Great Offscreen War

"I stepped out of the TARDIS onto a desolate-looking planet. All around me were thousands of extras, killed in an exciting and protracted battle that we've neither the time nor the budget to show."

— Doctor WHeasel & The Density of the Daleks

There was a war. It happened years ago, maybe even thousands of years. Or it can even happen during the course of the story itself. Regardless, characters reference it, especially if they took a part in it: the Shell-Shocked Veteran never managed to get over what he experienced back then, while the Phony Veteran, on the other hand, will never shut up about how many brave things he did in it.

Sometimes people will use the war as a reference point for placing events on a timeline — something happened a few years before the war, or somebody did something after the war.

Maybe people still have to deal with its consequences. The war happened, and it left its ugly mark on the world. But it's never shown to the audience — we never see a single flashback from the war, are never shown more than just a glimpse of what happened. The war will be referenced, but otherwise left mysterious, unexplained. Why it happened, how it ended, and what all the things that took place there (which people talk about like it should be obvious) actually were, are never explained. We may not even know the different factions involed in the fighting. The war is only a mysterious event of the past, included mostly to add a bit of mystery and give people excuses for insane ideas. Needless to say, this trope can easily be processed into Fanfic Fuel.

World War III is often used as this, as are the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and so on. Stories set After the End have the tendency to do this with the war that caused the apocalypse. If the war never stopped, may be a Forever War.

Often used as a sub-trope of Cryptic Background Reference. Compare also Cataclysm Backstory, and Unspecified Apocalypse for After the End-type scenarios that were not necessarily caused by war. For a fight that literally happens just offscreen, see Battle Discretion Shot.

Please, avoid shows referencing Real Life conflicts. We already have plenty of information on them. If anything, such tales would go under During the War.

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Sub-pages

• Literature
  • A Song of Ice and Fire
• Power Rangers
• Video Games

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Beastars has the Carni-Herbi War that happened about 100 years prior to the setting of the story and massively shaped the modern society, supposedly being the source of all animosity between the two sides, but the exact specifics of what happened are kept a secret to the general public.
• Bleach: Shinigami and Quincies have been opposed for over a millennium with two periods of warfare being very important for the main storyline. The first is the original war between Yhwach and Yamamoto that occurred a thousand years ago and led to the creation of the Quincy Clan and the Gotei 13. The second is the Shinigami's attempted purge of the Quincies 200 years ago. Both wars significantly impact the present-day Quincies and Shinigami, including anyone they associate with, be they human or hollow.
• In Blue Gender, we don't actually see humanity get overtaken by the Blues.
• In Claymore there is the Mainland, a continent where two nations have been waging war constantly for decades. No main character ever gets to visit the mainland, and we only know about it through descriptions, however it is revealed that one of these two nations is allied with the Dragon Descendants, powerful creatures much stronger than Humans, and that the nation opposed to the Dragon Descendants created the Organization to develop monsters and creatures able to fight the Dragons, the Organization took over the Island and created all the Yoma and Awakened Being using Dragon's flesh as part of a giant Research project.
• Code Geass has the Britannian invasion and conquest of Japan, which we see only in flashbacks concerning young Lelouch, Suzaku and Nunally and the one from first episode opening sequence. There also was an alternate version of the Napoleon wars, where Napoleon conquered Great Britain, making all the British aristocracy run to America, creating the Britannia Empire.
• Cowboy Bebop has the War on Titan, which shaped the lives of Vicious, Vincent, and Grencia years before any action related to the main story took place. We get a few brief glimpses of it in flashbacks however.
• Heavens War in Darker than Black serves as the backstory for most of the main characters, and is the driving force behind Hei's actions his sister Pai disappeared at the end when Heavens gate exploded, and Hei is trying desperately to find her.
• The war between the Saiyans and the Tuffles (Tsufuru-jin) in Dragon Ball is very important to the mythology of the series but we never actually see it except in brief clips in some of the anime episodes.
• Fairy Tail: The Dragon King Festival is the name given to the civil war between dragons 400 years prior to the start of the series, which resulted in the creation of Dragon Slaying Magic, the rise of Acnologia, and the virtual extinction of dragons as a species due to Acnologia's indiscriminate rampage near the end where he slaughtered every dragon and Dragon Slayer, friend or foe, he could get his claws on. Most of the backstory given on the war is told through the ghost of Zirconis, a dragon on the anti-human side slain by Acnologia, and Irene Belserion, the creator of Dragon Slayer Magic who also became a dragon from overuse of her magic (and is also Erza Scarlet's mother).
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: The Demon King waged a war on humanity for at least a thousand years until he was slain by the Hero Himmel's party. The story picks up in the aftermath of his death when humanity has finally achieved some measure of peace.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is set sometime after both World War III and IV, AKA the Second Vietnam War.
• The Joui War in Gintama is often referenced throughout the series and many notable characters take part in it, though only a few flashbacks are shown at best.
• The Gundam franchise has used this setting in several of its Alternate Timelines:
  • After War Gundam X: The Seventh Space War, which ended in a mass Colony Drop, devastating Earth, wiping out 90% of the human population, and causing a calendar change. We see a few scenes from it, and meet a few survivors of the war, though the focus is more on the characters trying to build a new world on the ashes of the old, and prevent an Eighth War from starting up in the meantime.
  • ∀ Gundam has the final conflict of the Dark History. There's very little known of it, except that it was apparently so nasty that all the space colonies pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here, and the pilot of the Turn A Gundam felt the need to wipe out all civilization on Earth (though his/her reasons for doing so are never stated... for obvious reasons, very few records of that time survive).
  • Gundam: Reconguista in G: 1000 years before the story started, the Universal Century depicted in the original Gundam series underwent a societal collapse after numerous wars. Records of the time are sparse, but it is known that most of the space colonies were either destroyed or left, Earth's environment was ruined, and there was a severe famine that caused even more death. Most of the current society under the rule of Capitol Tower is kept in line out of fear of ever risking such a disaster again.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has the Calamity War fought 300 years prior, which was so devastating that it caused a change in calendar and blew up most of the Moon. It was apparently fought between humanity and automated, self-repairing, and self-supplying drone superweapons called Mobile Armors, which killed a quarter of the human population at the time. Why anyone would create the Mobile Armors has not been discussed.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury occasionally references the Drone War, a conflict that seemingly occurred a few decades before the series. We know little about it as of this writing, but it was a major motivating factor behind Delling's belief that the Gundam technology could come to no good.
  • It's also played with in the main Universal Century timeline, where many of the smaller side stories take place independently of the larger war. Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket takes place in the neutral Side 6 colony of Libot, which was barely touched by the One Year War until events of the series (with some mentions of events of Gundam sprinkled in), while Gundam Sentinel takes place sometime during the events of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ but is otherwise completely separate.
• Hellsing Ultimate: The wars that Alucard/ Dracula fought against the Ottoman Empire.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: The war between the three families in the region Bard lives in took place before the events of the story, though we occasionally see flashbacks to it.
• In Kemono Jihen, the eponymous Kemono Jihen was a major war between Kemono and humans a thousand years ago. The resulting devastation convinced Kemono to hide themselves from humans and erase the memory of their existence from humanity, allowing themselves to fade into myth and obscurity. The point of Kemono offices like Inugami's is to allow Kemono to live peacefully among humans while preventing needless conflict that could ignite tensions on both sides.
• Last Exile also has the war between its two major powers, which is mediated by The Guild. Much of the action of this war takes place BEFORE the actual story, as a few episodes in we discover that one of the planets these factions live on is dying, essentially taking them out of the conflict for good. They're pretty much refugees after this point.
• The many wars of the Ancient Belka in Lyrical Nanoha. We have been told some general info about it, such as how it destroyed Old Belka and led to the current age where physical-based weapons were banned, but otherwise, it's a big question mark. These wars were not visually depicted until Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, which revolves around the Reincarnation of two prominent figures from that war.
• Macross:
  • In Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the backstory tells of a massive war between the Zentradi and a group known as the Supervision Army. This also forms a big part of the plot in Macross 7, where we learn more about what the Supervision Army is and where it came from. The war is actually on-going, and has been for something like 20,000 years, with the Zentradi and Supervision Army having been almost exactly evenly matched from the start. Many Zentradi fleets are still actively engaged in battle against Supervision Army forces far outside of the Milky-Way galaxy, and are far too busy to take note of humanity's affairs. Fortunately for the humans, both groups seem to be largely fragmented, and haven't noticed humanity destroying/assimilating various Zentradi fleets as their civilization expands. The growing human-"cultured" Zentradi alliance commonly skirmish against both forces, but the New United Nations have yet to run afoul of another one of the larger armadas, and already have colonies spread across roughly a third of the Milky Way galaxy.
  • There was also a World War III fought on Earth that led to a One World Order. Though the prequel Macross Zero covers some characters' actions in it, most of the factions and causes are kept vague.
  • Macross Delta has the Windermerean war for independence, which took place a few years before the story. Windermere did succeed in securing their independence from the New UN, but are still bitter over the lives lost... especially over the fact that a Fold Bomb was detonated on Windermere during the conflict.
• Mysterious conflict with Mazinkaiser SKL, whose consequences are related to events of the series.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has the dragon war between the Order and Chaos factions. Characters make plenty of references to it, but the fact that the story takes place on Earth (which is an established demilitarized zone) means that it's never shown. The one time that the plot heads to the other world, the battle that would have taken place is avoided thanks to Kobayashi's intervention.
• Naruto has the first three Shinobi World Wars; though they play a major role in the backstories of a good chunk of the main cast, we still know very little about these conflicts outside of a few offhand mentions and short flashbacks, plus a single gaiden story starring Kakashi.
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind has the Seven Days of Fire, in which the God Warriors were unleashed on the world and industrial civilization was destroyed.
• The war between Megalomesembria and Hellas Empire in Negima! Magister Negi Magi.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion several wars broke out a few days after the Second Impact, one of which resulted in the destruction of Tokyo. We know nothing about these wars other than what's mentioned in Shinji's history textbook.
• Pumpkin Scissors begins with the graduation ceremony of a class of army cadets being interrupted by an announcement that the war everyone thought they were going to be sent to fight in had just ended. The series itself is about a team working to help repair all the damage that was inflicted on their country during the war.
• The War with "Them" in Sound of the Sky is a complete mystery that has become filled with myths.
• Subverted in Space☆Dandy, where the war isn't so much off-screen as that the narrator completely forgets to mention it. It pops up now and again, but typically does not have much impact on the story until the last episode.
• The war between the Spiral Warriors and the Anti-Spirals in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Parallel Works #8 details this a little focusing on Lordgenome's involvement.
• Toriko: The Gourmet War that was waged prior to the start of the series and lasted for 100 years. Other than Acacia ending it by enlightening the world leaders with the ingredient GOD, we see next to nothing about the war.
• Transformers:
  • Following the events of Transformers: The★Headmasters, the Decepticons completely retreat from Earth and prompt the Autobots to likewise leave the planet behind. The resulting conflict between the Autobots based on the planet Athenia and the Decepticons on planet Charr becomes known as "The Master Wars" due to the technology of the planet Master (e.g. the Headmasters) forming the backbone of the conflict. This is used to explain the much smaller cast of Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, since the fighting is so fierce neither side can afford to send reinforcements to Earth.
  • Throughout Transformers Victory, God Ginrai's Autobots battle Overlord's Decepticons over in G Nebula 89. Both sides are comprised of survivors from Masterforce, but barring God Ginrai (and a brief appearance by Minerva) they don't even get lines or proper appearances.
  • In the Japanese version of Beast Wars, the Maximals and Predacons are still engaged in outright warfare (even using the same Japanese terminology for the factions: Cybertrons for the Maximals and Destrons for the Predacons). Beast Wars II introduces Lio Convoy and Apache engaging the Predacon unit in combat, while Beast Wars Neo has Big Convoy's Establishing Character Moment be his destruction of a Predacon fortress almost single-handed. This larger war otherwise goes unmentioned.
• Something like this was suggested in the dub version (but not the original version) of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. When Bommer summons his Flying Fortress SKY FIRE to use against Crow, Crow is naturally freaked out (as most of Bommer's opponents are when he summons it) and exclaims "That's not a monster, that's World War IV!" The implication, of course, is that World War III has occurred in the time period between the present day and this future time.

