Area 51

For the arcade game, see Area 51. For the later First-Person Shooter with the same name, see Area 51 (FPS).

We could show you a picture, but then we'd have to kill you. Go look for it on Google Earth yourself.

"You are here. We are not."

— As seen on a directory map of Area 51-A, The Simpsons, "Lost Our Lisa"

A top-secret United States Air Force base in the Nevada desert... until 2013, when it was revealed to be a test site for spy planes. (Unless that's what They want you to think, of course.)

In fiction, this is usually associated with the otherworldly and all manner of government conspiracies. The most popular theory is that aliens and spacecraft (particularly those recovered from Roswell, New Mexico) are being held and studied there. If any of this tech has seeped into common human use, the assertion may be made that E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi. Characters will often outright deny the existence of the base, despite its existence and uses prior to Roswell being relatively well-known and even documented.

In real life, Area 51 is an Air Force base of some kind (in the middle of an area officially designated as a bombing range, no less), officially known as the US Air Force Flight Test Center, and also known by the nicknames Groom Lake (for the dry lakebed the runways are on), Homey Airport (which is its 'official' title, with the airport code KXTA, though it goes without saying that pilots should NOT attempt to land here), Dreamland and Neverland. It is one of several remote facilities that make up the massive complex of Nellis Air Force Base (though is officially a detachment of Edwards Air Force Base in California). The more popular nickname stems from the naming system for areas involved in the Nevada atomic weapons testing; "Area-XX" was the default system for naming regions within or near the testing range, and the base was located in "Area 51" according to this system. The location was chosen due to the lakebed, which made an ideal landing strip when Lockheed Martin needed to relocate its Skunk Works; the base has the longest purpose-built runway in the world, though it appears to have been partially decommissioned following the U-2 spyplane project. It's been used in the past to test extremely secret experimental aircraft^note It was part of AQUATONE, the U-2 spyplane program; OXCART, the early stages of the A-12/SR-71 project; and HAVE BLUE, the project that ultimately created the F-117 Nighthawk. These days, it is rumored to be the testing and development area for the next generation B-21 Raider stealth bomber, along with experimental drones such as the XQ-58A Valkyrie and likely a multitude of other highly advanced prototype aircraft yet to be revealed. , which is probably the source of some of the rumors. What's going on there now (if anything) is way beyond your security clearance, and most US maps show a big blank over the area (Google Maps and Earth do not, though Maps humorously lists the base under the "Homey Airport" nickname, and also lists it as closed). The closest anyone has gotten to revealing what goes on at Area 51 was a lawsuit brought by workers at the base due to unsafe conditions — apparently, Area 51 has No OSHA Compliance — but the suit was thrown out of court when the state secrets privilege was invoked. It has been pointed out by many that the government has to develop secret (from other governments) projects somewhere, even if those projects have nothing to do with otherworldly things.

The secrecy surrounding the base makes it a tempting subject for real-life conspiracy theorists and Speculative Fiction writers alike. Some stories make an important plot point of the true goings-on in Area 51, while others just allude to it as a Historical In-Joke. Proof of how evil and devious the complex is can be seen in how intruders are dealt with; using a system of buried motion sensors and guys in jeeps, they, um... Well, they call the Lincoln County Sheriff, who escorts the intruders back outside.

There is also an "Area 52", the Tonopah Test Range. This was home to a now-declassified Cold War program called "Constant Peg", involving American pilots training against real MiGs, small numbers of which had been delivered by defectors.

Dulce Base, a similar underground government base in northwestern New Mexico, has begun to take the place of Area 51 in the conspiracy theorist/UFO enthusiast circles as the shroud of secrecy surrounding the latter has faded. Indeed, some go as far as to claim that Area 51 conspiracy theories are all just disinformation designed to focus people's attention on a fairly non-exotic facility. Given that the Groom Lake facility is visible from the Nellis perimeter fence, they may have a point about it being a less-than-perfect base for things we aren't supposed to see. So far, it's presumed that Dulce is actually just an urban legend, as no evidence of it can be found above ground (though several people allege the base is entirely underground, and is a massive subterranean complex linked to various other sites such as Area 51 and Denver Airport via underground rail tunnels). Then again, Area 51 was thought to be an urban legend until the Soviet Union released satellite pictures of it.

And in August 2013, the CIA declassified a document talking specifically about Area 51. President Obama even joked about it a few months later.

