History Main / ALongTimeAgoInAGalaxyFarFarAway

* ''ComicBook/{{Saga}}'', much like ''Franchise/StarWars'', is a [[ScienceFantasy science fiction/fantasy hybrid]] that takes place in an unnamed galaxy. Human characters exist but the word "human" or the planet Earth are never mentioned.

* ''[[Anime/{{Photon}} Photon: The Idiot Adventures]]'' mostly plays it straight apart from having Sandy Planet look like Earth at the end after it's terraformed. WordOfGod says it goes on to become the titular world of ''Anime/TenchiMuyoWarOnGeminar'' which would make it AnotherDimension to ''[[Anime/TenchiMuyoRyoOhki Tenchi Muyo]]'''s Earth.

** A proposed novel in the ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' books gave an origin story for humans in the Galaxy; that they were were escapees from the dystopia government from ''Film/THX1138'' that had taken an experimental FTL drive, ending up on the other side of the universe and backwards in time. The pitch became the ''Literature/AlienChronicles'' instead.

* Although Earth appears in Creator/MarkMillar's ''ComicBook/Empress}}'', it's set 65 million years in the past and inhabited by HumanAliens that run a major space empire.

* Although Earth appears in Creator/MarkMillar's ''Empress'', it's set 65 million years in the past and inhabited by HumanAliens that run a major space empire.

* ''VideoGame/{{XenoGears}}'': The prologue begins in a distant galaxy when a MileLongShip from Earth called The Eldridge comes under siege from an unknown force before activating the SelfDestructMechanism, causing it to crash onto a nearby planet and setting the story in motion. [[spoiler:The humans that live on this planet were created by the giant bio-weapon Deus 10,000 years ago in order to act as parts to repair its damage. The humans that created Deus were from Earth, but they are mostly a separate gene pool from Deus' created humans]].

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'' has a mini-side-quest that semi-confirms a direct connection between it and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', by implying that the Shinra in your group is the ancestor of those who will produce the technology to head to the stars and find a new planet thousands of years ago in the time-line of ''VII''.

* Most Creator/SquareEnix {{RPG}}s occur on planets with no visible relationship to Earth, or each other. Though, bizarrely enough, there's almost always humans, or just really HumanAliens.

* ''Literature/TheWitcher'' franchise is set on an unnamed planet populated by various races displaced from other worlds through portal storm events. The one that brought the humans (among other other, non-sapient races) was called the [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Conjunction_of_the_Spheres Conjunction of Spheres]], and it occurred 1,500 years before the events of the books. Elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes arrived on the planet in earlier events, as did now near-extinct races like orcs, vran, and ogres. Due to some characters (including the GreaterScopeVillain's army) having the ability to open portals to other worlds, [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Multiverse#Known_worlds several other planets]] are either visited or referenced over the course of the series, and while visuals in ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt'' make it clear that these are actual planets and not simply fantastical realms[[note]]In ''Witcher 2'', a character even suggests that the vast space between worlds could be cleared conventionally rather than with portals, they just lack the technology to do so. This makes it clear that these are conventional planets located in the same universe - or at least, that the characters think they are.[[/note]] no hints are ever given as to their location. It's lightly implied that the [[https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Earth_(world) original human home world]] could've been EarthAllAlong, but nothing's confirmed.

* ''Series/{{Lexx}}'' starts off in AlternateUniverse called the Light Zone with occasional mentions and visits to a [[DarkWorld Dark Zone]]. The Dark Zone is later revealed to be our universe and most of season 4 takes place on Earth.

* ''Franchise/BattlestarGalactica''. In both versions, the characters are human spacefarers inhabiting a fictional sector of space (the Cyrannus cluster), but not from Earth even ancestrally. They are from the Twelve Colonies that were settled by humans from Kobol and are looking for Earth, which is mentioned in their sacred scrolls as the 13th colony of Kobol. [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 The original series]] was set in ThePresentDay, while the series finale of [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 the 2000s version]] ultimately reveals that (major spoiler) [[spoiler: this ''is'' a long time ago far, far away (although in the Milky Way galaxy) when the fleet finally arrives on Earth and it's still the prehistoric era. They leave their ships and become the ancestors of Earth humans.]]
** Its SpinOff ''Series/{{Caprica}}'' played around with that a lot in trying to depict a human civilization that had nothing to do with Earth. Arguably it was the only TV show in recent history to have a go at that.

