History Main / PollutedWasteland

** It's revealed that [[spoiler:Kaido]] turned the majority of [[spoiler:Wano Country]] into this over the course of merely 20 years, thanks to the pollution created by his weapons factory. The rivers are poisonous, as are the animals that drink from them.

The Polluted Wasteland, often found in more realistic, {{dystopia}}n or Sci-Fi settings, is an {{Aesop}} against [[GreenAesop abusing resources]]. Its inhabitants stripped the land of everything good, and polluted the air. This may justify the activities of PlanetLooters who raid other worlds for the resources that they've squandered on their own.

* ''Anime/{{Simoun}}'': The island nation of Argentum is a SF {{anime}} example. The water and air are toxic and the skies are blackened with smog. The people need to wear masks constantly and it's shown that many are dying from the poisoning.
* ''Anime/{{Windaria}}'': One of the three areas is called 'The Shadowlands' and provides a {{foil}} for [[{{Arcadia}} The Valley]] in that it is dirtier, darker and based on industry instead of agriculture. Alan even states that farming is impossible in the Shadowland and drinking the water is lethal or insanity producing.

%%* ''Franchise/TheDCU'': The planet Apokolips in ''ComicBook/NewGods'', ruled by ComicBook/{{Darkseid}}.
* ''ComicBook/DisneyComics'': In "Be Leery of Lake Eerie", Huey, Dewey, Louie and the Junior Woodchucks discover a dragon that lives off of Lake Eerie's pollutants, only for the dragon to meet its demise when the rain dilutes the lake to a 98% impure level.
* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': In the ''Deadworld'' universe, the American government initiated an extensive mining operation at the very south of country that eventually transformed the region into the heavily polluted Fracklands ("five hundred miles of ''hell''"). The original residents were evicted and those who refused were arrested and then given a life sentence of servitude in the military's "national resource protection unit[s]". The pollution caused the unfortunate resident to mutate into misshapen horrors. President Douglas Boone then built a great wall on the Fracklands border to keep out mutants and other undesirables.

* ''WesternAnimation/FernGullyTheLastRainforest'': This is the villain Hexxus's ideal environment, and what he wants to turn Ferngully into. His entire mission is to spread destruction and pollution everywhere because he's literally [[MadeOfEvil made of the stuff]].

* ''Film/BladeRunner'': Future UsefulNotes/LosAngeles is covered in thick smog from pollution, and although it's still a high functioning urban area it's a horrible place to live. By the time ''Film/BladeRunner2049'' takes place, the entire biosphere has finally died off.

* ''Film/ShockingDark'': Future UsefulNotes/{{Venice}} has been so badly contaminated with toxic waste that the city's population has been forced to abandon it and move elsewhere. [[spoiler:This was deliberately engineered by the corrupt [[MegaCorp Tubular Corporation]] in order to increase their profit margin]].
* ''Film/SoylentGreen'': The world exists on the absolute cusp of becoming one, being so polluted, filthy, and overheated from climate change that things like milk and meat are considered delicacies that only the richest citizens can afford while everyone else is forced to subsist on the titular Soylent products made of soy or krill from the oceans. [[spoiler:Just seeing video footage of the way the world is today is enough to bring the protagonist to tears, and the big reveal is that ocean life is now ''extinct'' and Soylent Green is made out of people.]]

* ''Film/TheTimeMachine2002'': The protagonist sees the BadFuture depicted this way after defeating the Uber Morlock with his time machine.

