History Main / MonumentalDamageResistance

* ''Film/IndependenceDay'' becomes HarsherInHindsight at one point in a shot of a devastated New York City. The World Trade Center is still standing, with only a few large chunks ripped out of it here and there. Also, most everything in Los Angeles is reduced to rubble except the scorched and battered but still recognisable palm trees.[[note]][[RealityIsUnrealistic Less silly than it sounds]]: They evolved to stand up to regular hurricanes, after all.[[/note]] To let you know that yes, that ''was'' Los Angeles.

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[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/ResidentEvilExtinction'', Las Vegas is buried in sand, but the monuments of the strip are still there and recognizable.

* ''Film/IndependenceDay'' becomes HarsherInHindsight at one point in a shot of a devastated New York City. The World Trade Center is still standing, with only a few large chunks ripped out of it here and there. Also, most everything in Los Angeles is reduced to rubble except the scorched and battered but still recognisable palm trees.[[note]][[RealityIsUnrealistic Less silly than it sounds]]: They evolved to stand up to regular hurricanes, after all.[[/note]] To let you know that yes, that ''was'' Los Angeles.
* ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'': In the 40th century (the time period during which the first and second films take place), the Statue of Liberty lets the audience know that most of the movie takes place in a very post-apocalyptic New York.
* ''Film/MadMaxBeyondThunderdome'': Appearing at the end of the movie, Sydney Opera House and many of the skyscrapers of downtown Sydney, Australia seem to be in pretty good condition, given that everything else around them (including even the ocean) has been blasted into sand. Though the Sydney Harbour Bridge next to it is in a much worse state, its middle span completely collapsed.
* ''Film/{{Dreamscape}}''. During the President's final dream, a train car is passing through a landscape blasted by a nuclear explosion. We see a partially destroyed Capitol building to let the audience know it's the ruins of Washington D.C.
* In [[TheMovie the movie version]] of ''Film/LogansRun'', when Logan 5 and Jessica 6 reach the ruined city, we know its Washington DC because the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and National Archives are still standing. Vine-covered and weathered, but still standing.
* OlderThanTelevision: In the 1933 film ''Deluge'', New York City is flooded. The Empire State Building is knocked down by the wall of water, but the Statue of Liberty remains standing.

* Also played straight in 1975's ''Film/{{Earthquake}}'', which restricted ''most'' of the destruction to Los Angeles's outlying areas, leaving nearly all the city's landmarks fundamentally untouched.
* In the DistantFinale of ''Film/AIArtificialIntelligence'', New York City has been covered by glaciers, but the World Trade Center and the other recognizable buildings of downtown Manhattan are intact, sticking through the ice. (Glaciers, of course, move, and would flatten anything in their path.)

* ''Film/DeepImpact'': A brief (but iconic) shot of New York after it is flooded by the impact's tidal wave shows the Statue of Liberty's ''head'' and a seemingly intact yellow taxi being slowly moved by the current. This is after we've seen the statue, Brooklyn Bridge and Washington Square Arch destroyed with the detail that the best computer effects allowed in 1998.
* In ''Film/Oblivion2013'', during the OpeningNarration explaining how it's currently the 2070s and the world was blown to Hell and back by an AlienInvasion (to the point that the Iceland wastelands stand in for [[BigApplesauce New York State]]), we get a few shots of the destroyed Washington, D.C., and the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument and the Pentagon are free and still standing, while everything else is gone and replaced by mud flats and the Pentagon has a neat bomb crater (implied to have been made by a nuclear weapon) smack in the middle of it.

* ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'': A statue of George Washington and Federal Hall remain standing in New York City (not that the protagonist recognizes them as such) when it's mostly in ruins, although both are quite worn down, with only fragments from their inscriptions left.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': The episode "Dead Man's Switch" ends with a view of Washington DC destroyed. Inexplicably, the Washington Monument is still standing while everything around it is rubble.

* On ''Series/{{The 100}}'', the Lincoln Memorial seems to be the only piece of Washington D.C. to have survived the nuclear war and the anarchic century that followed.

* The intro-movie of ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'' features the Earth consumed in the nuclear fires of WorldWarIII... and yet the White House and the Arc de Triomphe are both shown to be standing tall while their respective cities (Washington, DC, and Paris respectively) are flat fields of rubble.

* This trope is in full effect for the Washington DC levels in ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare2''. Both the Washington Monument and White House ("Whiskey Hotel") suffer damage but are still iconically standing. That said, they still take ''quite'' a beating, especially the White House, which gets quite a few walls knocked down and its interior utterly totalled. Its later shown repaired.
** In ''Modern Warfare 3'', though pretty much the entire New York City skyline is in flames, One World Trade Centre is conspicuously untouched. This one's pretty justified, though, for obvious sensitivity-related reasons. The Statue of Liberty is also untouched.

