live in a giant spaceship. [[spoiler:They recover by the end credits.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Wizards}}'' is a fantasy film set after an apocalypse destroyed human civilization and allowed [[TheMagicComesBack magic and magical creatures to return to the world]].

!!Films -- Live-Action
* Any sequel to a ZombieApocalypse, including ''Film/DayOfTheDead1985,'' ''Film/LandOfTheDead'', ''Film/ResidentEvilExtinction'' and ''Film/TwentyEightWeeksLater''.
* Cole's time is this in ''Film/TwelveMonkeys''. He's sent back to pre-end times not to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong but just to collect information they need in their present.
* ''Film/TwentyYearsAfter'' is about a post-apocalyptic world that was caused by a nuclear war and plague. A woman who is about to have the first baby in fifteen years has to live in this world.
* ''Film/AfterEarth'': Humanity's disregard for the environment rendered the planet nearly uninhabitable, forcing them to leave. A thousand years later, wild animals have reclaimed the Earth.
* The docu-drama ''Film/TheAgeOfStupid'' portrays Earth in [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture the year 2055]] after runaway climate change ravages the planet. The film is shown from the viewpoint of an unnamed Archivist - the [[LastOfHisKind last surviving human on Earth]] - who laments "why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance?", and plays back real documentary footage from 2008, when the film was made.
* ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' happens after Thanos uses the Infinity Stones to wipe out half the life in the universe, with the majority following a five year skip where everything is very depressing and empty. [[spoiler:Once the heroes reverse the decimation\"Snap" and also stop a Thanos who arrived hoping to destroy the universe and remake it in his image instead, things again look up for everyone, though not without its cost.]]
* ''Battle Beyond the Sun'', an American adaptation of the Soviet sci-fi film ''Nebo Zovyot'' uses this trope to hide the Soviet origins and propaganda element of the original: the race to Mars is no longer between the Soviet Union and America[[note]]with the Soviets naturally being the favoured party[[/note]], but between two superstates (North Hemis[[note]]US, Canada, Britain, most of Central and Eastern Europe plus Russia[[/note]] and South Hemis[[note]]basically everywhere else[[/note]], representing the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin North and South Hemispheres]]) into which the Earth has coalesced following a nuclear war. Just to make it obvious, the obligatory mushroom cloud StockFootage is inserted into the introduction along with a map of the film's supposed world.
* ''Film/{{Battletruck}}'' is set following a series of wars over depleting petroleum reserves. In the aftermath, the Mesopotamia Basin has been reduced to a radioactive wasteland, oil fires burn out of control throughout the Middle East, food riots regularly break out, most major cities are under martial law, much of the American countryside is a lawless wasteland, and large groups of citizens are in the process fleeing the cities to find food and fuel.
* In ''Film/{{Bokeh}}'' an American couple on holiday in Iceland wake up one morning to discover that everyone else on Earth has disappeared.
* ''Film/TheBookOfEli'' has Denzel Washington in a world decimated for an unknown reason (heavily implied to be nuclear warfare) and literature, most notably the Bible, was blamed.
%%* ''Film/ABoyAndHisDog''
* ''Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury'': Much of the Earth has been reduced to a desolate wasteland by a nuclear holocaust, inhabited by mutants. The surviving humans (or rather, their descendants) live in isolated, hi-tech cities. In the TV series that followed, however, the Earth was depicted as being much more hospitable.
* ''Film/CloudAtlas''--The last portion of the film, at least chronologically, is entitled "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After." This section takes place in Hawaii years after an unspecified apocalyptic event, and the remnants of human kind has been divided between peaceful valley men (including Tom Hanks' character Zachary) and murderous cannibals called Konas (including the chief, played by Hugh Grant).
* ''Film/TheColony2013'': Due to {{Weather Control Machine}}s GoneHorriblyRight, the Earth has been plunged into a GlacialApocalypse which has killed pretty much everything on the surface and left humans scarcely surviving with livestock and crops inside outpost shelters. It makes for some rather beautiful SceneryGorn. Not least due to the nature of this apocalypse, [[spoiler:[[ImAHumanitarian some humans turned to cannibalism and went insane from starvation]] during the early days]].
* ''Film/{{Creepozoids}}'' is set six years after a nuclear war has reduced much of the U.S. to a bombed-out ruin, with acid rain being a regular occurrence.
* ''Film/{{Cyborg 1989}}'' has a world ravaged by seemingly a succession of disgraces ("First there was the collapse of civilization... anarchy, genocide, starvation... then we got the plague.").
* ''Film/DamnationAlley'' is set after WorldWarIII, with the Earth’s axis having ''shifted by 90 degrees''.
* ''Film/TheDarkCrystal'' opens 1,000 years after the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens urSkeks]] accidentally caused a near-apocalyptic event with a single poor choice.
* ''Film/DeadEndDriveIn'', features Australia becoming a ScavengerWorld.
* ''Film/DeadMansLetters'' is set in a ruined town following a nuclear war, whose inhabitants are forced to live underground and cannot leave their shelter without protective clothing due to the massive amount of radioactive fallout in both the air and soil.