Comic Books

• The Authority:
  • In the second arc, Jenny Sparks mentions how Earth cut down all connection with the alternate Universe, The Sliding Albion, after the First World War erupted there. Characters from Albion mention briefly that between that event and Albion's invasion on Earth, that world has seen eight other world wars.
  • Also, the fourth story arc (and first written by Mark Millar) showed us a glimpse of another alternate Earth, which had thirteen continents. A world war that erupted there ended with armies of Adolf X exterminating all non-black people on all of them. The Engineer finds the idea of sending a group of superpowered white supremacists there quite interesting.
• Frank Miller's RoboCop: As befitting the fact it was based on Frank Miller's original script for RoboCop 2 and elements going into RoboCop 3, the Amazon War from those two films is part of the backstory, with the Rehabs (much like in 3) being mercenaries who'd been involved in the war now employed by OCP — with the addition of Sgt. Reed having served in the war and recognizing the Rehabs from his time there.
• The Marvel Comics mini-series History of the Marvel Universe established the Siancong War, a combination of the Korean and Vietnam Wars which saw America enter the equally fictional Sin-Cong to try and drive off Communist invaders. It would be this war where people like Ben Grimm and Frank Castle would participate in as Comic-Book Time made using World War II and the Vietnam War implausible.
• In the Judge Dredd universe, the Great Atom War/World War Three started off as this, with only a few incidents in it ever being revealed. However, nearly 30 years later the storyline Origins came along and averted this trope, giving a solid order to events and how they were seen through along Joe Dredd's eyes.
• Venado Bay in Legion of Super-Heroes V4. In the retroboot Legion, the backstory of the planet Durla (Chameleon Boy's home) is the Six Minute War, the nuclear fallout from which left the planet barely habitable and is the origin of their Voluntary Shapeshifting.
• Despite the fact that the chronology of Lucky Luke is deliberately murky to the point of parody, one historical event that is often referred to is The American Civil War to the extent that some of Luke's enemies (Jesse James and Joss Jamon's gang) are known to have participated in it as mercenaries (for the Confederacy of course).
• Most of the event on the backstory of Old Man Logan (on which every single villain of the Marvel Universe teamed up and took over North America (if not the world, it's not really explicitly said), killing (most) of the superheroes) remains unexplained except for the post-apocalyptic wasteland where the story takes place, a number of Cryptic Background References (and the piles of spandex-wearing skeletons that adorn the sites where they are mentioned), and a couple of flashbacks to the event, where we see the massacre of the X-Men (by Wolverine, who got such a Heroic BSoD from being duped in such a way (by Mysterio) that he is still reeling from it by the time the story starts), and the Red Skull's slaying of Captain America.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) has the aptly named Great War between the Mobians and Overlanders (aka. the descendants of humanity). It was started when the Knight Templar Kodos killed two scouts from both sides and sent them to their respective sides, causing some seriously long-standing racial tensions to explode. It lasted for five years and ended when Dr. Robotnik (back when he was still called Kintobor) supposedly switched sides and gave the Mobians what they needed to drive back the Overlanders. Unfortunately, after the Mobians won, Robotnik promptly betrayed them too and overthrew the king with his badnik army. Many of the comic's older characters were in the war and there's still plenty of resentment and bigotry left over from the war.
  • There's also the first year of the Second Robotnik War, which saw Dr. Eggman regain his power base and promptly retake Mobius after Sonic had been thought killed in battle (in reality, the exploding black hole sent him across the galaxy and he spent from his perspective several weeks having adventures through space to get back).
• Sonic the Comic and the continuation Sonic the Comic – Online! has the Great War between the Echidnas of Megopolis City and the Drakons of the invading Drakon Empire which took place eight thousand years ago over Mobius' Emerald mines, which could contain the Chaos energy, a powerful but highly unstable energy source created by scientists on Drak, the Drakons home planet. The Drakons were able to steal seven Emeralds before the war began. The gems, when combined with the Chaos energy, formed the legendary Chaos Emeralds. Two days before the war began, Pochacamac, leader of the Megopolis tribe, managed to steal the sacred Emeralds back from the Drakons, both to keep to return them to their true home and to prevent the Drakons from conquering the entire galaxy. Angered, the Drakons sent out a scout to examine the Echidna defenses before sending a full-scale invasion force to claim the Emeralds. A battle erupted inside Pochacmac's command room, with Drakon Prosecutors and Sentinels fighting against Sonic the Hedgehog and echidnas armed with Guardian Robots. The fight was briefly interrupted when a Prosecutor struck the Emeralds with his Dimensional Staff, causing a chain reaction that turned a fallen Drakon warrior into the mighty Chaos. The ensuing explosion weakened the gathered Drakon soldiers enough for Knuckles and the other tribesmen to fight back while Sonic and Pochacmac took care of Chaos. After a final push, the echidnas drove the Drakon invaders out of the city, but the war was far from over. Although no victor was ever declared, the failure of the Drakons to claim their intended prize suggests the Mobian defence held out, albeit at a great cost.
• Continuing the trend, Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) partially deals with the aftermath of a war against Eggman's army, referencing the one that took place in Sonic Forces. The machinery, social impact, and reconstruction efforts are very much present throughout the comic.
• Star Wars: Legacy has the conflict between Galactic Republic and Empire, won by the latter, who then got into the war with the Sith.
• The Transformers (IDW) continuity has a few that happened either before or sometime during the onscreen war between the Autobots and Decepticons, which has recently ended:
  • The First Great War, which happened several million years before the comics. We don't know much about it, but Nova Prime and his allies managed to bring it to a peaceful conclusion leading the Cybertronion Golden Age.
  • The Software Wars, we know next to nothing about this one, except that Guzzle was in them and it was centered in the city of Polyhex.
  • The Lava Wars, again, we know next-to-nothing about this one. Apparently it was caused by a guy called Magma.
  • The war amongst the Stentarians between the Ammonites and Terradores. It's apparently ongoing, is older than all the other known galactic wars, and caused The Shattering, which eventually led to the formation of the Galactic Council.
  • Transformers: Last Bot Standing is set in a continutiy where the Great War is long over, and it took nearly everything in the universe with it. Few Cybertronians are left, and none are in good shape. The wars are impled to have wiped out pretty much every known race with them, including Humans and Nebulons.
• Ultimate X Men: The Brotherhood bombed the Capitol in Washington DC a week before the action starts in the first issue.

Eastern Animation

• Iron Kid: The war where Marty's ancestor fought the General is constantly mentioned even before the General's return becomes more likely. Society is still struggling to recover from it during the main series and many robots combatants from both sides are still around.