In July 2019, a joke Facebook event to "storm Area 51" attracted more than 2 million responses. On the specified date of September 20th, 2019, 150 people actually made it up to the main gate before being warned off by security.

A subtrope of Black Site. Compare Roswell That Ends Well.

---

Examples

Historical In-Joke

Comic Books

• The DCU: Lot 51 (Army Corps of Engineers Secret Base, Nevada) makes a brief appearance in the DC Comics Elseworlds JLA Age Of Wonder, as an excuse for making Hal Jordan a test pilot when officially airplanes haven't been invented yet. And they do have an alien corpse there; the previous ringwielder, who looks more like a Grey than Abin Sur.
  • The Elseworlds Superman: Red Son also has Abin Sur's ship held in Area 51. And it was Sur who crashed in Roswell.
• Hellboy apparently spent his childhood there, but seems to have enjoyed it.

Fan Works

• In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the Air Watch expanded from its canonical beginnings of Gnomes and Feegle riding tamed birds, and welcomed Witches of an aeronautic turn of mind who accepted Watch membership was the entry ticket to almost unlimited flying hours, plus the chance to do well-resourced R&D into the Magitek nature of flight. Lord Vetinari had an ulterior motive in mind: right from the start, he envisaged an Air Arm, perhaps a sort of Royal Ankh-Morporkian Air Force, capable of challenging the Klatchians for mastery of the skies. The expanded Air Division, at the latest point on the timeline, maintains its principal base at Pseudopolis Yard in the City, exploiting the large flat roof over the mews as its landing strip. It also has forward bases in Lancre and at the City Zoo. The Pseudopolis Yard airbase is where most of the research takes place into, for instance, larger, sleeker and faster broomsticks and other flying Devices. Very tight security is in force here. The local UFO-nuts absolutely insist this is where Lord Vetinari sanctions fiendish experiments into the nature of flight and where the aliens from other planets, who speak a language so bizzarely strange it could not possibly have evolved on the Discworld; it even uses an alien alphabet, look!, clandestinely descend to speak to the Patrician. Naturally, all this is hushed up. Air Division commanding officer Olga Romanoff is aware members of her multi-national command of witches have a collective weird sense of humour and have, with totally straight faces, "leaked" information to the UFO-nuts, about it being designated Area Fifty-Seven, along with tall tales about what goes on there. Just For the Lulz. Olga discourages this sort of thing. Read more in The Price of Flight.

Film

• It's revealed in a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the second sequel to Pitch Perfect that Lily was born at Area 51.
• Area 51 is apparently among the secrets in the Presidents' Book in National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.

Literature

• The 39 Clues: Lucians have control of Area 51, and store the clue calcium carbonate there.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, Area 51 is said to have been made solely to cover for a senator who crashed a jet into a mountain.
• Area 51 in The Last Adventure of Constance Verity was actually built by aliens as a "Constance Verity Museum" for intergalactic tourists as a tribute from all of the alien civilizations she saved during the month (a year from her perspective) she went missing through space and time via a wormhole under her family's house.
• In the Star Trek: Myriad Universes story Seeds of Dissent, the facility (known only as "Groom Lake") was sold off by the US government to an eccentric investor to cover their debts. He then developed it into a rocket launch facility and used it to construct several cryogenic transport ships, including the SS Botany Bay which a small crew used to escape Khan Noonien Singh's empire just before it finished taking over the world.

