History Main / RoswellThatEndsWell

* ''Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia'' has a strip for this, in which the arrival and existence of America's friend Tony are explained.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'': {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in "Prometheus". A group of reporters are told by Sam that [[spoiler:''Prometheus'' was designed from reverse-engineered parts of an alien crash in Fairbanks, Alaska.]] Jonas, knowing the truth, inquires "Fairbanks?" Sam answers that it sounds a lot better than Roswell.

* At the end of ''Disney/LiloAndStitch'', Cobra Bubbles is revealed to have saved the Earth from aliens by convincing them mosquitoes were an endangered species; this occurred at Roswell... [[BaitAndSwitch in 1973]].

* The below-mentioned ''Roswell'' series was based on Melinda Metz' YoungAdult book series ''Literture/RoswellHigh''.

* ''Series/{{Roswell}}'', natch. The protagonists are alien survivors of the Roswell Incident, [[{{Masquerade}} masquerading]] as humans.

-->-- ''[[Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainProton Captain Proton]]'', ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace''

-->-- ''[[Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainProton Captain Proton]]'', '''[[http://www.tomparisdorm.com/viewstory.php?sid=4084 Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space]]'''

* ''Series/{{Eureka}}'' makes mention of it during one episode. Apparently, it ''was'' just a weather balloon, and is a [[NeverLiveItDown constant embarrassment]] to the visiting bowling team from {{Area 51}}.

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* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': in [[Recap/FuturamaS3E19RoswellThatEndsWell the episode]] that [[TropeNamer gives this trope its name]], the Planet Express crew accidentally {{Time Travel}}s back to 1947 and causes the Roswell Incident.

The wreckage and bodies from Roswell may be stored in {{Area 51}}. At least one AlienAutopsy was performed and videotaped. TheMenInBlack may be involved in the coverup. And we may have reaped the wreckage for [[ETGaveUsWiFi our own technological benefit]]. (But there probably isn't, there probably wasn't, they probably weren't, and we probably didn't. Makes for good plot fodder nonetheless.)

-->-- ''[[Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainProton Captain Proton]]'', '''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'''

The Roswell Incident was forgotten for over 30 years, until ufologist Stanton Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel about it in 1978. Marcel claimed that the government had pressured him and other eyewitness into silence about what they had seen: the object recovered from Roswell was a spacecraft containing alien bodies. Interviews with other witnesses added to the story until it grew into a major piece of UFO lore. In the '90s, the government offered a new explanation of the events: there was a coverup, but it was to hide the existence of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul Project Mogul]], not aliens (note that in both versions of the story, the debris was from high-altitude balloons). In light of this, and the questionable research of some Roswell conspiracy theorists, even most serious pro-UFO advocates have become convinced there were no aliens involved.

Compare TheTunguskaEvent.

Named after an Emmy award-winning episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', which posited that the entire incident was caused by the Planet Express ship accidentally travelling back in time and showing up in Roswell on that fateful day. The "flying disc" in question is actually a deconstructed Bender's "[[CatchPhrase shiny metal ass]]".

%%* ''Series/{{Taken}}''

* In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'', debris from Roswell is seen in {{Area 51}}.

!!Examples

* ''Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia'' has a strip for this, in which the arrival and existence of America's friend Tony are explained.

* ''RoswellLittleGreenMan'' from Creator/BongoComics. The series followed the misadventures of an extraterrestrial who arrived at Earth via the 1947 Roswell UFO incident.

* ComicBook/{{Hellboy}}: Scenes involving Hellboy's childhood and the early years of the BPRD are sometimes set at the Roswell Army Air Field, where the Bureau was based until the famous 1947 spaceship crash. (It's possible that they might've been able to stay there, were it not for an incident involving kid Hellboy, his dog Mac, and some of the residue from the ship. In the aftermath, it was decided that the time had come for the Bureau to go its own way, at which point it moved to the Connecticut facility seen in stories set during Hellboy's tenure as a BPRD agent.)

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/IndependenceDay'': the crashed spaceship from Roswell (stored in {{Area 51}}) proves vital to humanity's battle against the alien invaders.
* In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'', debris from Roswell is seen in {{Area 51}}.