Fairy Tales

• Maid Maleen: The titular princess and her chambermaid spend seven years locked away in a tower. When they break out, both women find out Maleen's father got into a fight with the wrong ruler during their captivity, since "her father's castle lay in ruins, the town and the villages were, so far as could be seen, destroyed by fire, the fields far and wide laid to waste, and no human being was visible. [...]The enemy had ravaged the whole kingdom, driven away the King, and slain all the inhabitants." The identity of whoever destroyed the kingdom is unrevealed, but since Maleen and her servant have no longer a home, they are forced to wander around the ravaged countryside until they arrive in another city.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): It's not that overt, but there are references to Ghidorah killing other members of both Thor and Godzilla's respective species (the former because they refused to submit to Ghidorah's dominance) in the ancient past.
• Another Rainbow in Another Sky: It's mentioned that there's a civil war between the Dream Valley (G1), Friendship Gardens (G2), and Ponyville (G3) ponies. After years of absence, Paradise and Wind Whistler seek out Megan for help. The story ends with Megan, Kim, and the ponies riding off to Dream Valley.
• Beyond the Winding Road, a PandoraHearts Continuation fic, has the Great Tousterre War. Paralleling World Wars I and II, the great political mess left by the events in the manga led to a massive, bloody war between Sable and its invading neighbors. The war has political ramifications even a century later.
• Child of the Storm has a number of these, as a result of major league world building and the sheer scale of the setting.
  • The War of the Nine Realms, between the Alliance of Realms and Surtur, over a million years before the present.
  • The War for the Dawn, between Asgard and her allies and the Dark Elves, about 6000 years prior to the present when the Dark Elves tried to destroy the Nine Realms with the Aether, and rearrange them with the Dark Elves on top.
  • The Avalon Wars, a series of wars between Asgard and Avalon, as the followers of the two respective pantheons clashed, and the two pantheons wound up on collision course (though it's implied that the Avalonians fired the first shot, lashing out at what they saw as encroachment by the followers of the Asgardian gods and Christian missionaries). It ended when the Frost Giants invaded and an Enemy Mine ensued, but it's heavily implied that Asgard was winning and the Avalonians are still carrying a grudge.
  • The Last Great Frost Giant War, with Asgard, Avalon and their human allies (including the ancestors of the founders of Hogwarts) on one side, and the Frost Giants on the other, circa 500 AD. The Avalonians were swept aside early by the might of the Casket (something which Odin puts down to them having been weakened by fighting Asgard), the ancestors of the Founders rallied for the Last Stand, before Asgard played the role of Big Damn Heroes and saved the day. A long war ensured, a world war, and the allied forces won, the Frost Giants were stripped of the Casket of Ancient Winters and Loki was adopted by Odin. Odin's descriptions to Harry of what happened make it sound pretty spectacular, with notable incidents including Aethelstan Gryffindor dueling Laufey with 'swords and magic' and losing a hand (he eventually took up Mjolnir), while leaving scars to remember him by, Prospero Slytherin wielding the wand Laevaeteinn (which is heavily implied to be a fragment of the Phoenix) in a Last Stand so spectacular it retroactively carved out the Grand Canyon.
• The Tiberium War (or to the more pedantic people on the streets of Coreline that know their Command & Conquer lore, the Fourth Tiberium War) on Cline Op Ghost In The Machine. The specifics of the War are All There in the Manual for the setting, but all that is important to the protagonists is that the Brotherhood of Nod left behind a base, which was then taken over, transformed into an experiments lab, and abandoned by Aperture Science, deep within the Australian countryside that they need to explore.
• Digimon Trinity: There are repeated mentions of a war that has resulted in the protagonists of Adventure and 02 becoming Famed In-Story. While the specifics are uncertain, it has resulted in TK having become the bitter head of Hypnos, and Tai and Agumon to have vanished for fifteen years.
• Endless Pantheon: The Goa'uld and Faerie Courts went to war several millennia ago due to Thoth's Folly, a series of events which saw the Goa'uld fall from grace. The exact details of the war are not clear as the Terms which ended the hostilities also rewrote much of the Goa'uld racial memory of what happened. To the modern day, the Goa'uld still consider this to have been the only war worth mentioning as such.
• Evilhumour's "The Powers That Be" multiverse of stories has a shared one, mentioned in both A Chance Meeting of Two Moons and Diplomacy Through Schooling, the third story in the Diplomacy-verse: the alicorn-dragonequus war, in which the majority of both species fought one another in the service of Order and Chaos, the two Eldest of the Creators. This war is the reason why there are so few alicorns in the multiverse, and why the Doors to the Realms In Between have largely been sealed off. As the Diplomacy-verse notes, after it was over, Order and Chaos stepped back; their Champions for each universe are largely in charge of their business there nowadays.
  • The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Equestria fought two during the thousand-year timeskip between the prologue and first chapter.
    • The war between Equestria and the Changelings began after the destruction of Canterlot Castle and the deaths of everyone within, and ended when Blueblood slew Queen Chrysalis. Its ramifications are still being felt a thousand years later, including the treatment of the Changelings.
    • When Sombra returned, he started the Crystal World War, which lasted ten years and took the entire world working together to drive him back to his empire's capital and kill him.
• Fallout: Equestria has the war between the zebra and Equestria, which ended much like in the original Fallout (again, it's almost confirmed that the zebra fired first). We actually hear a great deal about what happened in the background of the war, but still almost never see a battle fought.
• Friendship is Witchcraft:
  • This My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic spoof series features this in the second episode, "Read it and Sleep", with Rarity admitting that she is still traumatized after The War.
  • The War is referenced again in episode 7, "Cherry Bomb", where Applejack's blue ribbons (from the episode "The Last Roundup") are portrayed as being medals from The War.
• In Frontier, it's revealed that the geth Consensus tied up the Big Bad so much that its full force is never applied to the heroes. Keep in mind how many casualties they suffered anyway, so the "full force" of said enemy might have been more like "game over."
• The Golds: At some point between Belle, Baelfire and Bella returning to Storybrooke and “Moving Day”, Cora found her way into Storybrooke and rallied half of its citizens into a frenzy, claiming that Bella is an abomination and should be killed before she brings disaster. Cora ripped her heart out and held it as leverage against her parents, only for Bella to use her first moment of instinctive magic to turn her into a rose.
• The Jackson Legacy: The Private War takes place a decade before the story kicks off.
• Justice League of Equestria: The War in Heaven; we don't know much about it, just that Athena battled and defeated Darkseid and the forces of Apokalips.
• The Legend of Genji has the Foggy Swamp & Sandbender Rebellions that took place about twenty years before the start of comic. It was a pair of uprisings staged by the indigenous Foggy Swamp and Si Wong tribes against the larger Earth Federation after the Federation attempted to expel the natives from their homelands through military force. The Foggy Swamp Rebellion resulted in the swampbenders gaining their independence after driving away the Federation's armies with the help of Avatar Korra herself. However, the Sandbender Rebellion was not as lucky and got steamrolled by the technologically superior Earth Federation, which would place the Si Wong Desert under military occupation over the next few decades while they mined the desert's underground oil deposits.
• The Man with No Name: The Great Time War and the Independence War both play important roles; besides heavily influencing how the Doctor interacts with the crew of Serenity (and vice versa) the Big Bad is revealed to be an alien who felt his people were betrayed by the Doctor during the Time War, and his sponsors are Browncoat zealots hoping to use mind-controlled Reavers to restart the Independence War.
• My Hero Academia: Mechanical green: The "Avalon War" enacted by Dr. Paxton Frederick Jones, waging war against multiple nations with his army of robots eleven years before the beginning of the fic. The war caused a lot of destruction and death, the effects of which are still being felt in the present. Numerous characters make reference to either experiencing the war itself, or having their lives irrevocably changed by the side-effects of the war, whether it be from the death of love ones such as Ochaco's parents and Mei's mother dying in the crossfire, the physical and mental toll of fighting Paxton himself, or the fallout from his causing multiple nations to collapse in on themselves, nearly succeeding with the United States too.
• The Negotiations-verse is a recursive fanfiction of The Conversion Bureau that takes place in the aftermath of the war between humanity and ponykind, with humanity emerging victorious. Nothing of the war is actually shown (until the prequel story Warfare, which describes the war in the form of journal entries written by a Royal Guard, and the fan-written side story Choice, which details a few key moments and battles), but it's stated to have gone on for five years, with both sides sustaining heavy losses (humanity lost several cities and nations that were wiped out by the barrier and at least one-third of their population while Equestria lost the Crystal Empire, three of its princesses, close to half of its population, and most of its military forces).
• Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku! has the Lantern War, a colossal conflict between the Green Lantern Corp and the Red Lantern Corp that began when the Red Lantern Corp inexplicably invaded Earth back when Izuku's adoptive grandfather was still in fighting shape. It's heavily implied to have been a bloody and brutal affair, which led to widespread xenophobia on Earth that persists into the main story. Many alien superheroes who were once praised as champions for good like the Martian Manhunter and Starfire were either ousted, forced into hiding, or killed out of sheer paranoia. Those closely associated with them, like Renegade, were treated similarly. Izuku himself is plagued with self-loathing at the start of the story for being an alien, which is only compounded by his lasting guilt complex.
• The New Age of Monsters: The first war. As in the first war ever! It happened many thousand of years ago and consisted of a series of battles between many different humans factions and their respective “gods”. Eventually, the kaijus grew disillusioned with their followers and stopped supporting them, leading to an last attempt by Mu to conquer the world by controlling kaiju to attack their weakened enemies. This proved to be the last straw for Manda and she allowed Mu to be destroyed by the other kaiju.
• The Night Unfurls: The Forever War between Celestine Lucross and Olga Discordia. The readers understand why the war broke out and has lasted for centuries (the Fantastic Racism between humanity and dark elves), many Kuroinu-original characters have been either directly involved in or affected by said war one way or another (The Seven Shields, the Black Dogs, Olga, Grace, etc.), and the war itself is still ongoing by the beginning of the fanfic (though at its final stage, since Celestine's vision foretells its end as a result of Kyril's appearance). However, the readers do not see much of the actual war, and Kyril is more of an Outside-Context Problem instead of someone affected by the war, though he does contribute to its end. Several Original Characters, namely Kyril's four apprentices, were not even born at that period. Then again, the main focus of this story is the conflict against the traitorous Black Dogs, not Celestine and Olga's century-old war.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has several mentions of Trainer-Ranger Wars in the past, with Lt. Surge having fought in the most recent one that ended 40 years ago. The sides of the war were mentioned to be the Trainer Aligned Treaty Organization (consisting of Kanto, the Orange Islands, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, and Orre) and the Fall City Pact (consisting of Fiore, Almia, and Oblivia), with side conflicts originating from one side aiding the traditional enemies of the other, such as the Fall City Pact giving aide to the Draconid Tribe that often was in conflict with the main Hoenn population. What is known about the war is that it was not pretty.
• Pony POV Series: The Great Alicorn-Draconequs War, which was a side effect of the wendigos being destroyed. The head of the Draconi, Entropy wanted retribution from being harmed by the fires of friendship, but the Alicorns said it would be misplaced blame for an accident and stood up for the mortals who did it. So, Nature's Law (The Alicorns) and Nature's Fury (The Draconi) went to war over it. There are some snippets of details provided. Discord apparently sawed off the alicorn of fate's wing during the fighting. Destruction was EATEN by discord near the end. And Death's kids chose their mother over him, but he promised them that they would never fight during the conflict. Eventually, both sides burned themselves out on how stupid this had become and called a truce, though Celestia, Luna, Galaxia and Discord ended up incarnating on earth afterwards due to fleeing the war.
• Power Rangers GPX: In great Power Rangers tradition, an ancient, pre-historical war between humans, elves and Zordonians forms the backdrop. Long story short, the Zordonians were nasty, the humans and elves got mad and kicked them off the planet, humans accidentally killed the elves' leader, the elves hid and the Zordonians returned 10,000 years later.
• The Powers of Harmony has the War of the Sun and Moon, the conflict between Celestia and Nightmare Moon, which in this story is presented as having lasted several years. There are a few flashbacks to it, but for the most part it's offscreen.
  • There's also the Blood War between the Metallic and Chromatic dragons, triggered by Discord making each side think the other killed their leader/progenitor Io. This war lasted for the entire Era of Discord (centuries, if not longer), and it was only after his defeat that Celestia and Luna were able to reveal the truth and end the war.
  • Discord also started a war between the Crystal Ponies and the other races inhabiting Tarandus, which led to the formation of the Crystal Empire (which originally lived up to the name and trope.
• Queen of All Oni: The Red King's Rebellion, wherein Tarakudo overthrew the Oni Elders. We only see a portion of the Final Battle, spread out over two separate flashbacks.
• Roanapur Connection: The Russian and EU war refered in chapter Eye Of The Storm that took place between 1987-1990, is heavily implied to have been a bloody and costly war that Europe is still recovering from years later. With Ganabati also noting the use of Chemical bombs and gas attacks that did a number on the major cities, but also on Poland and Ukraine especially.
  • The Great War is also mentioned in chapter one that Nathan states led to Japan becoming a republic in 1945 atb. Though no further details have been provided yet on it beyond Natsumi’s grandfather having fought in it.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: Act III mentions the Battle of Kahdaln, the Last Stand during a war between monsters and humans for control of the world; the monsters lost and were forced back into the monster world, thus beginning The Masquerade. In the present day, most monsters dislike talking about it to the extent that, when Ahakon brings it up in class, Ms. Nekonome promptly dismisses it as a myth.
• Shakedown Shenanigans: The current 40 Eridani Starfleet Construction Yards are built on the site of a Vulcan yard that was destroyed by a Romulan raid during the Earth-Romulan War 250 years earlier. The ongoing Federation-Klingon War also gets mentioned as the reason for the USS Bajor's construction (she's primarily a line battleship to replace combat losses) but doesn't play a role in the plot.
• Several times in Sonic X: Dark Chaos, mostly because the author has admitted that he isn't good at writing battle scenes.
  • The Demon-Seedrian War, which ended in the creation of Tsali and the near-extermination of Cosmo's race, is a major part of the backstory frequently alluded but never actually shown. The author began to write a prequel to explore it, but it was scrapped.
  • The battles between the Demons and Angels aren't really shown either - the story focuses more on the effects of said battles and the political machinations behind the scenes.
• Soul Eater: Troubled Souls: Death Weapon Meister Academy and the Witch Society have been in opposition for a long time, but their conflict hit the nadir in a time called the Period of Destruction. Lord Death claims it is the darkest and bloodiest period of war between them. Three whole centuries of on-and-off bloodshed; for reference, both World Wars began and ended during the Period of Destruction. Other notable events include the Lucrenian Clan Incident that plays a vital role in Cancer’s and Kujira’s lives and the defensive purge of the Immortal Clan necessitated from their attack on humanity.
• Tarkin's Fist: The Americas War, fought between the Union of South American Nations and the North American Union, provides some backdrop for the frigid international situation at the time of the Empire's arrival. The war is started by an emboldened South America, flush with oil money, making a land grab in Central America. The NAU intervenes. Fought over the course of three years in Central America, the Caribbean, and in Venezuela, the war ends in a draw, with the ceasefire being arbitrated by the People's Republic of China. European clandestine support for the USAN leads to a straining of relations between North America and the nations of the European Union.
• To the Stars has the Unification Wars between the United Front and Freedom Alliance. The former won and became humanity's unified government seen in the story. Most of the details are All There in the Manual.
• Utopia Unmade has the Bad End War that took place in the past, where Pierrot took control of Märchenland, renamed it the Bad End Kingdom, and attacked Majorland. The Precure Kingdom aided Majorland and eventually exterminated all the residents of the Bad End Kingdom. This was when Love realized the Precure Kingdom was heading towards something bad.
• There is the occasional mention of the Battle of Al'Zahur in Warriors of the World: Soldiers of Fortune that took place fourteen years prior to the fic. All anyone knows about the war is that it was "between mercenaries and the Chivalry", and that Valkron was part of it. He's reticent on the subject, but he does imply that it changed a lot about how the way things were run in the Kingdom afterwards.
• In With Strings Attached, Grunnel talks about how the Tayhil and their monsters conquered most of Baravada some 200 years ago, and how the skahs rose up to take back the place.
• A Young Girl's Guerrilla War: As in canon, the Second Pacific War ended with Britannia invading the Japanese mainland and forcing Tokyo’s unconditional surrender. Even many of the characters too young to have fought in it still remember the devastation. Before that, there was the First Pacific War, evidently waged between Europa Universalis and Imperial Japan approximately seventy years before the canon story, ended so poorly for the Japanese that the country was reformed into the Republic of Japan.