* ''Literature/ClockworkCentury'': Seattle has become this in ''Boneshaker''. A giant drilling machine released a poisonous gas which blocks out the sun, made the air toxic to breathe, and killed all the plant life and people...or turned them in to zombies. Also there are frequent earthquakes and the small living population is made up of outlaws whose de facto ruler is an evil MadScientist.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': PlayedForLaughs; the River Ankh is so polluted from two cities dumping their refuse into it that the water occasionally catches fire, and people jumping off the bridges to commit suicide have to break through the crust first. Corpses don't get disposed of in it, they get thrown ''on'' it. Anyone invading from the sea needs gangs of men with shovels so their ships can move up. And so on.
* ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'': Giedi Prime, homeworld of House Harkonnen, has had its environment ravaged by overindustrialization.
* ''Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle'': In the Seventh Circle, the rise of pollution and environmental degradation among humanity has made it necessary to separate the violent against nature from the violent against art and God, who were previously all sent to the desert of fire. The new area takes the form of a great valley, cutting through the Wood of Suicides and deep into the desert; it is referred to in the sequel as the Valley of Desolation. It is a barren, polluted waste of churned mud filled with garbage, toxic waste, and oily puddles, cut through by a sluggish river of brown-and-purple slime and dotted with smoke-belching factories and great strip mines. The souls of the worst polluters are sentenced here, to run through toxic slurry while chased by living bulldozers.
* ''Literature/TheLorax'': The land that was once populated by Truffula trees and various animals becomes a Polluted Wasteland when all the trees are cut down, sludge is dumped into the water and pollutants are pumped into the air. The story ends on a bittersweet, yet cautiously optimistic note when [[spoiler:a young boy is given the last Truffula seed and told to replant the forest, in hopes of bringing the area to its former glory]].
* ''Literature/TheLotusWar'': The Fushima Islands'. The local MultipurposeMonoculturedCrop is poisoning the environment. A horrendously poorly-burning fuel is processed from its seeds, its pollen is so thick it colors the sky and contributes to the Greenhouse Effect, and it poisons the soil with its waste products unless [[spoiler:it's fed blood, so all the animals that didn't get eaten got mashed into fertilizer; now that they're out of animals they're using [[HumanResources POW's]]]]. Everyone's addicted to smoking its leaves to boot. Despite this, the local MegaCorp, which worships it, keeps growing vast amounts of it. People in cities have to wear gas masks at all times when outdoors, some making do with rags tied around their faces. Those too poor to afford a proper mask develop ''lung cancer''. The rain is black and causes chemical burns.
* ''Literature/{{Malevil}}'': Pastoral rural France becomes this following WorldWarIII. The forests charred, the farms and village smashed ''then'' incinerated, [[TheNightThatNeverEnds the sky darkened by ash]], and the overpowering stench of death and smoke.
* ''Literature/TheRunningMan'': Most of America in 2025. The corporate networks have gained unrestricted license to pump out exhaust gasses that cause a surge in bronchitis cases, to the point where the relatively well-off part of the population use special nose filters.

** The planet Sullust was never particularly hospitable with large parts of the native live evolving underground. The planet is also extremely rich in natural resources and the local Sullustans are known as great engineers, which made it one of the main manufacturers of starships in the galaxy with pretty much no concerns for natural preservation, as not even the natives wanted to go outside if it could be avoided, and rather lived on space stations when supporting the underground settlements became problematic.
** Raxus Prime (introduced by the ''Literature/BobaFett'' childrens' series) is an entire planet designated as the galaxy's garbage dump.
* ''Literature/UnderTheDome'': [[spoiler:Chester's Mill]] briefly becomes this in the last few chapters, when Big Jim Rennie sends members of his new police force to the radio station to collect some of the propane he has been stealing from the town [[spoiler:to run his meth lab]]. Chef panics and [[spoiler:blows up the meth lab, releasing a wave of fire that sweeps down from the old radio station and torches half the town, obscuring the surface of the dome and turning the town into a darkened wasteland with a toxic atmosphere]].
* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': In the Literature/{{Ultramarines}} novel ''Dead Sky Black Sun'', Uriel and Pasanius find that a Chaos-warped AfterlifeExpress has carried them into planet Medrengard in the Eye of Terror. Hideous, impossible landscapes haunted by monsters and hold many dead bodies, containing tunnels that can [[DrivenToSuicide drive people to murder and suicide]], and a city of AlienGeometries with [[LightIsNotGood strange light creatures]] and [[MobileMaze impossible to trace routes]], pollutants that come to life as {{Living Shadow}}s and an EvilTowerOfOminousness.
* ''Literature/TheWitchlands'': Southern Nubrevna. During the war, it came under heavy attack by Poisonwitches, who turned the water and earth there heavily toxic, to the point where vast swaths of it are completely devoid of life save for slowly-dying trees.
* Hugh Howey's ''Literature/{{Wool}}'' has the outside world beyond the silo everyone is living in to be so ruined that to go outside is a death sentence. [[spoiler:Or at least it seems to be...]]