* In ''Film/TheRock'', the secrets that John Mason stole include the truth about Roswell.
* ''Film/MyFavoriteMartian'' alludes to it, when a Man in Black, frustrated, says that they're not going to get any more out of this than that Roswell fiasco. His boss immediately rebukes him, saying "Not only is that incident classified, but ''it never happened''."
* A TV movie involves a ship crashing near Roswell in 1947 with two HumanAliens and a number of genetically-engineered pilots (i.e. TheGreys) aboard. The aliens are actually mercenaries, hired to "cleanse" Earth from humans for re-settlement by their employers. Roswell is specifically chosen, because the military base there has an atomic bomb, which one of the aliens (posing as a nuclear physicist) modifies with alien technology to boost its yield to allow it to wipe out everyone on the planet. However, he ends up falling in love with a beautiful widow and becoming fond of her son. He kills his partner/ex-lover, stops the countdown, and departs in a one-man ship to ensure that no other mercenaries are sent to finish the job. The military promptly covers up the event. Before departing, though, the alien reveals that Earth's humans are descended from a group of alien prisoners, whose transport crash-landed on the planet millennia ago.

* The below-mentioned ''Roswell'' series was based on Melinda Metz' YoungAdult book series ''Literture/RoswellHigh''.
* ''Series/StargateSG1: Roswell''.
* Mario Acevedo's ''The Nymphos of Rocky Flats'' is (apparently) about a soldier who is now a vampire, stuck between vampire hunters and the Roswell aliens. Sounds [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot awesome]].
* In Neal Shusterman's novel ''Everlost'', Roswell is explained to have happened when a "Afterlight" boy who died in UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg crash ended up flying the ghost of the Hindenburg to Roswell for sixty years. Somehow it ends up being seen by non-Afterlights...in 1947.

* ''Literature/LittleGreenMen'' explains that the Roswell "crash" was one of the first events faked up by [[GovernmentConspiracy MJ-12]] to prove that aliens existed and imply that the United States possessed their technology in the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.
* Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse:

** The Literature/PastDoctorAdventures novel ''Devil Goblins from Neptune''.

* ''{{Roswell}}'', natch. The protagonists are alien survivors of the Roswell Incident, [[{{Masquerade}} masquerading]] as humans.
* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E08LittleGreenMen Little Green Men]]": The aliens were Quark and co., sent back in time by accident.
* ''Series/SevenDays'': the TimeTravel machine was reverse engineered from alien technology salvaged from the Roswell crash. [[spoiler: Which was an alien prison transport spaceship.]]

* ''Series/TheXFiles''
** Subverted however in "[[Recap/TheXFilesS06E19TheUnnatural The Unnatural]]", which involves TheGreys in Roswell in 1947, but has nothing whatsoever to do with any crashed UFO.
** ''The X-Files'' implied several times that Roswell was a smokescreen for several other alien salvage operations that were more successful.
* ''Series/{{Taken}}''
* ''Series/StargateSG1'': {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in "Prometheus". A group of reporters are told by Sam that [[spoiler: ''Prometheus'' was designed from reverse-engineered parts of an alien crash in Fairbanks, Alaska.]] Jonas, knowing the truth, inquires "Fairbanks?" Sam answers that it sounds a lot better than Roswell.

* Subverted in the ''Series/BabylonFive'' spin off ''Series/{{Crusade}}'' has the episode visitors from down the street. Were they meet 2 aliens who claim that events similar to the Roswell crash and subsequent cover ups are all done by order of Earth. It turns out that the aliens are all paranoid and their leaders use Aliens as a way to divert blame and responsibilities from themselves in order to prevent civil war, mainly caused by their leaders being corrupt. The Captain takes steps to reveal the truth by the end.
* Alluded to on ''Series/TheWestWing'', when CJ explains why she doesn't believe in government conspiracies.
-->There is no group of people this large in the world that can keep a secret. I find it comforting. It's how I know for sure that the government isn't covering up aliens in New Mexico.
** The Roswell crash is brought up again when Bob Engler, a ufologist and conspiracy theorist Sam had dealt with previously, insinuates that the remains from the crash had been moved from storage in {{Area 51}} to the Fort Knox bullion depository. He's petitioning the government for permission to audit the vault, and Sam suspects he's been obliviously put up to it by Republicans to bother the Bartlet Administration.