Films — Animation

• The Angry Birds Movie ended with the beginning of the war between the titular Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies, which was central to the Angry Birds video game series for so long. With the sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, beginning with the end of such a conflict, very much of that war becomes this trope, left to the imagination...or the series' games that you play.
• At the beginning of The Black Cauldron, the characters mention that there's a war being fought (presumably against the Horned King, given the context), but we never see any part of it, nor do we even see whom or whatever the Horned King is fighting against.

Films — Live-Action

• When watching Airplane!, they never make clear which war "The War" was for Ted Stryker, though judging by when the movie was made, one might assume Vietnam. As farcical as the entire movie is, it could very well have been some other war entirely though. Hell, it could be a war they (or Ted) completely made up as well. In one scene Ted starts having flashbacks which are represented by Stock Footage going farther and farther back, all the way through World War I biplanes and finally the Wright brothers test flight.
  • "The War" in Zero Hour! (1957), the film on which Airplane! is based, and which came out a quarter of a century earlier, was obviously World War II. This time frame informs a lot of the gags and references in the latter film.
• Devotion (2022): World War II, which most of the cast trained for but weren't able to serve in: deuteragonist Tom Hudner applied to the Naval Academy after Pearl Harbor and was a month away from graduation when Japan surrendered.
• King Arthur in First Knight waged several wars to secure and defend Camelot. Lancelot's family perished in one of those wars.
• In Godzilla vs. Kong, throughout the film, there are repeated allusions to an ancient war between Godzilla and Kong's ancestors, but the details are left very vague, including why it happened, which side started it or what the outcome was, beyond the implication that it led to the decline of both species.
• Ida is set in Poland in 1961, 16 years after the end of World War II and a decade or so after the show trials at the height of Communist oppression. Both of those traumatic experiences hang over the entire film. Ida is in search of the truth about her parents, Polish Jews who were murdered during the war. Although Wanda doesn't admit it, she obviously feels guilt over her role as a Hanging Judge during the Communist show trials of the early 1950s.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring begins with Galadriel recounting the story of the last war with Sauron, several thousand years prior. We only see the end of the final battle.
• Maleficent's backstory includes a war between humans and The Fair Folk. While the film only makes small reference to it, the novelization expands on this; notably, it was in this war that Maleficent's parents were killed. The film itself shows the two races living in segregation, though the ending implies that Queen Aurora will bring peace between them.
• In RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3 there is mention of a war in the Amazon, with Cain and the Rehabs having served in the war. The latter film sees Lewis reading a copy of USA Today in the scene of the botched donut shop robbery with the headline being the war getting worse. These were elements from Frank Miller's original script for 2, which had Sgt. Reed as having served in the war and dreading the arrival of the Rehabs as he recognized them as mercenaries from his time in the war.
• A plot point in Rollerball. Whenever the protagonist tries to find out details about the Corporate Wars he finds himself hitting a brick wall, as America is One Nation Under Copyright and doesn't want its skeletons in the closet being aired.
• Seventh Son is set about a century after a war waged by evil witches on humanity, which the world is said to still be recovering from.
• Shredder Orpheus takes place in a future dystopia sometime after the Great Contra War, which left the veteran Axel without the use of his legs and lower nervous system.
• The Clone Wars were this for the Star Wars franchise until the prequels came, then two cartoons and a lot of other things explored it, so it ultimately avoids this trope. This was actually an Enforced Trope before the prequels came out: Expanded Universe writers weren't allowed to set stories in the Clone Wars era to leave it open for George Lucas.
• The Time Machine (1960):
  • The protagonist from 1899 traveled a couple of decades into the future. One of his friends' sons mentions "the front" of "the war". It's obvious it's the First World War, but being a time-traveler, he was unaware.
  • The film loops back to this trope again in the late second act, when the protagonist visits the remnants of a museum's collection kept (however ignorantly) by the Eloi. The "talking rings" recording devices relate the horrific effects, then aftermath, of a cataclysmic global war that ostensibly occurred during the period that the Time Machine was buried in rock. (Speaking as it does of the destruction of oxygen factories and germ warfare, it's unclear whether it is the same war whose nuclear strike the protagonist narrowly avoids in his second "future stop," or one that follows.)
• Snowpiercer: A previous revolt against Wilford, the McGregor Riots from four years ago, are alluded to a few times. What happened to McGregor is unmentioned but likely bad, as the Front Section passengers shot so many advancing rebels that Curtis is convinced that bullets went "extinct."
• Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision: The first sign that Miller ignoring Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act is having unpleasant consequences like Josh Chan warned are constant vague references to a catastrophic war where Doc's husband and Chan's parents died and O'Rourke lost an eye.
• The war against the Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past. When the film starts, the war is over, and the Sentinels are just hunting the last mutant survivors.
• A Year of the Quiet Sun: The film is set in Poland in early 1946, less than a year after the end of World War II. The Recovered Territories of eastern Poland are an area that was Germany less than a year before and as such, was ravaged during the Soviet offensive. Everyone is suffering from the trauma of war. Emilia and her mother seem to have been transferred to Poland's new territory against their will, after they lost both their house and Emilia's husband in the war. Norman, the American soldier who falls in love with Emilia, suffers from trauma and nightmares from his time as POW.