* No matter how many nukes you drop on a city in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} IV'', you can never destroy a World Wonder. Razing a city by conventional means will still destroy them, however.
* ''VideoGame/WorldInConflict'' has the Space Needle and the Statue of Liberty survive untouched, though the latter is threatened in one mission.
* ''VideoGame/EarthEternal'' is set long AfterTheEnd -- humans have blasted themselves into oblivion with nuclear war, the ruins of our civilizations have long fallen to ruin, the radiation has been cleaned up, and the Beasts have reclaimed the world. But the Eiffel Tower is still intact, somehow.

* ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'' in the After the End mod for the sequel, one of the pictures shows the statue of Lincoln, partially covered in vines, being knelt to.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Film]]

* The novel of ''Literature/{{Metro 2033}}'' mentions that the Kremlin is standing and is in pretty good shape, compared to the rest of Moscow after the city was nuked. It is explained that NATO specifically avoided hitting Kremlin, preferring to test a new biological weapon instead. Said weapon consumed everyone holed up there and eventually became [[EldritchAbomination something much worse]].

A major city has been completely leveled, whether by a marauding monster, invading alien, nuclear attack, or anything that has a tendency to cause massive collateral damage. The town is nothing but a smoking pile of smouldering rubble. But wait! What's that over there? A few buildings are still standing. And what do you know! It's TheWhiteHouse! It might be a little worse-for-wear, and probably has chunks taken out of it and bits broken off, but it's [[TheConstant still standing]] and easily recognizable.

* ''Film/IndependenceDay'' creates a FunnyAneurysmMoment at one point in a shot of a devastated New York City. The World Trade Center is still standing, with only a few large chunks ripped out of it here and there. Also, most everything in Los Angeles is reduced to rubble except the scorched and battered but still recognisable palm trees.[[note]][[RealityIsUnrealistic Less silly than it sounds]]: They evolved to stand up to regular hurricanes, after all.[[/note]] To let you know that yes, that ''was'' Los Angeles.

* Seen generally in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series, but most noticeable in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}''. Despite the general devastation of the DC area, most of the landmarks are left remarkably intact. The Washington Monument, the National Archives, the Jefferson Memorial, the Museum of Natural History, and the Lincoln Memorial all feature prominently in in-game quests. The US Capitol building also dominates the view of one end of the National Mall, with the iconic rotunda still standing (albeit with a hole in the side). The setting tries to [[JustifiedTrope justify]] this: the extended Cold War between the US and China led to the government reinforcing major landmarks in anticipation of a nuclear apocalypse, while the weapons technology of the ''Fallout'' universe favored low-yield weapons that did less explosive damage but left far more... well, [[TitleDrop fallout]].
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' also subverts this trope. With so much of the city still standing, you'd expect to eventually be able to explore the White House, but all you'll find at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is [[MonumentalDamage a deep, highly-irradiated crater]] and a few [[SicklyGreenGlow Glowing One]] [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier ghouls]].

** Continuing the tradition, ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' prominently features Boston monuments such as the [=USS=] Constitution, Fenway Park, the Bunker Hill Monument, the Paul Revere Memorial, Faneuil Hall, the Old North Church, and even Walden Pond. Somewhat justified in that only one nuke was aimed at Boston, and it missed and landed somewhere Southwest of the city, in a heavily destroyed and still-irradiated area now called the Glowing Sea.

* ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'': A statue of George Washington and Federal Hall remain standing in New York City (not that the protagonists recognizes them as such) when it's mostly in ruins, although both are quite worn down, with only fragments from their inscriptions left.

** Some have said that the Luftwaffe deliberately left St Paul's untouched was because it was a prominent landmark and useful as a waypoint for estimating distance to targets. However, the cathedral was hit in 1940 and would have burnt down without the intervention of firefighters.

* Also played straight in 1975's ''Earthquake'', which restricted ''most'' of the destruction to Los Angeles's outlying areas, leaving nearly all the city's landmarks fundamentally untouched.

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/{{Fallout3}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/monumentaldamageresistance_198.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The Washington Monument in the background is the dead give-away.]]
A major city has been completely levelled, whether by a marauding monster, invading alien, nuclear attack, or anything that has a tendency to cause massive collateral damage. The town is nothing but a smoking pile of smouldering rubble. But wait! What's that over there? A few buildings are still standing. And what do you know! It's TheWhiteHouse! It might be a little worse-for-wear, and probably has chunks taken out of it and bits broken off, but it's [[TheConstant still standing]] and easily recognizable.

* In ''Film/Oblivion2013'', during the OpeningNarration explaining how it's currently the 2070s and the world was blown to Hell and back by an AlienInvasion (to the point that the Iceland wastelands stand in for [[BigApplesauce New York State]]), we get a few shots of the destroyed Washington, D.C., and the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument and the Pentagon are free and still standing, while everything else is gone and replaced by mud flats and the Pentaggon has a neat bomb crater (implied to have been made by a nuclear weapon) smack in the middle of it.

* Partially subverted in 1983's ''Film/TheDayAfter''. Towards the end, Dr. Oakes is wandering the ruins of what was Kansas City, and finds the stump of the Liberty Memorial tower; some of words on the monument are still visible.