* ''Series/AgentCarter'' subverts the circumstances of the event, making the [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU's]] version of it an explosion of [[{{Unobtainium}} Zero Matter]] instead of a crashed ship of any kind.
* [[UnbuiltTrope Honorable mention]] goes to ''Series/LostInspace'', whose third season episode "Visit to a Hostile Planet" sees the ''Jupiter 2'' hurled [[TimeTravel back in time]] and space to 1947 Earth. In this case it's the backwoods of Michigan rather than the deserts of New Mexico, but the Robinsons et al. are mistaken for aliens, and their disc-shaped craft is witnessed (and attacked!) by many locals. It's a strange example, given that it predates the pop culture resurgence of Roswell itself by over a decade.

* ''TabletopGame/DeltaGreen'' plays with this.

* TabletopGame/SecretsOfTheThirdReich: The members of [[OperationBlank Program]] [[CaptainPatriotic "Sentinel Of Freedom"]] (essentially ComicBook/CaptainAmerica [[{{Expy}} Expies]]) are given their powers with the "Roswell Cocktail", reverse-engineered from the crash's tech. The British HeroUnit Black Jack is a {{Cyborg}} made with salvaged mechanics from the ship (ironically because [[WeCanRebuildHim his body fatally rejected the Cocktail]]).
* The final book of TabletopGame/BattleTech's "Blood of Kerensky" novels riffs off of this. On Alyina, there were frequent reports of 'Unexplained Aerial Phenomena', and a holovid claimed that there were alien bodies in the Hudson Gulf Base, area 51, hangar 18b, which was in the Roswell District. The reality was that they were experiments at reproducing the [[LostTechnology Star League-era Hammerhead fighter]]. A scrap of a crashed fighter, being a piece of the advanced Ferro-Fibrous armor they used, was [[{{Irony}} claimed to be an alien material humanity could never reproduce.]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Dust}}'': Super-tech reverse-engineered from the wreck of a crashed UFO found on the Antarctic provide [[StupidJetpackHitler the Axis]] (who deposed Hitler from power) with the capacity to turn the Russian campaign into something more manageable, allowed them to succeed when they performed Operation Sealion, and at the time of the "present day" on the game's setting they have now started a campaign of limited ground warfare on the coasts of the United States. The best hope the United States has is their own super-tech, engineered from that which they have captured from the Axis and a recent UFO crash on Roswell, New Mexico...

* Not historical, but definitely an in-joke. ''VideoGame/{{Wild ARMs 3}}'' featured a side-quest where your heroes fend off alien invaders, complete with {{Flying Saucer}}s. The name of the paranormal investigator you speak to for the quest? Roswell.

* In ''[[VideoGame/TexMurphy The Pandora Directive]]'', Tex finds out from a former {{Area 51}} scientist that [[WorldWarThree World War 3]] was started using AntiMatter salvaged from the Roswell craft. Area 51 itself is on lockdown, after most of the staff were infected with an alien parasite and were gunned down by the guards. Worse, there's a larger vessel hidden somewhere in jungles, and its fuel tanks are full of anti-matter.
* In ''VideoGame/MoonChronicles'' the Roswell Conspiracy was the first time humanity was shown that they were not alone in the universe. During the events of the game an alien complex on the moon is discovered to be built by the same aliens responsible for Roswell.
* In ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'', the alien Pokemon Elgyem and Beheeyem's Pokedex entries highly imply that they were the survivors of the Roswell, New Mexico crash. Elgyem's French name is even Roswell backwards, though with only one L.
* Supposedly, if one takes the map of the world of ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER|1}}'' (a game about an alien invasion), turns it upside-down, and places the city of Ellay where L.A. would be in real life, the protagonist's house roughly corresponds to Roswell, New Mexico.

* In ''Webcomic/TheLastCowboy,'' in 1947 the women in the town of Roswell all contract a disease that renders them sterile. Since no-one knows about the visiting aliens, no-one makes a connection between the two events. This has disastrous consequences two decades later when the same aliens land all over the Earth.