* [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]]' ''Literature/TheCulture'' novels mainly concern the spacefaring non-empire "The Culture". The appendix of the first novel states that the interstellar war described ended in the 13th Century AD. In the short story ''State Of The Art'', a Culture ship visits Earth in 1977, stays to study us for a while and leaves without being noticed. The attribution of the epilogue to ''Literature/ConsiderPhlebas'' suggests that Earth gets [[FirstContact contacted]] (as opposed to Contact-ed) in the 2100's.

** Lampshaded in the film novelization by having Ben Kenobi say "Still, even a duck has to be taught to swim." and Luke asking "What's a duck?"

* ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'' mentions a few real-life stars but not Earth, and there are only two humans in the entire movie.

* ''Anime/LostUniverse'' uses this trope, as it's in a different universe.

** ''[[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 Xenoblade Chronicles]]'': [[spoiler:The BigBad of the game was originally a human scientists from Earth, whose experiment ended up destroying his world and resulted in the creation of the world that the Bionis and the Mechonis inhabit.]]

* The ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' franchise mostly functions this way. With two exceptions (one of whom dies in the same game he's introduced in), every human character (usually referred to as "terrans") is descended from a group of colonists who arrived in the Koprulu sector when their ships' FTL drives malfunctioned and they wound up being blasted so far into deep space (a good sixty thousand light-years from Earth) that there was seemingly no hope of ever contacting their homeworld again. Hundreds of years later, the terrans have built up their own societies across dozens of planets and moons, and start to encounter sapient aliens also in the sector, namely the [[SpaceElves protoss]] and [[HordeOfAlienLocusts zerg]]. The terran characters almost never refer to Earth and the Koprulu sector is usually treated as synonymous with all of existence to them - even [[TheCaligula Arcturus]] [[{{Greed}} Mengsk]] only desires to rule the sector rather than seek out Earth. ''Brood War'' fits Earth back into the story via a long-range expeditionary fleet sent by the [[TheWarOfEarthlyAggression United Earth Directorate]], but the terran characters don't identify themselves with the invaders at all (pulling an EnemyMine with the protoss and zerg factions to repulse them), and it's gone by the end of the same expansion that introduces it. After the UED's defeat, Earth goes on to play no role in the rest of the series (beyond one of the survivors of the UED expedition becoming a minor recurring character who sometimes references it).

* ''ComicBook/{{Saga}}'' by Creator/BrianKVaughan, much like ''Franchise/StarWars'', is a [[ScienceFantasy science fiction/fantasy hybrid]] that takes place in an unnamed galaxy. Human characters exist but the word "human" or the planet Earth are never mentioned.

* ''ComicBook/{{Dreadstar}}'' is set in the Empirical Galaxy. Dreadstar himself is a refugee from our destroyed galaxy after drifting frozen for a million years. He looks human but it's not clear if he's a HumanAlien or can trace his origins to Earth.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'': [[spoiler:A major part of the overall MythArc of the first three games and their respective expansions is that unlike other JRPG franchises like ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' or ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'', ''Xenoblade Chronicles''[='=]s fantastical settings are actually just Earth AfterTheEnd:]]

* ''TabletopGame/{{Dragonstar}}'' is set in the Serpent's Eye galaxy. Like ''TabletopGame/{{Spelljammer}}'', it's a ScienceFantasy series that is basically ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' RecycledInSpace.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' has this in the form of "Lost Jerusalem", which is the colloquial term for the ancestral planet of humans. Humans have been living in space for a good 4000 years, and [[spoiler: Earth has long since been lost and forgotten over time.]]