Live-Action TV

• CSI-verse:
  • An episode of CSI has the agents uncovering what appears to be an alien corpse, later revealed to be a guy in a costume, buried in the desert just outside Area 51.
  • CSI: NY: Adam Ross finds what he thinks is a piece of an alien space ship, figures he'll be famous for making first contact, and immediately makes plans to open his own theme park called ARea 52. ^note That's not a typo; he deliberately capitalized his initials.
• On NewsRadio, Joe claimed that Area 51 was just a cover-up for the even-more-secret Area 52.
• In the Murdoch Mysteries episode "The Annoying Red Planet", UFO sightings in 19th century Toronto turn out to be an airship being constructed by the Canadian and American governments, based in a plot of land registered with the city as "Concession 51". At the end of the episode the characters conclude that the governments will move their experiments to somewhere more out of the way, probably somewhere in the US desert.
• On Eureka the surveillance balloon debacle is still something they never got over for the guys from Area 51. The Eureka bowling team mocks theirs about it.
  • In the pilot, when Allison is taking Jack to Global Dynamics for the first time, he asks, jokingly, if she's taking him to Area 51. She laughs and tells him that Area 51 people wish they had GD security.
  • In another episode, Jack and Henry discuss a potential magnetic weapon:
  Henry: We abandoned it after our very first attempt.
  Jack: I'm hoping you didn't suck down a bunch of planes and helicopters.
  Henry: No, but nearly all the recorded data in Nevada was erased. Tapes in video stores, floppy disks in casinos, half the database of Area 51.
  Jack: (grinning) Area 51 is real?
  Henry: (nodding) No.
• JAG:
  • In the "The One Who Got Away", while flying for the CIA, Harm is detailed to fly the Aurora spy plane from a secret location, which even the usually reliable Title In names as "Diamond Lake, Location classified".
    Harm: So what is this place, anyway?
    Allen Blaisdell: The Directorate for Development Plans Area.
    Harm: I thought that was Area 51.
    Allen Blaisdell: DDP hasn't been there for years.
    Andy Watson: It's kind of difficult to do top secret flight ops, huh, on a base surrounded by tourists with telescopes and video cameras.
  • However, in a later scene we do see on a flight map that the base is located somewhere around the Nevada Test Site.
  • In "Impact", although the story is set around Twenty-Nine Palms, California, the secretive Bradenhurst Corporation test area exhibits many subtropes commonly associated with Area 51, such as: use of deadly force authorize signs, armed private security guards, mysterious unidentified aircraft originating from that area, and blanket security cover for the whole operation.
    Clark: Listen, since when did top secret become everybody's business? Do you have any idea how many nutcases we have trying to break onto this site because they think we have crashed spaceships and aliens on ice out here?
• On Leverage during an episode involving conspiracy theories, Eliot and Hardison convince Parker that there isn't an Area 51 (or at least that any conspiracies about it aren't true), but Area 52 on the other hand....

Other

• Nevada State Route 375 is a random dusty road that runs near the base. The state playfully dubbed it "The Extraterrestrial Highway" and post signs to that effect.
• And there's the Fun T-Shirt: What happens in Area 51 stays in Area 51.
• The Las Vegas Minor League Baseball team, the Las Vegas 51s (of the AAA Pacific Coast League), are named for the base; their logo is a Grey with baseball seams on his giant forehead.

Tabletop Games

• In Rifts, Area 51 was a military R&D facility before the Great Cataclysm, which was discovered centuries later by the Black Market and formed into the core of Bandito Arms, the Market's slowly-legitimizing R&D and manufacturing faction.

Video Games

• Alien Hominid had a row of buttons on an FBI spacecraft; Area 50, Area 51, Area 52, Area 53, etc...
• The Backyard Soccer series has a Dummied Out field called Area 51½ (also known as A Nameless Field).
• Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped has one of its levels, called "Area 51?". It's a motorbike level where Crash has to race flying saucers with his bike to the finish to get the Plot Coupon, and it's set at dark midnight.
• In Growing Up, if you train in the military and get an A in the SAT, you'll be deployed in Area 51, where you save the world several times by investigating and capturing aliens. Turns out Bunny and Quack from the eponymous cartoon are Real After All because they're shown being captured in the background.
• Perfect Dark features 4 missions that are based on Area 51. There's also a multiplayer map named Area 52.
• It doesn't show up in the games, but since Generation VI, Elgyem and Beheeyem could learn Steel Wing, which was TM 51 in Gen VI and VII.
• SimCity 4 gives us Area 5.1. Constructing the facility grants the player the ability to pilot an attack jet and UFO, in addition to a small monthly income.
• The Rail Shooter, Area 51, obviously.
• World of Warcraft has Area 52, a goblin outpost in Netherstorm complete with Men in Black guards at the entrances.

Webcomics

• A pair of guys in the web comic Dragon Tails worked in Area 52 and complained of never getting anything interesting.
• In General Protection Fault, Colonel Barker worked for an alien investigation taskforce in Area 54. They stopped using Area 51 because too many people had heard about it.

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation lists SCP-1051 as an alien organism that apparently replaced the hangar at Groom Lake as camouflage. The UFO from Roswell was its larval form and the conspiracy theories about it are its attempts to lure in prey, namely humans.