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* In ''[[Recap/DoctorWho2009ASDreamland Dreamland]]'', the Doctor visits 1950s New Mexico and helps rescue the survivors of the Roswell crash from TheMenInBlack
[[/folder]]

--->'''Bender:''' That's no flying saucer! That's my ass!

* Ditto ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad''.
* Max and [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Xylene]] from ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' use the phrase "[[NoodleIncident we'll always have Roswell]]." However, Max was still a very young child in 1947, so there must have been a different alien incident in the same area...
** Turns out not only was it the same event, but Max himself was involved in the Roswell incident. As revealed in ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'', Max was the one who encountered the aliens, who were actually Blukic and Driba, and aided in their escape when they got captured.
* ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand'' plays this out in reverse when Team Lightyear crash-lands on the home planet of the aliens responsible for the original Roswell Incident ([[ALongTimeAgoInAGalaxyFarFarAway possibly]]), which happens to be an awful lot like 1950's New Mexico.
* The entire ''WesternAnimation/RoswellConspiracies'' animated series, of course.
* The Roswell UFO crash appears in the prologue of one ''WesternAnimation/JonnyQuestTheRealAdventures'' episode taking place in the Anasazi region of the US Southwest.
* In ''WesternAnimation/DanVs'' "New Mexico," Elise sneaks into Area 51 and steals a spaceship in order to take her revenge on the state.
* There was an episode of the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' SpinOff ''PostcardsFromBuster'' that visited, among other places, Roswell.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'', it is revealed that the Roswell incident occurred when the Earth Protection Force, led by Agent Bishop, shot down an alien ship belonging to the aliens that initially abducted him.

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'', the alien Pokemon Elgyem and Beheeyem's Pokedex entries highly imply that they were the survivors of the Roswell, New Mexico crash.

* ''MyFavoriteMartian'' alludes to it, when a Man in Black, frustrated, says that they're not going to get any more out of this than that Roswell fiasco. His boss immediately rebukes him, saying "Not only is that incident classified, but ''it never happened''."

The Roswell Incident was forgotten for over 30 years, until ufologist Stanton Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel about it in 1978. Marcel claimed that the government had pressured him and other eyewitness into silence about what they had seen: the object recovered from Roswell was a spacecraft containing alien bodies. Interviews with other witnesses added to the story until it grew into a major piece of UFO lore. In the '90s, the government offered a new explanation of the events: there was a coverup, but it was to hide the existence of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul Project Mogul]], not aliens (Note that in both versions of the story, the debris was from high-altitude balloons.) In light of this, and the questionable research of some Roswell conspiracy theorists, even most serious pro-UFO advocates have become convinced there were no aliens involved.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "Dalek"]], the mileometer from the Roswell ship is seen in a museum of alien artifacts. In the same episode, Van Statten claims that [[ETGaveUsWiFi alien tech from the incident ended up creating Broadband]].
** The Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse has multiple and contradictory takes on Roswell, most recently in the animated ''Dreamland''. (Older instances include the Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures novel ''First Frontier'' and the Literature/PastDoctorAdventures novel ''Devil Goblins from Neptune''.) It '''is''' ''[[NegativeContinuity Doctor Who]]'', after all; the Time-War and universal cracks have pretty much left us with a great big TimeyWimeyBall (and even before then, the show favoured BroadStrokes).

Regardless of what actually happened (TheOtherWiki [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_Incident has a good overview]] of what's known), the idea of a crashed alien spacecraft--and a subsequent government coverup - has become permanently associated with the city of Roswell in the popular imagination. The fame and ambiguity of the original incident have inspired every SpeculativeFiction series ever to [[ExternalRetcon explain]] (or just [[HistoricalInJoke make an oblique reference to]]) "what ''really'' happened", with varying amounts of seriousness. The town itself, meanwhile, has capitalized on this, building a lucrative tourist industry around the event and aliens in general.

-->-- '''Captain Proton''', ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space''

* ''Series/AgentCarter'' subverts the circumstances of the event, making the [[MarvelCinematicUniverse MCU's]] version of it an explosion of [[{{Unobtainium}} Zero Matter]] instead of a crashed ship of any kind.