Is there a name for the trope where a story is high fantasy at first glance, except for it's not fantasy and is actually set in a post-apocalypse dystopian future?
Is there a name for the trope where a story is high fantasy at first glance, except for it's not fantasy and is actually set in a post-apocalypse dystopian future?
I'm embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions... So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
Assuming it's a surprise, this is Earth All Along. Genre Shift is similar, but that's more about tone than plot
Aladdin (1992). The Genie is the last survivor of the AI wars and has mental damage. The Cave of Wonders is another remnant. “Magic” is low level AI responding to human intent. Iago is an uplift. Agrabah is literally a generic Middle Eastern country because it was assembled from the fragmented records of what remained of the Middle East.
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is my personal favourite of Bruce Campbell's work. Starts off as any ordinary western, before getting very, very weird.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105932/
Come to think of it, Firefly might count, after watching Serenity at the end of the series.
Yeah, Adventure Time
That wouldn’t fall under a single trope, but would be a combination of several tropes. After The End would be a requirement, and for technology that is like magic to those who live in the world would be Lost Technology.
To clarify, are you asking if there's a specific genre to Planet of the Apes where there's a big reveal that this is actually just earth after some society ending disaster? (And similar stuff but that's the first that came to mind).
NK Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy comes to mind, fantastic series it that's your thing
Post Apocalyptic Fantasy and Post Apocalyptical High Fantasy are two phrases I keep seeing.
Star Trek comes to mind unless you disallow scifi (as high fantasy usually would iirc, though notably "space operas" really do seem to blur the line).
LOTR could be argued as such - there was an earlier age of beings from which only remnants survived, and then we also watch live as a second epochal transition takes place, where the likes of elves disappear. I mean, either way it's not "our reality" type of age - but then again you couldn't ask for that from "high fantasy" by definition :-).
And it's a very common trope in video games - e.g. Chrono Trigger that is arguably the best RPG of all time (shitty graphics, even for its time, but hands-down the best story I've ever seen, made btw by the creators of Final Fantasy who were given the freedom to do whatever they wanted for it). Edit: another one like that is Lufia - not a ground-breaking game but highly regarded for doing what it did so very well, at its time mind you.
And I've seen some others where like basically Earth is implied to have been destroyed (or at least it is unclear whether it survived a world-ending event), but the singular human remaining lives on, in space, but in something like a series of interconnected "worlds", some having higher levels of technology than Earth ever managed to reach while others are set in earlier timeframes. And dealing with noncorporeal beings from like higher dimensions, and entities like a god inside the machine - so definitely once again mixing up heavy elements of "high fantasy" (with the likes of swords and magic) and sci-fi.
If you can dream it, someone has likely written it. Books are freaking awesome! 😎 So too are other mediums, when profits are not the exclusive focus.
Shan ara chronicles has just that and I searched it in tvtropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheShannaraChronicles#:~:text=The Shannara Chronicles is an American post-apocalyptic fantasy drama television
The Reveal: Not that the characters particularly care, but Safehold turns out to be the 3000 year old remains of San Francisco
Hmm not sure. I guess I'd call it post-apocoliptic fantasy lol. But I know exaxctly what you mean and I love that genre. The Horizon games and even the Witcher books/games fit into this genre.
The Elder Scrolls. It's not explicitly stated, but iirc it's highly suggested it's post-apocalyptic. That said, it's still fantasy, there's still magic, spellcasting and so forth (there's no indication that the magic is the result of lost tech becoming indistinguishable from magic); it's just that the lore highly suggests it may be post-apocalyptic.
it would be quite interesting to see that trope actually get a name, cause it feels quite overused personally, recently even freaking one piece did it
one of my favorite recent fantasy mangas (helck) also had a pretty...detestably quality with it, the ending was basically "how is thing happening? why? HOW??" and than boom..ancient but also post apocalyptic
however, at least they give it a small spin by basically just being modern day, with a bit of cyberpunk tech
It's probably common enough to be it's own trope but I think it's mostly considered to be mix of tropes such as Twist Ending, After the End and Despair Event Horizon(to a lesser degree). If I would have to give it a name, I'd probably call it the "Lady Liberty Twist".
I don’t quite think that there’s a name for this genre (yet?) but I’ll take this opportunity to blast out my favorite story-focused game serieses
Xenoblade is a nice fantasy RPG if you really like Storytelling! And all 3 core games are available on Switch!
Generally speaking, Xenogears and Xenosaga have amazing stories too, but Xenoblade got translated and dubbed waaaay better
Edit: just thought of this the last couple of minutes, and, if there was a name for this genre, it would spoil the whole game/movie/book for you! Imagine watching Planet of the Apes for the first time (it’s old by now and I hope there’s no one here who didn’t watch it already) and exactly knowing what planet it is
Movies like
My Name is Bruce.
The Thirteenth Floor