* ''Series/The100'': {{Double subver|sion}}ted. The Sky People were expecting Earth to still be a toxic, radioactive DeathWorld after the [[WorldWarIII nuclear war]] a century ago. Instead they find a lush, vibrant and abundantly habitable world, with little sign of nuclear contamination. Then they find out that Earth actually ''is'' still highly radioactive; they've just developed an unusually high tolerance for radiation, as have the various plants and animals on the planet's surface. The Mountain Men, who haven't developed such superhuman tolerance, find the Earth's surface just as toxic and deadly as the Sky People feared.

** The planet Skaro, as depicted in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]" and several Expanded Universe media, thanks to a centuries-long war of attrition involving nuclear and chemical weapons. And that was ''before'' the Daleks came into the picture.

--->'''Seventh Doctor:''' Thousands of years in the future, the Earth lies dying, the surface just a chemical slime. Half a million years of industrial progress.
--->'''Haemovore:''' I am the last. The last living creature on Earth. I watched my world dying with chemicals, and I could do nothing. My world is dead.

** The series is the TropeNamer for "EarthThatWas", though the details are somewhat vague and comics reveal that it's not totally dead. In addition, much the same thing happened to Mal's homeworld, Shadow, at the hands of the Alliance during the Unification War.

** There are hints that other worlds in the verse are this way too.
* ''Series/LogansRun'': After the nuclear war in 2119, the world outside the City of Domes became like this. However, during the 200 years since the war, it had returned to normal (though the Council of Elders kept this from the city's inhabitants).

** In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S5E4TheGrell The Grell]]", the area around [[UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} Old Seattle]] is irradiated as it was hit by a nuclear bomb many years earlier. Humans cannot eat any of the fruits or vegetables unless the radiation is neutralized by a Grell using Grell alchemy.

* In ''Series/TerraNova'', the entire Earth is covered in thick yellow smog in the 22nd century, requiring filtering masks for any time spent outside. The rich live under domes, PopulationControl is in effect, and [[BlackMarketProduce an orange is a rare and exciting find]]. The eponymous colony is located behind a one-way PortalToThePast -- the late Cretaceous, where humanity might be able to start anew.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': Athas, the world of ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'', is a rare magical example of this. It was once lush and green, but the main form of magic here permanently destroys water and plant life. Centuries of reckless and rampant use of this magic have turned the entire world into a desert where few can survive.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'': Part of the cyberpunk aesthetic of the setting is the amount of industrial pollution in the Sixth World due to most of the {{megacorp}}s being ToxicInc to one degree or another plus numerous wars and natural and man-made disasters. Most major cities have descriptions for how polluted they are: the worst have air quality that's so bad that the average person can't breath outside without a respirator or cybernetic lungs that have pollution filters. The BadassLongcoat is popular with Shadowrunners not just for the protection from bullets and blades it provides, but because in polluted Sixth World Seattle the [[CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain precipitation]] sometimes can eat holes in an unprotected person's skin. There are a few places that are relatively clean, but only the ultra-rich have the money to live their lives in protected, pollution-free sanctuaries.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'': The "industrial" trade classification describes a planet with billions of inhabitants and an unbreathable or barely breathable atmosphere, that's implied to be a global factory and (because of the way the ''Traveller'' random world generation system works) also very likely to have a repressive government.