Western Animation

• In the Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well", when Truman is shown Zoidberg and the remains of Bender recovered from Roswell:
  President Truman: Take this to Area 51.
  Soldier: But sir, that's where we're building the fake moon landing set.
  President Truman: Then we'll have to really land on the Moon! Invent NASA and tell them to get off their fannies!
• At the beginning of Lilo & Stitch, one of the aliens mentions that Earth is in a region of space known as Quadrant 51. Later, we learn that Lilo's social worker, Cobra Bubbles, is really one of The Men in Black, whose familiarity with aliens comes from having worked at Area 51.
• It's revealed in Rick and Morty that the United States government somehow managed to seal Poseidon in Area 51.
• The Simpsons: In "Lost Our Lisa", Lisa Simpson, after accidentally getting on bus 22a instead of the 22, finds Area 51. Her excitement is squashed, however, when she's told that it's actually Area 51-A. Whatever it is, its location is still classified and so the guard won't give Lisa directions.
  You are here. We are not.

Plot-Crucial

Anime and Manga

• Area 51 is seen in Moonlight Mile. The U.S. military launches to their secret space station from here. Personnel are shown flying from Las Vegas on Janet Airlines.

Comic Books

• C.O.V.E.N.: The name of Area 07, the underground complex where the eponymous team lives and operates out of, is an obvious Shout-Out to Area 51.
• Justice League of America: When the rest of the League goes looking for the Martian Manhunter in JLA: A Midsummer's Nightmare, hoping he'll help them undo Know Man and Doctor Destiny's reality warping, they find him in what's was supposed to be implied to be Area 51, artistic license was taken as the site of the gate sets it in Roswell.
• Paperinik New Adventures: Dept. 51 is the repository for recovered Evronian technology-and a lot more, as seen in an issue where boxes containing artifacts and data about previous alien contacts are seen.

Fan Works

• In Arrow: Rebirth, it's revealed that the central headquarters of Division X (the secret government agency that deals with the Dominators) is located at Area 51. Most of the Justice League is naturally shocked to learn that.
  Superman: So, I’ll end up at Area 51, after all. Lois is going to have a field day with this one.

Film

• In Army of the Dead, Zeus (the Alpha zombie who started a Zombie Apocalypse in Las Vegas) was detained in Area 51 and escaped containment following a car crash into the convoy transporting him out of Area 51.
• Independence Day, unbeknownst to the president for reasons of Plausible Deniability. He begins to reassure a conspiracy theorist that the government has never captured a UFO and really had no idea an invasion was coming, only to be told by his Secretary of Defense that "that's not entirely accurate". The film actually lost its Backing By The Pentagon because of this since the official policy of the U.S. military is that there are no aliens at Area 51 and there never have been.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens in Hanger 51 (presumably making it some strange composite of Area 51 and Hangar 18), including mention of Roswell. Additionally, we find out that the Ark of the Covenant is also stored there. It turns out this was the same warehouse it was brought to at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action reveals that Area 51 is just a decoy to distract people from the real facility where the aliens are kept, which is Area 52. Mother, the lead scientist there and an ally of Damien Drake, informs the protagonists of just what the Blue Monkey diamond is capable of.
• In Zero Dark Thirty, Area 51 is where the stealth helicopters for the raid on Osama bin Laden are being tested. Notable in that there is no mention of aliens whatsoever - it's just another wetworks base.
• In the direct-to-TV William Shatner film Groom Lake, a government official arrives to Area 51 to shut down the facility after the end of the Cold War, laughing that their fake UFO rumors successfully prevented the Russians from discovering the secret aircraft testing that has been really going on there. He finds out, though that the base commander is hiding a real-life spaceship and an alien.
• The Found Footage Film, Area 51 is about a group of people who sneak into a base beneath Area 51 and find far more then they bargained for.
• The film 51 takes place entirely in Area 51.