Live-Action TV

• The war with the Magogs from Andromeda, the end of which caused the Nietzschean revolution, may count too, as it started at the beginning of the first episode. The episode then jumps 300 years in the future, to the main plot, not only skipping the downfall of the revolution, but also the civil war among the ones who caused it, the High Guard.
• Babylon 5
  • The Dilgar War, the first major interstellar war that the humans got involved in, as well as the previous Shadow War, which took place around a thousand years previously. We do see a glimpse of that era, mostly just some less advanced looking Minbari ships, but nothing of the war itself.
  • Also the Telepath War. We are shown only before and after.
  • And the first Narn war for independence from the Centauri, about 100 years prior to the beginning of the series.
  • Along with the numerous wars the Centauri Republic was waging with its neighbors in the third season, none of which are seen, or indeed the numerous smaller wars between the members of the League of Nonaligned Worlds in the same season.
  • There are also allusions to various minor conflicts that the Earth Alliance took part in. Not to mention the Earth Minbari War, which we heard much about, but saw little of, until the prequel movie In The Beginning.
  • Also, the Drakh War, of which we see practically nothing due the spin-off telling it getting Screwed by the Network.
  • Other important conflicts are the other Shadow Wars, the war against the Thirdspace Aliens, the one against whoever created The Hand (purpoted to be the Thirdspace Aliens in the Expanded Universe), and the genocidal war between the Centauri and their co-worlder race the Xon.
  • Discussed by Garibaldi in an introspective moment in season 5 as things move towards war with the Centauri. To paraphrase, he wonders aloud why we always divide history by the wars, not by the periods of peace, and comes to the conclusion that wars are just more fun.
  • Played With in one episode when Marcus & Dr. Franklin were being smuggled to Mars. The Earth Alliance kept out of the Vorlon-Shadow war, so from the perspective of most humans this is the case. Marcus even (sarcastically) lamented coming home as a war hero in a war nobody ever heard about.
• Both series of Battlestar Galactica have mentioned previous wars with Cylons.
  • The new BSG's First Cylon War did eventually get screentime in Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome and a flashback in the episode "Razor". The video game Battlestar Galactica Deadlock covers much of the war, though its original elements and storyline probably aren't canon. An earlier licensed video game also purports to cover that period, even being played from the perspective of Commander Adama as a rookie pilot, but it mixes and matches so many elements of the original series and remake that it probably belongs in its own separate continuity.
• The villain from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Prom " bred hellhounds which were used in the Makhash Wars, whatever that is..
• Doctor Who:
  • Episodes of the classic series referred to several different events, including the survivors of the destruction of Phaester Osiris defeating Sutekh and sealing him in a pyramid on Mars, or the ancient war between the Time Lords and the Great Vampires shortly after the beginning of time.
  • The great Cyber-Wars fought between human forces and the Cybermen were mentioned frequently, but the Cybermen were hardly even seen at the height of their power — mostly after the fact as The Remnant.
  • The Sontarans have warred with the Rutan host for at least 60,000 years of the Whoniverse's timeline (mentioned in both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures), and yet we've never encountered a Rutan and Sontaran together on TV once.
  • The Last Great Time War, between the classic and new series. It was never shown, we know only that it caused a lot of destruction and wiped out entire races, including the Time Lords, whose Sole Survivor was the Doctor. We find out that the Doctor was the one who ended the war, killing every Dalek (apart from a few who got away, of course) at the cost of also killing every Time Lord, including their own children and grandchildren. The Doctor has to deal with the consequences of the Time War from time to time and sometimes they or somebody else makes a reference to some events of it, but it's still mostly a mystery.
    • The Time War is described by the Gelth in "The Unquiet Dead", themselves being bodiless refugees of the War, as being "invisible to lesser species but devastating to higher ones", meaning that the Time War was "offscreen", as it were, to a large portion of the Universe.
    • Showrunner Steven Moffat has gone on record saying that he will never show the Time War since there isn't enough money in the world to do it justice. All we see of it in "The Day of the Doctor" is a few brief scenes of the Dalek invasion of Gallifrey at the war's climax... and it is not pretty. See also this line to The Master, in "The End of Time: Part Two":
      The Doctor: You weren’t there, in the final days of the war. You never saw what was born. But if the Time Lock’s broken then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres — the war turned into Hell. And that's what you've opened. Right above the Earth. Hell is descending.
  • Ancient battles between the Fledgling Empires (including Gallifrey) and the Racnoss were mentioned in "The Runaway Bride".
  • Played With in "The Doctor's Daughter". A war, fuelled by cloning machines, has gone on for 700 generations. It turns out that those 700 generations were cloned, shoved into battle and killed in the space of one week.
• Dominion has the Extermination War fought between humanity and the angels led by Gabriel. We saw the opening days of the conflict in Legion (the movie to which this show is a sequel), but the show is set 25 years after its conclusion.
• Earth: Final Conflict occasionally mentions the SI War that ended just prior to the arrival of the Taelons, where the SI stands for "Sino-Indian", though the US was also involved in some capacity. Not many details are revealed, but no nukes were used, which is amazing, since both China and India have them. The first protagonist fought in the war, and the second one took on the identity of someone else who did. Several other characters were also involved in various capacities. Apparently, the war ended when someone employed a new WMD called the Quantum Vortex (some suggest it was the Taelons), which killed 100,000 people. There are a few flashbacks to the events of the war through the series. There's also the Taelon-Jaridian War, of which barely anything is known, save that it has been going on for milenia and suposedly spans galaxies.
• Emerald City has the battles against the Beast Forever, which come roughly once every generation. Specifically the last war, which took place twenty years before the events of the series, resulted in the deaths of King Pastoria and Mother South, as well as the Wizard supposedly saving Oz and becoming its ruler as a result. It's eventually revealed that the King and Queen were killed by Eamonn on orders of the Wizard. Mother South is still alive and is being hidden by Glinda, breeding new witches to fight the Wizard.
• The Firefly pilot^note The original pilot 'Serenity' remained unaired for most of the series run, making the series an even stronger example of this trope. (and one other episode) contain a flashback to the "Independence War", but other than that it's just talked about, although its aftermath is the prime motivation for many of the characters. In fact it's not until Serenity that we get a clear picture of what it was actually fought over.^note Briefly, a number of worlds declined to join the Union of Allied Planets on the grounds that the economic benefits didn't justify the loss of autonomy, but eventually the Alliance stopped taking no for an answer.
• Kamen Rider Agito is a non-direct sequel to Kamen Rider Kuuga, most explicitly referenced by the police-made G3 Powered Armor being based on data from Kuuga himself. According to the backstory, Kuuga's old enemies the Grongi fought a war against another monster group, the Lords, who eventually won and became the villains of Agito. Kamen Rider Decade directly references this when the heroes go to an Alternate Universe version of Agito and land right near the end of the Grongi-Lord War.
  • And of course then there are things like the Rinto Kuuga's battle with the Grongi, the Battle Royale, and the original OOO's battle with the Greed, though that one is not what it seems.
• The Last Ship has the Immune Wars. Season 2 Big Bad Sean Ramsey and his cult, who believe that their natural immunity to the Red Flu is divine will and that they're therefore destined to rule the world, are established shortly after their introduction to have apparently taken over Europe. We never get a full explanation of this, nor what happened after Ramsey's defeat by the crew of the Nathan James, though some details are revealed over time — at the very least, Britain put up a fight, which all but wiped out the Royal Air Force in the process.
  • Season 5 reveals that there was a war between Mexico and Cuba during the global famine of Season 4. Apparently Cuba fired first by invading Mexico (though they claim that the "invaders" were actually starving refugees), which Mexico fought off before counter-invading and occupying Cuba. How this all ended isn't touched on, but Cuba is independent again in the present.
• The Insect Wars from Lexx. Despite only being mentioned once or twice in a couple episodes, the Wars are very important to the plot since they never really ended. The last surviving Insect passed his essence onto humans to create the Divine Order which helped him revive his original body and wipe out most of the Light Universe's human population in one fell swoop. His Divine Shadow takes great pleasure in telling Kai all of this.
  His Divine Shadow: The victory of your ancestors was not complete.
  Kai: You are a survivor of the Insect Civilization!
  His Divine Shadow: Yes, last of the Brunnen-G.
• Loki (2021): In the pilot, we're told that there was once a Multiversal War, as conflict broke out between various universes that threatened to wipe out all of creation, until the Time Keepers ended it and created the Time Variance Authority to ensure that only a singular timeline would exist in order to prevent this from happening again. The Season 1 finale reveals that this is only half true — the war did happen, but was specifically fought between variants of the same man (all but outright said to be Kang the Conqueror) until one managed to secure the existence of only his timeline by creating the TVA and giving them the myth of the Time Keepers to guide them. When this victorious Variant is killed by Sylvie in the finale, the timeline starts branching, indicating that the war is about to start again.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The War of Wrath is briefly shown in the Opening Monologue.
• The conflict between Dharma Initiative and the Others was only hinted at in the first four seasons of Lost, though the Season 5 gives us a pretty clear picture of it. The conflict between the Others and the US Army is even more obscure.
• Lucifer (2016): Lucifer often talks about his rebellion against his Father that led to his fall, but we see nothing of it.
• Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Several episodes into the series, after it's become apparent that mermaids have something against mermen, Rita gives an As You Know speech to the mermaid trio about how in the ancient past ("before men lived in cities"), a pod of mermen tried to conquer the oceans and make the mermaids subservient to them. Apparently, it took a betrayal from one of the mermen and the mermaid pods from all five oceans joining together to defeat them, and as a result, all mermen were banished to land.
• In Merlin (2008) there are increasingly frequent mentions of a war waged at some nebulous time before/around King Uther's time in which ancient/recent kings were pitted against the sorcerous High Priestesses.
• The Amazon War from the second and third RoboCop films carries over to RoboCop: The Series and is likewise an ongoing conflict with one of Murphy's childhood friends being part of a special ops unit that was missing and presumed killed during the war, only for said unit to turn up alive and well, suffering from issues related to the war.
• Scrubs has the Janitor mention overthrowing Kyle, the former leader the Brain Trust ("A dictatorship masquerading as a democracy") during The Revolution of '02, specifically The Battle of the Basement Supply Closet. This probably never happened.
• Silo: The Rebellion, a long-ago insurrection against the leadership of the Silo, is constantly mentioned as an event that helped shape many of the current rules of the Silo.
• Silicate War, the war with the android revolution, taking place years before events of Space: Above and Beyond.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series has a lot of those:
    • The Third World War and Eugenic Wars, all taking place on Earth and concerning only humanity. It was actually one war in the Original Series, but was later divided.
    • The war between Earth and Romulan Star Empire, which forms the backstory for the episode "Balance of Terror". When first mentioned in the original series, this war was fought entirely at extreme ranges with nuclear weapons (and with neither race ever actually seeing a member of the other). Star Trek: Enterprise depicted the build-up to the war and retconned the details a bit: both sides had access to conventional starships and weapons but the Romulans themselves remained unseen by humans.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • The wars between the Federation and the Cardassians, which were responsible for creating the Anti-Cardassian Maquis. Strangely, the wars weren't mentioned in the first seasons, only later.
    • The "brutal border wars" against the Talarians and the Tzenkethi, which happened at some point between the Original Series and The Next Generation. There was also at least one conflict with the Tholians in the same time-frame.
• The civil war in heaven among the angels in Supernatural is all off screen, which is likely justified as humans can not perceive the true form of angels without their eyes burning out.
• Played with in That Mitchell and Webb Look where a group of people are holed up in a nuclear bunker playing a game show and broadcasting in the vain hope somebody is actually watching. It all focuses around "The Event"; the only interesting thing any of the characters can think about but are sworn not to talk about for various reasons. The most probable event would be a nuclear war.
  • Or alternatively whatever caused the majority of the human population to become zombies ('Them').
• The Walking Dead Television Universe:
  • In The Walking Dead (2010), the military is mentioned to have been overtaken by the Walkers and their abandoned equipment and corpses are seen lying about in the streets of Atlanta and outside of CDC, but it's never shown how the military were defeated.
  • At least not until Fear the Walking Dead, where it becomes apparent that the military lost because they (or at least the National Guard in LA) were incompetent and evil. A recording played in a much later episode indicates that for some reason, the National Guard and regular army started fighting each other in the middle of this too.
  • The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live later clarifies that the infighting between the National Guard and US Military was the result of the Guard refusing to go along with the federal government's orders to bomb major cities in a futile attempt to contain the Zombie Apocalypse.