* ''Film/DefCon4'': Following the outbreak of WorldWarIII, large areas of Earth's surface are irradiated and [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] mutants known as "terminals" terrorize the few survivors, who live in makeshift fortresses made out of junk.
* ''[[Film/Dinosaur1985 Dinosaur!]]'': The final scenes with dinosaurs are set in an [[TearJerker extremely heartbreaking]] view of the wasteland the Earth became after the asteroid impact. The asteroid has caused thick clouds of dust and ash to blot out the sun’s light and heat, causing temperatures to drop and plants to die, and even the last few dinosaurs left alive are slowly starving to death. They are also unable to reproduce anymore, as shown by a starving ''Hadrosaurus'' bellowing in despair over her disintegrated eggs.
* Ambiguous in [[Literature/TheGiver the book]] (but stated in the sequels), [[Film/TheGiver the film]] confirms the fact that "The Giver" takes place after a tragedy known as "The Ruin."
* ''Film/Finch2021'' is set after a solar flare destroyed the ozone and burned the surface of the Earth, killing all the crops and most of life on earth. An ailing inventor who appears to the last man on earth makes a cross country journey with his dog and robot companions across a post-apocalyptic America.
* In ''Film/{{Five}}'', five people are miraculously spared when the fall-out from a super-atomic bomb eventually kills all of the rest of humanity on Earth.
* ''Film/FriendOfTheWorld'' takes place almost entirely in a bunker during the aftermath of a cataclysmic, global war.
* ''Film/FutureWorld2018'': The film is set after a war has destroyed civilization following humanity creating human-like androids.
* ''Film/{{Hostile}}'' is set several years after an UnspecifiedApocalypse that has left the earth a wasteland with mutants called “reapers” roaming it, a survivor who becomes injured and trapped in her upturned truck is forced to survive the night fending off one of the mutants while she reflects on her life before the apocalypse.
* ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'': The Earth is being bombarded with dust storms; humanity relies on a dwindling supply of corn after the blight has killed off all other crops; governmental and military organizations have disbanded just to produce enough farmers to sustain the population; and technology is scavenged to make use of solar panels. The only hope left for humanity's survival is to move to a different planet.
* ''Film/IronSkyTheComingRace'' takes place after the global nuclear exchange that took place at the end of [[Film/IronSky the previous movie]]. The remaining less than two thousand people live in ''Schwarze Sonne'' fortress at the dark side of the Moon, which is also slowly falling apart.
* ''Film/LandOfTheDead'': After the ZombieApocalypse, Pittsburgh has become a [[UnsafeHaven "safe" haven]] walled off from the zombie hordes roaming the world, and an elitist society has formed where the rich live in luxury while the rest have to scrape by to make a living.
* ''Film/TheLastManOnEarth'', ''Film/TheOmegaMan'', and ''Film/IAmLegend'', all based on the same novel.
* ''Film/LogansRun'' is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where the only survivors live in a hermetically-sealed domed city -- except for one crazy old man who lives in the U.S. Capitol with his cats.
* ''Film/LoveAndMonsters'' is set seven years after fallout from a massive missile strike to destroy an asteroid headed for Earth caused all cold-blooded animals to mutate into huge monsters, leading to the collapse of human civilization. Humanity survived, but in scattered, primarily underground colonies.
* The original ''Film/MadMax1'' takes place JustBeforeTheEnd, while its sequels, ''Film/TheRoadWarrior'', ''Film/MadMaxBeyondThunderdome'', and the saga of ''Film/MadMaxFuryRoad'' and ''Film/{{Furiosa|A Mad Max Saga}}'' take place After.
* ''Film/TheMatrix'' is set in the aftermath of a RobotWar that the humans lost. The free remnants of humanity are holed up in the last human city, Zion, while everyone else is grown and plugged into a machine-made world called the Matrix. The films are about the human resistance against the machines, and the effort to free the rest of humanity from the Matrix.
* ''Film/TheMidnightSky'' A mysterious disaster known as "The Event" has left the earth covered in a spreading cloud of radiation, in an isolated research base in the Arctic a lone scientist has to warn a returning crew of astronauts not to return to earth.
* ''Film/Oblivion2013'': Held after an AlienInvasion and war which the humans won at the cost of most of Earth being destroyed. [[spoiler:Except this is a lie. Humanity ''lost'' and the so-called "Scavs" are actually what's left of it.]]
* ''Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes'', and the various sequels and TV series based off it. The only ones JustBeforeTheEnd are ''Film/EscapeFromThePlanetOfTheApes'' and ''Film/RiseOfThePlanetOfTheApes''.
* ''Film/ThePostman'' is a post-apocalyptic world where civilization starts to rekindle after the hero delivers their old mail.
* ''Film/TheQuietEarth'', in which an attempt at building a global energy grid reduces the population of the world to three New Zealanders, who only survived because they were on the brink of death at the time. For a while, [[MayorOfAGhostTown the survivors enjoy everything the abandoned world has to offer]] while trying to work out what happened: then the disaster happens again, and [[GainaxEnding the movie ends with one protagonist, left staring up at an]] AlienSky.