** Many of the more established manufacturing worlds are described this way. Whether they be Forge Worlds covered in nothing but manufactoriums, or Hive Worlds scattered with immense urban sprawl cities, they usually tend to consume their immediate environment and push it past its point of capacity such that they depend on off world imports and terraforming machinery just to keep themselves habitable. The planet Armageddon is a well known example of this, often requiring re-breathers to breath comfortably in the areas near its hive cities. Indeed, this tends to motivate the otherwise sprawling nature of hive cities into dense "spires" where the air can be more easily kept breathable with environmental seals and carbon dioxide scrubber machines.
** This is one of the most common aspects of [[PlagueMaster Nurgle's]] realm as many of his armies make biological warfare a new level of fear. While Nurgle's armies will use bolters and missiles aplenty, Nurgle always keeps experimenting of new plagues and new kinds of demons to send against his rival brother gods. It gets difficult to the point that the other Chaos Gods have to dedicated Special Units to clear a path, and they [[WeAreasMayflies burn out quickly!]]

* "Smog Rock" by German rocker Udo Lindenberg plays it much for laughs -- it features a romance which is a bit hindered by the circumstances. He wants to count her the stars -- oops, bad viewing conditions. He wants to kiss her -- the gas mask gets in the way. Puns with "takes your breath away" et al. are mandatory.
* The Music/FrankZappa song "San Ber'dino" from ''One Size Fits All'' describes the titular city as having "some dark green air and you can choke all day" as one of its distinctive features.

* ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooieGruntysRevenge'': Spiller's Harbor. Once a beautiful resort, then [[BigBad Gruntilda]] and her minions came and turned the place into an oil refinery.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': [[BadFuture The Future]], although how much of its pollution actually is [[BigBad Lavos]]' fault is unclear.

** ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry3DixieKongsDoubleTrouble'': Mekanos is the polluted side to this trope taken to extremes. A level with a giant ripsaw shredding a whole forest as it goes upwards and various factories. [[note]]Compare with KAOS Kore is quite a serene pleasant area, with the exception of Kastle KAOS and the DeathWorld like area of Lightning Lookout.[[/note]]
* ''VideoGame/EarthwormJim'': New Junk City appears to be the [[EverythingIsBigInTexas biggest one in Texas]].
** "Big Bruty" from ''Earthworm Jim: Special Edition'' appears to take place in another one of these.
* ''VideoGame/EverQuest'': [=EQ1=] has a few areas that are slightly less conventional Mordors. The Grey is an area that got exposed to the vacuum of space through some powerful magic. Now it's a desert where the only things that can survive are those that don't need to breathe air.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Factorio}}'', ''you'' play as the wannabe WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanet villain polluting the planet. Automation equipment used in factories spew out pollution that kills off forests and [[GaiasVengeance agitates]] the local BigCreepyCrawlies. A factory built in a pristine forest will soon turn the green trees into dead husks. Sadly, there is no way to directly dump oil into water sources -- without [[GameMod mods]], at least.
* ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}'': Most of the world has become a desert, barren and irradiated wasteland littered with urban ruins, though this is a result of global thermonuclear war. A more traditional example is the Sierra Madre area in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Dead Money'', which is blanketed in the Cloud, a corrosive red smog created by the {{Mad Scientist}}s of Big Mountain. The Pitt from ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' has the worst of both industrial and radioactive pollution. You can find piles of barrels of nuclear waste just laying around in all the games. In ''New Vegas'' in particular it's possible to find several truckloads of the stuff, because standard procedure for pre-war society was to just dump toxic waste wherever it was convenient.

* ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'': Planet Leeds. Instead of "great evil" there's just rampant irresponsibility, but ''the planet is capable of blowing out entire nebulae of smog.'' Accordingly, the government is depicted as unable to deal with the pollution and industrial accidents, and news stories of mine collapses devouring neighborhoods tromp across the Colonial News Service from time to time. Planet Houston also counts to some degree, being an entirely industrial planet that runs on prisoner labor.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Indivisible}},'' the Iron Kingdom (a FantasyCounterpartCulture of Industrial Revolution London) is choked with foul-smelling green smog and slathered in industrial runoff that resembles nothing so much as vast ammounts of ABC (Already Been Chewed) bubblegum. [[NightmareFetishist Naturally, Razmi the Witch loves it.]]
* ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxter'': In ''VideoGame/JakIIRenegade'' and ''VideoGame/Jak3Wastelander'', the Metal Heads' territory, as well as Haven City itself, is very desolate, polluted, and dangerous. It's both a DeathWorld filled with dangerous monsters and polluted to the point it makes any real life environmental trainwrecks look quite pleasant in comparison.
* ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'': Many areas of Zaun are like this, due to their total lack of safety restrictions. Other parts of Runeterra are also pretty much uninhabitable as a result of magical fallout from the Rune Wars.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': Tuchanka is a post-nuclear wasteland dotted with ruins and rubble, to the extent that when Grunt gets his first look at his homeworld, his immediate reaction boils down to "''This'' is Tuchanka? Seriously? What a shithole." Of course, the krogan, who believe in TheSpartanWay, ''prefer'' Tuchanka as a hellhole because it ensures they have to be strong to survive.
* ''VideoGame/Metro2033'': Moscow has become such a wasteland following a nuclear war 20 years prior. The surface is completely uninhabitable due to radiation, poisonous air, and [[NuclearMutant man-eating mutants]], forcing the citizens to live out their lives in the Metro tunnels beneath the city. And even there, they're not completely safe, as subterranean mutants and corrupt, warmongering factions remain a major threat. It's made even more glaring in ''VideoGame/MetroExodus'', where [[spoiler:the areas outside of Moscow have normal, breathable air and radiation is far less prevalent, though mutants are still a concern]].
* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'': The Space Pirate Homeworld is very much this. The planet's acid rain is the most dangerous environmental hazard in that game, killing you almost before you can realize it.

** In ''VideoGame/BattalionWars'', the nation of Xylvania ( EX Ill-Vain-Ia) is so polluted that the trees are all dead, the soil has degenerated into a grey-blue sludge, the sky is allways black with forge smoke, and the water is yellow from all the mine tailings. Xylvanians themselves are mutated into vampires, complete with pale skin, red eyes and snaggleteeth. Half of them need to wear hazmat armor when fighting in sulight.
** ''Advance Wars: Dual Strike'' gives us what happens when a Black Crystal is allowed to run. First the land is turned into a desert. Let it ''keep'' running, and it transforms the entire landscape around it into a burned-out, blackened wasteland - the waters even turn blood red. Best part: the ending leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not breaking the things will turn everything ''back''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Oddworld}}'': The bad guys pollute the land and drive species to extinction in their thirst for profits. This makes all bad guy areas disgusting industrial wastelands with gloomy smog as the clouds of doom, immense factories as the tall, dark towers, and cruel [=CEOs=] as the {{Big Bad}}s. The player is [[{{Anvilicious}} bashed over the head]] with the "Save the environment, Big corporations are bad" philosophy, which is ironic considering the last two games in this franchise were made for a Microsoft platform.
* In ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndMoon'' you can reach [[EldritchAbomination the Ultra Beast Guzzlord]]'s homeworld, which turns out to be [[AlternateUniverse an alternate version of Earth]] that's been destroyed by pollution. The air is toxic, all the water requires purifiers to be drinkable, and Hau'oli City is completely in ruins. Humanity's long since abandoned the place for other worlds, and you only meet one other human who wears a hazmat suit and is unfamiliar with [[LostCommonKnowledge the color blue]]. It's gotten so bad that the only person you meet there says the Guzzlord population seems to be decreasing, despite them being a species of ExtremeOmnivore that can eat literally anything including toxic waste.
* ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'': The hyper-industrial Strogg turn every place and thing they can find into a Polluted Wasteland, as long as it can be used in a production facility somehow. Blood and gristle are fine lubricants, and they'll be damned if they can't find a way to install a human torso in a machine ''one'' way or another.
* ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002'': Planet Orxon, to the point where it [[SurprisinglyCreepyMoment has become horrifically mutated in numerous ways]], ''[[DeadlyGas completely]]'' [[DeadlyGas requires the O2 Mask when playing as Ratchet]], and [[GrimyWater has flesh-melting toxic sludge where basically]] ''[[GrimyWater all]]'' [[GrimyWater of its water should be]]. Worse yet, [[BigBad Chairman Drek]] is planning to turn who-knows-how-many more of the Ratchet & Clank universe's planets into what Orxon has become in this game.
** In ''VideoGame/RatchetDeadlocked'', Orxon has been cleaned up considerably but is ''still'' a major example of the trope.
* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD'': Not destroying the robots results in the level you're playing in turning into a BadFuture which is usually a Polluted Wasteland.