Literature

• "Crucial" is stretching it, but Animorphs has the Fictional Counterpart Zone 91. #14 revolves around the protagonists and the antagonists trying to figure out if the government is really trying to cover up evidence of an alien crash, because the antagonists depend on the idea of an Alien Invasion being utterly unbelievable to the average guy on the street. The book is pure comedy, especially when Sixth Ranger Ax reveals that the piece of alien technology is just an Andalite toilet, but "only the most primitive model."
• Ice Station by Matthew Reilly mentions that UFO storage facilities have been built in the Nevada desert. They've remained completely empty.
  • Area 7 largely takes place in the titular compound, a chemical warfare research facility in the Nevada desert, while the nearby Area 8 houses experimental planes and armed space shuttles. Area 51 is never mentioned, but there's a strong implication of each of the Areas being some form of secret government facility.
• Area 51: The first book heavily focuses on the mysterious site, revealed as a secret government base for test-flying flying saucers. However, in subsequent books things move on into other areas.
• Most novels by Dale Brown involve HAWC, the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, located at Groom Lake. No aliens, just top secret Air Force projects.
• In Adaptation. by Malinda Lo, Reese's car crashes in Area 51. She wakes up in a hospital where she gets a mysterious operation performed by aliens. The aliens have been doing testing on many people in Area 51.
• The third book in the Nemesis Saga, Project 731, reveals that Area 51 is the location of the Elaborate Underground Base used as the headquarters of G.O.D.
• In I Need A Hero, the post-apocalyptic superhero organization Yggdrasil use the former Area 51 as their headquarters, where they have constructed a sprawling underground complex designed to contain supervillains and study superpowers, in addition to continuing the real-life aerospace engineering that took place there.
• In Stolen Skies, which revolves around UFOs, Pierce Plowman used to work at Area 51, and he says that it was just for secret aircraft testing and was never used for storing alien technology — apart from that one time that a group of bored technicians were messing around with the radars and inadvertantly caused a UFO to crash near the base.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Mystery Hunters, Christina heads near the area to investigate reports of captured ufos.
• Due to being Backed by the Pentagon, Area 51 in Stargate SG-1 is explicitly not used for storing aliens... at first. It was originally a secret but mundane Air Force R&D base, which is later used to store and study the various alien artifacts brought back to Earth by the Stargate programme.
• The X-Files:
  • Plays a minor role in the Myth Arc. It's visited in the episodes "Dreamland I & II", in which we learn that it's just a testing ground — "They build 'em up in Utah."
  • However, the planes being tested there are powered by gravity manipulation and, as a side effect, cause bystanders on the ground to either swap bodies or get trapped phased partway through the nearest object... or person.
  • The show also pokes fun at the idea in "Apocrypha", in which one of the Syndicate elders asks why they can't hide a downed UFO at Area 51 and the Cigarette-Smoking Man responds that it's too insecure due to "heightened public interest."
• In 7 Days (1998), The Sphere operates out of Area 51, and is reverse-engineered from alien technology.
  • They do have several alien bodies stored there, as well as one comatose alien, who was knocked out by a scared soldier. Turns out, he's a criminal who's pissed off at humans and in 2 episodes ends up causing the End of the World as We Know It. Luckily, Frank is there to fix things.
• Tracker (2001) had an episode called "Area 51" (aka "Roswell") that centered on breaking into Area 51.
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Little Green Men", in which the Ferengis end up at Area 51 due to a time-travel mishap.
• War of the Worlds (1988): Another piece of UFO conspiracy mythology, Hanger 18 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, is referred to as military disinformation to cover up for the real hanger where Martian technology is kept.
• Doctor Who:
  • Featured in the episode "Day of the Moon".
  • Area 52 shows up in "The Wedding of River Song". Inside a pyramid. It Makes Sense in Context. More or less.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • In "Josh", the military intends to send Josh Butler to Area 51 for study.
  • In "Down to Earth", Max Buford, an employee of Area 51, steals a fragment of an alien ship from the base and shows it to the organizing committee of the North American UFO Convention.
• Taken: The name Area 51 is never used but the UFO project is based in Groom Lake, Nevada from "Jacob and Jesse" to “Maintenance”.

Music

• The song "Faaip De Oiad" by tool features the real audio of a man who called the Art Bell radio show on Sept 11, 1997, claiming to be a former worker at Area 51, on the run because he wanted to expose the terrible secret held there. Curiously enough, the power at Art Bell's radio station was cut during the phone call, and someone claiming to be the caller called Art Bell two weeks later to declare that the call was a hoax.
  • The same call audio appears in "It's Out There and It's Gonna Get You" by The Paper Chase.
• Megadeth, having Conspiracy Theorist leanings in their music, naturally references this in "Hangar 18".
• The Pixies' "The Happening" is all about human-alien encounters. The opening line is "They got a ranch they call Number Fifty-One".
• The Scratch21 song "Ayleeyuns", inspired by the 2019 "raid", naturally features a few lines alluding to Area 51 and its association with UFOs and aliens.
  The city lights and the desert sun
  Just take my hand and we'll have some fun
  Hello, Nevada, we wanna see aliens

Pinball

• Lexy Lightspeed - Escape from Earth begins with the title character (and her companion Lookie) crash-landing in Area 53.1, a secret government facility on the edge of a Florida swamp that hosts a number of aliens.
• In Foo Fighters (2023), the complex is host to the Overlord and some of his mind-controlled minions. Not only is it physically depicted on Premium and Limited Edition machines, it is the subject of the aptly-named Area 51 Multiball (wherein the Foo Fighters break in and steal classified information from the building) across all versions of the game.

