History Main / FloodedFutureWorld

* ''WesternAnimat/{{Chaotic}}'': In Season 2, the characters find a network of caves that act as portals through time, and find that in the future all of Perim is apparently under water, with ''something'' lurking under the waves. This turns out to be {{Foreshadowing}} the M'arrillian Invasion later in the season, with their ultimate goal being to cause this (since they not only survive but thrive in those conditions, unlike everyone else). [[spoiler: Given that the M'arrilians' plan is thwarted, this has been relegated to a BadFuture]].

In more downplayed settings, humanity may be able to scrape along in the drowned lowlands, sometimes inhabiting the higher reaches of buildings or natural formations poking above the waterline, or may retreat altogether to higher ground. In the most intense cases of global flooding, survivors will often be forced to live on rafts, ships, and other waterborne vehicles drifting along the currents, although luckier sorts may be able to hold on in a CityOnTheWater or an UnderwaterCity. Either way, humanity will likely develop into highly nautical societies. Survivors will typically have to deal with intense resource scarcity, since all the stone and metal and forests are at the bottom of the sea, and remaining artifacts and technology will be rare and precious commodities. This often leads to a full-on ScavengerWorld if they come to rely on gathering flotsam or diving to submerged ruins for artifacts and materials. Particularly unlucky ones might also get {{Sea Monster}}s in the bargain. In cases where islands or other emerged lands exist, they'll either be the main refuge of society or semi-mythical promised lands that the seabound survivors yearn to find.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'': In the comic book adaptation, the reason the family lives in the sky is due to flooding. This isn't the case in the cartoon it was adapted from, where we see the surface and it looks fine.

* ''The World Sinks Except Japan'': Climate change has made the sea levels rise so much that every landmass in the world has sunk... [[ExactlyWhatOtSaysOnTheTin except for Japan]].

* ''Film/TheWorldSinksExceptJapan'': Climate change has made the sea levels rise so much that every landmass in the world has sunk... except for Japan.

* The ''Literature/GregMandel'' trilogy by Creator/PeterFHamilton is set in a GlobalWarming Britain with housing shortages due to coastal evacuation and a lot of arable land turned to salt marsh, made worse by the inefficient Communist government which used to run the country -- Greg notes that building levees is among the oldest form of civil engineering.

* ''Anime/FutureBoyConan'' is set after [[NuclearWeaponsTaboo geomagnetic weapons]] shift the Earth's crust such that the oceans have flooded the world. The bad guys live on an island that's the sole surviving industrial center on the planet, and even they are forced to scavenge from the ocean floor. [[spoiler:The Earth's plates are still shifting two decades after the weapons were last used, causing Industria to sink but a new continent/island to be form.]]

* ''VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest'': Much of UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco is at least partially flooded, with certain buildings being entirely underwater.

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* ''Anime/LaMaisonEnPetitsCubes'' by Kunio Kato transpires on an Earth that's mostly seawater. The level rises steadily, as the main character discovers one morning while getting out of bed when his feet get wet in inch-deep water on his floor. The solution is to build another room atop his current room, which he has done five or six times previously. There are a few other people that visit him, always traveling by boat, which is also how the man acquires his building materials.

* ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'': The HumongousMecha were originally developed to construct barrier dams to protect coastal cities from being flooded due to Climate Change. {{Downplayed|Trope}}, as the flooding is not catastrophic and is merely part of the background.
* ''Anime/WeatheringWithYou'': downplayed as the the films is set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, however Tokyo is beginning to steadily become more and more flooded until Tokyo is completely submerged by the end.

* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'': A Climate Change catastrophe causes New York City to flood. Then the falling temperature causes the flood waters to freeze over.
* The 2023 film ''[[Film/LastSentinel2023 Last Sentinel]]'' takes place in a future where GlobalWarming has reduced the landmass to only two continents which are at war with each other over [[NoBloodForPhlebotinum what little remains of land and resources]].

* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' is the {{Aesop}} version, created when runaway {{global warming}} floods the entire planet. Humans mostly inhabit "atolls", ramshackle floating villages built out of whatever junk and flotsam could be scavenged from the sea, but there are also Drifters who spend their entire lives sailing nomadically between villages on one-person boats, aquatic mutants with gills behind their ears, and the Smokers, feared pirates with access to the only remaining motorcraft. There are also mutant sea monsters in the oceans, and food plants and soil have also become rare and valuable luxuries. Myth claims that a single piece of dry land remains, and most of the movie follows a hunt for this island. In the end, it's revealed that [[spoiler:the island exists -- it's the tip of Mount Everest]].
* ''Film/TheWorldSinksExceptJapan'': Climate Change has made the sea levels rise so much that every landmass in the world has sunk... except for Japan.

* ''Literature/ConcienciaYVoluntad'' takes place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, where runaway Climate Change has sunk all coastal cities -- the walls around [[CrystalSpiresAndTogas La Plata]] are partly to keep the waters at bay, and partly to provide cover against the roamers of the ruins of sunken Buenos Aires.

* ''Literature/TheKrakenWakes'' by Creator/JohnWyndham depicts unseen aliens colonizing the Earth's oceans, and eventually melting the icecaps to cripple human civilization. The bulk of the novel is set in England, and the reader witnesses London becoming mostly submerged and abandoned.