** Nal Hutta was transformed into a polluted hellhole by industrialization after the Hutts took it over from the native Evocii. Doubles as a WretchedHive given the presence of the Hutts.

** Taris doesn't fare much better; centuries after being [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic bombarded from orbit]] it's still barely habitable, with rakghouls running wild and toxic runoff leaking from the ruins of industrial buildings.
* ''VideoGame/{{Tamarin}}'': In the intro cutscene, the invading BigCreepyCrawlies are seen marching through one.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'', dwarf planet Ceres has been turned by Grineer into their empire's industrial centre, giving the planet lakes of green ooze and sickly green/brown/gray clouds that rain constantly. It's also one of very few places where you can engage in planetside Survival missions[[note]]Where the goal is not only to HoldTheLine but also to look after your OxygenMeter.[[/note]], which should be saying something about the quality of air on this planet, though somehow there ''are'' plants growing there (pitcher plants, that is). Did we mention [[{{Irony}} Ceres is named after a goddess of agriculture]]?
* The Toxic Landfill in ''VideoGame/WarioLand4''.
* ''[[VideoGame/LogicalJourneyOfTheZoombinis Zoombinis: Island Odyssey]]'' is an EdutainmentGame that features this as the resource aspect; the titular Zoombinis arrive at their abandoned homeland and realise that the invaders have removed all the butterflies and destroyed the environment(?). By returning caterpillars, the place gradually returns to its former glory. So, basically, you play through rebuilding an area.
* ''VideoGame/TerraNil'' is a {{Reconstruction}} (literally) of this trope, the entire goal of the game is to depollute one of the [[GaiasLament bleakest wastelands]] ever seen into a beautiful healthy landscape.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'': "Olivia & Yunan" shows that the lands around Newtopia have been stripped for resources to fuel the BigBad's multiverse-spanning war machine, leaving nothing but bare earth, strip-mining machines, and smoke-belching factories to produce more MechaMooks.
* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Used sometimes to reinforce the occasional GreenAesop. Without even mentioning [[{{Anvilicious}} "The Painted Lady"]], several episodes that take place in the Fire Nation come with shots of strip mines, factories with belching smokestacks, machinery, and lots and lots of metal stuff and steampunk technology.
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' is set in [[BananaRepublic Verdeza]], a South American nation whose ecosystem has been polluted by the son of a corrupt billionaire.
* ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'': The villains try to create such wastelands and the heroes stop them. On a meta level, the show [[GreenAesop encourages its viewers to try to prevent this happening in real life]].
* On ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'', Cosmo turned Xanadu into a Polluted Wasteland, except he calls it [[PlaceWorseThanDeath Pittsburgh]].
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': In one episode when [[VillainProtagonist Mr. Cat]] manages to TakeOverTheWorld, he actually ''takes steps to ensure'' that this happens to Smileyland. The sky even turns red when this happens.

* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'': In most incarnations of the franchise, Cybertron has been reduced to the sci-fi version of this, due to brutal warfare sparked by a resource shortage.