Professional Wrestling

• While originally billed from "Classified", The Prototype relocated at some point to Area 51.
• "The Galaxy's Greatest Alien" Kris Statlander is usually billed from "The Andromeda Galaxy". For her Beyond Treasure Hunt semifinal match against Jordynne Grace, the announcer added, "Recently escaped from Area 51."
• Bullet Club members Chase Owens and Bad Luck Fale spent the 2019 G1 Climax tour constantly alluding to the "raiding Area 51" meme of the time as though they planned to lead Bullet Club in such a raid.

Tabletop Games

• In Delta Green, some of Majestic-12's facilities are located inside Area 51, although it's not Area 51 itself.

Video Games

• The final mission sequence of Deus Ex takes place in Area 51. It's alluded to that the so-called alien 'Greys' were being used to distract the conspiracy theorists from something even worse, although that does raise the question as to where they got the anti-matter reactor, if not the aliens...
• Tomb Raider III has a level where an artifact is stored in Area 51.
• The Area 51 appears in the park known as "Witchyworld" in Banjo-Tooie.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had one mission where you had to steal a secret jetpack known as the Black Project by infiltrating a military base that is considered not to be on the map by a few people, known as Area 69. Before or after this mission, your warrant level would instantly shoot up to 5 stars if you wandered too close to the base. Try to do this by air and the base would shoot missiles at you.
• Hydro Thunder Hurricane features a level set in Area 51. A portion of the level involves racing through an alien world.
• Perfect Dark has three levels that take place at Area 51. In a genre shift from industrial espionage to straight-up sci-fi, you wind up rescuing a captured alien who's a friend of your boss, and proceed to escape in a captured UFO There's also a multiplayer left called Area 52 which is based on the single player level.
• In Destroy All Humans!, the Majestic agents operate out of Area 42.
• Freelancer has a Fantasy Counterpart Culture Zone 21, which is also the subject of many conspiracy theories. It's a massive minefield that contains a jump gate to the Alaska System, which is where all the top-secret testing actually takes place. The Alaska system is visited once in the storyline.
• Area 51 is a field in Backyard Baseball. It actually belongs to the CIA!
• The arcade games Area 51 and Area 51: Site 4 take place at — where else? — Area 51, dealing with an Alien Invasion that starts there.
• A 2005 first-person shooter, not to be confused with the above, was also titled Area 51, its story revolving around a viral outbreak at the base that you and your team of soldiers are sent to clean up. The Illuminati and The Greys were responsible, planning on using the virus to Take Over the World. It got an unrelated sequel in 2007, BlackSite: Area 51, which was about the base playing host to a failed Super-Soldier program whose remnants spill out into the nearby town of Rachel, Nevada.
• Adding an additional 15, Area 66 is MadWorld space theme level, featuring aliens, robots, spatial decompression, flashfreeze guns, and bunch of Star Wars references.
• There's an Area 51 level in the fourth episode of Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition.
• In The Pandora Directive, Tex travels to Area 51 and infiltrates the underground facility, long since shut down. He finds dozens of bullet-ridden corpses there, indicating that the soldiers opened fire on the scientists. The corpses then get up and start chasing the detective. He barely makes it out without being killed or infected. Also, Area 51 is where the Roswell spaceship was reverse-engineered into some of the technology used in this world. Among these was anti-matter, which the military used to build bombs that they dropped on the Middle East, starting WWIII.
• In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, it is revealed that the Patriots stored Big Boss's comatose body in Area 51. Zero, the leader of the Patriots, was somewhat of a UFO enthusiast and even thought that he had been abducted by aliens at one point in his life, so storing his friend's body in such a top secret place may be a subtle nod to this aspect of his character. Raiden eventually does break Big Boss's body out of Area 51 though is captured by the Patriots in the process and is subjected to cybernetic experiments that morph his body into the Cyborg Ninja we see him as in MGS4.
• Area 51 is one of the places you can visit in the desert in Champions Online, which has apparently been taken over by the terrorist organisation VIPER.