* ''Literature/NewYork2140'': In the titular year, the BigApplesauce has become a CityOfCanals not unlike Venice due to Climate Change.

* ''Series/TheFutureIsWild'' has this happen in the "100 million years from now" segment. Earth has a hothouse climate, with shallow seas covering most of what were once valleys and lowlands.

* ''Videogame/{{Brink}}'': TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, global warming and rising sea levels have rendered most of the earth a giant ocean, with the Ark, a CityOnTheWater built before the flooding, and a few mountaintops as the only known places where humans survive. The Ark itself is suffering an OverpopulationCrisis due to holding nine times as many people as it was originally designed to host, leading to resource shortages, severe wealth inequality, resentment between the refugee community and the Ark's Founders, and eventual civil war.
* ''VideoGame/CivilizationCallToPower'': If enough pollution occurs, the sea level can rise.
* ''VideoGame/CivilizationVI'': In the expansion "Gathering Storm", polar ice caps begin to melt and some coastal land tiles become flooded when enough carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from industrial buildings and units.

* ''VideoGame/LethalSkies'' is set in an OceanPunk-type setting after melting glaciers have flooded most of the planet.

* ''Webcomic/EnnuiGo'' has a video game called "Deluge" where [[{{VideoGame/Fallout}} the post-apocalyptic Earth is flooded and culture stuck in the 90s.]]

* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' is TheAesop version, created when runaway {{global warming}} floods the entire planet. Humans mostly inhabit "atolls", ramshackle floating villages built out of whatever junk and flotsam could be scavenged from the sea, but there are also Drifters who spend their entire lives sailing nomadically between villages on one-person boats, aquatic mutants with gills behind their ears, and the Smokers, feared pirates with access to the only remaining motorcraft. There are also mutant sea monsters in the oceans, and food plants and soil have also become rare and valuable luxuries. Myth claims that a single piece of dry land remains, and most of the movie follows a hunt for this island. In the end, it's revealed that [[spoiler:the island exists -- it's the tip of Mount Everest]].

* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' is the aesop version, created when runaway global warming floods the entire planet. Humans mostly inhabit "atolls", ramshackle floating villages built out of whatever junk and flotsam could be scavenged from the sea, but there are also Drifters who spend their entire lives sailing nomadically between villages on one-person boats, aquatic mutants with gills behind their ears, and the Smokers, feared pirates with access to the only remaining motorcraft. There are also mutant sea monsters in the oceans, and food plants and soil have also become rare and valuable luxuries. Myth claims that a single piece of dry land remains, and most of the movie follows a hunt for this island. In the end, it's revealed that [[spoiler:the island exists -- it's the tip of Mount Everest]].

In more downplayed settings, humanity may be able to scrape along in the drowned lowlands, sometimes inhabiting the higher reaches of buildings or natural formations poking above the waterline, or may retreat altogether to higher ground. In the most intense cases of global flooding, survivors will often be forced to live on rafts, ships, and other waterborne vehicles drifting along the currents, although luckier sorts may be able to hold on in a CityOnTheWater or an UnderwaterCity. Either way, humanity will likely develop into highly nautical societies. Survivors will typically have to deal with intense resource scarcity, since all the stone and metal and forests are at the bottom of the sea, and remaining artifacts and technology will be rare and precious commodities. This often leads to a full-on ScavengerWorld if they come to rely on gathering flotsam or diving to submerged ruins for artifacts and materials. In cases where islands or other emerged lands exist, they'll either be the main refuge of society or semi-mythical promised lands that the seabound survivors yearn to find.

* ''Manga/YokohamaKaidashiKikou'': Due to an environmental shift whose details are largely unrevealed, sea levels have risen dramatically, [[SunkenCity submerging a great many coastal cities]] completely.

* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' is the aesop version, created when runaway global warming floods the entire planet. Humans mostly inhabit "atolls", ramshackle floating villages built out of whatever junk and flotsam could be scavenged from the sea, but there are also Drifters who spend their entire lives sailing nomadically between villages on one-person boats, aquatic mutants with gills behind their ears, and the Smokers, feared pirates with access to the only remaining motorcraft. Food plants and soil have also become rare and valuable luxuries. Myth claims that a single piece of dry land remains, and most of the movie follows a hunt for this island. In the end, it's revealed that [[spoiler:the island exists -- it's the tip of Mount Everest]].

* ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends'' takes place thousands of years later in the encompassing ''Mega Man'' timeline, and the opening narration states that the world is filled with water. What few settlements left around the world exist on islands or are built over the ruins of a past civilizations, if not both. Earlier installments in the ''Mega Man'' franchise show much more landmass among the various areas of the world.

Not much has changed by they lived underwater''

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': The Foundation narrowly averted one of these at [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2894 SCP-2894]]. The site was originally an island containing an underground portal to an alien sea, which constantly expelled water into the Earth's oceans. This caused global sea levels to rise steadily, and Foundation scientists predicted that the two worlds' sea levels would only equalize well after the Earth was completely flooded by water. In the end, the apocalypse was only prevented by [[spoiler: [[RetGone retroactively erasing]] the island and the portal from existence]].