History Main / LandfillBeyondTheStars

* In the film ''Film/{{Soldier}}'' the main character had been dumped on a "landfill planet" because he was taken for dead.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

* The ironically named Shangri-La colony from ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamZZ Gundam ZZ]]'' is mostly used as a scrapyard, collecting all the wreckage from the space wars that have been raging intermittently for the past 9 years. [[{{Joisey}} Unsurprisingly it's mostly populated by devil-may-care teens who dream of running away to a better world & lots of people with names ending in vowels.]]

[[folder:Comics]]

* An early script for ''Film/BladeRunner opened on an "Off-World Termination Dump" where they bury expired androids. Three replicants that had been faking their deaths kill their dumpsters and escape to Earth.

** ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' / ''Franchise/StarWars'' [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]]'' meanwhile has a whole [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Junk_planets bunch of them.]]

* Pandora in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' is half junkyard, half desert. It gets so bad around the settlement of New Haven that a cave system nearby has walls and ceiling made out of garbage.

* In a different version of this trope, the Malon in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' dump their dangerously radioactive "antimatter waste" (no, we don't know how that works either) in other regions of space, with less scrupulous captains not bothering to look for uninhabited ones. They do give a brief HandWave about why they can't just HurlItIntoTheSun, though; doing so often enough would apparently cause a star to ''explode''. Why they persist in using a power generation technique that produces so much appallingly hazardous waste as a byproduct is not explained, however. ''Voyager'' even tried to offer them waste-cleaning technology, but the one captain they tried this with cared more about his job than saving his society.
** Anti-matter-matter conversion produces a lot of radioactivity. On a ship something would have to absorb that radiation and then become radioactive itself, otherwise the engine would kill everyone. It is possible that whatever absorbs that radiation is what is being dumped.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* The setting of a ''Series/{{Lexx}}'' episode. The system's other planets were mutually annihilated by war, leaving a few hundred employees stranded on the landfill planet. [[HiveQueen It got worse.]]
* Gerry Anderson's ''Series/Space1999'' started with the moon being used as a nuclear waste dump.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Obsidian}}'' The third dream world starts in a planet-wide junkyard like this, [[DoAndroidsDream dreamed of and built by the nanobot-controlling AI, Ceres]]. But, as surreal as everything else in the game is, it also has unusual features: like a giant metal hand containing a flying machine, a radio that makes you levitate, three "moons" based on elements that Ceres was to study in this world, and a massive "Frame in the Sky".

* A more reasonable version appears in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''; the planet Korlus is used as a junkyard/recycling plant for old space-craft, and only those that were near a [[PortalNetwork Mass Relay]]. It's a dirty and dangerous task due to the various volatile chemicals released during the process. So it is less of a planetary junkyard, and more like a planet whose primary industry is ship-breaking.

* ''Film/ThorRagnarok'': The planet Sakaar, which is ruled by the Grandmaster, is an alien scrapyard for derelict spaceships and is known as the "Trash Can of the Universe." Apparently most rogue portals or other teleportation mishaps in the Universe end up on Sakaar, to justify why so many important characters all end up stranded in the same location.

* Morbus in the Archie ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures''' comics is garbage planet within Dimension X, where Krang is banished by Cherubae.

* ''StarWarsLegends'' ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'' features the planet Caamas as this after the planet was utterly devastated by orbital bombardment. This was something of a charitable endeavour, as the Caamasi were at least paid for the use of their (now mostly useless) planet.

** By ''VideoGame/StarFoxAssault'', if Zoness being a multiplayer map is any indication, it seems that a cleanup effort, first hinted in the Corneria stage, was successful.

** ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' / ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' meanwhile has a whole [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Junk_planets bunch of them]].

** ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' meanwhile has a whole [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Junk_planets bunch of them]].

* The darkly humorous ''TabletopGame/HoL'' (''Human Occupied Landfill'') takes place on one of these planets. It also takes the concept one step further and turns it into a landfill for people: the planet is the [[FunWithAcronyms Confederation Of World's]] only prison.

* ''ThorRagnarok'': The planet Sakaar, which is ruled by the Grandmaster, is an alien scrapyard for derelict spaceships and is known as the "Trash Can of the Universe." Apparently most rogue portals or other teleportation mishaps in the Universe end up on Sakaar, to justify why so many important characters all end up stranded in the same location.

* Morbus in the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics is garbage planet within Dimension X, where Krang is banished by Cherubae.

* Vulpin in the fluff of ''Series/Ben10'' is a galactic dumping ground totally devoid of all life that's not freakishly mutated by toxic wastes. For perspective, Wildmutt (think a vaguely canine gorilla with no eyes and a massive set of jaws) was sampled from the DNA of a creature native to the place.
* ''StarWarsTheCloneWars'' has Lotho Minor as a textbook example.

For this trope to work at all, the setting must have ''very'' [[CasualInterstellarTravel Casual (and VERY CHEAP) Interstellar Travel.]] There are, however, ways to harden this trope: make the planet in question a useless dwarf planet in a nearby asteroid belt, Ceres-like (delta-v to reach such a planet could be really low), used only to dump garbage of space origin from the same system, and equipped with dirty recycling industries that make it more efficient to fling refuse there, rather than into the star. Rarely will it ever be a recycling planet of some kind, which would justify that moving massive amounts of junk there. For this trope in a smaller scale, see DownInTheDumps.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** Raxus Prime.
*** Along with its somewhat interchangeable counterparts Ord Mantell and Lotho Minor.
** ''Star Wars'' averts it with Coruscant. The planet's waste is recycled or composted where applicable, and the truly hazardous, irreclaimable garbage gets packed into containers and shot into orbit, where it gets a subsequent heave toward the sun.
** The planet Caamas was used as this after the planet was utterly devastated by orbital bombardment. This was something of a charitable endeavour, as the Caamasi were paid for the use of their (now mostly useless) planet.

* ''VideoGame/TheForceUnleashed'' returns to the planet Raxus Prime, which was so polluted from its long history as a manufacturing center that it eventually became this.

* Creator/LarryNiven's short stoy "[[Literature/KnownSpace The Woman in Del Rey Crater]]" involves humanity dumping most of their nuclear waste into a single crater on the Moon. This is actually explained pretty well: the radioactive waste is hideously dangerous NOW, but we may find a way to use it at some later time. The Moon has no environment to damage, is very sparsely populated, and is relatively easy for this near-future society to reach, so it makes an excellent landfill until recycling technology catches up.