Podcasts

• The Adventure Zone: Balance has The Relic Wars, a global conflict fought over immensely powerful magical artifacts called the Grand Relics; it nearly destroyed the world a decade back. Most of the world doesn't remember it, thanks to Laser-Guided Amnesia.

Roleplay

• From Embers in the Dusk^note These are the most prominent examples. Technically, there are a lot more that fit the trope for the Imperial Trust, since it's a minor player located away from the big polities and the main fronts of action.:
  • The War in the Void, fought between the Necrons under the Silent King and the main Tyranid hive fleet. We don't see much of it due to it taking place outside the galaxy, but the Necrons made use of their most destructive superweapons that they don't dare use inside the galaxy for fear of wrecking the place, and the Tyranid hive fleet was a few dozen times larger than the galaxy at its height.
  • The War in Heaven in the backstory. It lasted thousands of years, and things were crazy enough that according to Word of God, the Primarchs, some of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy present-day, would only be second-tier heroes if they were around back then.
  • The Krork aganst the Eternal Conflagration. As of the third Grand Conclave, it is eight hundred Sectors of Krork against a level 4 WAAAAGH! eleven hundred sectors in size englobing them. The (almost) full might of Gork and Mork on one side versus War in Heaven technology on the other. All we know is that 1) The Krork are building Attack Moons and War Worlds. 2) The Orks are attempting to build Attack Moons but are yet to field one and 3) the Krork are confident they'll win.

Tabletop Games

• Battletech has an interesting relation to this trope, as it features multiple eras who started out being this trope. The 'classic' Battletech started in the In-Universe year of 3025 and featured an eight-hundred year backstory filled with these (of particular note were the Reunification Wars, the Amaris Civil War, and the first three Succession Wars). As the game has expanded forward in time, sourcebooks have also been released to allow games being played at these time points, using era-appropriate tech and 'mechs. The main remaining offscreen war at this point is the Outer Reaches Rebellion, as it happened 300 years before the creation of the Humongous Mecha the setting is known for.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Adventure I12 Egg of the Phoenix: The War of Ending between the forces of Evil and Old Empyrea. Doc and the silver dragon Falx fought in the war, during the adventure the Player Characters find a message that dates back to it, and one mission involves scouting one of the Castles of Ruling that played a major part in the war.
  • An attempt was made to rework the Greyhawk setting with The Greyhawk Wars (the war Iuz was preparing for in the time period of the original boxed set). The war itself was represented as a stand-alone board game only. It produced some interesting novels set in the aftermath of the War where characters often have to deal with the consequences, but the canon version of the war itself is relatively obscure.
  • The various fiends have their own GOWs that shaped their societies, such as they are.
    • The Chaotic Evil demons have the Upheaval, an ancient conflict sparked when the primordial obyriths suffered a devastating defeat in the war between Chaos and Law. The Queen of Chaos lost her most powerful champion, her alliance of other obyriths shattered, inspiring their tanar'ri servitors to rise up against them... and then an eladrin warhost saw a similar opportunity and invaded the Abyss, driving as many fiends as possible into its various layers. When the fighting was over, the power of the obyriths had been forever broken, the tanar'ri were the dominant breed of demons in the Abyss, and the Queen of Chaos was in hiding, and has not been seen since.
    • The Lawful Evil devils have the Reckoning, a great civil war that wracked the Nine Hells of Baator. The various archdevils split into two factions that attempted to unseat Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine. Unfortunately for them, Asmodeus was such as an expert chessmaster that his counter-conspiracy left his would-be usurpers utterly broken, and emerged with an even tighter grip on power. In the aftermath, the treacherous archdevils were punished in various ways — Baalzebul was transformed into a hideous slug monster, while Belial lost official rulership of Phlegethos to his daughter Fierna — though the archduke Geryon, who had served as Asmodeus' mole during the conflict, was also punished by being deposed as ruler of Stygia, perhaps because loyalty is no virtue in Hell. The grudges from the Reckoning persist to this day, though most archdevils are more concerned with getting revenge on their rivals/co-conspirators than making another serious attempt to overthrow Asmodeus.
  • Eberron has one happening just a few years before the current day of the setting. The Great War was sparked by a Succession Crisis, and lasted for about a century. It saw the creation of several nations who seceded from the original five nations of Galifar, and only ended when a mysterious catastrophe consumed the entire nation of Cyre, killing everything within its borders. The war doesn't have to be offscreen, and there are resources available for playing during the war, but the "present day" of the setting is two years after the war officially ended.
  • The backstory of the Nentir Vale setting in 4th Edition has the war between the civilization of Nerath led by King Elidyr and the gnoll demon horde headed by Yeenoghu. There was also the war between the tiefling (half-devil) empire of Bael Turath versus the dragonborn empire of Archosia. Your characters most likely will start their career scrounging leftover supplies from said wars.
• Exalted has a few examples: the Primordial War, the Aftershock War, the Usurpation and the Balorian Crusade. All of these are provided some level of detail (specifically who was fighting and why), but the exact events of the wars are generally shrouded in mystery (typically because they all involved reality being damaged to some degree).
  • And those are just wars involving the Exalted. The occasional hint is dropped regarding wars waged by gods in the era before humanity, and even occasionally to conflicts involving the Primordials prior to the existence of Creation.
  • Autochthonia has its own version in the Elemental War (so named because it so devastated the mechanical ecology that it drove thousands of elementals violently mad), which was noteworthy for being an extremely violent, ethnically driven total war in a world where most fighting is skirmishes to steal resources and supply lines.
• The setting of Flying Circus lives in the shadow of the Great War, where Himmilgard's political powers bombarded each other out of existence, tainted the landscape, and traumatized the survivors. This war takes place twenty years before the game setting's start. That's enough time where campaigns won't take place in the Great War, while keeping it enough of a presence that most characters rather want to forget.
• In Twilight: 2000 World War III is pretty much already over in 2000 when the first adventure is set, with the players as survivors of one of the last major battles. Everybody lost.
• The War of Vengeance/The War of the Beard in Warhammer led to the current state of the Elvish and Dwarf Kingdoms; Dark Elves disguised as High Elves attacked a Dwarf caravan, to which High King Gotrek sent emissaries to Phoenix King Caledor II demanding an explanation and compensation. Caledor sent the emissaries back with nothing, saying that the Dwarfs had to beg if they wanted anything. Gotrek was pissed, but sent the emissaries back another time, demanding more compensation for the insult. Caledor had their beards shaved, one of the most grievous insults to a Dwarf, starting a war that would wreck both kingdoms and leave the two races as bitter enemies.
• Given Warhammer 40,000's tagline "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war", it's unsurprising that this happens quite a lot. Most prominent are the Robot War that explains the Imperium's distrust of Artificial Intelligence, the Great Crusade in which the Emperor founded the Imperium, and the Horus Heresy which resulted in the Imperium as we know it today. Going further back, the War In Heaven between the Slaan and the Necrons sets up the backstory for the setting as a whole, but few details are ever given and even less is known in-universe. Some of these have been elaborated on more over time, especially the Horus Heresy which started as a vague explanation for why Chaos Space Marines exist and why the Emperor doesn't do much, but in recent years has become a major focus of the literature in the expanded universe.
  • There are also numerous examples of wars which would count as great in most settings, but which are so small they hardly get a mention in Warhammer. Crusades lasting decades and covering hundreds or thousands of worlds often get little more than a sentence or two of offhand mention. Even those that form the background of larger works (such as Gaunt's Ghosts) have very little of the whole war ever shown.
  • The War in Heaven is arguably the most important event in the Warhammer galaxy's history. It not only directly created three of the largest factions in the game (the Orcs, the Eldar and the Necrons), but the uncounted trillions of angry dead souls was enough to corrupt the Afterlife, turning it into the churning nightmare of a hellscape known as the Warp, making it partially responsible for Chaos as well.
• In the backstory lore of Wyrmlings, the Order of Dragon Knights fought a massive conflict against the Evil Wizards that were once menacing Dragonsdale. The Knights won and banished the Wizards in the end.