• In Treyarch's continuity of the Call of Duty Nazi Zombies series Area 51 is talked about and even showcased a couple of times. The first mention of Area 51 comes in the Nazi Zombies minigame where the various radio transmissions that expand upon the background story of the Zombies makes a reference to a, "remote base in Nevada." and even gives exact coordinates of where it would be located on a map. Later on in the storyline of Nazi Zombies in the map "Five" John F. Kennedy makes references to Groom Lake, which is talking about the lake that Area 51 is situated on, and the various technological achievements made there. Finally in the Nazi Zombies map "Moon" Area 51 is being assaulted by Zombies and you have to escape them by teleporting to the surface of the Moon but you can come back later if you want though it won't contribute to ending your current round as all rounds can only be fought on the Moon. Beyond the Nazi Zombies universe Area 51 is also a multiplayer map called "Hanger 18" which is a reference to conspiracy theorists who believe that at Area 51 all of the most top secret Military Aircrafts are all tested there. Also the Element 115 that is constantly referenced in the Nazi Zombies storyline is based off the account of a former Area 51 employee who is stated to have witnessed the substance in action and who said it had reality warping qualities to it.
• In UFO Aftermath, after you establish a solid foothold of reclaimed territory, you get the mission objective to check out what the former US government knew about the alien invaders that have killed off the vast majority of humanity. While it turns out that it was a worldwide initiative to investigate and research the Roswell crash, the first location you raid is Area 51. As a side-note, the game was originally going to be called The Dreamland Chronicles, and the server you recover from Area 51 has information on "Project Dreamland", one of the many code names for Area 51.
• Broken Helix is Die Hard on Area 51.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Area 64 in Stardust Fields, on the border between the Mushroom and Beanbean Kingdoms which the bros have crash-landed into. Mario and Luigi learn a couple of new moves there, beat up a sniggering, money-taking, froggy thing called Tolstar and usual Big Bad Bowser gets blasted out of a cannon.
• The Sims:
  • In The Sims 2 the neighborhood Strangetown is heavily based on typical depictions of Area 51. It is a desert area with military presence (the Grunt family) and also has several aliens. There also is a crashed alien spaceship in a crater.
  • In The Sims 4: Strangerville game pack, Strangerville is based on Area 51, complete with introducing the military career for the first time. However in this case there are no alien sims, instead there is a mysterious flower that is infecting the local townspeople.
• Sonic Advance 2: The True Final Boss of the game is fought in a level titled True Area 53, which seems to be a region in space where the Earth is visible. Why it has a name referencing Area 51 (something that has never been referenced by the franchise before or since) goes unexplained.
• In Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive, Tex has to search the Area 51 facility to find an alien power cell.
• Area 51 makes an appearance in Puyo Puyo 7 and is visited by Andou Ringo.
• Unlike the movie it draws from, Area 51 is a significant location in the Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius game.
• Find and free alien Myukus here in Rampage 2: Universal Tour, the last stop before heading into space to clean the bad-guy aliens out of our solar system.
• Fate/Grand Order: Cosmos in the Lostbelt has a running subplot about David Bluebook, one of the few survivors of the Alien God's invasion setting out to investigate Area 51 as the cause. He eventually discovers the presumed cause to be an alien imprisoned and operated on at Area 51 titled Subject E by the US military who was sending out a distress signal to outer space for someone to rescue it. When he gets there, he is shot in the operation theater Subject E was being dissected in by a mysterious figure whose silhouette is clad in static. The mystery thickens when the protagonists end up in the same place and are not attacked, only finding a twig on an operating bed and humanoid circulatory/nervous systems propped up besides the bed.

Webcomics

• Jix and Lauren in Jix travel to Area 51 to recover Ambis technology.
• In Escape from Terra the United World government hides a cloned neanderthal girl in Area 51, prompting a Belter raid to rescue her when she is scheduled to be terminated.
• The fourth storyline of Skin Horse, "I Can Fly", is set at Area 51, although it's only referred to as such in one strip, and from then on it's Groom Lake. It's the origin of Nick, the team's Black Helicopter.
• In Trying Human Area 51 is the base of Majestic 12 and holds Glasner's lab where he "studies" The Greys.