* The infamous Corona Ash Dumps. The area where Flushing Meadows–Corona Park now sits used to be a nightmarish dump site back in the 1920's. Ash and street sweepings were originally brought in as landfill for what used to be marshland and it just escalated until the site was filled with literal mountains of soot, horse manure, and garbage. Nearby neighborhoods were plagued not only by the sights and smells, but rat infestations. The dump is what inspired the Valley of Ashes in ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': Most of the world has become a desert, barren and irradiated wasteland littered with urban ruins, though this is a result of global thermonuclear war. A more traditional example is the Sierra Madre area in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Dead Money'', which is blanketed in the Cloud, a corrosive red smog created by the {{Mad Scientist}}s of Big Mountain. The Pitt from ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' has the worst of both industrial and radioactive pollution. You can find piles a barrels of nuclear waste just laying around in all the games. In ''New Vegas'' in particular it's possible to find several truckloads of the stuff, because standard procedure for pre-war society was to just dump toxic waste wherever it was convenient.

* ''Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle'': The ring of the violent wasters in the Seventh Circle, previously given over to suicides and the profligate, is now mostly occupied by a barren, polluted waste of churned mud filled with garbage, toxic waste, and oily puddles, and dotted with smoke-belching factories and great strip mines. The souls of the worst polluters are sentenced here, to run through toxic slurry while chased by living bulldozers.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Many of the more established manufacturing worlds are described this way. Whether they be Forge Worlds covered in nothing but manufactoriums, or Hive Worlds scattered with immense urban sprawl cities, they usually tend to consume their immediate environment and push it past its point of capacity such that they depend on off world imports and terraforming machinery just to keep themselves habitable. The planet Armageddon is a well known example of this, often requiring re-breathers to breath comfortably in the areas near its hive cities. Indeed, this tends to motivate the otherwise sprawling nature of hive cities into dense "spires" where the air can be more easily kept breathable with environmental seals and carbon dioxide scrubber machines.
* This is one of the most common aspects of [[PlagueMaster Nurgle's]] realm as many of his armies make Biological Warfare a NEW level of fear! While Nurgle's armies will use bolters and missiles aplenty, Nurgle always keeps experimenting of new plagues and new kinds of demons to send against his rival brother gods. It gets difficult to the point that the other Chaos Gods have to dedicated Special Units to clear a path, and they [[WeAreasMayflies burn out quickly!]]
* In ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', Pentex factories turn landscapes into this, in both the material world and the Umbra.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", in the aftermath of the nuclear war, large parts of Earth are contaminated with radiation. The Old Man told Mr. Goldsmith that the Village should not plant tomatoes. When they ignored this advice, the tomatoes that grew looked like rotten watermelons because of the radiation. Jason also mentions freak carrots.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Voices in the Earth", Earth's biosphere was destroyed 1,000 years earlier due to the complete depletion of the ozone layer. Its atmosphere consists predominantly of carbon dioxide with traces of methane and ammonia and appears to be yellow due to the iron oxide created by the many rusted buildings. However, the ghosts of the dead Earth eventually use their collective powers to [[NewEden restore the biosphere and create life in the oceans]].

Compare ForbiddenZone, IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace, NightmarishFactory, CrapsackWorld, GaiasLament. Frequently a byproduct of ToxicInc.

* ''Film/Zone39'': The titular territory has become desolate and polluted because Central has been draining resources, and as a result, Central has been misappropriating drinking water from working towns.

* Dzerzhinsk, Russia is city known for its chemical industry (including chemical weapons) and is so polluted that the average lifespan of its inhabitants is ''40''. And that two of the largest chemical waste sites have their own names (White Sea and Black Hole).

* In ''Literature/TheLorax'', the land that was once populated by Truffula trees and various animals becomes a Polluted Wasteland when all the trees are cut down, sludge is dumped into the water and pollutants are pumped into the air. The story ends on a bittersweet, yet cautiously optimistic note when [[spoiler:a young boy is given the last Truffula seed and told to replant the forest, in hopes of bringing the area to its former glory]].

* The infamous Corona Ash Dumps. The area where Flushing Meadows–Corona Park now sits used to be a nightmarish dump site back in the 1920's. Ash and street sweepings were originally brought in as landfill for what used to be marshland and it just escalated until the site was filled with literal mountains of soot, horse manure, and garbage. Nearby neighborhoods were plagued not only by the sights and smells, but rat infestations. The dump is what inspired the Valley of Ashes in Literature/TheGreatGatsby.