Theatre

• William Shakespeare:
  • As You Like It: Duke Senior was (somehow) deposed by his younger brother Fredrick and exiled to the Forest of Arden. A very blatant Deus ex Machina at the end restores Senior to his rightful place.
  • Old Hamlet's war with Norway in Hamlet.
  • Othello's military record might also count: he boasts at length of his experience with 'pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war', but we never see him fight. Giuseppe Verdi's opera compensates for this somewhat by having him win a naval battle in the opening scene, but this is still an Offstage Moment of Awesome.
  • Macbeth begins with a recounting of a war between Scotland and Norway.

Toys

• The Core War in BIONICLE, although we do see a very brief account of its more important moments in one of the Flashback comics. Also worth mentioning are the Matoran Civil War, the Toa-Dark Hunter War, and the Dark Hunter-Brotherhood of Makuta war, the former of which we're shown nothing, and the latter two which only show glimpses of the conflict.

Visual Novels

• In the backstory of Fate/stay night, the Third Holy Grail Wars counts, as it shaped the circumstances under which the Fifth is fought. At first, the Fourth Holy Grail War was also an example, but eventually the story was told as Fate/Zero. Said war also occurs in the backstory of Fate/Apocrypha (according to this, the Third Reich got involved after getting wind of a possibly omnipotent wish-granting device), albeit in this timeline, due to the Greater Grail being taken to Romania, neither the Fourth or Fifth occur in this timeline. Also, instead of an Avenger being summoned by the Einzbern, it was a Ruler, which means the Grail isn't corrupted in this timeline and plays into said surviving Ruler's own plans.
• ghostpia has occasional references to a devastating war that happened sometime in the past but absolutely no details about the true scale, reasons or outcome are ever given. It's speculated that the unexploded missile in the middle of town is a remnant of it.
• Buried in the backstory to Hatoful Boyfriend is the war between humans and just-uplifted birds, which started with the disorganized Hitchcock Winter, became formal when birds drew up their own Declaration of Independence, and continued for thirty years until humans surrendered. Of course things aren't entirely peaceful now...
• Sunrider has the Alliance-Imperial War, which shaped the galaxy’s current political landscape by establishing the Solar Alliance as a legitimate rival to the New Empire and breaking the latter’s dominance of the galaxy. This would lead to the Compact Revolution a century later, in which the New Empire collapsed due to internal dissent and was reorganized into the People’s Alliance for Common Treatment, or PACT.
• South Scrimshaw: The drones used for camera and illumination work are mentioned as having been created during the Pacification War on Earth. Some details are provided - the war was brief and "mostly between Earth factions" but there was threat of Orbital Bombardment, implying some degree of extra-terrestrial involvement.
• Tokyo Necro: The Sino-American war was a conflict in the VN's backstory between China and America come about as a result of the encroaching ice age that raged from 2141 to 2186 with many other countries getting dragged into it. It was during the later half of the war where the use of the living dead as cheap and perpetual soldiers were widely used leading that period to be called the War of the Dead.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue has repeated references (especially in the Recollection Trilogy) to some kind of great war against an alien race. The only details are that it took place during The Blood Gulch Chronicles and was resolved offscreen sometime between Blood Gulch and Reconstruction (or possibly sometime before the end of Blood Gulch), that Project Freelancer was one of many desperate initiatives towards the end of the war, and that humanity became allied with the aliens afterwards. As the link shows, everything indicates it's the Human-Covenant War from the Halo games the series is built on, although the connections to Master Chief's story are often very loose. (More can be read on the Red vs Blue WMG page).
• RWBY mentions a few distant wars.
  • Once upon a time, humans were driven to the brink of extinction by the Grimm. Humanity discovered the power of Dust and fought back, eventually gaining enough territory to build several kingdoms.
  • Eighty years before the start of the series came the bloody conflict between kingdoms known simply as the Great War, which pitted an expansionist alliance of Mantle and Mistral against Vale, which was later joined by Vacuo. The conflict was touched off by settlers from both sides clashing during the Mantle/Mistral expansion, though nobody knows who shot first. The aftermath of the War had profound societal consequences for all of Remnant. The King of Vale, heavily implied to be an incarnation of Professor Ozpin, who had led the decisive Final Battle, spearheaded the creation of the Huntsman Academies, one for each kingdom, in order to train the future generations of humanity's protectors. Furthermore, as an act of defiance against Mantle and Mistral's suppression of the arts,^NoteThe reasoning behind this was that the Creatures of Grimm are drawn to negative emotions, and therefore that suppressing emotional expression would decrease the likelihood of Grimm attacks. the tradition of Colorful Theme Naming got started.
  • The Faunus were treated by humanity with no small amount of Fantastic Racism throughout history, resulting in at least one Faunus Rebellion, where Faunus night vision proved itself a decisive advantage. After the Great War, they were granted the small continent of Menagerie as their new homeland, ending open conflict (but not either the racism, or the festering resentment).
  • All of the above conflicts ultimately turn out to be very relevant to the main story, as they're all heavily influenced by the messy geopolitics of Remnant intertwining with Ozma's own secret war against Salem, with the strong implication that said secret war, with all of Ozma's mistakes, have caused the society he tried to build to complete his divine mission to become so unstable and fragile under the appearance of being united, making it very easier for his enemies to undermine.
• Salad Fingers from Salad Fingers often references an event called the Great War in a few episodes. However, it's so far unknown if the war was nuclear or even existed at all as it could be all in Salad Finger's mind.

Webcomics

• Anecdote of Error takes place in the middle of a war between the countries of Batea and Alemi, but since the story takes place in a boarding school, this is just background detail. Until Alemi's army sends a small group of soldiers to invade the school, thereby dragging the main characters into the conflict despite them only being teenagers.
• More like Great Offscreen Brawls. In various Celestia's Servant Interview comics, Gig, Master of Death, would antagonize the pony being interviewed that strip. In the comments after Rarity's fifth interview, he paint-bombed the Carousel Boutique, and... well Rainbow Dash gives the fallout both short-term and long-term after the fifth reverse interview. To summarize: Fighting accomplished nothing beyond hospitalizing Dashie twice, and the memory spell didn't work either.
  • Since Derpibooru's days may be numbered, here is the summary:
    Nightwing: Gig maybe? since in one of rarity’s asks he did throw a paint bomb into her boutique.
    Rainbow Dash: That was when I lost my temper and fought with him. I’m not into fashion myself, but Rarity is awesome, and no one does that do her. When a hoof sandwich proved ineffective, I really lost it and gave him a fast-moving shod back hoof to his little monkey balls. That only angered him, and he slammed me into the ground. Trip one to the hospital, and that was when I discovered the "One Hocklet to Rule them All" trilogy. /)^3^(\
    After the fifth Twilight Sparkle interview, Twilight determined that we could safely borrow the Elements from the Tree of Harmony for just long enough to turn him to stone. Gig did not stay petrified, though, and he beat me to a pulp again, If it weren’t for Zecora my wings would have had to be amputated. I still had to go to the hospital again.
    Then the princesses called the emergency meeting to learn as much as possible about Gig. The six of us were there, as were primate experts Lyra Heartstrings and Sunset Shimmer. Bon Bon was there though I’m not supposed to say why, and Django was there because he knew about Gig. There we learned about Gig’s former good self as Vigilance, and Twilight decided to use the memory spell to awaken his Vigilance memories.
    Pinkie found some hotpods, somehow. Just by being Pinkie Pie, I guess. Anyway, Gig came for them and Twilight cast the memory spell. Sadly, the Vigilance memories didn’t stick.
• In Crimson Knights the war between Crales and Aleovohan happens entirely off-panel apart from the attack on Brennus Cliff which is seen first hand. The war in the South in the Soburgian Empire (implied to be much grander in scope) is also completely unseen.
• One (probably two) of the four "Breakings" from The Dragon Doctors.
• There are several of these in Drowtales, including several wars of the Surface between the Dark and Light Elves and the conflict that eventually led to the Surface becoming uninhabitable, forcing the remaining elves to flee underground. Then there's the war between the Dark Elves and their children, the Drow, which led to the near extinction of the Dark Elves. The city of Chel'el'sussoloth also has a few of these such as the Sharen vs. the Sullisin'rune and various other times the Imperial forces have come into conflict with rogue clans.
• Gene Catlow: There was some sort of armed conflict that led to the Animen being granted full civil rights and several older supporting characters were a part of it. But it's never been spelled out whether this was a full-on revolution, an "Arab Spring" type uprising or a touchstone event like the Stonewall Riots.
• The war with the Other in Girl Genius occurred about twenty years before the events of the comic, and was basically a Steampunk zombie apocalypse. Then, after the Other's unexplained disappearance, the surviving Sparks and nobles immediately started fighting over what was left. Klaus put a stop to all that. Two centuries previously had been the war between the Storm King's Alliance and the Heterodynes, whose ending set the stage for centuries of scheming over who would be Andronicus' successor.
• How to Raise Your Teenage Dragon references the Nephilim War, an invasion of the friendly furry kingdom Xootopia.
• The Universal War in Kill Six Billion Demons, which is long over by the beginning of the comic's story. It was a Divine Conflict free-for-all between all the Demiurges that took a millennia to die down, and whittled the Demiurges' numbers down from over a million to seven. Many of the surviving seven obtained their power during the War, having been born mundane during or shortly prior to its beginning, and at least one appears to be motivated by what he experienced during the war. Another character is revealed to have had the makings of one of the seven, but had a revelation about the pointlessness of winning such a war and abandoned all power.
• In Oceanfalls, There is a mysterious war as part of the setting's backstory, between humans and monsters. Aria's mother died in it. It was ended by the creation of a barrier which divided the human and monster worlds; it is this same barrier that forms a massive dome which traps both worlds inside it. Nino's psychological reaction indicates that he has some dark connection to it.
• Only Human has Luna War I and Luna War II, which eventually brought the end of human civilization.
• ReBoot: Code of Honor: It's said that Megabyte's "Hunt" from the end of Season Four eventually escalated into a Net-wide Viral War, which affected tens of thousands of systems. Very little of it is shown, though, as the comic begins in the last days of it.
• Res Nullius: The story takes place immediately after a genocidal war that (Possibly) left the two protagonists as the Last of Their Kind. Details of the war, including the name of the species that decimated two spacefaring civilizations, have been minimal.
• Ronin Galaxy: Taylor speaks to Cecil about the current war-like state of Earth and her difficulty getting to the Moon on this page. Cecil retorts that Earth is an "antique collecting space dust."
• The Teraport Wars from Schlock Mercenary count as a rare example of a war concurrent with the story. Although it's pretty easy to imagine the effects the Teraport would have on a galaxy used to wormgate travel for war and trading, we never actually see much of the chaos the invention actually inflicts on galactic civilization apart from a single battle.
  • Also the Terraforming wars, back when both Tagons were in the Celeschul military. A faction of the human population of Celeschul wanted to terraform some of the other planets in the system, but the Schuul natives forbid it, eventually they rebelled, and were very much uncivilized about it.
• The Old War in Skin Horse has been mentioned a few times. Tip has no idea what it was, and finds it very hard to get details from the nonhuman community, either because a crisis is going on, or because they don't actually know anything. We eventually get the details in "Mixed-Up Files", starting here. It turns out to be a desperate shadow war in the 19th century between human and nonhuman, provoked by Moustachio's attack on the Great Exhibition.
• The Sanity Circus: Centuries before the plot, there was a war between humans and sorcerers (in Attley's words, 'The sorcerers invented magic and humans got huffy about that'). In the end humans won and the sorcerers were wiped out, but not before the last one created the Scarecrows.
• Sister Claire has a war between the Witches and the Nuns about 20 years ago that greatly affected the world, including causing bits of the landscape to be missing, and the after effects still linger among the characters, several of whom were on either side, including Catharine's sister Clementine, who was the leader of the Witches known as The Bright One.