Web Original

• On YouTube, JediMaster362 has posted a Live Stream about a dream he had in regards to Area 51.
• Fine Structure: Not the Area 51, but the base where the Power experiments are carried out is certainly the next best thing.
  A desolate air base smack in the North American heartland, surrounded by a sixty-kilometre ribbon of electric fence and razor wire hung with intimidating red, yellow and white signs warding off photographers, trespassers and enemies of the state respectively, plus incomprehensibly secret experiments going on within? It's a little greener, vegetation-wise, but Kuang Ching-Yu thinks you might as well call it Area 51 and save yourself five pages of description.
• The "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" viral Facebook event mentioned up top in the description, which garnered the attention of hundreds of thousands of people (including a few celebrities) and was even being reported on by mainstream media. It ended up being a night gathering/party around the area overseen by the National Guard itself, while there were also reports that a few people actually trying to snuck into Area 51 and were arrested for their troubles.
• 7-Second Riddles: A character ends up going there as part of the 2019 event and discovers it's not only filled with aliens, but other monsters as well- and some human guards. The aliens are actually super chill and welcome him with open arms, as it turns out the site is actually a secret alien settlement.
• The plot of the Team Fortress 2 fan animation Pootis Engage is about two heavies who invade Area 51 to obtain thicc anime titties and ass.

Western Animation

• Godzilla: The Series had the aptly titled "Area 51". Turns out that atomic weapons testing in the US desert had created a bunch of giant mutant, Godzilla-esque desert creatures that were being kept secret at the base, with the media having stories about aliens leaked out to cover it up.
• In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the protagonists wander into a high-tech science lab through a portal in the desert, run by "Mother". When Bugs asks her if they're in Area 51, she says Area 51 is just a conspiracy theory, and that they are in fact in Area 52. Bugs promptly pulls out a "Screw Ball" rebus sign when her back is turned.
  Mother: Don't quote me on that!
• Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders centers around Area 51, or at least a spoof of it. Yes, there are aliens.
• Area 52 is where the monsters in Monsters vs. Aliens are being kept. It's not refered to as such in the film: Gen. Monger refers to it as "a place so secret the mere mention of it is a federal offence", and when one aide starts to say "Area Fifty..." he gets a tranquilizer dart to the neck. In the TV series spin-off, it's refered to as Area Fifty-Something.
• X-Men: Evolution features Area 51 as the area where the army hold the incapacitated mutants they kidnapped after the fight with the Sentinel in the season 2 finale.
• As the name suggests, the Doctor Who animation "Dreamland". (They don't have a grey corpse there - she's still alive.)
• In Unidentified Flying Mater, we get to see Parking Area 51.
• The animated film Planet 51 (the title is an obvious reference, though it is never referred as such in the story) shows the alien version, Base 9.
• In an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Cindy, Sheen, Libby, and Carl are taken to "Area 86" after they develop superpowers from contact with space radiation.
• An episode of Megas XLR involved 'Area 50', an abandoned US military base near Las Vegas, in which an experimental battle robot was being developed.
• An episode of Kim Possible has Kim and Ron taken inside Area 51, and they are told that every story of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena was made by the government as part of a disinformation campaign - while every word was actually true.
• One episode of Total Drama World Tour has the contestants infiltrate Area 51, which was presented as a huge warehouse full of alien artifacts, most of which were broken. The fact that aliens were shown to be real caused surprisingly little reaction among the contestants.
• Johnny Test features Area 51.1 as a recurring location. The General and agents Mr. Black and Mr. White work there.
• Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends: Area 51 features in a number of episodes, usually with nasty surprises being found there. The biggest one being it's where the remains of the real General Rinaker are being stored after he was murdered in 1946 by a Shadoen assassin robot.
• 3Below has Area 49-B, just outside of Arcadia Oaks, a military base dedicated to capturing any and all aliens they can find and reverse-engineering their technology to ensure the planet's safety.
• American Dad!: Roger met Stan Smith, for the very first time, during a raid at Area 51. They met in a surgery room that was soon flooded with grenades. They managed to escape through a nearby laundry chute and landed in a van that was heading outside the base. Later in the series, Roger takes Stan back to Area 51. They acquire Roger's lost fanny pack. It contains a lotion that Roger uses to repair Stan's broken legs. Moments later, they are confronted by scientists and soldiers. The soldiers chase Stan and Roger throughout the base. They escape through the same chute, like last time, and end up in a van heading outside Area 51.

---