History Main / BeforeTheDarkTimes

Related to EndOfAnAge. TheDarkTimes may be related to this trope, but not always. Not to be confused with JustBeforeTheEnd.

* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' is set after humanity destroyed most of the world in an effort to prevent resources falling into enemy hands. 20 years earlier the countries of the world had just learned to coexist together in peace while the people were generally happy.
** Said enemy being a race of mutants accidentally created from a group of Immulsion miners, not realizing how toxic the new resource is.

->''"For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the [[TheRepublic Old Republic]]. [[TropeNamer Before the Dark Times]]. Before TheEmpire."''

[[quoteright:309:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/star_trek_san_francisco.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:309:[[Franchise/StarTrek Starfleet Headquarters.]]\\

[[folder:Films]]

* ''Film/SoylentGreen'': After Thorn and Sol enjoy a meal of real food, Sol mentions on how the old world was just as Crapsack as the present in terms of people, but it was at least beautiful compared to the [[GaiasLament environmental disaster that is the world of 2022.]] [[spoiler: When Sol is committing suicide at the clinic, they both watch videos of the old times, seeing how far the world really has gone.]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': Codex books, manuals and tie-in novels--especially ones dealing with the Imperium of Man -- often refer to the (poorly named) "Dark Age of Technology", which was a time of great technological stride and prosperity that preceded the "Horus Heresy" and rise of Chaos. The reason it's called the Dark Age is because the GodEmperor wasn't around then (and because several historical records of the era are missing, hence ''dark'').

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''{{Metro2033}}'': The pre-war world. In Artyom's home station, an older [=NPC=] can be heard reminiscing on how beautiful the world once was. In the D6 base, while passing by a room filled with military equipment, Miller will go on a speech on how humanity will take back the world and return it to its former glory, and that "everything will be everything."

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

[[folder: Real Life]]

[[caption-width-right:309:[[Franchise/StarTrek Starfleet Headquarters]] Top: [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Pre-Dominion War.]] Bottom: [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Post-Dominion War.]]]]

[[quoteright:161:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/SFbeforeandafter_5352.png]]
[[caption-width-right:161: [[Franchise/StarTrek Starfleet Headquarters]] Top:[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Pre-Dominion War.]] Bottom: [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Post-Dominion War]] ]]

->''"For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the [[TheRepublic Old Republic]]. [[TropeNamer Before the Dark Times]]. Before {{The Empire}}."''
-->-- '''Obi-Wan Kenobi''', ''{{Film/A New Hope}}''

Related to EndOfAnAge. TheDarkTimes may be related to this trope, but not always.

-->-- '''Obi-Wan Kenobi''', (''{{Film/A New Hope}}'')

-->--'''Obi-Wan Kenobi''', (''{{Film/A New Hope}}'')

* In the early ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' seasons, no episode was complete without Dylan reminiscing on how great the old [[TheFederation System Commonwealth]] was. In fact, various episodes and flashbacks reveal that the old Commonwealth was not that great. There's a reason why most of their ships of the line habitually carried dozens of star-destroying weapons. Also, when the Magog attached, the a Commonwealth responded with a policy of appeasement, despite being fully capable of defeating them. In exchange for a peace treaty, they gave up dozens of border worlds, mostly populated by Nietzcheans. Is it a wonder the Nietzcheans eventually rebelled?

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'' we learn that the gods flooded Hyrule to keep it safe from Ganondorf.
** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' we learn that the DarkWorld used to be the the Golden Realm, a holy, more or less perfect realm where the [[AncientArtifact Triforce]] resides, before Ganon got imprisoned there and took it over.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'': In this later (but chronologically earlier) game, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero guess who ends up being responsible for sending him there]]?
** An example involving ''a'' DarkWorld, but not ''the'' Dark World, is present in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkBetweenWorlds''. Princess Hilda says that "Lorule was just like Hyrule. So very beautiful. So very...promising." This was before all the events that let [[BigBad Yuga]] make it a haven for monsters. Hilda even tells Zelda that she has to borrow Link to save her kingdom because all of Lorule's native heroes are long gone. It turns out the kingdom's decay started well before any of this: [[spoiler:Lorule had its own upside-down Triforce that was just as much an object of greed as its Hyrulean counterpart. The key point where they diverged from Hyrule is that, in order to keep it out of the hands of evil people, they ''destroyed'' their Triforce rather than seal it away. They found out the hard way that this was pretty much the equivalent of tearing the glue out of a wooden model, and Lorule started crumbling apart as a result. The whole EvilPlan seen in ''A Link Between Worlds'' was actually formulated by ''Hilda'' as a way of taking Hyrule's Triforce to replace their own.]]