Web Original

• In the NatOne Productions universe of Denazra, this trope has been going on for hundreds of years. The titular denazra have been conquering our tiny slice of the galaxy over the course of many generations. Most recently, the Coalition was completely routed at Orm.
• Several previous conflicts are mentioned in The Solstice War but only the Ayvartan Civil War and the Nocht Unification War have been explored the tiniest bit in the story (through short flashbacks). At one point a character has a flashback of a dozen conflicts, suggesting a long history of Great Off-Screen Wars.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time takes place a thousand years after "The Mushroom War", which pretty much destroyed all of humanity. The events aren't elaborated on for the first third of the series' run. It isn't until the episodes "Finn the Human" and "Jake the Dog" that we explicitly learn it was a nuclear conflict, and one of the bombs unleashed massive mutagenic (and magical) energies, and these energies either gave birth to the Lich or revived him in the then-modern world. A solid third of the planet was also blown up, with observers from space being able to see a giant gap that goes all the way down to the core.
  • Also mentioned at one point is a war between rainicorns and dogs, which is never elaborated upon (beyond mention of Lady Rainicorn's father being saved by a dog at some point during it) but shown as a cause for great strife between the species.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Fire Nation's war against the rest of the world is an interesting variation, as while it is ongoing, it still fits within the realms of this trope: We see much of the actual effects of the war, with the show taking place during its final year, but we get little information concerning the period between the Fire Nation beginning their expansion and colonization of other countries at the start of the war to the present. We only see some snippets of the raids on the Southern Water Tribe and Iroh's assault on Ba Sing Se through flashbacks while most other battles are only alluded to. Even over the course of the show itself we don 't see that much of the actual war, with only a small handful of major military battles being shown. (four, maybe five if you count "The Drill"). In fact, the entire century of conflict between Aang's freezing to when Katara frees him is mostly untouched, even in fan fiction.
• Batman Beyond referred occasionally to "The Near-Apocalypse of '09", wherein the Justice League managed to seemingly kill the notoriously unkillable Ra's Al Ghul for good. Its nature has been speculated on for years by DC Animated Universe fans; one guess is that it was the final battle of Justice League Unlimited, which was definitely a "near-apocalypse", but the instigator of that conflict was Darkseid, not Al Ghul.
• Centaurworld: Multiple episodes mention that Centaurworld went through a major and devastating war a few decades ago — several characters let slip that their goofy and cheerful personalities are a way to cope with the horrors they experienced, and a flashback shows that Wammawink was orphaned when her village was destroyed — but it's not explained precisely what happened there beyond the revelation that it involved the same monsters now attacking the human world.
• Exo Squad: The Neosapien Rebellion a.k.a. the First Neosapien War fifty years ago. It is particularly oft mentioned in the early episodes, before the Second Neosapien War breaks out and easily surpasses the original one in scope and impact.
• Futurama occasionally makes reference to some war or another, usually for a quick gag. One time one is relevant to the main plot is in "Three Hundred Big Boys", where the spoils from a recently won Bug War are spread among the populace. There were also the Star Trek Wars (not to be confused with the "Star Wars Trek"), which resulted in the banning of Star Trek, which led into the events of "Where No Fan Has Gone Before".
• Imago is a fantasy Mons Series chock-full of powerful mages and their magical animal companions… who are seldom seen as they are off fighting the main villain. Meanwhile, the focus is on the group of kid heroes, who can hardly receive any assistance from adults.
• Kulipari: An Army of Frogs has the Hiding War, in which the Turtle King, Sergu, raised a great ward (the Veil) over the Amphibilands to keep them safe, and an entire generation of the Frog's elite Kulipari warriors died throwing themselves against a scorpion horde to buy him the time to do it. This is a major background event, particularly as the hero, Darrel's, father was one of the Kulipari who died in that final battle.
• Lloyd in Space: The show's description and marketing mentioned that it takes place shortly after World war IX, only for said war to never get mentioned in the show proper or have any implications on the world. It was likely either a dropped plot or an excuse as to why the show constantly deals with Fantastic Racism between the alien races.
• Parodied in the The Simpsons Flash Forward episode "Lisa's Wedding", which suggested that WWIII took place some time between 1995 to 2010.
  Moe: Oh-ho, an English boy, huh? You know, we saved your ass in World War II.
  Hugh: Yeah? Well, we saved your arse in World War III.
  Moe: (beat) That's true.
• Saving Me: As season 2 reveals, the Inter-Galactic Alliance, whom Earth is secretly allied with. Has been at war with a hostile alien race that's been rampaging across the universe known as the Gundrene, for an indeterminate amount of time.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) has a briefly-mentioned "Great War". Robotnik had put himself into a position to take over by helping Mobotropolis win it. The war itself is explored in the comic adaptation but the circumstances that lead into the coup are similar in both media.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, Mr. Krabs is repeatedly alluded to having served in the Navy, with the episode "Krusty Krabs Training Video" stating he started the restaurant some time "after the war". While his past in the Navy itself has received some attention (we've seen some of his former shipmates, and his work as a deckhand pops up every now and then), there's been no detail given on what the "war" actually was.
• The Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon" imports the Kzinti from Larry Niven's Known Space stories, and with it the backstory of their having fought multiple wars with humanity and lost all of them.
• Steven Universe: Much of what occurs in the series has its roots in a war that took place 5,750 years ago, in which an alien race known as the Gems fought over the colonization of Earth. The splinter group devoted to protecting the planet, the Crystal Gems, won a Pyrrhic Victory after a thousand years, losing all but 4 warriors to a final attack that turned the rest into berserk monsters. The advancement that was made in colonizing the planet also led to a completely different geography and an Alternate History where various wars were never fought and most holidays never developed.
• A Thousand and One... Americas:
  • In the twenty-fifth episode, a friendly Toltec courier tells Chris about a long, violent war between the factions led respectively by Mixcoatl (the first-ever chief of the Toltecs) and Chimalma (the goddess of fertility, and the overseer of life and death). The episode only shows a flashback of the last few moments of the way, when nearly everybody from both factions succumbed and only the two aforementioned generals stood up. The two decide to drop their weapons, and not only put a halt to the war but also married (unfortunately, Chimalma later succumed to a Death by Childbirth). The child conceived by them was a child who, upon growing up, defeated a Feathered Serpent that was attacking his homeland and then unified the two previously-conflicting factions, thus founding Tula.
  • In the final episode, it is briefly narrated that the Aztecs were a proud warrior civilization, and engaged into a war against other people. They won, leading to their status as the most powerful and advance pre-Columbian civilization until the arrival of the Europeans (led by Christopher Columbus).
• Transformers has this to varying degrees, the Cartoon itself is a straight example, as the war has restarted on Earth and the million-year war on Cybertron is only alluded to.
  • The war between the Autobots and the Decepticons in Transformers: Animated. By the time the series starts, the war is over, with the Autobots having won and the Decepticons scattered to the far reaches of space.
  • The first flashback material was repurposed clips from The Transformers Generation One. We later see some flashbacks from Ratchet's perspective.
  • Transformers: Generation 1 contains references to the Third and Fourth Great (or "Cybertronian") Wars, the assumption being that there were a first and second. (They're probably in the fourth one. Or the fifth, if you consider the ending of The Transformers: The Movie to be the end of that particular war.)
  • In the Generation 1 episode "Sea Change", Perceptor mentions a "Third Cybertron War". Apparently separate from the Third Cybertronian War. Though given the context, it's not clear.
  • At some point in the process of writing some of the later spin-off comics, the writers appear to have decided that all the above were effectively one single conflict with occasional lulls or ceasefires, thus handily allowing any confusion over which war a particular character happened to be referencing at the time to be Hand Waved as the Cybertronians having trouble keeping track as well: If the only actual peace was the occasional short interlude where everyone was busy rearming they'd have to start blurring together after a while.
  • In Transformers: EarthSpark, the Transformers War is central to the setting and the backstory of several characters including Dot Malto, a veteran of the war and friend to a reformed Megatron, and Dr. Meridian, who has sworn to wipe out all Cybertronians after losing his arm in an attack on San Francisco.
• The Venture Bros. makes occasional references to the "Pyramid Wars" of 1987, in which the O.S.I. finally defeated S.P.H.I.N.X. (largely parodies of G.I. Joe and Cobra). While some characters are said to have fought in it, very little detail is given.

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