* ''Film/AQuietPlace'' takes place some time after sound-hunting nigh-invincible alien creatures wipe out all civilization. The focus is on a family that manages to survive in the wilderness by staying as quiet as possible and communicating via sign language.
** ''Film/AQuietPlacePartII'' follows the same family but also shows a few other survivors including a former friend of the family and an small community on a near by island.
* In ''Film/Ravenous2017'', after a brief opening scene at an auto rally, the rest of the film happens at a much later time. That is, after the zombie outbreak is more widespread. The old women tell the rest of the group that they saw fewer and fewer zombies for weeks after about a month, but also that the zombies have returned in larger numbers -- presumably because "they're looking for food," as Céline put it.
* ''Film/RatsNightOfTerror'' takes place in the year 2240, 225 years after a catastrophic nuclear war destroys much of civilization and reduces the surviving population to the status of scavengers.
* ''Film/ReignOfFire'': Human civilisation is destroyed when they inadvertently awaken the dragons who had been hibernating beneath the earth. It's implied that they were responsible for previously wiping out the dinosaurs.
* ''Film/RiotGirls'': Ever since a plague wiped the adults out, the kids are fighting each other over what's left.
* ''Film/TheRoad'': Depicts the aftermath of a global UnspecifiedApocalypse, where the Earth's [[ApocalypseHow/Class5 biosphere extinction]] has already occurred and the world is in the final stages of dying, leaving survivors such as the {{protagonist}} and his child roaming the dead world, seeking food and shelter, whilst other hungry survivors have formed cannibalistic gangs. Mankind is not just scraping by, but truly dying.
* Despite all the {{Western}} trappings, ''Film/SixReasonsWhy'' actually takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, as evidenced by The Nomad's tape player (and his need for batteries) and the radio in the saloon. The nature of the disaster that befell the world is never mentioned.
* The story of ''Film/{{Snowpiercer}}'' picks up seventeen years after mankind's attempt to fight global warming through geoengineering [[GoneHorriblyRight went a little too well]] and the chemical compound they emitted into the atmosphere [[GlacialApocalypse turned Earth into an ice globe]] and the last of humanity survives on a train that continuously circles the earth.
* ''Film/StakeLand'': Unique to the genre, its after a ''Vampire'' epidemic wiped out most of the human race (which had a lot of help from a Naziesque Cult called the Brotherhood).
* ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' uses the power of TimeTravel to visit this time period.
* ''Film/TheSurvivalist:'' Set in Northern Ireland, after a social and population collapse caused by oil running out. A mother and daughter intrude into the protagonist's solitary existence.
* The Big Reveal at the end of [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] classic ''Film/TeenageCaveman''.
* The future scenes in the ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'' series.
* Taken to an extreme in ''Film/TheTimeMachine2002'' where Alexander travels to the year 802701, where humanity has started over and split into the normal-looking Eloi and the savage Morloks, and then again to the year 635,427,810, where the latter has taken over the planet.
* ''Film/TotalRecall2012'': After a series of wars over resources, the only parts of the world left that aren't biohazard wastelands are the United Federation of Britain (a chunk of Europe controlled by Britain) and the Colony (Australia).
* ''Film/Virus1980:'' A government bioweapon is accidentally released and decimates the planet, leaving the few survivors to eke out an existence in Antarctica. The rest of the story follows the people in Antarctica, and their attempts to stop an automated missile system aimed right at them from being triggered by an impending earthquake.
* ''Film/WarriorOfTheLostWorld'', an Italian rip-off of ''Film/MadMax'' with none of that franchise's charm. Or much of an apocalypse for that matter, given how lush and green the "lost world" is. To look at it, you'd think that all the likable people in the world simply went on vacation and told the cast of characters that we see that they'd all died.
* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' takes place after the polar ice caps have completely melted due to a magnetic pole reversal, causing the all remaining human civilization to become seafaring.
* ''Film/TheWorldsEnd'': At the end of the film, a [[spoiler:ApocalypseHow/Class2 has occurred in the form of a global BigBlackout. Humanity is knocked back to pre-industrial levels but the bulk of the population apparently survives and there seems no danger of actual extinction. In fact most of the surviving characters are shown to prefer the new way of life]].
* ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'' opens in a future where {{Killer Robot}}s have wiped out most of humanity.
-->'''Wolverine:''' In the beginning, the Sentinels were just targeting mutants. [[FinalSolution Then they began targeting everyone]].
* ''Film/{{Zardoz}}'' happens in a distant future, implied to happen after a nuclear war, where mankind has been reduced to simple peasants ("Brutals") and hitmen ("Exterminators") who unknowingly follow the orders of Eternals who live in their own dimension.
* ''Film/{{Zombieland}}'' takes place a few months after a ZombieApocalypse. The sequel, ''Film/ZombielandDoubleTap'', takes place in the same ZombieApocalypse ten years after the events of the first film.
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