* Creator/WhiteWolf ''loves'' this trope ([[TropesAreNotGood and not always doing it in a believable way]]):

* ''SoylentGreen'': After Thorn and Sol enjoy a meal of real food, Sol mentions on how the old world was just as Crapsack as the present in terms of people, but it was at least beautiful compared to the [[GaiasLament environmental disaster that is the world of 2022.]] [[spoiler: When Sol is committing suicide at the clinic, they both watch videos of the old times, seeing how far the world really has gone.]]

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': Codex books, manuals and tie-in novels--especially ones dealing with the Imperium of Man -- often refer to the (poorly named) "Dark Age of Technology", which was a time of great technological stride and prosperity that preceded the "Horus Heresy" and rise of Chaos. The reason it's called the Dark Age is because the GodEmperor wasn't around then.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': Codex books, manuals and tie-in novels--especially ones dealing with the Imperium of Man -- often refer to the (poorly named) "Dark Age of Technology", which was a time of great technological stride and prosperity that preceded the "Horus Heresy" and rise of Chaos.

* Renaissance historical literature, such as that of Petrarch, commonly portrays the ages of Ancient Greece and TheRomanEmpire as this. They were the ones who coined the term "DarkAgeEurope" to refer to the post-Roman world in the first place.

* ''VideoGame/HaloReach'': To some degree this is the purpose behind the game, to show the UNSC at its greatest and the Spartan Program at its peak. Then the game takes you down the course where the Covenant overwhelms everything. While the UNSC is still somewhat strong in the original game trilogy, the defeat at Reach destroyed the Spartan ranks. At the same time, the pre-contact humanity was far from a perfect place. There was a reason the Spartans were created in the first place, and that reason was to fight the Insurrectionists, who had no qualms about using [=WMDs=] on civilian targets to get the UNSC to leave them alone. That worked about as well as you'd expect. Oh, and the Spartans themselves are either kidnapped and brainwashed children (SPARTAN-II) or orphans manipulated into enlisting voluntarily (SPARTAN-III). Only the original Project ORION (unofficially called SPARTAN-I) and the new SPARTAN-IV program can be called ethical, as they use adult volunteers, who understand what they're getting into.

* ''VideoGame/HaloReach'': To some degree this is the purpose behind the game, to show the UNSC at its greatest and the Spartan Program at its peak. Then the game takes you down the course where the Covenant overwhelms everything. While the UNSC is still somewhat strong in the original game trilogy, the defeat at Reach destroyed the Spartan ranks.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'': TropeNamer from Obi-Wan's speech in ''Episode IV'' regarding the Jedi/the Old Republic compared to the Empire. Freedoms still existed, the Jedi were respected and the rights of non-human species were still there, although corruption was beginning to tear the Republic apart...

* ''HaloReach'': To some degree this is the purpose behind the game, to show the UNSC at its greatest and the Spartan Program at its peak. Then the game takes you down the course where the Covenant overwhelms everything. While the UNSC is still somewhat strong in the original game trilogy, the defeat at Reach destroyed the Spartan ranks.

->''"For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights of peace and justice in the [[TheRepublic Old Republic]]. [[TropeNamer Before the Dark Times]]. Before {{The Empire}}."''
-->--'''Obi-Wan Kenobi''', (''{{ANewHope}}'')

->''"The present may stink, but at least now we can look forward to a better yesterday."''
-->--'''[[IdiotHero Philip J. Fry]]''', ''{{Futurama}}'' (''[[TheMovie Bender's Big Score]]'')

In some works, restoring the world to this once grand state may be the goal by the characters. Conflict may arise when there are different factions each with their own ideas on how to recreate this utopia. In cynical works, older characters who lived in this time, or educated characters about this time may also comment on how it really wasn't that grand of a time, and that in reality, it was just as bad, but in its own ways. In other works, there may be no way to restore the world to its once-grand state, and the details of it only exist to highlight how far the work's society has fallen, and to add drama to the story.